Do Not Fear the Slaughterbot Drone Scenario Because It Won’t Work

What this tells me is that better drones able to carry radio countermeasures can make an area drone free.

All this restores the artillary to dominance along with the highly trained assault soldier who buttons up to the artillary fall advancing over an enemy position.  this is exactly what the Canada Corps in particuar mastrered in WWI and on into WWII and other conflicts.

Understand that without that training, you are doomed to repeat the Somme.  In fact is is obvious that a front line force has the tools to force airpower away as well.

Do Not Fear the Slaughterbot Drone Scenario Because It Won’t Work

September 1, 2023 by Brian Wang

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/09/do-not-fear-the-slaughterbot-drone-scenario-because-it-wont-work.html#more-186562

Jamming systems can neutralize drones by causing them to crash, land, or return to the operator. They work by blasting electromagnetic noise at the radio frequencies that drones use to operate and emit information. This drowns out the conversation between a drone and its operator. The UK estimates that Ukraine is losing 10,000 drones each month to jamming.

This is showing that the fictional Slaughterbot scenario will not work in modern warfare. the movie proposed that a $25 million order of unstoppable drones can kill half a city. The 10,000 drones being destroyed each month on the Ukrainian side of the war is about the $25 million worth of drones. The smaller drones that are working in the Ukraine war are fast launched short range systems for flying a few hundred feet and dropping a grenade. There is minimal flight control needed. Large swarms of small drones would get hit by larger jamming systems. The jamming systems are constantly operating.

There were debates about whether a lot of small drones could become a weapon of mass destruction after the Slaughterbot movie was made. The military analysts who said that cheap and simple counter measures would massively reduce the effectiveness of small drones were right.

The US is developing and buying bigger drones with more powerful systems and ability to shoot missiles at longer ranges. US drones will be about the size of a Cessna or the existing Predator drones.

Binkov’s Battleground summarizes what is and is not working so far in the Russia Ukraine war. Tanks, small drones and jets are being shown to be less useful than military analysts expected a few years ago. What is working is coordinated operations of softening troops and disrupting supply lines and then surprising with overwhelming force with proper backup.

Tanks, swarms and small drones and jets are not useless in the Ukraine War but they are secondary to long range precision artillery, intelligence on enemy military concentrations and soldiers.

Brian Wang