US Military says Drone Zerg Rushes may be Overpowered

[CarlBar]

44 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

nothing says you need to stay at 20mm though, we can easily move to 30mm/40mm and as high  76mm (looking at you Otomatic)

 

wait so its going to swarm but carry a long range weapon not likely.

 

Agreed, which was my point all along.

 

33 minutes ago, leadeater said:

That's why for the really important things they have exclusions zones, anything within that is fair game so my advice is to not be in them 

 

Exclusions zones are a nice theory and can work in fixed defence doctrine, a formation on the move that may be slowed down more or less than other nearby formations on it's advance not so much. Ditto a fixed location you can give people in it plenty of time to move out. A mobile oporation isn;t likly to be abel to give the time, and if your oporating over a large enough geographical area the people may very well not have anywhere to go to.

 

18 minutes ago, leadeater said:

CIWS are designed to shoot mortar shells as well, there's really not much it can't shot. Still nothing is 100% effective but there is currently nothing a drone can fire that a CIWS cannot itself intercept and then if the drone comes within 2km it'll be dead too.

 

If you want to know how effective these systems are go buy 10 drones and try and fly them through Israel's Iron Dome defense area, just be prepared for the biggest grilling you'll ever get in your life and a possible life sentence. 

 

They 100% can be detected right now, very easily. Knowing it as a drone, knowing it's a threat, knowing you need to actually shoot it is the problem. As for guided weapons, OSA actually works for both. CIWS is unguided munitions with radar and FLIR targeting, OSA allows any weapon to use any information source for targeting, so guided and unguided weapons. OSA is addressing the issue of being able to know where things are and track them always from anywhere at any time by anyone which cannot be done today.

 

That's why OSA is a death sentence to any drone swarm, it will allow everything within effective firing range to target and fire using all available radar, FLIR and visual sources.

 

1. No they're not designed to shoot down mortar shells. They happen to be able to do it fairly effectively but for some very simple reasons that means you can't extrapolate that to other small weapons without some accounting for the variables.

 

Point defence theory works something like this, (i'm certainly simplifying a few things), for a gun based system. First you have to work out what the kill radius of your round vs your target is, (for impact stuff thats the cross section of your target). Then you need to know what the probability of a round falling within that kill-box is on any given shot, (varies with range), from that you can work out how many rounds to achieve a sufficiently high statistical likelihood of a kill. That gives you an engagement time, and combining that with the velocity of the target you can work out when you need to start firing. Of course the engagement range is going to thus be partly dependent on the velocity so there's a certain amount of feedback in there. But the main consequence is that whilst mortar shells are much smaller than an anti-shipping missile, they're very low falling speed means you can wait till they get a lot closer, (and thus up your hit chances reducing, thus the round needed, and thus counteracting the effects of the smaller size of the target on the average number of rounds required to get a killing blow).

 

2. A consequence of the above combined with the fact that it's allready been established that existing CIWS systems need to be firing at a missile for long enough for it to cover a significant distance, (over a km for the Goalkeeper system vs a mach 2 missile), is that if your trying to hit ordnance heading towards friendlies at high velocity, unless the targets very close, (for an anti-shipping missile sized target and Goalkeeper that seems to be 300-400 meters), the missile will pass through your weapons range and hit the target before the system can reliably kill it.

 

3. I think you completely missed my point on the drones,. My argument isn't that a 20mm phalanx can;t kill them, but that the long engagement range means despite their size it's going to take a lot of ammunition, (far more than the 100+ rounds needed vs a closing anti-ship missile), and your defence systems don't have unlimited supplies. If the enemy sends enough drones, sure they'll lose the first 7 or 8 to wander into engagement range of the defence system, but anymore than that and they can then proceed to kill the defence system while it's reloading, then kill the stuff it was supposed to be defending. And if the cost of even just the defence system is more than the value of the drones lost, thats a win for the drone user.

 

 

4. Distinguishing somthing from background clutter and other not actually military targets is kind of key to "detecting" somthing. Don;t get me wrong, drones are well within the ability of modern hardware to distinguish, but it's way harder than just "point this sensor here".

 

5. Being able to use any information source for targeting and tracking isn't the be all and end all you'd think it is. Separate search systems from track systems exist because search systems commonly have insufficient accuracy, (in position, range, and/or velocity). Likewise plenty of existing weapons systems can be guided to the general location of the target, (commonly referred to as midcourse guidance), but they just flat out don't support final terminal guidance with anything but their built in seekers. in the same vein you can add the inaccuracy of both the firing platform and the source platforms GPS data to the inaccuracy of any fire. An error of more than a few centimetres vs a drone is going to render a direct hit reliant system, like a 20mm Phalanx, completely ineffective.

 

6. Bear in mind most ground based, (and for the matter non-radar based), sensor systems currently in use do not have automated search capabilities, and especially in the case of the ground stuff even the automated tracking is generally slaved to the weapon system so you can't provide acurratte track data one one target and engage another with your weaponry. The point of OSA is to provide these mostly tracking centric platforms with the search data to point their tracking systems at somthing, not aim the weapons without any sensor input from the firing platform. Though for things that don't need a dedicated tracking system on the firing platform, (e.g. missile systems with a terminal seeker and mid course capabilities), it can allow them to operate without a dedicated search system. But it doesn't resolve any issues around very precise pointing requirements of seekers or potential issues with tracking systems that have more than one valid target in view when they try to initiate tracking on somthing, (be that a missile seeker or the gunners sight+FCS combination of an M1 Abrams).

[spartaman64]

17 hours ago, leadeater said:

CIWS are designed to shoot mortar shells as well, there's really not much it can't shot. Still nothing is 100% effective but there is currently nothing a drone can fire that a CIWS cannot itself intercept and then if the drone comes within 2km it'll be dead too.

 

If you want to know how effective these systems are go buy 10 drones and try and fly them through Israel's Iron Dome defense area, just be prepared for the biggest grilling you'll ever get in your life and a possible life sentence. 

 

They 100% can be detected right now, very easily. Knowing it as a drone, knowing it's a threat, knowing you need to actually shoot it is the problem. As for guided weapons, OSA actually works for both. CIWS is unguided munitions with radar and FLIR targeting, OSA allows any weapon to use any information source for targeting, so guided and unguided weapons. OSA is addressing the issue of being able to know where things are and track them always from anywhere at any time by anyone which cannot be done today.

 

That's why OSA is a death sentence to any drone swarm, it will allow everything within effective firing range to target and fire using all available radar, FLIR and visual sources.

idk reading the incidents page on the phalanx wikipedia decreases my confidence in it. also apparently it doesnt have a system for identifying allies or foes so there are windows in a carrier group anyways where they have to be disabled it seems

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, spartaman64 said:

idk reading the incidents page on the phalanx wikipedia decreases my confidence in it. also apparently it doesnt have a system for identifying allies or foes so there are windows in a carrier group anyways where they have to be disabled it seems

True but that's also true for most weapon systems. Objects that don't actively identify themselves are notoriously hard to automatically identify, in many ways humans are still better at that which is why almost always there's human confirmation required and they are not in fully autonomous operation.

 

But also it's not like these haven't been upgraded since back then.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, CarlBar said:

1. No they're not designed to shoot down mortar shells. They happen to be able to do it fairly effectively but for some very simple reasons that means you can't extrapolate that to other small weapons without some accounting for the variables.

Yes they are.

 

Quote

A land variant, known as the LPWS (Land Phalanx Weapon System), part of the C-RAM system, has recently been deployed in a short range missile defense role, to counter incoming rockets, artillery and mortar fire.^[6] The U.S. Navy also fields the SeaRAM system, which pairs the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile with sensors based on the Phalanx.

 

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, CarlBar said:

The point of OSA is to provide these mostly tracking centric platforms with the search data to point their tracking systems at somthing, not aim the weapons without any sensor input from the firing platform. Though for things that don't need a dedicated tracking system on the firing platform, (e.g. missile systems with a terminal seeker and mid course capabilities), it can allow them to operate without a dedicated search system.

Yes which was exactly my point, more of these missiles exist now than before and are continuing to be developed to work with OSA. OSA is not an isolated development effort. Once OSA exists like I said drone swarms will be utterly moot as first you'll know they are coming so that's strike 1 i.e. Readiness, then since you know they are coming you can identify them so strike 2 i.e. Identification then once you know they are coming and you have identified what they are you can engage them so strike 3 they are now dead or dying.

 

CIWS is both ballistic and missile capable, and like I said these systems will be further developed if a need is identified. They haven't been developed because a need has not been identified. CIWS right now are treated as final last line of defense, nothing is supposed to get close enough to have to be used in the first place. LPWS on the other hand has actually been used in a more active defense role quite successfully too.

[Letgomyleghoe]

On 2/2/2021 at 4:20 PM, GDRRiley said:

CWIS was designed for low attitude stuff ?

yes, it was, but not for drones flying 8-10 feet off the ground or even lower.

[Jet_ski]

Nothing a little EMP can’t solve.