[xnx]

It's shocking to me the Secretary of Defense confirmation hearing only mentioned "drone" once, and that was not in reference to the future of warfare.

Ukraine has made pretty clear that drones will play a huge roll in future major conflicts. It's crazy that we haven't already shifted major portions of the defense budget from legacy weapons systems (e.g. tanks) to drones.

[nradov]

I guess you haven't been paying attention. The Marine Corps has divested its tanks in preparation for fighting an island-hopping campaign against China.

https://www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/2857680/fo...

[euroderf]

It's pretty amazing that an American armed forces service gave up an entire lineup of weaponry. 2021: "The Marine Corps had more than 450 tanks prior to the deactivation of the tank battalions. To date, MCSC has transferred more than 400 tanks to the Army. The remaining tanks in the Marine Corps inventory are afloat globally on Maritime Prepositioning Ships and are scheduled for transfer to the Army over the next few years."

[robertlagrant]

I'm pretty sure the US had drones before Ukraine occurred. The US does invest in drones. Maybe they will more, but we're probably a little way away from them assuming the role of tanks any time soon.

[pjc50]

"Drone" gets used to cover a lot of things; full aircraft sized Reaper/Predator drones down to toy-sized quadcopters. It's the latter which Ukraine has been developing, including a unique solution to ECM: the fiber-optic drone.

Small drones do not assume the role of tanks. Drones assume the role of WW1 aircraft: artillery spotters and very light bombing capability. They have this role there because both sides have SAM superiority over the other's airforce.

Drones solve the problem that combat aircraft are too expensive and too easy to shoot down.

[robertlagrant]

> Small drones do not assume the role of tanks

I'm not saying they do. I was replying to a comment.

[FreebasingLLMs]

> very light bombing capability.

Define "light". Ukraine is fielding FPV drones with EFPs attached that can easily slice into anything armored.

[jcgrillo]

There's things like the Anduril Bolt. They cost like 100x as much as devices the Ukranians are building from cardboard. Another major innovation is TOW style fiber optic control which is immune to electronic countermeasures. There's definitely a lot to learn, but sadly necessity is the mother of invention and not since WW2 has manufacturing cost really been a serious concern for US defense production. Seems like we'll need a really big war to make that essential, and then there's an open question whether we'd actually be able to do it given that nobody knows how to do anything anymore.

[robertlagrant]

> Seems like we'll need a really big war to make that essential, and then there's an open question whether we'd actually be able to do it given that nobody knows how to do anything anymore.

I'm not sure if I'd be rooting for this eventuality.

[jcgrillo]

No, I'm definitely not! But I can't imagine the US defense sector doing anything sensible otherwise.

[moduspol]

Yep. It boggles my mind that we still do aircraft flyovers at big football games. Those should be drones doing coordinated light shows--even in heavy winds, rain, and unfavorable conditions. Just to show that we've mastered it, and that we can do it easily even when there are no stakes.

My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good with drones and just strategically have decided not to broadcast it, but I don't think that's the way forward. It needs to be known that we've absolutely mastered them.

You know, kind of like the Chinese have done with their drone shows at the Olympics and similar events.

[jandrewrogers]

> My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good with drones and just strategically have decided not to broadcast it

I am confused.

The US has massive fleets of military drones of every type and size that have been proven in combat environments. They literally pioneered the development of this type of military system and have been using them operationally decades before anyone else. Did everyone just forget this?

The US has extremely mature and capable drone technology, much better than a lot of what is being used in Ukraine. Really the only question is the ability of the US to scale production if it needed to.

[mopsi]

Entire categories of drones are missing from the US arsenal, such as the ultra-cheap wire-guided ones that allow Ukrainians to fly 20 km into the enemy's rear, enter buildings, explore them from the inside, and leave behind presents or detonate immediately if they find any targets. Such drones can be seen at the start of this video, and at the very end too, when they are sneaking up to artillery and puncturing gun barrels: https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1893632328108220538

The US leads in larger drones, like the Global Hawk, which is the size of a regional airliner, can stay airborne for more than a day, and cover tens of thousands of kilometers in that time. The smaller and cheaper ones are just expensive toys, far behind what's seen in Ukraine in terms of actual usefulness. A cheap Chinese agricultural sprayer drone with equally cheap 3D-printed drum of infantry grenades or an anti-tank mine strapped to it outperforms most "military grade" commercial offerings like Switchblade that cost ten times as much and are good for only a single use, unlike the sprayer, which returns home after dropping its payload.

[542354234235]

The US doesn’t try to build cheap One-Way Attack drones like Ukraine because the US has the most advanced air force in the world and utilizes that for surveillance and combat. They have advanced communications and battlefield coordination tools so that a small unit commander doesn’t need to carry/use drones. They can get surveillance from those Global Hawks and call in strikes from Reapers. The drones allow Ukraine to conduct asymmetric warfare against a larger force with more resources. The US is the larger force, and so those types of drones are a niche product, not a primary weapon.

[jandrewrogers]

The US has a different drone tech tree than Ukraine. Ukraine is adapting to the limitations of the cheap drones available to them. There is value in this as operational knowledge but it is a mistake to assume that the US is bound by similar constraints. They do things differently because they have other options. The US has plenty of experience designing wire-guided systems; they largely abandoned them for a reason.

There is much to learn about drone warfare from Ukraine but I would not expect a conflict with advanced technical capabilities to look similar.

[Syonyk]

> My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good with drones and just strategically have decided not to broadcast it...

What would you call the Reapers and such? The US has a massive fleet of large, armed drones, remotely operated, and quite a few are capable of being armed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicles_in_th...

It's different from the consumer/small commercial drones being talked about here, but the US Military is pretty darn good at UAVs.

[xnx]

True. This is a very different class of drone. What is the defense against an adversary who releases a thousand quadcopter style drones against a US aircraft carrier?

[00N8]

The carriers aren't sailing around alone - they're escorted by a whole fleet (plus air patrol) that will intercept the drone launching vehicle at multiple dozen nautical miles range. Smaller quadcopter drones won't even get close to catching the carrier (which can travel over 40 kts while evading) before their batteries die. And even if a few hundred got through, how much damage can they really do? I'd imagine the flight decks can be patched quickly, although some radar equipment & any jets parked at the time of the attack would probably be lost.

It's definitely a concern as part of a larger attack, but I don't think a quadcopter drone swarm alone is likely to sink a carrier or leave it combat ineffective in the long term.

[euroderf]

Agreed. But there's going to be "happy medium" drones that can be delivered by a long-range mothership. Price is no object when you can take out a carrier.

[nradov]

That's just silly. For attacks against surface targets, the bombers or strike aircraft (possibly unmanned) are going to continue carrying large, fast cruise missiles just like they have been since the 1960's. There is zero reason to use quadcopter type drones for this mission.

[nradov]

The type of quadcopter style drones that can be produced in the thousands have very short range and limited sensors. How are they going to get to the aircraft carrier? The lessons learned in a land conflict in Eastern Europe have little relevance to the Pacific Theater, where the US Navy intends to focus now.

[esseph]

Insanely sophisticated electronic warfare that can disrupt / defeat / destroy.

A few nice miniguns with radars sensitive enough to pick up birds that fire flak.

Auto cannons.

Missiles.

... Lasers.

[V__]

I would be really interested in a deep analysis. Ukraine doesn't have air superiority and the war has evolved into trench warfare.. thus drones are a very usefull tool.

But would this still be the case for a conflict with US involvement?

[tim333]

If you think of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, maybe not during the initial attack but once there were troops on the ground they would likely be vulnerable.

[rtkwe]

The major threat is SAM and other anti air. Maybe the US's stealth or long range cruise missiles would be enough to knock down and keep down the opponents anti air coverage but it's not guaranteed. Neither side has been able to gain safe access to the skies in this whole conflict, modern AA is just able to cover such a wide area it's hard to get ground assets close enough to strike.

[pjc50]

> Maybe the US's stealth or long range cruise missiles would be enough to knock down and keep down the opponents anti air coverage but it's not guaranteed.

That's what those capabilities are designed to do ("SEAD"), but they're very expensive. And so strategic that the US wasn't willing to let the Ukranians have any.

[rtkwe]

Of course yeah, the main thing is they've not really been tested in a while against OpFor radar or AA so I have some reservations about it actually working long term. The last time they really tested at all was 2003 during the second Iraq war. Even if they can knock out dedicated AA manpads could still pose a significant threat they haven't had to encounter in a while.

If they work like they should on paper and can keep the opponents pinned to the ground under US air supremacy it'll be great but there's always that little doubt that it will work as well against a more evenly match opponent like a theoretical US v Russia/China when it's not punching down so far.