in recent times a lot of the hype has been placed on the role of drones in modern combat operations
events in Saudi Arabia Syria and the Caucasus have prompted the observers to declare that
a new type of air power has risen and it has shown its potential
well if indeed it is their power it's not new and the potential was well known
so let's start from the drone itself the lack of pilot replaced by remote guidance systems is
a factor for cost reduction but not as much as it may seem removing the pilot is not going to
make the drone cost a fraction of the equivalent piloted plane the cost reduction may be estimated
between 10 and 50 percent the percentage depends from the incidence of the cockpit and all the
system connecting with the pilot on the total of the aircraft on a fourth or fifth generation
jet it is relatively small on the equivalent of a Super Tucano is much higher the cost of the drone
actually is mainly driven by its capabilities projects like the Skyborg or the loyal wingmen
will produce should they produce anything some sort of scaled-down high-performance
jets a supersonic stability relaxed drone with systems similar to a piloted aircraft
they will not be much cheaper since most of the cost elements are still there albeit smaller
the cost will still be in the tenths of millions of value high enough to make the whole
a treatable concept say relative short cost per flight hour will be lower than an equivalent
manned aircraft but it will not be the decisive cost reduction being sold from some outlets
if they do not replace man jets in some of their tasks they will actually increase the overall
cost of their power additionally what is essential for our story is that these weapons will still be
out of reach for many minor players that can't afford more than a handful of legacy man jets
however things change if we scale down one notch and we get into the realm of light attack
light attack is the type of mission conducted by planes like the combat versions of jet trainers
the AMX or some more modern turbo props specifically equipped for the mission like
Super Tucano which is a reference for the category in this case and for this specific mission drones
can be even more effective than a man platform at a lower cost while the American MQ-9
is still as expensive as a Super Tucan other manufacturers like Turkey Iran Russia and Israel
today produce lighter platforms with light attack capability for less than half the price even if
some critical components are often sourced abroad what has been seen at work in 2020 is
light attack with precision weapons and there's no point in the nine that this clash of weapons has
scored some relevant successes however none of the capabilities demonstrated was unknown
and unexpected and among the known and expected capability
there wasn't the ability to defend themselves effectively from any serious form of contrast
what should be the ideal form of contrast we will see in a bit but these drones prove to be
rather vulnerable anyway we are not over yet because if we scale down a notch again
we enter the realm of tactical drones whose diffusion is steadily increasing commercial
quadcopters have been in use in the Ukraine the United States Marines are building squads
and platoons around small reconnaissance drones and military versions of civilian designs are
actually proliferating this is something really unprecedented in ground operations
we are approaching an era when the tactical commanders on the battlefield at platoon
and company level may have an unprecedented situational awareness every platoon may literally
have a daughter or small drones of various types not much different from civilian models that can
be used to look around the corner or on the other side of the hill all for a relatively modest cost
larger tactical drones like quadcopters can also carry small explosive devices or light automatic
weapons and they can't be used to apply force from an unexpected direction being hidden behind a wall
may be no longer being hidden tactical drones are already having a huge impact on the tactics for
example dispersion and camouflage are becoming more important even at tactical level quick
movement may be another measure to reduce the opponent's situational awareness in a few years we
might end up in confrontation where light drones become the main asset for the infantry platoon
or company commander because they will be able to apply the same volume of fire and provide the
same level of intelligence as individual soldiers soldiers won't go away they will be there to pilot
the drones and definitely there are some tasks on the battlefield that can't be mechanized
defending from the unmanned version of a high performance jet requires assets not much
different than those required for a manned one we are in the same category air-to-air missiles
surface-to-air missiles the same jamming equipment already in use and this is obvious because these
drones have similar performance and features as the manned aircraft the same performance
and features the weapons i mentioned before are designed to counter critically the weapons are
still less expensive overall than the targets and this makes the whole kill chain viable
if you move down a notch like we did before we get in an era where the situation is
not so clear-cut drones of the class of the reaper or a bit lower can still be attacked with classic
air-to-air or surface-to-air weapons and indeed they are very vulnerable as we have already said
the only protection is the relatively low radar signature due to their size and the possibility
to introduce some basic stealth measure the engines either turboprop piston or jet
tend to be relatively cold for the class so even the infrared signature is quite small they're
spotted though they have no real defense against a missile or a AAA system however maintaining a
constant air superiority near the front line may be a taxing additional task and a dangerous one
for conventional fighters particularly for the same minor players that are more
likely to implement their air power on drones rather than planes in the same way
the density of surface-to-air weapons or jammers required to fend off a coordinated drone force
may be rather high and beyond reach of the same minor players this is the reason why we have seen
so many successful drones operations in the last few years the opponent was missing the air-to-air
or the surface-to-air capability required to shoot them down while the same capability will be there
and given for granted in a clash among major players at this level the cost of the weapons
that will be employed to defend from these drones is approaching the coast of the drones themselves
making the whole proposition a bit more shaky Russia and China have been aware
of this problem introducing systems actually designed with the contrast of drones in mind
an example is the Pantsir the Pantsir is a short to medium range system that uses very
cheap missiles and 30 millimeter auto cannons together with a radar that is tuned to detect
even small drones without too many force positives in its performance it had highs and lows but the
direction is the right one even the Chinese are introducing simple track vehicles with autocannons
likely aimed to engage low flying drones the situation is even more intricate if we move
down a notch again and we consider tactical drones these systems are difficult to engage because they
are cheap enough to justify only basically light weapons or small caliber autocannon reactions
but there are also small moving targets very difficult to hit with kinetic weapons if not
assisted by a fire control system this situation produce anomalies like what happened in 2017 in
southern Saudi Arabia when a Patriot missile what about 3 million was fired at a quadcopter it seems
that the industry is actually tending toward light jammers that could be mounted on a light wheeled
vehicle to counter the tactical drone menace but these systems are still few and relatively young
however jammers are important because the drone communication channels are one of their main
vulnerabilities from this point of view jammers are only going to proliferate and one country
that is already ahead in the race is Russia and because they already have a system that is
considered to be quite effective drummers also have an advantage against one feature of drones
that has not been really demonstrated yet but it could be an important improvement in the future
swarming is the possibility to use a large number of small and inexpensive drones in a cooperative
way that is the drones communicate with each other and optimize their action to reach the objective
the algorithms and the mathematics behind the concept are really solid and the implementation
is just a matter of time the operator in this case won't control the single drone but the entire
swarm it is not clear yet what the potential of swarming is but there are some use cases that
do show why there are several researches ongoing for example to attack a Pantsir system like the
one we mentioned before a swarm of 15 or 20 small drones could be used each carrying the equivalent
of a hand grenade or a RPG warhead each drone coordinated with the others to attack from around
the clock making very difficult for a computer to establish the priority of the targets to engage
another example would be the same swarm attacking a group of vehicles and coordinating to be sure of
hitting every vehicle no more than a couple of times avoiding overkills while at this point it
seems that we are moving toward a dystopic science fiction film so maybe it is better if I stop here
but if you like this video I'm sure you are going to like the videos that are going to appear beside
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