Swarming Aerial Drones

This is old but hasn’t been mentioned yet. I could envision this tech being used as a kind of smart Chaff:

 
From some discussions about the war, Harop gets a manufacturing price tag of $80~100k (supposedly reported in israeli media) per drone, quite cheap if one thinks of 1000km strike range.

Do you have a link to the media where the is quoted price? That seems pretty cheap for the cost of the overall system.
 

At a live demonstration for India’s Army Day last week, the Indian military showed off a swarm of 75 drones destroying a variety of simulated targets in explosive kamikaze attacks for the first time. The commentary accompanying the demonstration claimed that the swarm is capable of autonomous operation. You can see a video of the event here...

The Indian Army appears to be using three types of UAV: a quadcopter probably for sensing, a six-rotor mothership drone, and the small quadcopters with explosives on them. “National security discourse in the United States around drones often emphasizes a large homogenous swarm, but India's work shows this is a mistake.” A mix of drones with heavyweight carriers, reusable scouts with advanced sensors and expendable attack drones may be more flexible and capable. Kallenborn also notes that the claim of an autonomous swarm is plausible, but it is not clear how much of this has been achieved so far.

According to the commentary, the drone swarm is capable of attacking targets from a range of 50 kilometers. In addition to reconnaissance and attack, Indian drone swarms will also be able to carry out resupply missions, with a 75-drone swarm delivering over 1,200 pounds of supplies to troops in the battle zone.

India is also developing drone swarms that can be deployed from fast jets. A Jaguar strike aircraft will carry four pods each containing each of the Air-Launched Flexible Asset (Swarm) or ALFA-S drones, which are capable of attacking air defenses. This project was fast-tracked last year in response to China’s deployment for surface-to-air missiles across the Ladakh border.
 

Nice overview of the topic on the offensive and defensive side:


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Ultimately, all MBTs, IFVs and armoured infantry carriers will need some kind of remote weapon station fitted with weapons and sensors capable of engaging both aerial and ground targets. Here an M134 7.62 mm Minigun on a Kongsberg RS4 can provide a significant close-in defensive effect. (Image: US Marine Corps)
It does seem to me that Dual purpose weapons ought to be favored over single purpose ones. Air defense needs to be ubiquitous and cover a complete range of targets, covering both saturation attacks and high performance penetration attacks. I expect that once all aspect air defense coverage is fulfilled, there is basically almost no direct fire ground target that does not fall into the effective engagement envelope of some AA capable system in the formation, thus removing much demand for specialized weapons.

The greatly superior mobility with good presence of loitering munition means evasion is not an option for heavy land forces, and sheer firepower is needed to survive an well resourced attack. I'd expect it to crowd out other forms firepower as they are less critical.

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Kind of a no-brainer here, but ALTIUS-600 with 276 miles on light load is something interesting.
 
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Mark this as happenings?




and this is what diplo types think
 
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Though with that particular Air Marshal, I would take his statements with more than a pinch of salt.
 

Jet powered, recoverable, DEW equipped, anti-air, tube launched, swarming drones? What more check marks needed? (oh vtol meme and autonomy I guess)

Curious how does a jet powered coyote gets recovered and how much off board cueing is needed for various missions.
 

Jet powered, recoverable, DEW equipped, anti-air, tube launched, swarming drones? What more check marks needed? (oh vtol meme and autonomy I guess)

Curious how does a jet powered coyote gets recovered and how much off board cueing is needed for various missions.
when ur already outnumbered one shot wonders wont do and no vtol.
The whole swarm w/ reloads lasts for less than the first 1/2 hr.
 



Iranian source!

some other news
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New normal. The technology in some sense isn't that interesting, the politics is the one with to watch. Will it spread to "unconstrained submarine warfare", stay restrained like "chemical warfare" or grow into something else completely?

What can be seen is that up this point this technology isn't limited total war scale and much hybrid sub-threshold games can be played. How much defenses will be demanded, or retaliation is considered acceptable. (and would this retaliation of this type result in a "duke franz ferdinand" event?) So much to speculate.

The capability of ICBM and geology of inter-continental distances defined the cold war. How would the demands of current conflicts drive offense and defenses? More destructive power? Ease of deployment? Improve defense penetration? Cost? Plausible deniability?

If only social sciences weren't so bad. :(
 
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Could this be a weaponized coyote? Looks like it might be a lot large to be that UAV, but they do have a truck mounted launcher for it.
 
I'd argue numbers are irrelevant to swarm control, which makes this test a bit of a cloud-pleaser.

Swarms control themselves via their inbuilt logic, rather than the user assigning each a task. The user rather assigns the swarm as a whole the task and the swarm then organises itself to achieve it (and either it has enough assets to do it, or it doesn't).

TLDR: The significant thing here is the "swarm grammar" as a method of assigning tasks, the numbers are a distraction.
 
Yo I heard you like drones, I put drones on drones~
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Can't find more info on this, does anyone know where this is from?

Also this category of vehicle is absolutely necessary for drone swarms deployment, there is still a lot of relevant systems that is not fully developed. Rearm/refuel systems, launch systems, recovery systems, on board maintenance/repair capabilities, command and control and so on....should be a interesting field to watch
 

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