This is the type of stuff Ukraine has been doing against Russian assets. It's effectifve asymmetrical warfare when you lose air superiority.
We may even need to revisit what air superiority means in the age of long range, relatively stealthy drones that are cheap to produce using widely available tech.
I also would expect Russian and Chinese Satellite intel being fed to Iran to locate these types of targets, again exactly like how the NATO powers have been providing intel to Ukraine.
China views the US as an adversary. They would very much like to reduce America's sphere of influence and are cognizant of the fact that we might end up in a war in the medium term future. The US bleeding immense amounts of money and military assets in Iran is great for China's relative strength; it's in their interest to increase those costs in ways that don't escalate immediate tensions with America. Sharing targeting and other intel is one of the more effective ways of doing that.
And what would the US do with that 'tension'? FWIW China is already helping Russia in their war against Ukraine and the West for several years. What did the US do? Nothing at all.
Credible sources claim it's very likely Iran is working with Chinese satellite data (that is also possibly available commercially but they would be unlikely allowed to obtain it without government approval). That of course in addition to Russian help that the US knows very well about and does, again, nothing at all.
I don't know - is allowing the sale of previously sanctioned Russian oil a trade war?
> Isn't the US currently involved in a trade war and toppling various administrations around the world due to these tensions?
Which administrations? They are verbally attacking the UK, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Canada, raising and lowering tariffs randomly, if there is some grand plan in all of this it's hidden very well.
Of course I know about Venezuela and Cuba, but it's quite a stretch to claim that the US is aggressive towards them because of the tensions with Russia or China. If there was a coherent strategy, support for Ukraine would be a big part of that, but US support has ceased in the last year.
> They are verbally attacking the UK, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Canada, raising and lowering tariffs randomly, if there is some grand plan in all of this it's hidden very well.
The tariffs are more than verbal attacks and the ostensible lack of a grand plan doesn't change the reality of what's happening.
> Of course I know about Venezuela and Cuba,
Yes, that's what I was referring to, and Iran obviously.
> it's quite a stretch to claim that the US is aggressive towards them because of the tensions with Russia or China
That claim hasn't been made. I'm just pointing out that they're not the passive spectators unable to take any action like was suggested above with questions like "Well what would they do?" and the suggestions they would do "nothing" like they had done before.
> If there was a coherent strategy,
Again, having a plan or a strategy isn't important for the question at hand.
China is allied with Iran and has long term trade relations with the country, importing large amounts of oil from Iran, and supplying Iran with air defense systems and other military and economic support.
China also views the US as a strategic rival and would love the opportunity to take us down a peg.
Don't think that America's strategic opponents -- Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, Algeria do not provide some mutual support, even if for purposes of survival, and view the US as threat. We have already taken out Venezuela, Lybia, Syria and flipped Armenia. Cuba, Iran are next on our radar, but we are active all over the world trying to flip pro-Russian/pro-Chinese governments to pro-US governments.
I can already see Iran making FPV compilation "Death faces of American soldiers" like Ukrainian do, where target is to show face of terrified soldier from the last frame of FPV camera, right before FPV exploded. This is would be a weapon of massive demoralization when relatives of soldiers will be sifting through Iranian Telegram channels just to find video with their relative right before being killed or maimed.
This is a powerful propaganda tool for Iran waiting to be used to full extent.
Imagine a small quadcopter with deployment and transportation device packaged discretely inside an Amazon box.
The box is shipped internationally and sent to a package delivery company that gets a job to deliver the box to an abandoned lot near an airforce base in bumfuck nowhere America.
Once the package is delivered the deployment device cuts the top of the box open and lets the drone out. The drone flies in the direction of the base and then kamikazes on the nearest helicopter or aircraft shaped object that it sees.
What’s the counter to that?
Or imagine a scenario where a country launches a weather balloon full of the same kinds of drones but equipped with solar panels.
The weather balloon explodes like a piñata and deploys all these drones over a vast area. The drones are programmed to make their way to different military or infrastructure targets and stop and recharge high places out of site of people and maybe only travel at night. They slowly make their way over days or weeks until they find their target. They’re designed to self destruct if they sense that they’re being handled by a human being.
The usual thing that most of us do is not do things that make other folks want to blow our vehicles up. That's how I've avoided getting my stuff blown up, at least.
Or this: https://www.epirusinc.com/electronic-warfare if you think the C-RAM would get saturated. Whether the weather balloon drones move at night is irrelevant if you stop the last move they need to make.
Militaries have been defending themselves against attacks for as long as they've been around. Drones will change the way they fight a little, but it isn't going to be some magic pill that modern militaries can't adapt to. Hiding an explosive and then blowing it up when your target is nearby? That's almost the same concept as assassinating someone with a car bomb. Putting it in an Amazon box and letting the drone go the final distance changes things a little, but militaries and governments were able to assassinate people remotely before drones.
Swarming attacks with cheap munitions? Saturating an enemy's defenses has been a thing at least since the time of the English Longbow. The longbow regiments would all shoot at the same time, and while you could dodge one arrow it was hard to dodge all of them.
Drones are new and will take some adapting to. If a military refuses to change then it probably will be disadvantaged. But the US military has been buying and testing drones for a while, and is already undergoing the adaptation. As it better understands cheap drones for offense, it necessarily gains a better understanding of what is needed for defense.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for the US attacking Iran. All I'm saying is that the US military is not about to lose the conflict because of this particular tactic.
How's that going to work when the drone hugs the ground, only rising a bit to hop over walls? Are you going to flatten everything a mile around every base, and shoot at head height with zero warning?
> Leonidas EWS
How's that going to work when the drone doesn't show up on radar and has fiber-optic controls?
If drones were this easy to counter, we wouldn't be seeing them play such a massive role in the Ukraine war. The whole problem is that drones massively change how a conflict works, and the entire US military is designed for pre-drone warfare. It remains to be seen whether they can adapt quickly enough fast enough for this conflict - the US doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to asymmetrical warfare...
> Are you going to flatten everything a mile around every base, and shoot at head height with zero warning?
Yes. You've obviously never seen a C-RAM in action. They will put 20 mm rounds in any angle that isn't restricted. The rounds go far beyond a mile when fired into the air. Only a few hit the target, dozens/hundreds of rounds just sail off into the distance, and if it hits a village down the road, well that's just too bad. Shooting downward into the dirt is probably a better arrangement because ricochets won't go as far.
> How's that going to work when the drone doesn't show up on radar and has fiber-optic controls?
Tiny drones do show up on radar. Tiny birds show up on radar. Making a quadcopter or similar drone stealthy kills some of the value proposition on making them cheaply, and physically shrinking them lowers the amount of destructive payload they can carry. Fiber optics don't help against a directed energy weapon- the microwaves burn out the electronics; it's not a jammer, it's a heat ray. And if there was a fiber optic line, that means the attacker is close enough to be struck directly rather than some long-distance control or autonomous program.
Before you think you've solved warfare and that a modern military can't possibly defend against your brilliant tactics, learn about what warfare is actually like and how the systems work. A lot of your ideas have already been thought out. A loss of a single helicopter is not really an indictment of the US military's defense; the fact that there's only one of these stories vs. the many that have come out of Ukraine indicate that a US base isn't nearly as vulnerable as the Russians have been. While Ukraine is punching far above its weight, their adversary is hampered by (more) corrupt acquisition processes, poorly trained conscripts, and overall bad decision making.
That first paragraph is a good argument for using this defense in occupied land, less so for domestic bases per the hypothetical. It becomes laughably bad if the target is changed from military to civilian; the defense seems likely to cause as much or more damage.
This is partly why most military bases are not in a city- open space makes it easier to defend. (Another reason is that the dangerous chemicals and loud training make residents hate the base even in peacetime.)
And attacking civilian targets is a violation of the law of armed conflict. It would be a war crime if a country were to use drones (or any weapon) to intentionally attack civilians who are not participating in the fight.
I don't even know why people are still arguing. The US has been bombing Iran for nearly a month now. If drones and drone tactics were a particular weakness, why hasn't the US lost more equipment because of it? Out of 25 losses recorded for the US only one has been because of a drone. The US has lost more due to crashes and friendly fire than enemy drone action. Until drones are more effective than just someone not paying attention then it's hard to make an argument that there is a serious weakness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_an...
I think going low-tech and deploy netting around critical things would be the most effective. Sure they are a pain but they'll catch drones before they reach any targets.
Park your aircraft in hangars. And hope you hid your tracks well enough once the generals start eyeing their almost expired bunker busters with a twinkle in their eye
Automatic turret-mounted anti-air shotguns. Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.
I bet you could do aiming and firing in less than 0.1 seconds with nearly 100% accuracy in the 50 meter range which would enable ~10 destroyed drones per unit if the drones are going 150 km/h.
Shotgun pellets are also basically entirely safe when shot into the air as they have low falling velocity enabling usage when shooting over populated areas.
> Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.
Then two drones approach from opposite sides at 200 MPH. Your emplacement costs more than $200 and can only fire in one direction at a time.
Or, as we've seen in Ukraine, once your disposable low-cost drones have precisely identified a high-value, high-effectiveness static emplacement, you send in a cruise missile to clear it out, and then the drones continue sweeping forward.
Drones that can move that fast have extremely little cargo capacity for explosive charges and it's not fast enough to simply use the kinetic energy of the drone for much.
Which only protect a small area, so drones just need to target less obvious things. Meanwhile your guns shoot birds and once in a while - an occasional bystander. Attackers are always advantaged since you have to protect _everything_ and they only need to target what's left unprotected. Some drones just drop grenades, I somehow don't see your shotgun hitting either the drone (too high) or a grenade (too fast and small).
How many shotguns? How do they reload? What happens when they run out of ammo?
Can they be hacked, or duped into firing at friendly aircraft?
How will they deal with the enemy adapting their drones to have camoflage?
There's no way automatic turret mounted shotguns are the solution to this problem.
It simply isn't economical to produce, install and maintain all of these things, and now you've sunk a massive amount of resources into this infrastructure when the enemy doesn't even really have to launch a real attack.
> Automatic turret-mounted anti-air shotguns. Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.
Yeah, doable. I went to a clay pigeon range last week (company outing). These are targets that move quite fast. They don't spring out from the same spot and some roll over the ground. I had never handled a gun before. I am 50, with the attendant poor eyesight and lack of twitch reflexes.
And yet, I still nailed 20/25 moving targets. A turret with a shotgun is going to hit much more than that.
Mandatory package screenings to detect explosives? I don't know if that's technically feasible at scale, or if that's already implemented (and I'd prefer not to ask that kind of question to Google/ChatGPT)
The biggest security threat any country has is if an adversary sends 1-10 million drones at once, each with a small grenade on it, and overwhelms a city. They could literally target individual politicians or weak spots on infrastructure like buildings or bombs and almost nothing could stop it except possibly an EMP.
I'm not sure what anyone can do about that but that to me is my biggest fear about the future of all this technology.
92 comments
We may even need to revisit what air superiority means in the age of long range, relatively stealthy drones that are cheap to produce using widely available tech.
I also would expect Russian and Chinese Satellite intel being fed to Iran to locate these types of targets, again exactly like how the NATO powers have been providing intel to Ukraine.
> Sharing targeting and other intel is one of the more effective ways of doing that.
In what way would that not immediately escalate tensions?
Credible sources claim it's very likely Iran is working with Chinese satellite data (that is also possibly available commercially but they would be unlikely allowed to obtain it without government approval). That of course in addition to Russian help that the US knows very well about and does, again, nothing at all.
> And what would the US do with that 'tension'?
I'm responding to the assertion that they would choose this route specifically to avoid increasing tensions.
> That of course in addition to Russian help that the US knows very well about and does, again, nothing at all.
Isn't the US currently involved in a trade war and toppling various administrations around the world due to these tensions?
> Isn't the US currently involved in a trade war and toppling various administrations around the world due to these tensions?
Which administrations? They are verbally attacking the UK, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Canada, raising and lowering tariffs randomly, if there is some grand plan in all of this it's hidden very well.
Of course I know about Venezuela and Cuba, but it's quite a stretch to claim that the US is aggressive towards them because of the tensions with Russia or China. If there was a coherent strategy, support for Ukraine would be a big part of that, but US support has ceased in the last year.
> I don't know - is allowing the sale of previously sanctioned Russian oil a trade war?
Who said anything about that? I'm referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
> They are verbally attacking the UK, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Canada, raising and lowering tariffs randomly, if there is some grand plan in all of this it's hidden very well.
The tariffs are more than verbal attacks and the ostensible lack of a grand plan doesn't change the reality of what's happening.
> Of course I know about Venezuela and Cuba,
Yes, that's what I was referring to, and Iran obviously.
> it's quite a stretch to claim that the US is aggressive towards them because of the tensions with Russia or China
That claim hasn't been made. I'm just pointing out that they're not the passive spectators unable to take any action like was suggested above with questions like "Well what would they do?" and the suggestions they would do "nothing" like they had done before.
> If there was a coherent strategy,
Again, having a plan or a strategy isn't important for the question at hand.
China also views the US as a strategic rival and would love the opportunity to take us down a peg.
Don't think that America's strategic opponents -- Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, Algeria do not provide some mutual support, even if for purposes of survival, and view the US as threat. We have already taken out Venezuela, Lybia, Syria and flipped Armenia. Cuba, Iran are next on our radar, but we are active all over the world trying to flip pro-Russian/pro-Chinese governments to pro-US governments.
This is a powerful propaganda tool for Iran waiting to be used to full extent.
[0] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/23/nato_air_defenses/
The box is shipped internationally and sent to a package delivery company that gets a job to deliver the box to an abandoned lot near an airforce base in bumfuck nowhere America.
Once the package is delivered the deployment device cuts the top of the box open and lets the drone out. The drone flies in the direction of the base and then kamikazes on the nearest helicopter or aircraft shaped object that it sees.
What’s the counter to that?
Or imagine a scenario where a country launches a weather balloon full of the same kinds of drones but equipped with solar panels.
The weather balloon explodes like a piñata and deploys all these drones over a vast area. The drones are programmed to make their way to different military or infrastructure targets and stop and recharge high places out of site of people and maybe only travel at night. They slowly make their way over days or weeks until they find their target. They’re designed to self destruct if they sense that they’re being handled by a human being.
What’s the counter to that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb
Everything else is a half measure.
Or this: https://www.epirusinc.com/electronic-warfare if you think the C-RAM would get saturated. Whether the weather balloon drones move at night is irrelevant if you stop the last move they need to make.
Militaries have been defending themselves against attacks for as long as they've been around. Drones will change the way they fight a little, but it isn't going to be some magic pill that modern militaries can't adapt to. Hiding an explosive and then blowing it up when your target is nearby? That's almost the same concept as assassinating someone with a car bomb. Putting it in an Amazon box and letting the drone go the final distance changes things a little, but militaries and governments were able to assassinate people remotely before drones.
Swarming attacks with cheap munitions? Saturating an enemy's defenses has been a thing at least since the time of the English Longbow. The longbow regiments would all shoot at the same time, and while you could dodge one arrow it was hard to dodge all of them.
Drones are new and will take some adapting to. If a military refuses to change then it probably will be disadvantaged. But the US military has been buying and testing drones for a while, and is already undergoing the adaptation. As it better understands cheap drones for offense, it necessarily gains a better understanding of what is needed for defense.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for the US attacking Iran. All I'm saying is that the US military is not about to lose the conflict because of this particular tactic.
> Centurion C-RAM
How's that going to work when the drone hugs the ground, only rising a bit to hop over walls? Are you going to flatten everything a mile around every base, and shoot at head height with zero warning?
> Leonidas EWS
How's that going to work when the drone doesn't show up on radar and has fiber-optic controls?
If drones were this easy to counter, we wouldn't be seeing them play such a massive role in the Ukraine war. The whole problem is that drones massively change how a conflict works, and the entire US military is designed for pre-drone warfare. It remains to be seen whether they can adapt quickly enough fast enough for this conflict - the US doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to asymmetrical warfare...
> Are you going to flatten everything a mile around every base, and shoot at head height with zero warning?
Yes. You've obviously never seen a C-RAM in action. They will put 20 mm rounds in any angle that isn't restricted. The rounds go far beyond a mile when fired into the air. Only a few hit the target, dozens/hundreds of rounds just sail off into the distance, and if it hits a village down the road, well that's just too bad. Shooting downward into the dirt is probably a better arrangement because ricochets won't go as far.
> How's that going to work when the drone doesn't show up on radar and has fiber-optic controls?
Tiny drones do show up on radar. Tiny birds show up on radar. Making a quadcopter or similar drone stealthy kills some of the value proposition on making them cheaply, and physically shrinking them lowers the amount of destructive payload they can carry. Fiber optics don't help against a directed energy weapon- the microwaves burn out the electronics; it's not a jammer, it's a heat ray. And if there was a fiber optic line, that means the attacker is close enough to be struck directly rather than some long-distance control or autonomous program.
Before you think you've solved warfare and that a modern military can't possibly defend against your brilliant tactics, learn about what warfare is actually like and how the systems work. A lot of your ideas have already been thought out. A loss of a single helicopter is not really an indictment of the US military's defense; the fact that there's only one of these stories vs. the many that have come out of Ukraine indicate that a US base isn't nearly as vulnerable as the Russians have been. While Ukraine is punching far above its weight, their adversary is hampered by (more) corrupt acquisition processes, poorly trained conscripts, and overall bad decision making.
And attacking civilian targets is a violation of the law of armed conflict. It would be a war crime if a country were to use drones (or any weapon) to intentionally attack civilians who are not participating in the fight.
I don't even know why people are still arguing. The US has been bombing Iran for nearly a month now. If drones and drone tactics were a particular weakness, why hasn't the US lost more equipment because of it? Out of 25 losses recorded for the US only one has been because of a drone. The US has lost more due to crashes and friendly fire than enemy drone action. Until drones are more effective than just someone not paying attention then it's hard to make an argument that there is a serious weakness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_an...
It becomes defense in depth though, perimeter defense is no longer enough. Thats kinda new.
So realistically a laser drone weapon can eliminate just a couple of drones until a third or a fourth one comes through and destroys your turret.
And then all drones tracked by satellite so any drone that doesnt show up gets shot down anywhere over a large geographic area.
Using cheaper drones to hunt down expensive drones.
Or of course, just eagles.
I bet you could do aiming and firing in less than 0.1 seconds with nearly 100% accuracy in the 50 meter range which would enable ~10 destroyed drones per unit if the drones are going 150 km/h.
Shotgun pellets are also basically entirely safe when shot into the air as they have low falling velocity enabling usage when shooting over populated areas.
Then two drones approach from opposite sides at 200 MPH. Your emplacement costs more than $200 and can only fire in one direction at a time.
Or, as we've seen in Ukraine, once your disposable low-cost drones have precisely identified a high-value, high-effectiveness static emplacement, you send in a cruise missile to clear it out, and then the drones continue sweeping forward.
Can they be hacked, or duped into firing at friendly aircraft?
How will they deal with the enemy adapting their drones to have camoflage?
There's no way automatic turret mounted shotguns are the solution to this problem.
It simply isn't economical to produce, install and maintain all of these things, and now you've sunk a massive amount of resources into this infrastructure when the enemy doesn't even really have to launch a real attack.
> Automatic turret-mounted anti-air shotguns. Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.
Yeah, doable. I went to a clay pigeon range last week (company outing). These are targets that move quite fast. They don't spring out from the same spot and some roll over the ground. I had never handled a gun before. I am 50, with the attendant poor eyesight and lack of twitch reflexes.
And yet, I still nailed 20/25 moving targets. A turret with a shotgun is going to hit much more than that.
But why go through all that when you can just have someone in the country launch it, or drop it off?
> What’s the counter to that?
In the case of the AWS scenario someone driving by who decides to nick it?
Or the courier puts the box down upside down?
Just by the way is a package delivery company going to be willing to deliver a package to an abandoned lot?
Your solar panel equipped, "rest and recharge" idea is interesting.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/iran-negotiate...
Trump made a very strategic error that he can’t easily get out of.
US borrowing trillions in debt to fund other people’s wars. This level of stupidity is Bush in Afhanistan.
I'm not sure what anyone can do about that but that to me is my biggest fear about the future of all this technology.