jacob wrote:Well, here's another one then. High altitude balloon (think many of them), crowbar, camera at the pointy end, guiding fins. Think darts. Air superiority can't fix this one.
But we're getting away from the original observation of how drones take away the public/mass/people equalizer of the gun. Ordinary citizens don't have access to fighter jets to eliminate any untoward drone threats. If guns are the dominant technology, a war requires convincing a mass of people to pick them up. Admittedly, the US is already quite a bit away from that requirement. American wars don't really require the people behind them anymore, very much, at least in the short run. Anyhoo ... the issue with drones is that you no longer need a mass of people. You just need a lot fewer skilled operators and some off the shelf hardware. This removes the otherwise strong link between war and the entire public. In short, it changes the landscape.
Crowbar? It's interesting that the link for the "drone war" novel I put in this thread earlier actually had a weapon called the "crowbar." Instead of balloon based it was satellite based and they would just drop hundreds of them over the battlefield. The author made them just steel rods with sensors and small guidance fins that would kill with just kinetic energy provided by gravity.
While I have pointed out that current drone tech is really just remote controlled aircraft, I do agree with Jacob that it still changes warfare drastically. Probably more psychological now (for the user) than a drastic increase in capability. The increase in capability will come when they can be autonomous and cheap (a predator is cheaper to operate right now than F-16, but it needs to drop further for the swarms), or at least 90% autonomous.
Removing the morality of killing millions from the equation and just imagining a modern war between the US/Europe and Russia is kind of staggering and scary with drones involved. I don't think it would take long before we would be cranking out drones like we were cranking out piston fighters in WWII. In full fledged World War, which is what any full on war with Russia would be, we would be less concerned with civilian casualties. This would mean we could take 5,000 drones and load them with hellfires or some other smart munition and launch them over an area with orders to destroy any vehicles. I think the programs are smart enough to do that with minimal human intervention.
This reminds me more of WWI than WWII, as WWI was the first truly modern industrial war. The generals on both sides weren't expecting the level of casualties that occurred from industrial war. The French lost something like 40-60k men and 250k wounded in the first 2 weeks. An enjoyable listen is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts titled "A Blueprint for Armagedon I & II."
