US Military says Drone Zerg Rushes may be Overpowered

[whm1974]

6 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

ok.  A volume of fire is still going to be better than a shotgun or airburst munition.

Phalanx CIWS Close-in Weapon System In Action - US Navy's Deadly Autocannon - YouTube

How is a civilian going to get hold of a Phalanx CIWS defensive weapon? The vast majority of Modern Nations have Laws preventing this sort of thing. And very few Citizens can afford one anyway.

[ToboRobot]

Just now, whm1974 said:

How is a civilian going to get hold of a Phalanx CIWS defensive weapon? The vast majority of Modern Nations have Laws preventing this sort of thing. And very few Citizens can afford one anyway.

They aren't, this is for the military.  

[whm1974]

3 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

They aren't, this is for the military.  

How are Civilians supposed to deal with Drones?

[ToboRobot]

1 minute ago, whm1974 said:

How are Civilians supposed to deal with Drones?

How do civilians deal with tanks or fighter planes?  Let the military deal with it.

[whm1974]

2 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

How do civilians deal with tanks or fighter planes?  Let the military deal with it.

Well Regular Citizens can deal with Tanks by lighting them on fire with the same cocktails used in WWII.

[ToboRobot]

Just now, whm1974 said:

Well Regular Citizens can deal with Tanks by lighting them on fire with the same cocktails used in WWII.

Not very effective against modern tanks, and you have zero ability to defend against air attacks, so why should civilians need to defend against drones?

 

[whm1974]

4 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Not very effective against modern tanks, and you have zero ability to defend against air attacks, so why should civilians need to defend against drones?

 

Troops have to be there to protect Civilians.

[JZStudios]

I'm heavily disappointed in all of you.

[StDragon]

6 hours ago, whm1974 said:

Well Regular Citizens can deal with Tanks by lighting them on fire with the same cocktails used in WWII.

Say what??!! In case I'm missing the sarcasm, let me tell you something, an M60 and M1 can roll right over a car raging on fire and zero efs would be given.

 

Unless a civilian has access to anti-tank munitions, it would be ill-advised to attempt confrontation with one.

[whm1974]

20 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Say what??!! In case I'm missing the sarcasm, let me tell you something, an M60 and M1 can roll right over a car raging on fire and zero efs would be given.

 

Unless a civilian has access to anti-tank munitions, it would be ill-advised to attempt confrontation with one.

Do burning cars have sticky "fuels" that sticks to the Tank to set them on fire? As I recall from reading about them. The Cocktails were a mixture of Motor Oil and gasoline, perhaps something added to them.

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, whm1974 said:

Do burning cars have sticky "fuels" that sticks to the Tank to set them on fire? As I recall from reading about them. The Cocktails were a mixture of Motor Oil and gasoline, perhaps something added to them.

You should read up on the Gulf War. Parts of the desert were on fire lit ablaze from sabotaged oil wells. Many tank battles took place in those conditions. Fire wasn't an issue.

 

It takes a lot more to burn through thick plate armor than some petrol on fire. Short of using thermite to cause some damage (assuming the tank isn't moving), there's nothing a civilian can "MacGyver" to bring one down. Ain't gonna happen.

[whm1974]

3 minutes ago, StDragon said:

You should read up on the Gulf War. Parts of the desert were on fire lit ablaze from sabotaged oil wells. Many tank battles took place in those conditions. Fire wasn't an issue.

 

It takes a lot more to burn through thick plate armor than some petrol on fire. Short of using thermite to cause some damage (assuming the tank isn't moving), there's nothing a civilian can "MacGyver" to bring one down. Ain't gonna happen.

What about damaging outside Equipment on the Vechlicals?

[StDragon]

Just now, whm1974 said:

What about damaging outside Equipment on the Vechlicals?

The camo paintjob?? There's not much to burn that's of any meaningful consequence to a tanks running operation.

 

Put it to you this way. An MRAP would be more than sufficient to handle an angry mob on the streets. Tanks have a more important function; they destroy other vehicles and objects. I can't imagine them ever being used against civilians from a tactical and logistics point of view. Maybe to act as a blockade on the street and/or stop passage of vehicles by force.

 

[CarlBar]

Just now, whm1974 said:

What about damaging outside Equipment on the Vechlicals?

 

Nope. The Old molotov Cocktail trick worked because there was no sealing preventing it getting to the engine on old tanks where it woudl then set rubber hosing on fire, (or at leats burn through), cutting off oil and fuel flow to the engine and causing the tanks own fuel to go up. Old tanks didn't have a firewall between the engine and the crew ciompartment so the heat could get in and setoff the ammo and cook the crew forcing them to evacuate.

 

I don't know about the Abram's but the British Challanger 2 firewall had a design requirement that it could protect the crew from an engine bay fire that consumed the vehichles entire fuel supply without forcing them to evacuate. It would still disable the tank, (but again good luck getting a molotov in there. Even homemade thermite isn't likely to be reliable, those doors are 700kg's apiece.), but the crew would be fine and they could still operate the non-electronic systems. Modern MBT's and the like are designed with those old tricks in mind. Realistically there's nothing thats civilian legal to own in the US that can get through even the most weakly armoured parts of most AFV's. 

 

For that matter it isn;t even the Abrams you should be worried about. it's the dismounted infantry in front. They've all got automatic rifles, and for every i belive it's 4 men in the unit one of them has a SAW. You remember that guy in Vegas a few years back with the huge mags and modifed guns that allowed near full auto fire? Imagine 1 in 4 having that but better. And the dozens of M249's, they shoot the same rifle rounds you'd use to hunt deer or the like, but with the same full auto high capacity capability as the SAW. And then there's the crew served stuff. Shoulder fired RPG's, 50 cal machine guns, (SAW but with 50 cals and a bit less mobile), and grenade machineguns, (they're basically 40mm cannon, but with too low a velocity for Anti-Air duty, but vs infantry at upto a few kilometre's they're in the same capability range). And they're on coms, coordinated, and trained to a far higher standard than 99% of civilians.

 

They'll completely fuck your shit up without ever needing the heavy stuff on the tanks and helicopters and jets.

 

18 minutes ago, Sakuriru said:

Yeah I agree; it probably wouldn't work against anyone near-peer.

 

Sort of. Some armies have platforms that could be adapted, but the US amongst others really doesn't have anything thats ideal for the job. And the US army and air-force have been pushing more and more for precision kill systems. it sounds great, but against somthing like a drone swarm it's completely the wrong type of weapon for the job.

[whm1974]

5 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Nope. The Old molotov Cocktail trick worked because there was no sealing preventing it getting to the engine on old tanks where it woudl then set rubber hosing on fire, (or at leats burn through), cutting off oil and fuel flow to the engine and causing the tanks own fuel to go up. Old tanks didn't have a firewall between the engine and the crew ciompartment so the heat could get in and setoff the ammo and cook the crew forcing them to evacuate.

 

I don't know about the Abram's but the British Challanger 2 firewall had a design requirement that it could protect the crew from an engine bay fire that consumed the vehichles entire fuel supply without forcing them to evacuate. It would still disable the tank, (but again good luck getting a molotov in there. Even homemade thermite isn't likely to be reliable, those doors are 700kg's apiece.), but the crew would be fine and they could still operate the non-electronic systems. Modern MBT's and the like are designed with those old tricks in mind. Realistically there's nothing thats civilian legal to own in the US that can get through even the most weakly armoured parts of most AFV's. 

 

For that matter it isn;t even the Abrams you should be worried about. it's the dismounted infantry in front. They've all got automatic rifles, and for every i belive it's 4 men in the unit one of them has a SAW. You remember that guy in Vegas a few years back with the huge mags and modifed guns that allowed near full auto fire? Imagine 1 in 4 having that but better. And the dozens of M249's, they shoot the same rifle rounds you'd use to hunt deer or the like, but with the same full auto high capacity capability as the SAW. And then there's the crew served stuff. Shoulder fired RPG's, 50 cal machine guns, (SAW but with 50 cals and a bit less mobile), and grenade machineguns, (they're basically 40mm cannon, but with too low a velocity for Anti-Air duty, but vs infantry at upto a few kilometre's they're in the same capability range). And they're on coms, coordinated, and trained to a far higher standard than 99% of civilians.

 

They'll completely fuck your shit up without ever needing the heavy stuff on the tanks and helicopters and jets.

I was thinking that Modern AFVs and and MBTs would really difficult to be defeated by Civilian Populations.

[CarlBar]

6 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

I was thinking that Modern AFVs and and MBTs would really difficult to be defeated by Civilian Populations.

 

Depends on what they're armed with. Give them actual anti-tank weapons and they'll make a mess of most anything, an MBt from the front is a bit much for all but the most modern stuff, but side or rear shots will work. But nothing thats legal for US civilians to own is even remotely relevant. AFAIK even a military spec Humvee is pretty much immune to anything less than full auto 50 cal fire. And thats about as light as AFV get.

 

I get the feeling TBH from some of your prior posts that your misunderstanding what the US Army is so worried about. they're not worried about some civilian taking a bunch of civllian drones, strapping semi-auto AR-15's to them and going ham. it woudl suprise them and give them a big scare the first time, but it's well within their ability to deal with right now. It's the idea of a military entity taking beefed up custom drones and strapping things like 50 cal machine guns, grenade machine guns, RPG's, e.t.c to them. That can threat infantry en mass, and the RPG's can threaten even Bradley's and Abrams if they're modern enough. Here's an example of somthing much smaller than a Predator fitted with somthing like that, (note the pedestrian ramp in the background for scale):

 

 

Not autonomous and still decently sized, but a dedicated effort could probably produce somthing even smaller than this, (it's a 15 year old design allready), and definitely make it semi or fully autonomous.

[Mling]

If you hand a license plate around your neck I bet a drone will think you are a car and won't shoot you. I reckon creative people will come up with clothing to hack drones and other AI.

[Tam3n]

When speaking about a swarm of drones, it comes to mind they would fly in some kind of tight formation. But no... They can be spread out over a very wide range of area, flying low. With a great number of them, it becomes easy to quickly gather a lot of data about enemy positions and advantageous paths forward etc. Then they can team work, sharing info, like playing a tactics game with powerful AI. Can the humans keep up, or will it be like what we have seen with the deeplearning demos against top human players.

[CarlBar]

2 hours ago, Tam3n said:

Can the humans keep up, or will it be like what we have seen with the deeplearning demos against top human players.

 

Short answer, yes humans can keep up. 

 

Long Answer. First you have to understand those AI's are operating in an environment with much simpler "rules" than real life. An AI that can cope with real life is going to be both harder to do and need a lot more processing power. Both will eventually yield to tech advances, but not quickly. However that brings up the other issue. AI's are only as good as their training data set. Given we still don't know or what the perfect way to fight a real war is, and tech is allways changing the parameters it's going to be very hard to provide good training data,. and humans are good at somthing AI's just can't do, making intuitive leaps. Humans are really good at coming up with new idea's that could take advantage of things the training data set doesn't cover.

 

All of those issues might eventually yield to enough hardware and data. But then you've got the issue of cost effectiveness. A drone that capable is going to be expensive to develop and keep up to date and may not be that much better than a human. There's also complicated issues around drone size, anything capable of carrying weapons with a range over a couple of hundred metre is going to be bigger than a human so there's a lot of places they can't go, and anything smaller is going to have issues with not being well armed compared to humans which levels he playing field a lot, (especially alongside other physical limitations). And this assumes infantry kit won't have evolved.

 

Drone swarms both big and small drones are going to have their place in future warfare IMO, but they're by no means a complete infantry replacement.

[BuckGup]

On 1/29/2021 at 9:48 AM, williamcll said:

I remember the PLA have some kind of 40mm SAM designed to hit drones.

 

Also

 

Lol that video is extremely fake 

[CarlBar]

48 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Lol that video is extremely fake 

 

The drone is real, the gunfire is probably blanks, and the "hits" are clearly fake.

[ARikozuM]

How about we ban autonomous weapons? 

 

How many apocalyptic movies do we need to drill it home?

[BuckGup]

22 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

The drone is real, the gunfire is probably blanks, and the "hits" are clearly fake.

Lol no the whole thing is CGI dude. The only real part is the explosions and fake gun hits but that's all just pyrotechnics 

[CarlBar]

1 minute ago, BuckGup said:

Lol no the whole thing is CGI dude. The only real part is the explosions and fake gun hits but that's all just pyrotechnics 

 

You ot a source? because that drone is dammed convincing for CGI, (At least for the kind of CGI a youtuber is going to have access to).

[DeScruff]

4 hours ago, Tam3n said:

When speaking about a swarm of drones, it comes to mind they would fly in some kind of tight formation. But no... They can be spread out over a very wide range of area, flying low. With a great number of them, it becomes easy to quickly gather a lot of data about enemy positions and advantageous paths forward etc. Then they can team work, sharing info, like playing a tactics game with powerful AI. Can the humans keep up, or will it be like what we have seen with the deeplearning demos against top human players.

Thank you somebody finally said it.
They don't have to fly as a cloud. We are talking hundreds of tiny things in the sky, probably at distances where it might be visually difficult to see/track an individual.  - Kinda like a fly thats buzzing around your room, and you keep loosing sight of it. - but multiply that by hundreds.
Not to mention I imagine a good drone would have anti-flak maneuvers. Last I checked Flak guns can only point in a single direction at a time. If a swarm can visually identify the direction of a flak gun, they can move out of its line of fire.

Also something tells me military drones would have ways other then radio communication to communicate, or would have some level of behavior recognition or it's neighbors.