All hard countered by a laser like the Iron Beam, no? Unless there's a hard counter to the hard counter?
Combined arms is the probable solution for a Ukraine type war. As soon as your expensive laser lights up, it's got a couple of minutes to move before artillery shells arrive.
Of course deeper into Russia that's safe .. but instead you have the problem of a huge area to cover. You can protect a few high value targets but not everywhere. Consider something like the early stages of the Iraq war: target every single civilian electrical substation and petrol station with a drone bombing.
a laser needs a line of sight and dwell time. drones flying 3 ft off the ground, in between bushes and trees, at 100+ mph? not an easy situation.
ramp up power levels so dwell time might only be 1/2 second? maybe. but then there is a race for rapid target discrimination. and then ablative armor on the drones (cheap and easy to 3d print), and backup cameras, etc.
And ultimately there's the cost factor. Drones can be mass produced for cheap, laser systems are specialized and expensive. Something I haven't seen yet (but is likely in development) is drone swarms, one operator directing a squad of a hundred drones like it's an RTS game. Only one grenade or kamikaze drone needs to detonate close enough to a laser system to take it out of action. Mind you, the system has a range of up to 10 kilometers, so if the drones are detected from that far out there's enough time to take them all out.
Here’s a DARPA project from a few years back that is exactly having a small number of operators for a large number of drones. Very real.
https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/offensive-swarm-enab...
It seems like the power source required for a portable laser system makes it very cumbersome. Why not just use a fleet of very low cost anti-drone drones? They can be "AI-powered" to seek out enemy drones and try to damage them or throw a net on them.
I do think we will see more and more laser systems installed on large naval vessels as an alternative to close-in weapon system (CIWS), which, in practice, has not been very effective against missile attacks.
The issue with anti-drone drones is that mid-air interception of a fast moving object by another fast moving object is an incredibly difficult problem from a physics perspectives - especially when one of those objects is actively trying to dodge. If you add in a requirement that the drone must be captured in a non-destructive way, it’s only going to be possible with the lamest consumer drones.
The way air-air missiles typically work is massive fragmentation warheads and proximity detonation. Even then, it doesn’t always work.
The pro however is that the interceptor can position itself somewhat arbitrarily, and there doesn’t need to be ongoing line of sight from the initial detection point. In some cases (theatre radar systems, standoff radar systems), they may not even need to be able to see the target drone until they’re within detonation range. (Think ‘hides behind a random bush until they’re within detonation range of the target drone as it tries to zip by, then explodes with no warning’).
Then of course the attacking drones will add randomness to their attack patterns.
Lasers have the advantage that it’s essentially impossible to dodge a laser beam (speed of light meaning that for objects within the ranges we’re talking about are lazed the moment the laser turns on), so it’s purely an aiming/detection/line of sight issue. But they have the disadvantage that if the drone gets out of the line of sight, it’s completely ineffective. So they’ll need to be placed at locations that overlook large areas and have good visibility towards the entire potential approach area, which makes them vulnerable to artillery, massed attacks, etc.
Well, at least we know what shape the new arms race is taking!
The issue with anti-drone drones is that mid-air interception of a fast moving object by another fast moving object is an incredibly difficult problem from a physics perspectives - especially when one of those objects is actively trying to dodge.
The advantage of course is that the interceptor can position itself arbitrarily, and there doesn’t need to be ongoing line of sight from the initial detection point.
Lasers have the advantage that it’s essentially impossible to dodge a laser beam (speed of light meaning that for objects within the ranges we’re talking about are lazed the moment the laser turns on), so it’s purely an aiming/detection/line of sight issue. But they have the disadvantage that if the drone gets out of the line of sight, it’s completely ineffective.
Well, at least we know what shape the new arms race is taking!
> Something I haven't seen yet (but is likely in development) is drone swarms
Various entities related to the US military have been simulating and physically testing various approaches to that for years. There are blurbs in the press here and there. In some cases source code even got published (not clear if that was intentional though).
Plus artillery shells, cruise missiles, high altitude balloons and various other ways to fill the sky with literally tons of foil, chaff, tiny bits of wire, smoke, ball bearings, blaring radio transmitters, balsa wood dummy gliders, whatever is hoped to disrupt the targeting long enough to sneak something nitrogen-rich near to the fiddly optics.
Yeah, an artillery strike, a smoke screen, or fog. I'm also reading the target needs to be stationary or its movements predictable; unpredictable evasive maneuvers should be easy enough to implement (at the cost of speed/range). Plus there's the cost of the device itself, while it says it costs $3 per shot, it's still an (up to) 100 kw device + sensors + power supply setup. It doesn't say how much the system itself costs or its maintenance.
Or attack while it rains. Sure, a laser is great for defending Southern California or a place in the Middle East, but not so great for defending Great Britain
Rain probably adds a fair degree of difficulty for the drones themselves, though?
The obvious counter to a laser could be 'more drones'? And maybe just have the drones sneak up close to the ground.
I always hear this sneak up thing and think about how birds can be caught with netting. And all the barbed wire in old battlefields. I don't think drones will be able to meaningfully sneak up to a laser.
Of course more drones works. But more drones here is less drones there. It means lasers are an effective deterrent against opportunistic attacks.
Both Russia and Ukraine are putting up netting around the roads near the frontlines. Wire-guided drones are able to fly close enough to the ground to avoid it.
Sure but i would expect a laser to be at least 10x more expensive than a drone. Would you need 10 sneaky drones to overwhelm a laser?
My theory is that there will be pernicious netting around lasers, and any sneaking drones will tangle themselves up far from the laser. So only straight mass attacks will work. If you have but 10 drones you'll be unlikely to take out a laser I'd say.
The problem is the asymmetry. Drones are cheap, can be produced in huge numbers, and can be deployed anywhere by anyone. You can't put laser defences on every target, and the best laser defence could still be overwhelmed by a sufficient number of drones.
I am fucking terrified of drones.
Drones still have the limiting factor that is that they need to be produced at all as a piece of technology. Artillery shell on the other hand has all the explosive bits needed to make that drone blow up half your house, only it is a dummy round being fired from technology that has been globally solved and replicated for what over 100 years now, with huge stocks of surplus available along with popular rudimentary designs used by various guerillas around the world.
Increasingly we are also seeing a world where the technology to shape a cultures mind share can be deployed with a few dozen lines of code and a malware bot net rather than a sophisticated and well funded mass media operation a la the 1960s western cultural revolution supported in part by the CIA. You don't even need to blow up the enemies country, you can convince them it is in their best interest to be subjugated and they will remove their own naysayer internally and roll out the carpet for you when you arrive and proclaim your regional Obergruppenführer to meet production quotas.