Or on a smaller scale, something homebrew like a bunch of AK-74s attached to something resembling a minigun [1]. Or the other way around, take old AA guns, place them on the back of a pickup and shred Russian infantry without mercy [2].
Certainly the Ukrainians are showing the future when it comes to land-based wars; the question is how many of these we're actually going to see.
Of all shapes and sizes. I can imagine a robot M16 attached to a drone spotter might be effective against the sort of small drones that are hitting tanks in Ukraine.
That’s still rather big and is a dedicated vehicle. I wonder if there are initiatives of coupling the remote-controlled weapon turrents on normal vehicles with radar and such enabling anti-air capability:
My initial comment was mostly a remark on approaching it as a new problem and suggesting small arms, not a statement that I thought the existing system was optimized for all situations.
Cost, reliability and simplicity! A WWII-era 20-40mm cannon upgraded with automated targeting system doesn't even have to accurately hit the target if its shell explodes into a cloud of metal fragments that hits propellers and control surfaces or gets ingested into a jet engine.
Directed energy weapons are still in their early days, they're not powerful enough to just shrug off all sorts of potential countermeasures the way a solid chunk of metal hitting the target does.
Certainly the Ukrainians are showing the future when it comes to land-based wars; the question is how many of these we're actually going to see.
[1] https://armourersbench.com/2023/07/09/ukraines-improvised-an...
[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/ingenious-ukrainians-invent-ho...