Wouldn't old school AA guns be perfect for that sort of thing?

My understanding is that AA guns work best against targets the size of a fighter or bomber. As the target shrinks, so do your odds of a hit.

Here's an Orlan-10 on its launch mount. Perspective means it appears larger than it actually is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlan-10#/media/File:SlavicBro...

So, no, not perfect. Probably not even within an order of magnitude of the same effectiveness. Possibly not even two orders.

AUTONOMOUS AA guns would be perfect for that sort of thing

The US military has had Phalanx CIWS for decades to handle this type of threat

what both Russia and Ukraine could use are cheaper lower caliber versions of this

And then the attackers will locate these expensive systems and attack with a cheap drone swarm of 10-15 drones at once. Doesn't matter if you lose 9, if one gets past you're likely in trouble.

Exactly, so what is needed is a cheaper version of these weapons. A cheap drone swarm versus a cheap turret swarm built off the browning 50.cal rather than some complex 20 mm chain gun.

Most of the AA systems coming on line can easily handle a swarm of 15 drones. Watch a video of Skyranger with proximity fuses wiping the gnats out of the sky. The problem is that each system can only handle a small area of the battle front.

The problem is that each 30mm projectile costs ~5k. Not a good trade off if you swarm it with $300 Chinese drones. And as soon as it starts firing, artillery will start raining down on it. Plus, the Russians have already demonstrated the ability to attack AA systems from multiple sides to get through the blind spots. Any attempt to cluster multiple AA guns or radar systems will make for an incredibly attractive target. Modern production lines can make what, a few hundred of them a year at best? Russia has purchased several thousand drones from Iran alone last year, and they have supposedly produced several hundred thousand lancets.

The US desperately needs to stop feeding the MIC and Wall Street and to reindustrialize the US economy, because we are simply not able to produce anywhere near as much missiles, shells, tanks, etc to fight the war the US wants to fight. The current combined yearly shell production capacity of Germany and the US is less than half of Russia’s alleged production capability, and they just signed a deal with NK that will likely increase their production capacity by a good 50% at least.

Where are you getting $5K for a 30mm round?

Russia still hasn't destroyed any Gepards yet, so I don't see why they'd be able to successfully attack Skynex. And Russia hasn't shown any ability to "swarm" anything. At most, they've used an Orlan to spot for a Lancet. And if they can't fly Orlans around, they won't spot the Skynex system for artillery fire.

Also, the Shaheed drones from Iran aren't cheap. They're easily several thousand euros. And there's no indication at all that Russia has produced 200K + Lancets. Russia simply doesn't have the industrial capacity for that, or artillery rounds.

And Germany doesn't need to be the only partner with the US in providing artillery rounds. All of NATO is doing so, and if you think that North Korea and Russia can out produce the US and the EU (not to mention Japan and South Korea), you've been reading too much Russian propaganda.

No. The front is a huge; tens of kilometers deep and hundreds of kilometers long. You would need a stupid number of AA guns and crews to cover it all. The idea is fast hunter UAV that could sweep large areas and respond quickly to enemy UAVs.

With radar directed[0] gunnery and proximity fuzed rounds, absolutely. For SHORAD, or short range air defense. You'd need a lot of guns parceled out over a lot of frontage to protect your positions.

[0]Which, of course, means it has emissions that can be tracked, pinpointed, and targeted.

Too expensive in terms of cost, materials, and time. Also too vulnerable to swarm attacks. A gepard costs what, 400k? Lancets are 20-40k. I can almost guarantee that it won’t take anywhere near 10-20 lancets to kill one, maybe 3-5. And a non-SPAAG AA gun is a non-starter with modern ISR.