Posted on 10/13/2022 8:19:36 AM PDT by ganeemead
There was a report today that a Ukrainian Mig-29 was able to take out a drone by hitting it with the plane.
The pilot survived, the plane did not.
There was no cost estimate on this brilliant act.
“...vunce rockets are up, who cares where they go down. . .
. . .Zat’s not my Department, says Wernher von Braun”
- Tom Lehrer, “Wernher von Braun”. . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
why do they have to buy them from the muslimes???
Ja. When I was a kid Braun was sold to us as a “good” German. What shyt. He and his pals should have been working from a prison complex.
The V-1 was cost-effective only insofar as the Nazis, by that point in time of the war, had no other way to drop a 1-ton bomb on London (they had virtually run out of experienced bomber pilots and protective fighter pilots, they were low on fuel, and their bombers were too vulnerable to radar-guided anti-aircraft fire).
Even earlier in the war, during the Blitz, when Germany still had plenty of good pilots, planes, and fuel, and British defenses were still in development, even if V-1s had been available, it would STILL have made more sense (cheaper in German Marks and German lives) for the Nazis to instead use conventional bombers rather than V-1s.
It's as though your car were broken, and you had no recourse to taxis, friends with cars, bicycles, municipal buses, etc. - then, indeed, strapping fireworks to your 6-year-old son's plastic scooter would truly be the most-efficient way to get to work on time. (Indeed, it might be your ONLY way to get to work on time.)
If, at ANY time during the war, you had given London the complete plans for constructing a V-1, and a finished factory to build them, London would nevertheless have been foolish to expend an ounce of effort in manufacturing its own V-1s.
Even late in the war, V-1s were piss-poor weapons in terms of cost per enemy death. They were terribly inaccurate (and London had arrested EVERY Nazi operative in London from the start and "turned" them - so the secret transmissions being sent to Berlin on V-1 impacts were penned by the English and thus ensured that the "Buzz Bombs" consistently fell short of their mark).
What was true for the V-1 was true in spades for the V-2.
They were effective ONLY from a psychological point of view.
If I tell you that I'm sending my 12-year-old daughter over to your house to beat up your 18-year-old son, you will chuckle. (In spite of the fact that there is still a distinct statistical possibility that my daughter might happen to get a good punch in and maybe, through sheer luck, poke out your son's eye.)
But if I tell you that I am releasing genetically modified mosquitos laced with Ebola into your neighborhood, the "Fear Factor" might paralyze you and your family - even though, statistically, the actual risk to you is negligible.
There was no practical defense against the V-2. When you are presented with a small but fightable risk of death, you will cope with it somehow. But if I present you with a microscopic but unfightable risk of death, you will feel helpless and succumb.
Regards,
Bingo!
You win the Internet today!
Regards,
Yep. Swarms of preprogrammed drones can swamp defenses right now. Attacking units are relatively cheap. Defending units must be relatively cheap as well. And they must be very mobile.
A laser weapon capable of engaging targets in rapid sequence might be the answer - something like a Phalanx system but armed with a laser. Cheap ammo. Depending on the effective range of the laser against the drone a handful of them might be enough to defend a city. A microwave weapon might fry the electronics as well.
Like the Allied fighters learned to do against the V-1s in WW II. Fly alongside the V-1, put the tip of your wing under the V-1 wing, break to the right or left quickly, and then pull away. The gyros on the V-1 did not behave well after this maneuver and the V-1 crashed.
But this does not sound like the same thing.
alexander_busek wrote: “Bingo! You win the Internet today!”
I used to defense cost effectiveness analysis for a living.
Again the cost factors are critical. It makes no sense to try to shoot the drones down with missiles that cost 100 times what the drones do and the film footage I've seen of Ukies trying to shoot them down with AKs does not show anybody having any luck at it.
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