ccp
Posted on 04/18/2021 11:01:55 AM PDT by RomanSoldier19
n October 2016, the United States Strategic Capabilities Office launched 103 Perdix drones out of an F/A-18 Super Hornet. The drones communicated with one another using a distributed brain, assembling into a complex formation, traveling across a battlefield, and reforming into a new formation. The swarm over China Lake, California was the sort of “cutting-edge innovation” that would keep America ahead of its adversaries, a Defense Department press release quoted then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter as saying. But the Pentagon buried the lede: The Strategic Capabilities Office did not actually create the swarm; engineering students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) did, using an “all-commercial-components design.”
MIT engineering students are among the best engineering students in the world, and they have the exact skills for the task, but they are still students. If drone swarming technology is accessible enough that students can develop it, global proliferation is virtually inevitable. And, of course, world militaries are deploying new drone technology so quickly that even journalists and experts who follow the issue have trouble keeping up, even as much drone swarm-related research is surely taking place outside the public eye. With many countries announcing what they call “swarms,” at some point—and arguably that point is now—this technology will pose a real risk: In theory, swarms could be scaled to tens of thousands of drones, creating a weapon akin to a low-scale nuclear device. Think “Nagasaki” to get a sense of the death toll a massive drone swarm could theoretically inflict. (In most cases, drone swarms are likely to be far below this level of harm, but such extremes are absolutely possible.)
Creating a drone swarm is fundamentally a programming problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at thebulletin.org ...
ccp
Mosquitoes had that figured out 400 million years ago.
Good article, thanks
Gravel shot cannons (low tech)
Radar controlled low altitude AA with programmable burst height (high tech)
Even with 12 guns, one still gets through, even though destroyed in flight.
https://youtu.be/AohmOrX0_LQ
Seems like EMP would be a good defense, if it could be made directional. https://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb3.htm
“In theory, swarms could be scaled to tens of thousands of drones, creating a weapon akin to a low-scale nuclear device.”
A directed EMP defense could disable the lot of them instantaneously.
Drones are equipped with robust metal shielding, filtering of signals, surge protection, and other EMP countermeasures.
I don’t think my own hobby drones would appreciate being thrown out of an F18 at 200 knots. Have to read the article and see how they dealt with this.
Two words: Bird shot
That was a fake video.
Atchafalaya Swamp Mosquito...
Cool!
The Armenia Azerbaijan war was fought with drones. Can’t say *all* future wars will be but probably all future wars where at least one party is reasonably technologically savvy. Suspect it’s a whole new era in warfare.
Cept that he started in cavalry and finished with tanks.
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