Drones currently outpace their countermeasurs. This will definitely not be a thing forever. I think the effectiveness of cheap drones will go down as be countermeasures are invented.
We already see new very effective military drone jammers starting to come out
It’s one thing detecting a person with machine learning in a test and an actual soldier with camouflage in a very imperfect environment. Also good luck telling friend from foe from civilian.
This has all sorts of problems while making the whole system more complicated and prone to issues. Not the mention moral questions of autonomous weapons. I have no doubt it will happen but not yet, not here.
Tracking a moving object in realtime with video is a standard task for a machine learning engineer. You can do it on an embedded platform with ML hardware support. I don’t know what hardware newer Lancets use but they can already do it according from developer reports from Telegram channels like e.g Разработчик БПЛА.
Honestly, I was just objecting to the use of “AI”. We’ve had both fire and forget and loitering munitions for decades now, neither of which use ML. Will it happen? Sure. For now, ML/AI is too unreliable to be trusted in a deployed direct attack platform, and we dont have computing hardware powerful enough to run ML models that we can jam in a missile.
(Though yeah we run tons of models against drone data feeds, none of those are done onboard…)
The point of modern deep learning approaches is that they’re extremely easy on the developer skill. Decades ago realtime machine vision needed a machine vision expert, these days you throw the hardware at the problem at learning stage, and embedded devices to run the results are stupidly powerful (doesn’t even take a Jetson board), if you compare to what has been available even a decade ago.
A combination of GPS, or even inertial based guidance to get them to the target area and then some simple vehicle / object identification, I’d think those are possible.
GPS is useful, but not required for operation. Inertial guidance, and ground tracking cameras can easily maintain a good position sense, while completely RF passive. This is also already normal on many toy drones.
You would also want to jam it over a large area. That jamming is akin to a “kick me” sign, in neon lights.
Edit, apparently I’m an idiot and my ability to tell truth from fiction is a lot worse than I thought.
In my defence however, all the parts are completely viable. I also saw it mixed in with Boston dynamics videos.
I’ll leave the original comment for context of my folly.
The US already has them.
There are single shot drones, designed to be deployed into a building, or cave system. They then use cameras etc to navigate, while running face recognition. When they find their target, they fly just in front of it. The shaped C4 charge is designed to reduce their head to red mist, while not risking those close by.
AI + cheap drones will completely change warfare. Probably on the same level as the tank, or machine gun.
The only reliable counter to a drone is likely another drone.
I suspect Peter F Hamilton got it close, in the Confederation series, with WASPs. They are space based weapon platforms. They carry a mix of offensive and defensive subsystems, and operate with swarm logic.
I could easily see a larger drone carrying a swarm of 1 shot micro drones. When close, some would be sacrificed to get better sensor data, others would go on the attack. Conversely, a defensive target would launch their own swarm. It’s goal would be to stop the attackers getting a good shot on a high value target. It might also counterattack, either against the mother ship drone, or backtracking to find the launch site.
Jamming would also be part of this. A jammer could easily cut off the swarm from external data sources. Live satellite or remote surveillance systems would be cut. Point to point lasers are far harder, as are burst transmissions. Local sensor drones could easily punch short range data back, or paint targets, until they are destroyed by defensive systems.
There are in fact a huge number of reliable counters to drones, including but not limited to anti-aircraft gun systems, anti-aircraft lasers, RF jamming devices (especially effective against cheap/makeshift drones), and several more.
Drones are currently an emergent threat without a robust countermeasure scheme, but given their massive role in the Ukraine war that is not going to go unaddressed for long. From a purely mechanical standpoint, small drone munitions are also physically very vulnerable, making them readily destroyed by anti-air autocannon fire or even laser weapons if you assume RF jamming will not solve the problem.
It’s worth noting we are at the start of an arms race. It will iterate all over the place.
For example, smoke and chaff deploying drones would make defensive fire harder. Anti air can be either baited (and so depleted) or rushed. Lasers can be shielded against, at least for a time. Jamming can be countered with line of site communications.
In turn, each of these can be countered.
A key thing of note is that your solutions are heavy. Fine for defending a static target, but problematic when dealing with defending a mobile unit etc infantry of transports. In those situations an extremely rapid, focused highly dynamic response would be required. The obvious way to deploy those fast enough is to have them automated and airborne, aka a drone swarm.
I might be completely wrong, current drone warfare is akin to the invention of the smoothbore musket. How it will develop remains to be seen (for better or for worse).
Anti-air guns are the countermeasure. RADAR good enough to detect drones + an aimbot and programmable air-burst round to “shotgun” your pellets to damage those soft plastic bits.
We’re going back to WW2 tech. AA guns were considered obsolete because Helicopters + Missiles had more range. But now we need to build cheaper AA Guns for the anti-drone role.
AA Guns are also useful vs infantry, so in an infantry vs infantry fight, having an AA Gun platform will be useful even without any drones around. Airburst and rapid fire is always useful, and I expect the computers that make RADAR possible will be far cheaper today than decades past.
Jammers only work against remote controlled drones. Autonomous ones have no such issue. And jammers are never a problem against civilians, which tech like this will eventually be used on.
Drones currently outpace their countermeasurs. This will definitely not be a thing forever. I think the effectiveness of cheap drones will go down as be countermeasures are invented.
We already see new very effective military drone jammers starting to come out
Onboard AI guidance is not difficult.
I will be very suprised if this isn’t already happening.
It’s one thing detecting a person with machine learning in a test and an actual soldier with camouflage in a very imperfect environment. Also good luck telling friend from foe from civilian.
This has all sorts of problems while making the whole system more complicated and prone to issues. Not the mention moral questions of autonomous weapons. I have no doubt it will happen but not yet, not here.
I know it already does, at least in newer Lancets. Expect this in fpv type devices soon.
You can’t be serious.
Tracking a moving object in realtime with video is a standard task for a machine learning engineer. You can do it on an embedded platform with ML hardware support. I don’t know what hardware newer Lancets use but they can already do it according from developer reports from Telegram channels like e.g Разработчик БПЛА.
Honestly, I was just objecting to the use of “AI”. We’ve had both fire and forget and loitering munitions for decades now, neither of which use ML. Will it happen? Sure. For now, ML/AI is too unreliable to be trusted in a deployed direct attack platform, and we dont have computing hardware powerful enough to run ML models that we can jam in a missile.
(Though yeah we run tons of models against drone data feeds, none of those are done onboard…)
The point of modern deep learning approaches is that they’re extremely easy on the developer skill. Decades ago realtime machine vision needed a machine vision expert, these days you throw the hardware at the problem at learning stage, and embedded devices to run the results are stupidly powerful (doesn’t even take a Jetson board), if you compare to what has been available even a decade ago.
A combination of GPS, or even inertial based guidance to get them to the target area and then some simple vehicle / object identification, I’d think those are possible.
GPS is usually the first thing to be jammed in the battlefield.
GPS is useful, but not required for operation. Inertial guidance, and ground tracking cameras can easily maintain a good position sense, while completely RF passive. This is also already normal on many toy drones.
You would also want to jam it over a large area. That jamming is akin to a “kick me” sign, in neon lights.
Edit, apparently I’m an idiot and my ability to tell truth from fiction is a lot worse than I thought.
In my defence however, all the parts are completely viable. I also saw it mixed in with Boston dynamics videos.
I’ll leave the original comment for context of my folly.
The US already has them.
There are single shot drones, designed to be deployed into a building, or cave system. They then use cameras etc to navigate, while running face recognition. When they find their target, they fly just in front of it. The shaped C4 charge is designed to reduce their head to red mist, while not risking those close by.
AI + cheap drones will completely change warfare. Probably on the same level as the tank, or machine gun.
The only reliable counter to a drone is likely another drone.
I suspect Peter F Hamilton got it close, in the Confederation series, with WASPs. They are space based weapon platforms. They carry a mix of offensive and defensive subsystems, and operate with swarm logic.
I could easily see a larger drone carrying a swarm of 1 shot micro drones. When close, some would be sacrificed to get better sensor data, others would go on the attack. Conversely, a defensive target would launch their own swarm. It’s goal would be to stop the attackers getting a good shot on a high value target. It might also counterattack, either against the mother ship drone, or backtracking to find the launch site.
Jamming would also be part of this. A jammer could easily cut off the swarm from external data sources. Live satellite or remote surveillance systems would be cut. Point to point lasers are far harder, as are burst transmissions. Local sensor drones could easily punch short range data back, or paint targets, until they are destroyed by defensive systems.
There are in fact a huge number of reliable counters to drones, including but not limited to anti-aircraft gun systems, anti-aircraft lasers, RF jamming devices (especially effective against cheap/makeshift drones), and several more. Drones are currently an emergent threat without a robust countermeasure scheme, but given their massive role in the Ukraine war that is not going to go unaddressed for long. From a purely mechanical standpoint, small drone munitions are also physically very vulnerable, making them readily destroyed by anti-air autocannon fire or even laser weapons if you assume RF jamming will not solve the problem.
It’s worth noting we are at the start of an arms race. It will iterate all over the place.
For example, smoke and chaff deploying drones would make defensive fire harder. Anti air can be either baited (and so depleted) or rushed. Lasers can be shielded against, at least for a time. Jamming can be countered with line of site communications.
In turn, each of these can be countered.
A key thing of note is that your solutions are heavy. Fine for defending a static target, but problematic when dealing with defending a mobile unit etc infantry of transports. In those situations an extremely rapid, focused highly dynamic response would be required. The obvious way to deploy those fast enough is to have them automated and airborne, aka a drone swarm.
I might be completely wrong, current drone warfare is akin to the invention of the smoothbore musket. How it will develop remains to be seen (for better or for worse).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr7ym1zkda8
Anti-air guns are the countermeasure. RADAR good enough to detect drones + an aimbot and programmable air-burst round to “shotgun” your pellets to damage those soft plastic bits.
We’re going back to WW2 tech. AA guns were considered obsolete because Helicopters + Missiles had more range. But now we need to build cheaper AA Guns for the anti-drone role.
AA Guns are also useful vs infantry, so in an infantry vs infantry fight, having an AA Gun platform will be useful even without any drones around. Airburst and rapid fire is always useful, and I expect the computers that make RADAR possible will be far cheaper today than decades past.
Removed by mod
Jammers only work against remote controlled drones. Autonomous ones have no such issue. And jammers are never a problem against civilians, which tech like this will eventually be used on.
That’s only one example