Posted on 05/25/2025 3:29:52 PM PDT by Retain Mike
A key lesson of the Ukraine War is that when we deploy certain types of precision guided munitions (PGMs), such as anti-tank missiles or man-portable air-defense systems like Stinger missiles, it takes years to manufacture new ones. We have also learned that the tooling needed to produce various types of PGMs no longer exists—indeed, in some cases entire factories have been dismantled. This means that if we want more PGMs, we will have to start from scratch.
Another weakness of our defense manufacturing capability is that we depend heavily on global supply chains. Specialized parts may be produced in the U.S., but sometimes they come from other countries, including China. The U.S. must reverse this trend quickly if we are to remain dominant.
Consider the fact that most of the first person view (FPV) drones—drones controlled by a remote pilot using video cameras—that are being used on the battlefield in Ukraine and elsewhere are built with parts made primarily in China. This supply chain dependence is a direct result of the globalization of industry and the offshoring of America’s manufacturing—mostly to Asia and especially to China.
An important thing we learned very early on in the Ukraine War was that the incredibly expensive tanks we gave to the Ukrainians were defenseless against very inexpensive FPV drones. A thoughtful national defense establishment would have drawn the conclusion from this that we should launch a crash project to develop an effective and inexpensive answer to drones. But no such project was launched. So when the Iranian-backed Houthis started firing drones at ships in the Red Sea, what was the U.S. response? For each $30,000 Iranian drone we shot down, we employed two $2 million missiles.
(Excerpt) Read more at imprimis.hillsdale.edu ...
The government then has to go find another sucker who has to find, hire, and train up staff before producing.
Obviously, but I don't suspect Houthi drones are very fast or rugged. It just seemed to me that "shooting skeet" was a way to save considerable money.
Now that makes so much sense. I can definitely see DOD and Congress devising ways to sabotage our military.
Do you mean "scaling up?"
Regards,
Do you mean "to scale up?"
Regards,
FYI: Many of our current destroyers only have the aft Phalanx CIWS installation. There’s about a 90 degree or more arc forward that it can’t fire in.
The Houthi drones aren’t terribly rugged, no. And yes, the CIWS Gatling is a good answer where it can come to bear and ranges on the target - much cheaper than a SeaRAM missile, a Sea Sparrow or a Standard SM-2/3 missile.
Unfortunately, one of the problems with the Houthis is that Iran and others have armed them with drones *and* some pretty serious antishipping missiles. They are known to send them in swarms with drones leading the way and sucking up AA munitions so the missiles can attempt to get through. The reason you need more range is to prolong the engagement time so that you might be able to shoot down all the incoming before an actual antiship missile gets through.
The Gatling is a good idea for onesie-twosie drone attacks, but needs help against swarms or group threats. So something else needs to be used as well, or we need a lot more Phalanx CIWS on ships with deeper magazines.
Negative. We have no suitable air drone factories in the US to actually scale up. We would have to create new ones. However, as Ukraine and the Houthis have demonstrated, it’s not actually terribly hard to make an first person drone - they’re sold as childrens’ toys for basic models these days, after all - but if you don’t have the chips and in this case the batteries and motors to make one fly, you’re not getting anywhere. We don’t have the chips.
Correction: It’s not hard to make a plant to crank out first person drones. You can have one going within a month if you have parts supplies.
Thanks.
Perfectly reasonable. Yet one would think that with the right software the radar could distinguish the faster vehicles and use the missiles more sparingly.
So something else needs to be used as well, or we need a lot more Phalanx CIWS on ships with deeper magazines.
Yep. That was obvious two years ago.
Some of the antiship missiles and some of the drones can fly at about the same speeds. There are loitering antiship missiles these days, just like there are loitering drones, and they can be roughly the same size and radar return. It’s not just a matter of “the faster ones are the lethal missiles” - additionally, some of the drones are large enough to be loaded with anti-armor warheads and used as suicide drones, turning them into small antiship missiles as well.
Keep in mind that some of the Houthi drones are not “child’s toy” but a significant fraction of the size of a real aircraft, or the size of a conventional missile, so they can carry a decent payload or warhead. It’s how they’re sinking merchant ships.
What is the difference between a loitering missile and a loitering drone? Is it that the latter has real-time control from a base?
The missile is usually totally or even mostly autonomous and was designed as an attack munition to begin with. A loitering drone need not have been intended as an attack vehicle but could collect information. Drones of this type can be fully manually piloted by remote or have some automation - we’re still not at the point where they can fly completely on their own just yet.
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