"I don't think the US military generally uses off-the-shelf consumer products like the Ukraine military does, so does this actually affect them?"
Yes, because if you have no drone manufacturing in your country, you can't just spin on a dime and suddenly have military-grade drone manufacturing. Technology is a lot less about knowing what the atomic weight of cesium is and a lot more about employee A knowing that B knows how to solve instability problems and their contact at company C knows what to do when the blades spin apart. You can't build the massive networks of those relationship by just passing a law today and expecting to have a best-of-class industry tomorrow, no matter how much money you throw at it.
> FPV drones can almost be crafted locally, though, using off the shelf components.
The COTS components are all made in China. That's why no Western military is planning to use them in wartime - that supply chain is depending on the good will of an adversary.
That is here now. Small drones are appearing in Ukraine that target vehicles and infantry using machine vision and thermal imaging. This is driven by RF jamming that limits FPV. Also, the terminal phase of a small drone attack is often where the attack fails and automating that improves effectiveness even when FPV is possible. Less skill is necessary when a fighter can just designate a target and hit the 'kill' button, so this is a force multiplier.
An interesting story on this is found here[1]. Quantity serial production is underway and it will be in wide use very soon, as in the next couple weeks. One thing they've done is secure the software to prevent reverse engineering.
Another thing that stands out to me in that article is the claim that production is limited by component availability. An obvious thing to do is further enhancing these drones by converting them from suicide drones to bomb delivery vehicles so they can be reused.
> Bombs and artillery is the main weapon
That's a generalization that overlooks a great deal in Ukraine. It's like selecting some organ in the body and calling it the "main organ." These drones frequently provide precision forward observation that enables artillery and precision missiles. It's a system, and without FPV observation, FPV interdiction and other contributions Ukraine wouldn't be performing as well as it has.
“A video appeared on the network shows russian soldiers disassembling the American-made Switchblade 600 suicide drone manufactured by AeroVironment. According to Bild, it is the first documented use of this drone by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Moreover, the drone is equipped with 3 “aero-naut CAM Carbon” folding propellers produced by German company Aero-naut Modellbau. It’s a German company that specializes in designing and manufacturing model airplane and boat kits, as well as model components such as electric motors, speed controllers, and propellers. But the company has stated that it never intended for its products to be used for military purposes, and has expressed concern over the use of its products in military applications without its knowledge or consent.”
> Yet they don't seem to exist yet? Is this harder to do than it sounds?
It exists, but isn’t advertised much as it’s essentially a military technology. If you read about the homegrown attack drones Ukraine is building they use a variation of this tech. Various US platforms do something similar. You won’t see this in a consumer drone anytime soon, but a skilled hobbyist could rig something together.
I didn't RTFM, but drone defense has been a high priority for the Pentagon and they've been rapidly testing and developing various options.
A big challenge is doing it cost-effectively, AFAIK. Legacy anti-air technology is designed for shooting down airplanes and uses missiles that may cost 100-1000x the drone; it's not affordable to build missiles to shoot down all of an enemy's drones. I've seen reports of sniper rifles, lasers (less than $1 marginal cost per shot, reportedly), electromagnetic weapons that fry the drone's electronics, old-fashioned anti-aircraft guns, etc.
Not only can drones carry explosives, but apparently the Russians very effectively use drones as artillery spotters in Ukraine, and it's not just a battlefield problem: What happens when someone targets a drone at major public events or at VIPs such as the U.S. President? How do you stop it?
Anyone that has owned DJI drones and compared them for quality and cost against US and EU equivalents should continue to be very worried about Chinas ability to build smart munitions at scale for warfare vs the West.
And sustained smart munitions manufacturing capacity is proving decisive on the battlefield in Ukraine.
It's very difficult, but still much easier to inspect processing facilities for illegal enrichment than it would be to prevent manufacturing of military drones.
Drones are increasingly used by civilians, and we see in Ukraine that consumer drones are being employed in military operations with little more than a software upgrade.
You do realize that the Western drone companies are failing at making good military drones, do you? Have you seen what Ukraine had to say about it?
I don't even want to talk about DJI not being profitable. That's preposterous. It's like if I was claiming that Apple is state-subsidized and not profitable.
Sometimes I wonder what'll happen if the United States ever has to fight a war against an opponent whose industrial base is not 150 years behind it.
Then again, I've heard Russian military equipment is in just as sorry a state. No idea what the Chinese military is like, but I'd imagine the real money is in selling to Americans rather than killing them.
We're in this interesting place where it's entirely possible that the best military equipment is actually in the hands of private, ostensibly civilian companies. SpaceX has ballistic missiles with a CEP significantly smaller than a drone ship, for example, a feat that was unheard of during the Cold War. For that matter, the very concept of a drone ship would've been awfully helpful during the Battle of the Atlantic.
> The problem is that once we're talking tens of millions of dollars and up -- no, you can't.
Sure. If you're willing to build a new GPS system, because that's decently jammable for cheap.
Also are you proposing that all the drones will be individually piloted on missions as they are now? If so, I don't strictly have to jam the drones on the battlefield, I can just jam your satellite uplink or physically attack your operations centers. Add the cost of a plane ticket.
So far, we haven't used these weapons against any military that could be considered our peers. I wouldn't be so confident in our operational deployments without anything to base it on.
> The problem is that precision guided munitions are fairly expensive. Drones are cheap, but giving them any kind of offensive ability increases the cost significantly. A switchblade drone only costs about $6,000 and there still aren't swarms of thousands of them. Maybe once the economics enable massing hundreds of thousands of drones, autonomous control will become more reasonable.
Exactly this. How many drones can you get for the price of 100 F35's?
If you get that many drones, you want to have drones that can attack both enemy land units AND enemy drones.
> Drones and robots made attacks easier, did that help national security?
Large flying drones make patrolling a border easier. You don't have to worry about the pilot's fatigue level. Only fuel/battery.
The war in Ukraine clearly shows that smaller drones also help in attacking and defending. Attacking, by dropping bombs or spotting targets.
And defending, via spotting incoming enemy forces; spotting enemy artillery that is shooting at you, etc
America doesn’t lack combat experience with small drones.
> The fighting in Ukraine has provided "reinforcement and validation" of what US troops have learned about drones in the Middle East, Gainey said at the conference, echoing Army leaders who say the drone war in Ukraine is influencing their planning — particularly for how to counter the one-way attack drones that Russia has used widely.
> "In some cases, yes, what we're sending to Ukraine are also going to fit into our future plans," Douglas Bush, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology, said at a press conference in early August.
Further:
> "There's no one silver bullet. There's no one system that we can call out and say, 'This is a system that's going to defeat every threat,'" Parent told Insider.
The truth is that there is no “drone warfare” only a new class of military tools that resemble drones and are built on drone-esque platforms. They come on the sea, they come by land and they come by air, and they can be millions of dollars or 3500-5000 bucks (which is utterly nothing for US military spending) and built of cardboard like this one:
They are using Ukraine as a providing ground for anti-drone technology for sure as there have been many reports of directed energy weapons in Ukraine and Israel as of late.
So definitely we are in the drone warfare period and those lessons are getting learned. Have been since 2013 to 2016 when we had initial reports of drones on the battlefield and reactions in military planning discussions.
With regards to the idea, that experience is the sole predictor of Battlefield success, I would urge the original poster of that comment to read a few history books.
That's not true. First, many operations the US military engages in are with partner nations who only have access to commercial drones. The US military is behind them in effectively utilizing these drones (commonly DJI, which the US military can't even practice with due to the ban). Second, there's a huge push to shorten the drone procurement process, and reduce the cost of drones. This allows them to be used in harsh EW environments as one-offs, and allows the operator to be safer (the more expensive the drone, the more likely a unit will be sent to recover it if it's downed). It also allows for faster adaptation to EW and changing circumstances. The US military drones of tomorrow will look a lot like Skydio drones today, if the US can get it together and update their procurement process to the 21st century.
Yes, because if you have no drone manufacturing in your country, you can't just spin on a dime and suddenly have military-grade drone manufacturing. Technology is a lot less about knowing what the atomic weight of cesium is and a lot more about employee A knowing that B knows how to solve instability problems and their contact at company C knows what to do when the blades spin apart. You can't build the massive networks of those relationship by just passing a law today and expecting to have a best-of-class industry tomorrow, no matter how much money you throw at it.
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