Quote (ofthevoid @ 20 Oct 2022 03:43)
Some thoughts on drones.
I think we may see the evolution of warfare in the coming years. Cheap disposable drones that can travel hundreds of miles and kamikaze themselves into targets are just too useful.
Quick comparison.
Kalibr cruise missile cost = 5mm per wiki
Shahed 136 =20k per
That means you can fire off 250 drones for the cost of one cruise missile. Let's say 80% of them are shot down by air defenses. That still means 50 drones reaching their targets. You could literally have a team of nerds that played video games all of their life in a room pilot 250 of these per raid with no human causalities inflicting tons of damage every day, given you have the supply of them.
Also effective decoys and loitering munitions. China won't be storming the beaches like Normandy, they'll be sending endless swarms of these things at Taiwan when/if that war comes.
Quote (RedFromWinter @ 20 Oct 2022 04:12)
And your just talking radio operated drone tech. Eventually they won't even need human operator and won't be vulnerable to radio jams given some base neural net and AI algorithms to fallback on when jammed. Could have autonomous kamikaze drones going all over the planet. Some can perch and charge now., or water drones etc.
I agree with both of you that drones, particularly autonomous and semi-autonomous versions, will be the next evolution of warfare.
I think this will spur two technological developments:
1.: a massive leap in jammer and anti-jamming technology
2.: the emergence of "anti-air drones" which intercept and destroy any detected enemy drones while they approach. This is a task which can be carried out by AI too. Imho, the crux will be detection.
We are definitely in for a technological arms race on this front, which should favor the West in the long run since that's where the cutting edge tech companies and researchers are. China might be able to keep up to a sufficient degree though... but definitely not Russia, Iran or any other backward country.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 19 2022 08:41pm