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

[Colin Parkinson]

Likely see the smaller guns make a comback, being able to deal with the smaller stuff and leave the missiles to the bigger stuff.

 

[Kirkhill]

Likely see the smaller guns make a comback, being able to deal with the smaller stuff and leave the missiles to the bigger stuff.

How quickly can we get rounds on target at 200 m?

Detect, track, engage, kill.

 

[dimsum]

Likely see the smaller guns make a comback, being able to deal with the smaller stuff and leave the missiles to the bigger stuff.

the trade off being that usually the engagements are at closer range, which isn’t ideal in a swarm scenario.

 

[Furniture]

the trade off being that usually the engagements are at closer range, which isn’t ideal in a swarm scenario.

The secret with smaller guns is to later them with longer range options. A 30-40mm gun with hundreds of rounds is going to do a lot to a swarm when the bigger guns/missiles thin the herd.

 

[Kirkhill]

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2024/10/3/army-wrestling-with-rapidly-changing-world-of-drones

Frontline Ukrainian soldiers are cycling through new drone technology every six weeks. Every brigade has master maintainers, fabricators and software writers who are empowered to reprogram the drones, print 3D parts and directly reach out to Ukrainian drone manufacturers to request changes. Then they directly pay them for their services.

One of the lessons learned is that drones can’t just be sensing platforms anymore. “They all have to be multifunctional. They all have to be lethal. They all have to be capable of doing many things at the same time,” he said.

There also has to be a universal controller that can guide any drone the Army acquires, he said.

And soldiers down to the platoon level must be able to act without having to ask higher headquarters to deconflict airspace.

In Ukraine, “they are free to shoot whatever they want, launch whatever they want, because that’s as fast as they’re seeing targets. And if they don’t, either that target is going to move or they’re going to be targeted and shot before they can do something about it,” Ryan said.

“The U.S. Army can do it better, and we should be able to do it better, and we shouldn’t allow our old way of doing business to be a block to how we could do it,” he said. But with the current acquisition systems, cycling through technology in six weeks is “impossible,” he added.

“The retired sergeant majors or colonels who are sitting in cubicles right now are resistant to change,” he said.

“The leaders at the top and the action officers at the bottom are all in. It’s those layers of mud in the middle that are the hard parts to get through, and that’s where we really need the most help right now,” he said. ND