How come one side isn’t putting out air superiority drones to take out the other side’s tank-killer suicide drones? For that matter, why is either side using tanks instead of surface-mobile artillery drones?
“How come one side isn’t putting out air superiority drones to take out the other side’s tank-killer suicide drones? For that matter, why is either side using tanks instead of surface-mobile artillery drones?”
I have heavily researched the answers to those questions. The idea of an air superiority drone is doable, but the resulting device would be relatively cheap. This is not to say the problem is trivial or easy. It’s not to say it would be cheap to develop. But, the resulting drone would be small and relatively cheap to build. Nobody wants that. I was in the industrial side of the military industrial complex for 33 years. Companies want to build expensive, complex and difficult to maintain equipment. That’s because profit is a percentage of costs. I once told a program manager that the device about to pass its qual test was trending to failure and would return within weeks. He grinned and said, “We’ll make money when we fix it.”
On the military side, nobody wants to be the project manager or driving force behind a small, cheap project. That’s not where reputations and promotions are made. It’s also not how you negotiate for a no-show job after you leave the military.
As for smaller, unmanned tanks. I attended a high-level meeting at GD and the Army regarding new designs. We were just about to get some Future Combat Systems business. But the sales VP was focused on Stryker and Abrams. In a discussion over coffee before the main affair, an officer (a colonel, if I recall) said to the VP, “What we really want is something between, say, eight to 12 tons.” The VP laughed and replied, “No you don’t. You want a Stryker.” (About 16 tons if recall.) The VP was having a good laugh and failed completely to read the colonel’s expression. If looks could have killed, the VP would have burst into flames.
GD Land Systems ended up losing half it’s work force when the Army decided to buy the tanks built by three competitors on a six-ton truck chassis. While I am sure the VP made out quite well, the rest of us got laid off because GD was refusing to even entertain the Army’s needs.
Indeed, the main battle tank’s days are numbered. Not because it is particularly vulnerable in itself. But the logistics, the tankers in long rows behind it, can be taken out by tiny, cheap, and disposable drones. A tank with no gas is a radio and a fixed gun. Not very useful if you can’t move them where you need them.
These modern loitering drones are scary as hell. Diving, swerving, hanging back, and waiting for an opportunity to strike, just like a predator bird. They don't just fly in straight from a launch site, tough to knock out. Scary stuff.
Per descriptions of loitering drones:
"An autonomous loitering munition may be launched at an area where enemy activity is only probable, and loiter searching autonomously for targets for potentially hours following the initial launch decision, though it may be able to request final authorization for an attack from a human."
Man out of the loop machines, scary. Some can return to base if they haven't attacked the target, as long as they have fuel.