Drones, the Air Littoral, and the Looming Irrelevance of the USAF

[KevinB]

Kev your logic also applies in spades to conventional forces. The logistics required to sustain a 10,000 round per day artillery force are massive. Dumb rounds are cheap but apparently not as cheap as FPV drones.

But you are ignoring the payload aspect.
A FPV drone is a very expensive 5.56mm round when used in the anti-personnel role, and you need a slew of them on an armored target that a precision round or ATGM doesn’t need the mass.

I’m not discounting the role of the FPV UAS, my point is it is a tool, but not something to dumb other tools for.

And the cost of adding a flight control module to a dumb round are dropping from JDAM-Excalibur levels to those of the APKWS-PGK(M1156)-PGMM-RGK122, down into the 3-zeroes range.

Agreed, and those methods are being incorporated into the battlefield.

But they don’t offer the same level of precision, so it’s not an either or, it’s a mix.

A good chunk of the Sopwith pilot's time was spent just keeping the Camel in the air, managing the flight. That process has been automated and reduced to a package that can be added to anything thst has the potential for flight to a few hundred dollars.

I think you are vastly overestimating the value of UAS systems, and not understanding what C/UAS and C/RAM assets can do if meshed

That changes the way things are done and increases the range of possibilities.

It is another tool in the tool box. It isn’t really replacing anything.

All you can do is force your opponent to spend more to try to counter your capabilities, and try to stay in the black while maintaining a superior capability.

 

[Kirkhill]

The point is that you can now afford to apply flight control to a 5.56mm round cost effectively.

(Edit: forgot to hit the Post on this one. It has been lying dormant for a couple of weeks now.)

 

[Kirkhill]

More indications of the speed of change


From an airdroppable Horsa

USAF Gets Airlift Boost With DZYNE’s New ‘Grasshopper’ Autonomous Glider

DZYNE's Grasshopper moves critical supplies without putting soldiers in harm’s way.

nextgendefense.com

Boeing to Test Drones for Japanese ‘Loyal Wingman’ Experiment

Japan has contracted Boeing to test aerial drones for the country’s manned-unmanned teaming research and development.

nextgendefense.com

Kratos Flight-Tests New ‘Thanatos’ Combat Drone: Report

American defense firm Kratos has reportedly completed the first flight of its “Thanatos” combat drone.

nextgendefense.com

‘AirLAS’ Turns Reusable Drones Into Long-Range Missile Launchers

AirLAS pairs a reusable drone with IRIS-T missiles, offering a flexible, pilotless way to launch precision strikes from anywhere.

nextgendefense.com

Sikorsky Debuts Drone That Can Fly Like Helicopter, Airplane

Sikorsky has successfully flight-tested its “rotor blown wing” unmanned aerial system (UAS) with rotorcraft and fixed-wing platform characteristics.

nextgendefense.com

New Hybrid-Powered British Drone Aims to Revolutionize Military Logistics

The 600-kilogram logistics drone can stay airborne for long stretches, thanks to its hybrid turbine generator power system.

nextgendefense.com

And

Sweden Unveils New Drone Swarm Technology From Saab

Sweden has introduced advanced drone swarm technology that will enable drones of various sizes to work collaboratively on tasks.

nextgendefense.com

‘Fits in the Palm’: China Shows Off New Mosquito-Like Recon Drone

Equipped with micro-cameras and sensors, China’s mosquito-like drone is engineered for covert missions.

nextgendefense.com

To swarms of thumbnail sized recce scouts.

 

[Kirkhill]

And the transition includes more, newer, smarter weapons produced faster...

General Atomics to Enhance US Military Precision With ‘Bullseye’ Missile

General Atomics is set to supercharge the US military's precision strike capabilities with the Israeli-inspired "Bullseye" precision-guided missile.

nextgendefense.com

New FULGUR Missile Takes Aim at Europe’s VSHORAD Needs

Europe’s new FULGUR missile is designed to meet NATO standards and counter fast-evolving aerial threats with precision.

nextgendefense.com

 

[Kirkhill]

And just when I thought I had seen it all with the "mosquito", we have the cyborg bee.

Cyborg bees to be Chinese military scouts

Scientists to direct where insects fly by inserting controllers in their brains

www.telegraph.co.uk

Scientists in China are turning bees into cyborgs by inserting controllers into their brains and deciding where they should fly.

The bees – part insect, part machine – could serve as military scouts or be used to search for survivors following a natural disaster.

Zhao Jieliang, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, and his team recently developed the world’s lightest brain controller – weighing only 74 milligrams, or less than a pinch of salt.

The device is strapped to the back of a worker bee and pierces its brain with three needles to instruct it to fly in specific directions.

Based on the tests conducted by Prof Zhao and his team, the device worked nine times out of 10 and the bees obeyed the instructions.

 

[Kirkhill]

@KevinB

Further to "Drones as Ammunition"

Drones are now bullets: How a new Pentagon policy may accelerate robot warfare

The new policy also allows more units to buy drones, which should boost the demand signal to industry.

www.defenseone.com

Treat small drones like ammunition, not airplanes, the defense secretary told the Pentagon in a Thursday memo that just might boost production where many other efforts have failed.

The memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which builds on a July 6 White House executive order, does a couple of key things. Most importantly, it directs the Defense Department to treat small drones under 55 pounds—the so-called Group 1 and 2 drones—as consumables rather than “durable property.”

Small drones already don’t have to fit STANAG 4586—the NATO standard that makes sure different militaries can talk to the same drone over the same control link. The memo explicitly removes that requirement; there had been some confusion, particularly in training documents. It instructs U.S. military buyers to not hold cheap battlefield drones to the same interoperability rules designed for larger, more expensive systems.

That will codify that those drones will now be treated like “a munition,” which makes sense when thousands of them are consumed every week on Ukrainian battlefields.

....

The new policy also greatly opens up who in the Defense Department can buy drones, as well as how they can buy them by “delegating authorities to procure and operate drones from the bureaucracy to our warfighters” specifically by colonels and Navy captains at the brigade level. That should create the demand signal that will foster investments by U.S. dronemakers in innovation and production capacity.

The memo also directs the services to treat drones like a resourced capability at the service level. That will allow the services to deploy congressionally allocated budgets to buy drones far more quickly, rather than trying to fund lots of relatively small programs of record. That, in turn, allows purchasers to get around micro-purchase caps for GSA funds (around $10,000). And it will make drone purchases less vulnerable to tardy budgets.

“So now customers could come to our online store and buy $20,000 worth of stuff and just do a [Government Purchase Card], rather than having to find a contract vehicle and justify a contract vehicle and getting the authority to operate,” said Evans.