> I think the only reason we haven't seen this on the battlefield yet is that we haven't yet had a war between the right countries. But we will.
There are videos every day of Ukrainian drones dropping shaped charges like the Russian RKG-3/1600 from drones.
Ukraine even has special troops specialized in it, the Aerorozvidka (Google for the videos).
The reason they apparently aren’t bothered by anti drone efforts is because the Russian forces don’t seem to have the training and equipment for it, so regular drones work well enough (with selection bias of course - we don’t see the videos of the failed attacks).
It’s clear from that footage what an advantage it is to be able to drop 2 or 3 munitions since you can correct for wind if you miss the first, something you can’t do with a single drop.
The larger octocopters that can carry 5kg or more is probably what you want for the job. Some range, and at least 2 charges to drop.
But AT4 is not reliable, only 400mm of penetration and tanks can have 500mm or 600mm of armor. (Or really, equivalent to 500+mm once special materials or geometry is factored in).
To reliably kill a main battle tank requires a larger munition. Javelin is a 8kg warhead IIRC. This is because Javelin is tandem: two warheads. First warhead destroys reactive armor, 2nd warhead actually kills the tank with 900mm of penetration.
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For drones to be optimized on the battlefield will require specially designed drones and special warheads designed to fit in the cargo-capacity of drones.
Switchblade 300 is nice for example but is too small to reliably kill a tank.
Switchblade 600 can kill a tank, but no longer has the small and lightweight form factor that I'm sure the soldiers who have to carry this crap care about.
I think NLAW is ~500mm of penetration and top-down. Its not too hard to make a top-down weapon these days, but it does add weight to the device.
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EDIT: I'm pretty sure that you can't just "drop" a mortar or AT4 warhead reliably either. You'd want to make it into the shape of... well... a bomb. So that the "shape" of the shape-charge points in the correct direction.
they have been dropping 60's-vintage anti-tank hand grenades with 3d printed stabilizers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RKG-3_anti-tank_grenade#Histor...
"220 mm penetration of RHA" which is plenty for top armor
I seriously doubt that. Almost all modern tanks have reactive-armor on top.
There's a reason why NLAW has 500+mm penetration AND top-down. NLAW is single-charge (no-tandem), to punch-through reactive armor requires a lot more penetration.
Let alone lol Javelin with top-down, 900mm+ penetration, and tandem charge.
I don't think 200mm or even 400mm is considered reliable today.
Well it's good for Ukraine then that Russia doesn't really have a lot of modern tanks.
> Let alone lol Javelin with top-down, 900mm+ penetration, and tandem charge.
A Javelin can engage tanks directly if they're obscured from above of if the distance to target is insufficient for flying on a top-down trajectory, and for those situations it needs the 900mm+ penetration (otherwise the direct attack mode would be unusable and would not be provided as a feature). So you can't make the inference that because Javelin has 900mm+ penetration, top-down attacks require 900mm+ penetration.
not sure about nlaw but javelin also features a side targeting mode
And you should tell that to USA's and Britain's military, which have chosen 400mm penetration (AT4), 500mm top-down penetration (NLAW), and 900mm top-down + tandem penetration (Javelin).
200mm, even top-down, is significantly less than other anti-tank weapons. I presume that the militaries who made these modern weapons know what they're doing.
Dive bombing. These drones should be dive bombing. WW2 strategy to increase precision and placement of the bomb.
Only lesser-trained pilots glide-bombed or otherwise avoided dive-bombing in WW2.
I don't think the let-go at height maneuver is historically considered very good. By dive bombing, you set forward-momentum on the bomb and more accurately place it, compared to dropping it from a hover. The bomb also reaches its target faster, and the pilot has the ability to line-up the shot (especially useful if the enemy is a moving target).
I'm very much unimpressed by the "let go at height" videos, its just not good piloting IMO. But if these drones were dive-bombing instead, maybe I'd have a bit more respect. I'm not necessarily saying that the pilots have to dive-bomb, but maybe an AI could control that kind of pass.
A multi-rotor drone (what the videos seem to be shot from) cannot fly fast, and cannot pull the high gees after drop. Dive bombing won't help much. Likely even a controlled flight into the target (kamikaze) would end up slower (final velocity) than just dropping, making the drone a much easier target for small arms fire than just the bomb alone.
Fixed wing drones - different story. Getting them back to the ground in a reusable way requires effort, simply flying into the target seems to make more sense. The big reusable ones usually carry self-guided amunitions.
A combination of remote controlled, fast, high payload, high-g capable, and reusable would likely not be cost-effective (losses to be expected in any case).
Every one of these drone-drop videos is several seconds between letting go of the bomb, and the bomb colliding with the target.
If they actually want these drones to reliably hit a moving target, or even a vehicle in combat, they'll need to do something.
That's a lot of hang-time and delay in these "drone drop" videos. Once the bomb is let go, there's going to be another 20+ to 30+ minutes before the drone operator is able to fly another drone into the field, and that's if the drone operator has a 2nd drone with him. Maybe it will be hours, or maybe the next chance to drop a bomb never comes ever again.
You really want to maximize the chance of striking the target with these operations. A huge number of WW1 and WW2 operations were summarized as "Flew for 4 hours, missed my bomb, flew home". You want to minimize that kind of thing.
Especially if these drones are considered somewhat expendable.
Sophisticated militaries will strike moving targets with precision guided munitions. Generally either laser guidance with a designator mounted on the drone, or some kind of pattern recognition built into the bomb itself (could be optical, IR, or millimeter wave radar). For example, something like the GBU-44/B.
Poor militaries and insurgents will make do with whatever they can get. Either wait for the target to stop moving, or just lead it a little and hope.
Arming your enemy's enemy is nothing new.
Providing weapons has been a US-Soviet past time for the whole Cold War.
In this case, I think the US could have even moved in troops without being at war, early in the invasion. It just needs a pretext. By far the best response a week in, when Russia claimed chemical weapons, Nazis, etc., would have been to send in a multilateral force to investigate Russia's claims. It's face-saving for the Russians and ends the war.
Tensions are too high for that now.
I've got a feeling we might be pulling a Russia... Ie. None of our troops are there officially, bit there's an awful lot of troops volunteering and 'on holiday' and 'advising' there.
There are "rules" (and by rules I mean what is interpreted as "participating" vs "supporting" in a conflict that have been established and enforced for well over a thousand years. And supplying weapons has been firmly established in the 'supporting' category not the 'participating' category.
This conflict is illustrating a lot of things that haven't been seen since the cold war, which is an opportunity to learn new things about how the world works if you haven't seen it before.
The next interesting step happens when this conflict settles out, what does it look like.
Cheap commercial drones have a short range. In order to use them effectively on the battlefield, each drone needs an operator, who must also be on the battlefield. Those operators then need other people for watching their backs, coordinating their actions, and handling the logistics. Those 1000 cheap simultaneously launched drones are now an entire brigade on the battlefield, which is definitely not cheap.
Just a couple of days ago, a single artillery brigade eliminated an entire tank battalion at a river crossing.
Generally, if you can wipe out the fuel trucks, they have to abandon the tanks. An ordinary grenade suffices to blow up a fuel truck.
The swarm leader could be human-piloted or autonomous. Autonomy would be a matter of software and sensors; once you've invented it, it would be dirt-cheap to implement. A swarm of 50 would be enough to baffle air-defence systems capable of tracking multiple targets.
I have no idea if this exists, but it seems an obvious idea; if it doesn't exist, it must have been tried and found wanting.
The overral objective was for any drone within the swarm to immediately chase and ram into the first human it could locate. The processes were automated and could be triggered while unattended.
For reasons the video explains, letting 12 drones all try to independantly do the same thing at the same time was not going to work, so he came up with ghis structure.
1 server that processed the video feeds from the drones using AI trained to recognize humans/human faces 1 C&C computer that sent master commands and stuffs .... and maybe the computer flight code ...? 12 drones assigned to their own LAN making them a virtual group 4 of these drones were designated as flight leaders. They sent data from their cameras to the video processing server and recieved targetting results back. Sent target and flight instructions to the two drones assigned to them. 2 drones are assigned to each flight leader drone forming a single unit. They only communicate with their flight leader. They do what it does.
I know ... it isnt anywhere near what would be required for combat use, but come on... in the last test, his drones did what they were supposed to do; every single one of them automatically attacked the first human being they detected immediately. Better yet, they did it in unison. More better of all, all of them him.
This guy did this with cheap, off the shelf parts, by himself, during his downtime at home as a joke for Youtube.
I'm pretty sure this is how we are going to get sophisticated autonomous weapons. Everyone is screaming and shouting how dangerous they are and then some dude wants to get a quick laugh or prove everyone else wrong and inadvertently creates a high quality weapon.
actually I think that you didn't because slaughter bots are trying to not cause any collateral damage
Attach it to a few tens of dollars worth of drone. (The cheapest drones are under 10 dollars now).
A country could release 1000 of these and direct them at any military target, and they'll do massive amounts of damage at very low costs.
Most anti-drone defences can be defeated simply with a redesign of the drone (eg. Use UWB for Comms, and have dual gyros and use a camera for location instead of GPS).
I think the only reason we haven't seen this on the battlefield yet is that we haven't yet had a war between the right countries. But we will.