Guns or Drones or Both?

[Colin Parkinson]

Russians are fitting drone detectors to their helicopters that alerts them when a drone is in the vicinity.

I can see the use of a lot UGV's with gun systems to provide close in drone defense, to protect an evacuation route, advance or similar. You need a fair bit of overlap, so a UGV can have it's ammo topped up while under protection of a couple of others. They can move after every engagement, to avoid being targeted by artillery.

UGV that deploy and or recover EW systems and some UGV that have a small missile system to take out high flying UAS's would also be needed.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Vampires drones now have their own automated defense turret

 

[Kirkhill]

I am including this here because I consider (personal opinion) to be on the Drone/UAS/Loitering Munition spectrum.

The article makes the point that volume decreases costs and increases speed of delivery

Raytheon has received an extension of the contract for the production of Tomahawk Block V cruise missiles, which will reduce the price of each of them by $ 0.8 million and force production to accelerate by half​

"the average cost of one Tomahawk missile has decreased from $3 million to $2.2 million, taking into account the fact that the notional cost in the additional order is generally $1.75 million. This quite clearly demonstrates how much the cost of a unit of production can decrease depending on the volume of production."

"Previously, the production rate was supposed to be a nominal 3.35 missiles per month, and now the average Tomahawk production rate should increase to a nominal 7.14 missiles per month."

U.S. Orders Additional Tomahawk Cruise Missiles Even Cheaper Due to Large Order | Defense Express

Raytheon has received an extension of the contract for the production of Tomahawk Block V cruise missiles, which will reduce the price of each of them by $ 0.8 million and force production to accelerate by half

en.defence-ua.com

I suggest that those numbers are closer to the target numbers for the Kratos line of CCA drones.

 

[Kirkhill]

LIkewise with the JSM/NSM

Cruise MIssile or UAS or Loitering Munition?

America’s New Joint Strike Missile Is Key for Beyond-Visual-Horizon Warfare

The Joint Strike Missile—under development by Norwegian defense contractor Kongsberg for the US Air Force—includes key stealth features that previous US air-to-ground missiles have lacked.

nationalinterest.org