Comments on: Drone Swarm for Maximum Harm

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Thanks for the comments, I’ve learned a lot from them. The point made about a drone taking out a multi-million dollar aircraft is exactly the type of thing you need to do to be successful in war. I don’t see any reason you wouldn’t be successful with this mission… You could write a program to follow terrain and automatically attack an aircraft or tank… Just like a tomahawk only at a fraction of the cost and it would be 10x harder to kill (Cost, size and capability is what has created this paradigm shift in warfare).

Swarm killing: You might have imagined an artists concept of these things flying next to each other. Realistically they would be many miles away from each other.

The fact is that laser arrays (say 20 1MJ lasers pointing at the same thing) are going to make most aerial platforms sitting ducks so why not make them smarter, smaller and cheaper…and more disposable? That’s the whole point here.

Drones fighting drones: Now this is where the programming gets complex and you start seeing drones with mini missiles. Steering with a rudder is childs splay compared to 3D dogfighting.

By: dude

dude — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 01:05:03 +0000

why not make mini zeppelins/blimps? much longer loitering time, just make sure they have a low cross-section to the wind. additionally, why not have them use Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) with microphones to triangulate the location of gunfire, that seems like it would be very useful.
you could have a blanket of blimps capable of pinpointing the location of gunfire, giving all the information a howitzer would need. thus, firing at the blimp would cost you your life.

By: Maccabee

Maccabee — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:19:24 +0000

We don’t have the comms to do this properly yet, among other potential pitfalls. The concept is sound and very promising but needs an assortment of new technologies to mature first. Cheap software defined radio would help a great deal for instance. Refueling or extended battery technologies need attention and refinement.
And the same developments that will make this feasible will yield more effective countermeasures.
A swarm of offensive UAVs could be countered with relatively few defensive UAVs containing SDR jamming arrays and antiradiation/EMP weapons (either air-launched or in a cheaper flying bomb configuration.) You don’t need to decode an encrypted transmission to hit the transceiver with a HARM, or to guide an EMP drone to the middle of your ‘locust swarm.‘
In short, there’s a lot of potential here but it’s not a ‘magic bullet.’ Simply put, for the forseeable future JDAMs equipped with extended range kits are going to remain cheaper and less vulnerable than UAVs that attack from close in. Those JDAMs may be launched from UAVs–but that’s different than the ‘locust swarm’ concept. Munitions with a medium to long range standoff capability make the launch platform’s direct combat capabilities less important–which lowers cost, complexity, etc.
These systems will probably be more transformative for ground forces in terms of having disposable CAS and recon platforms (potentially organic to the unit) than it will for traditional strategic Air Force missions, and therefore will encroach more on the territory of rotary-wing than fixed wing aviation–at least in the initial generations. The ‘locust swarm’ might threaten to displace the A10 or the JSF in some roles but it’s going to be a while before it can displace the capabilities of platforms such as the BUFF or the Bone.

By: Bob Ratchet

Bob Ratchet — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:44:15 +0000

So when one of these drones falls to the ground someone will pick it up and reverse engineer the technology. Seems to me they’d be great weapon of choice for the assassins in the world. Maybe it is just what is needed.…the poor man’s ultimate defence

By: Julian

Julian — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:56:16 +0000

This is a brilliant system. All of the caveats I’ve seen posted so far are really non-issues.
– Networking bandwidth is not an issue, as secure, fault-tolerant wireless protocols are now ubiquitous.
– At their size and paired with stealth composites, radar is nigh useless. Without fire control, shooting down craft of this size is laughable. These will likely have a flight ceiling of over 10k feet, and are inaudible even above 2k feet.
With the success of guidance capabilities and shaped charges, smaller munitions are now becoming standard fare in many of the weapons systems. Pairing this to lightweight drones is a natural evolution. We’re still a few years from UCAVs taking over air supremacy roles, but for ground attack, UCAV is here now. If the military is saying it’s not interested, that’s probably because development has been co-opted for covert use.
Think about it:
– No pilots taken POW or KIA
– No risk of 100 million dollar craft shot down by a weapon system costing only 1% of the target
– Massive numbers of attack craft can even be used for soft targets and counter insurgency roles
– Fear factor would be unparalleled
– Cost per unit would enable not just hundreds, but perhaps even tens of thousands for deployment
– Loiter time + distributed image processing would enable detection of asymmetric warfare activities
I abhor warfare. But if the job needs to be done, do it quickly, with overwhelming superiority and minimal collateral damage.
I see this platform as satisfying all of these requirements.

By: no money

no money — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 01:43:41 +0000

Good ideas that pull money from those that have money are bad ideas to those that have money

By: DR LEN GILMAN

DR LEN GILMAN — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 05:10:11 +0000

Droping several dozen or more of these for a one shot search/destroy or self destruct seems very costly. There should be a recovery scheme.

By: iseethroughitall

iseethroughitall — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:38:56 +0000

The USA doesn’t really want the capability this weapon offers. The Dominator seems awfully good at going after that image we all have of the terrorist. The Bush gang knows darn well that terrorism isn’t the problem that it has made it out to be. Just the same, the Bushies have built up the terrorism threat, not because it is real, but because it’s a good way to get the country to agree to its real designs, that is, getting Congress to approve appropriations to companies like Halliburton. The real Bush plan is to invade countries, such as Iraq, then build a them back up again. Either way, Bush cronies get filthy, filthy rich.

By: n/a

n/a — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:09:12 +0000

if the air force wont accept it then why not do some research on what there looking for right now in drone asociated technology…
*do the research
*make improvements (btw the carbonfiber vac spheres thing is a good ideah)
*try to present it again
if that dosn’t work then like moose said the army likes this stuff, as do I

By: n/a

n/a — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 23:59:35 +0000