If we're going to expend time and effort on finding new and exciting ways to destroy other members of our species, it might be worth noting that the major change in battles over the last decade seems to have been flooding the zone with cheap, micro-to-small drones, not something like this.
That being said, perhaps we find something more productive to do with our time as humans?
All of the current conflicts (russia / ukraine, us / iran) would consider drones as a nuisance if:
#1. For russia / ukraine neither side has air superiority. If one side had it, they could be obliterating the other side with a constant stream of 500 lb gravity bombs. Each of which has more explosives than 100 drones.
#2. For us / iran, the US is unwilling to risk any pilots. And iran has some air defenses in place. The US could drop bombs from up close, gravity mk-82's and jdams every hour for months. Currently they are using standoff weapons which are either minimally effective (drones) or crazy expensive (Tomohawk, Standard Missile, etc.)
One B1 gets shot down, and 4 crew get paraded around in downtown Tehran, and what little support trump has will vanish.
What am I trying to say? Drones have a place. They don't obsolete anything. The key is to have the weapons available to meet the time in which they are needed.
The DARPA LongShot is a cruise missile barge that deploys another short range missile from its bay. That could be repurposed for other munitions like drones.
And I'm just going to link the obligatory link to the video of a Viggen landing, reversing, turning around and taking off again, because that's just how cool the Viggen was.
Incredible to see this in modern years still performing so well.
The only Saab story I see is one of innovation and dreaming. Ugh, I miss my 9-3 so much. I still get a kick out of seeing Saabs on the road to this day. Lots of respect to the owners, who I’m sure many continue to live with theirs as they adore it.
But your 9-3t started as a 900 NG with a little facelift. My point is to go to original branding and engineering, not whatever GM was trying to do we 9-whatever.
My 9-3t was the year SAAB sold entirely to GM but SAAB was still doing all the builds. So, no, no GM anything in it. Not a single American part (which made getting OEM replacements a pain in 2020.)
I'm super confused. All 9-3s came from 900NG, which was made during 50/50 ownership on GM-platform (Opel Vectra). SAAB had a habit of throwing away half of the platform and doing things themselves (see 9-2X). Go check your coolant expansion tank cap, it will literally have GM logo molded on it. Maybe your mechanic (or you) didn't realize you can look up parts by their GM number instead of SAAB's.
Sure there weren't "American parts", but there are a fuck ton of GM parts. Opel had been a wholly owned GM subsidiary since 1931.
Also why are you calling it 9-3t? There was never 9-3t and all 9-3s sold in the US had turbo.
The goal of concept to aircraft in 36 months is admirable. Anduril recently built a jet in a similar timeframe. In the US at least, the last 30 years after defense industry consolidation has caused great stagnation. The F-35 took over a decade and went monstrously over budget, more as a jobs program than as a functional product. Competition showing they can build a jet faster and cheaper is what we need to kick the DoD into gear with the large contractors.
As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.
I mean looking at the state of that conflict… the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great. Maybe other countries will want to go with this kind of attritable aircraft concept instead.
I think they meant the kind of warfare cheap drones encourage. I believe they implied other means may result in quicker conflict resolution.
I think the problem is, apart from deploying nuclear weapons, air-based warfare campaigns have never really been all that effective at achieving strategic goals. Bombing stuff always seems promising, but in reality consequences are hard to predict due to complexity and results tend to be underwhelming.
For the same reason, cheap drones favor the defender IMO. A typical country can sustain quite a bit of damage on home soil, without losing will to fight and popular support. On the other hand, the attacking carrier on their coast line, becomes a singular target instrumental to the aggressor's war efforts. On the front, cheap drones freeze the contact line, which of course also benefits the defender.
Ukraine is very successful at keeping front lines relatively stable, despite man power shortages, due to drones, but neither Ukraine, nor Russia are very successful with their deep strike drone campaigns. I mean stuff is burning all over, but it changes little for ending the war so far. Train tracks are quickly back in operation, refineries repaired, stocks replenished, behavior patterns changed. Population experiencing reverse hedonistic adaptation to the new shitty normal. No models to predict resilience. Collapse may happen instantly or not at all.
Also pretty evident with the US/Israel aggression against Iran right now. It somehow always takes a lot more than expected to break your enemy in the deep.
I meant defender, as in country being attacked. As in not the the aggressor.
In the concrete instance of AA defense you are correct. You basically can't prevent drone damage actively, since every AA system can be easily overwhelmed and costs are very asymmetrical. However, the damage taken does not change much, strategically. That's my point.
Also the immediate outcome perspective is a momentary picture. In the future we will see more underground/protected infrastructure immune to drones, as well as more symmetrical defense options (cheap drone on drone systems, lasers, ...). Cheap drones will not become bunker busters any time soon. Doctrines will also likely adapt more rapid initial escalation since nobody wants the prolonged attritional warfare expected with cheap drones.
> Highways, rail tracks and the ports are quickly operational again. That's my point.
Have drones drop explosives on the LA freeways for a week and see what happens.
It does a tiny amount of direct damage.
But the fallout, politically, economically, etc would be immense.
We're talking about billions spent across the country to try and harden critical industries and transportation, harden buildings, set up various types of drone point defense, funneled in as fast as it can be done least a politician not be reelected.
I'm sure somebody evil enough and creative enough could find a way to get the president to deploy the national guard across the country for an extended period. That's not at all cheap.
Just think about 9/11 for a sec. That could still happen today with a handful of drones.
This depends on the threat scenario. Sure, in Belgium or the US you won't see defense factories going underground any time soon. But Poland? Doing so already proved a valuable investment for Iran - even facing an enemy with an abundance of fancy bunker busters. Ukraine also started to build energy infrastructure and weapon production sites underground, and even Russia finally started building protected shelters for their military aircraft. I am pretty sure the US will also reconsider their arrogant assumptions of high tech superiority going forward, when it comes to their bases in the middle east, where they got very, very expensive stuff destroyed by Shaheds oversaturating Patriot systems. You see, deep underground cities and bunkers withstanding nuclear strikes are not required. You only need a bit of concrete and dirt to withstand medium yield flying bombs arriving with low kinetic energy (unlike ballistic missiles). Hobbit style housing. A cheap drone will never be able to dig itself into its target, since cheap and fast are incompatible.
That said, of course some important components can't really be protected passively. E.g. comms and sigint will always have expensive, hard to replace antenna arrays exposed. But narrowing vulnerability down to those assets means you can focus scalable air defense and EW measures there.
Again, this benefits the country on the defense, especially against distant enemies, since you can build bunkers etc. at home, but can't really bring them along. And bunkers are one time investments, theoretically good for centuries (WWII/Soviet bunkers are still all over the place in Europe). I think, it would be viable for a peaceful country to almost entirely invest military funds in bunkers, drones, drone comms and crews/AI, and possibly nukes, to discourage any aggressor, while minimizing peacetime running costs . Additionally, highly decentralized renewable energy like solar and wind makes that sectors really hard to disrupt. Especially individual solar installations, battery storage and electric cars potentially enables quasi autarky for large portions of the population. Mighty "petrol station" Russia, got fucked by their reliance on ICE. Solar and wind will work even in nuclear wastelands, and replacing that solar panel is still cheaper than the cheap drone, which damaged it.
Ty for the insight - indeed, i had been thinking about full nuclear bunker, which you point out is overblown. That said, complacency (~entropy) tends to win over time.
Ukrainian yong adult in 2051: ouch!
Old Ukrainian: first time in a bunker? mind your head.
> I believe they implied other means may result in quicker conflict resolution.
Making wars unending quagmires is an excellent form of preventing them. Had Putin known how bad it would turn out, I doubt an invasion would be his option of ensuring long term access to Sevastopol.
Yes, I also think cheap drones are somewhat of a pacifying development, similar to nuclear bombs, but available to pretty much any nation. (Although, I think ironically nuclear strikes become more likely now, because of drone asymmetry...)
Then again, the US learned nothing from Ukraine and still attacked Iran - the Shahed country. Hopefully, China is a bit more considerate about Taiwan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-cost_Uncrewed_Combat_Attac... is almost a straight copy of the infamous Iranian Shahed for ~$35,000 USD. (Perhaps the US sourced their Shahed from Ukraine, though that, like many things about this program, has not been officially discussed.)
I wonder, at the point of such a simple thing as the Saheed (there are videos online of some of its electronics, not saying it's bad, indeed it's cheap and effective, but it's dirt simple), does the USA really need to reverse engineer it? Is it just a way to prevent project management turning the thing into a million dollar per unit thing?
People calling it "reverse engineered" are not entirely correct.
The "Low accuracy, low speed, drone" concept has not changed since the V1 was invented by the Germans. Who then went ahead and built a more modern one back in the 80s. It should look very familiar:
It has all the bells and whistles you can recognize: GPS guidance, shitty small piston engine, lumbering speed, launched from a box truck using a small booster rocket.
See, the funny part is that the project was considered a failure because they were designed as anti-radar munitions, to just hang around until a radar transmitted and home in and destroy it. But that part of the project never figured out a good seeker.
It's just convergent evolution. That's what the design requirements imply.
Makes sense, I presume any defense corporation (even small ones of the drone manufacturer style) could get one of these running in a few months if needs arise.
Now, for the defense model of "western" nations (once again, not saying this is a bad thing nor wrong), a dumb warhead that just lands wherever and explodes makes no sense, no tactic would be enabled by it, so I guess the natural course of actions is you get heavier guidance requirements (case in point, radar homing), then you get operation in GPS-denied environment, then some other part of the army decides it needs to be carried on fighter jets, and another team wants it carried on frigates, and suddenly you have developed a million-€ loitering munition instead of a 10k€ V1 tactical-analogue!
> Competition showing they can build a jet faster and cheaper is what we need to kick the DoD into gear with the large contractors.
The problem is, will there be enough of a demand? Part of why military procurement programs are stretched so long now is because the hot war that these things might be used in (aka, an all out direct war with Russia or China) is... increasingly unrealistic, but at the same time the US (or EU) still have to maintain the know-how, and we don't need hundreds or thousands of unit which makes the unit price including R&D extremely high.
Make the Pentagon finally pass an audit. Cut its funding. It is clear the profligacy is incentivizing bad decisions - the new normal in the Strait of Hormuz being only the latest.
It's clearly too much of a toy and too much capability for the past few decades of both civilian and military administration. An entire generation only knows the United States military as an institution of blunder, excess and failure.
The United States should also bring back the draft. More social spending should be paired with more public service. It will be harder to start wars of choice when everyone's kids will have to sacrifice. This will not degrade capability, many of the most capable militaries in the world have a draft - notably Israel. Making people from Iowa and New York serve together would be good for a dangerously fracturing country. The "volunteer professional" military was created to get around opposition to Vietnam. It's a disgrace.
A draft would also likely enable/strengthen moral objection for soldiers. A professional army brings contractual obligations for any received benefits (e.g. education), which makes disobeying objectionable orders a question of dealing with existentially threatening consequences (e.g. debt). A draft would also mean the army would culturally approach population average, instead of selecting for a specific background. This strengthens the democratic foundation and surely would be somewhat effective against cultural polarization.
However, in today's society, I think it would be most important to have a draft for everyone, not just young man. Otherwise it would be social dynamite. See South Korea.
Personally, I would prefer a mandatory choice for everyone (no bone spurs) between social services (e.g. working in a hospital), ecological services (e.g. reforestation), technical services (e.g. firefighters) and military service. Everyone having to do one year for society. It would be a unifying shared experience if done right. People of different background would be exposed to each other, a reliable way to fight bias and prejudice.
Indeed. Israel also does something like this. Nerds don't go to the front line for example, they go into the cyber corps. It's why they have some of the best cyber professionals and companies in the world.
Americans should get free education and free healthcare. But as JFK said, one should also ask what they can do for their country. The military has a lot of jobs, relatively few members actually serve in combat. There are more than enough tasks to go around. Most every type of work you identify already exists as a subset of military service.
I meant especially civilian services as alternative. Every human should have the right to decide, if they want the moral implications associated with the military. The military also shouldn't become a substitute civil infrastructure blurring lines of function and funding. E.g. money for education should be spend on public education for everyone, not becoming a incentive for joining the military.
In Germany it's been like that: You objected military service, you had to do mandatory civilian service, e.g. aiding disabled people, for 9 months . I would prefer there to be a choice right from the beginning. So while mandatory to spend a certain amount of your life time for the collective, some agency remains.
Israel is bad example, because there objection is notoriously hard, yet more relevant than ever.
I would just say while generally your last point is true, we also shouldn't underplay the vast extent of civic protest against the current administration in Israel prior to October 7th. It is easy to forget given how quickly October 7th changed Israeli priorities, but I would actually suggest prior to the current "state of emergency" like suspension of internal policy disputes, Israeli society was well demonstrating the democratic benefits of having a country where (mostly) everyone has to serve. You had senior military figures, active military service members, former generals, and civilians (most of which served or had family who served or were serving) all standing up to prevent what was essentially a far-right takeover of the judiciary.
That is no small thing, and the political optics and ability of Israeli democracy to protect itself in this (and other instances) is I think grounded in large part by the fact that the majority of that society sees defense as a collective responsibility of all, rather than the sequestered task of a few. This allows for more checks on state power. Obviously, Israel is not a great example for other reasons. But it is hard to imagine such an act ever occurring in the modern United States under present conditions. Take the Jan 6th attack. Why is it the job of the Capitol Police alone to prevent such an attempted decapitation of American democracy? Every American should feel a sense of patriotic duty and capability to protect the foundational organs of the American state. It doesn't exist in this country because for the vast majority of Americans, the federal government is really something of an alien entity. It's a piece of paper or a tax or a headline. The problem of modern America is we are supposed to be a democracy yet we are alienated from our own institutions, our own government, and our own military. In Israel, despite its numerous other problems, this problem does not exist.
Athenian democracy - that which the West and the American founders lauded - had the same sort of emphasis on the inculcation of civic virtue through public service. Even the gadfly Socrates was a veteran.
I don't want to derail this thread further. I meant 'objection' exclusively in relation to mandatory military service. People who object military service are imprisoned and psychologically tortured in Israel. The lines between collective service and indoctrination are very blurred and military presence is heavily ingrained in the upbringing of their children. That is not how you want to organize a peaceful society.
Overloading the military with civilian functions aids fascistoid developments. The military should serve defense, not power projection. Making it a welfare institution makes warfare a way of life. Relevant documentary: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/
Concerns over the DoD failing audits are silly and uninformed. The reality is that they only started publishing full financial reports in FY2018 and are legally required to pass an audit in FY2028. The department is full of complex legacy systems and it's going to take years to modernize those no matter what.
In the meantime, cutting funding accomplishes nothing and only punishes troops who can't do anything to fix the core problems. Despite the enormous budget the DoD is actually underfunded for their assigned missions. This is causing escalating failures and reducing readiness. The only solution is to scale back the missions, and that can only be done by Congress and the President. This is fundamentally a political issue so vote accordingly.
The notion of bringing back the draft is stupid. Most US senior military leaders don't even want conscripts: they're generally unmotivated, cause morale problems, and don't stick around. For an offensive expeditionary force they're worse than useless. Comparisons to Israel are irrelevant because they operate a territorial defense force which isn't expected to conduct sustained power projection far beyond their own borders. And it the new era of autonomous systems there's little need for mass armies anyway.
Veterans are hardly treated like beggars. Those who complete a full 20+ years of service (or are medically retired) receive a solid pension and medical benefits. While there are some flaws in the military retirement and disability system, and occasionally veterans don't get the services they deserve, it generally works pretty well for such a huge system.
Also pointing at the Hormuz situation as a victim of this is silly. I would be very surprised if the top military leaders truly believed that Iran couldn’t execute asymmetric warfare to disrupt the gulf without a US invasion.
Israel gave presentations to DoD that said they could affect regime change in Iran. The DoD said “lol yeah, okay buddy, ain’t now way in hell.” Israel had a single audience, Trump, and just had to play into his ego + pretending that this would be Venezuela 2.0.
Dan Caine has come out in testimony before the Senate in support of this war and this strategy, shoulder to shoulder with Hegseth.
If this is due to post Venezuela kool-aid, then he drank from the same cup. Many others in the natsec space have resigned or been fired for standing by their convictions in the Trump era. The DoD is not without responsibility for this failure. Blaming Trump alone has been the sad redoubt of modern American discourse, a rather depressing reflection of a country that cannot look itself in the mirror, that treats Trump as a cause rather than a symptom.
If the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq had not occurred, Trump would likely have never been elected. His entire electoral premise has always been institutional incompetence. He famously was elected the first time by destroying the Republican guard from the inside, by tearing down Jeb Bush - a proxy for his brother and his two wars of failure.
> The notion of bringing back the draft is stupid. Most US senior military leaders don't even want conscripts: they're generally unmotivated, cause morale problems, and don't stick around. For an offensive expeditionary force they're worse than useless. Comparisons to Israel are irrelevant because they operate a territorial defense force which isn't expected to conduct sustained power projection far beyond their own borders.
If most Americans don't want to fight sustained wars overseas, America should not fight. That is the point. It is easy to make declaring war a distant political issue when a tiny subset of the population fights, yet creates problems for generations across the world. The effects of interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran will likely continue to be felt for generations, and likely make future attacks on the homeland more likely given the asymmetric consequences of the United States continuing to create failed quagmires abroad.
The Iraq War would have probably not happened the way it did if there was a draft. If most Americans don't want to fight, then America should not go to war. What could be a simpler democratic principle?
Instead you seem to support and make excuses for a volunteer military, one with an (at minimum) two decade history of failure, whose hubris and excesses have multiplied in a time of increasing political polarization, lack of faith in institutions (gee, I wonder why?), and as you say, technological change.
Why would this not be a time for radical reform? Why should we ever allow any president or congress to inherit such an institution?
Generals shouldn't always get what they want. Civilian oversight cannot be effective if the gap between civilians and professional service members is so wide. Kennedy famously had to talk down professional generals that bordered on homicidal. Luckily, he was was a veteran himself and was willing to resist their more outrageous impulses. We may not be so lucky next time. More people in the room, and in the military can only lead to better outcomes. If this makes a few trigger happy generals less happy, so be it. It should not be so easy to send men into battle. That is the problem you are failing to appreciate. The problem with the military is that it is too easy. As such, your claim about it being underfunded strikes me as some type of semantic game. If you listen to the alcoholic running the Pentagon, we are wildly succeeding. He doesn't seem to take his job seriously enough. Perhaps it is because it is rather easy for him to obliterate targets and cause chaos from the sky, with minimal repercussions? The cost of this escapade approaching what, $100 billion? And you want to give them more? For what mission are they underfunded? A land invasion? More bombs? More air defense? What more should we take from the American taxpayer to make this make sense? Maybe we should repeat 2003 and invade an adjacent country that has nothing to do with this again?
If everyone had to serve, then perhaps the next time they will have to actually convince the country and the men in their care of the virtue of their purpose. Nothing could be more desirable in a democratic society.
There is no conceivable way for "everyone" to serve even if they wanted to. The modern professional military couldn't possibly absorb a mass of new conscripts. We don't have the budget or resources to train, equip, transport, and sustain them. Militaries of the future will have more robots and fewer humans, and those humans will need higher technical skills than ever before. That is our reality regardless of your political or social concerns.
I don't want to give the military more funding. I favor a less interventionist (but not totally isolationist) foreign policy, and a corresponding reduction in military mission requirements.
> Most US senior military leaders don't even want conscripts: they're generally unmotivated, cause morale problems, and don't stick around. For an offensive expeditionary force they're worse than useless. Comparisons to Israel are irrelevant because they operate a territorial defense force which isn't expected to conduct sustained power projection far beyond their own borders.
This is an interesting angle I hadn't considered. Why do you think territorial defense vs force projection matters for motivation/morale? Is the idea that territorial defense is more moral? (I'm not the parent, nor am I an advocate for the draft--I'm just curious as I haven't thought much about it)
Canada is (rightfully) re-thinking their F-35 commitment after the current U.S. Administration bullied them in trade negotiations: https://youtu.be/ukYxk31zXWg
Yep, I'm an American, and sadly we've proven that our country is neither honorable nor reliable. I hope Saab and others continue to provide the free world with options until my country learns that there are consequences for behaving like the slimiest used car salesmen.
That depends on what you mean by "concept to aircraft". Boeing and Lockheed Martin built flying JSF prototypes pretty quickly after receiving the initial program requirements. But it took a lot longer to reach operational status. Ironically the biggest delays were caused by software development, and that part isn't any easier for unmanned systems. Maybe Saab and Anduril will be faster than Lockheed on the software side but so far they haven't delivered anything with even a fraction of the capabilities.
TIL Saab was an aerospace company.
My Dad had a '98 Saab. It had an "S" button on the shifter. It stood for "speed". When we were 7/8 years old we'd beg him to press it and it would speed up 10mph. I got my license in 2011, immediately took that car onto the highway and pressed the S button.
Nothing happened. I went home and read the manual. S stand for sport. It keeps the engine in a higher gear than normal for quicker response
Yeah I remember we had a family friend and they had a Boost button in their Saab. I don't know if it literally said Boost but in my memory it does. We begged him to press it but he told us it was extremely dangerous and would cause flames to shoot out the back. So of course we begged him even more...
It's actually a "everything defense related" company. They makes boats, submarines, airplanes, radars, EW, rockets, etc etc... It's a bit of a "company of companies" since it started as aerospace but successively merged with other defense companies.
They used to make cars but also at some point, computers [1] and even space stuff. Perk of coldwar, independent country (=requires own military industry), strong industry to begin with (= frequent M&A with other industrial companies such as Ericsson) positioned the company to become what it is now (a heavy engineering focused company)
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 30.1 ms ] threadThat being said, perhaps we find something more productive to do with our time as humans?
#1. For russia / ukraine neither side has air superiority. If one side had it, they could be obliterating the other side with a constant stream of 500 lb gravity bombs. Each of which has more explosives than 100 drones.
#2. For us / iran, the US is unwilling to risk any pilots. And iran has some air defenses in place. The US could drop bombs from up close, gravity mk-82's and jdams every hour for months. Currently they are using standoff weapons which are either minimally effective (drones) or crazy expensive (Tomohawk, Standard Missile, etc.)
One B1 gets shot down, and 4 crew get paraded around in downtown Tehran, and what little support trump has will vanish.
What am I trying to say? Drones have a place. They don't obsolete anything. The key is to have the weapons available to meet the time in which they are needed.
I just wish more of my Swedish countrymen understood that.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_37_Viggen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBE41A9VT3Q
From stationary to airborne in 8 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XbTL2kBnN7Q
The reason it can do this is because of the dispersed road airbase system where you are expected to manage with very few resources.
And this is all SAAB military aircraft in one shot https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uel1N2F6jo0
The only Saab story I see is one of innovation and dreaming. Ugh, I miss my 9-3 so much. I still get a kick out of seeing Saabs on the road to this day. Lots of respect to the owners, who I’m sure many continue to live with theirs as they adore it.
I never saw a 900 do that.
Sure there weren't "American parts", but there are a fuck ton of GM parts. Opel had been a wholly owned GM subsidiary since 1931.
Also why are you calling it 9-3t? There was never 9-3t and all 9-3s sold in the US had turbo.
But nooo, SAAB sold their auto division to GM in 2005.
As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.
In what sense do you mean that?
I think the problem is, apart from deploying nuclear weapons, air-based warfare campaigns have never really been all that effective at achieving strategic goals. Bombing stuff always seems promising, but in reality consequences are hard to predict due to complexity and results tend to be underwhelming.
For the same reason, cheap drones favor the defender IMO. A typical country can sustain quite a bit of damage on home soil, without losing will to fight and popular support. On the other hand, the attacking carrier on their coast line, becomes a singular target instrumental to the aggressor's war efforts. On the front, cheap drones freeze the contact line, which of course also benefits the defender.
Ukraine is very successful at keeping front lines relatively stable, despite man power shortages, due to drones, but neither Ukraine, nor Russia are very successful with their deep strike drone campaigns. I mean stuff is burning all over, but it changes little for ending the war so far. Train tracks are quickly back in operation, refineries repaired, stocks replenished, behavior patterns changed. Population experiencing reverse hedonistic adaptation to the new shitty normal. No models to predict resilience. Collapse may happen instantly or not at all.
Also pretty evident with the US/Israel aggression against Iran right now. It somehow always takes a lot more than expected to break your enemy in the deep.
In the concrete instance of AA defense you are correct. You basically can't prevent drone damage actively, since every AA system can be easily overwhelmed and costs are very asymmetrical. However, the damage taken does not change much, strategically. That's my point.
Also the immediate outcome perspective is a momentary picture. In the future we will see more underground/protected infrastructure immune to drones, as well as more symmetrical defense options (cheap drone on drone systems, lasers, ...). Cheap drones will not become bunker busters any time soon. Doctrines will also likely adapt more rapid initial escalation since nobody wants the prolonged attritional warfare expected with cheap drones.
Have drones drop explosives on the LA freeways for a week and see what happens.
It does a tiny amount of direct damage.
But the fallout, politically, economically, etc would be immense.
We're talking about billions spent across the country to try and harden critical industries and transportation, harden buildings, set up various types of drone point defense, funneled in as fast as it can be done least a politician not be reelected.
I'm sure somebody evil enough and creative enough could find a way to get the president to deploy the national guard across the country for an extended period. That's not at all cheap.
Just think about 9/11 for a sec. That could still happen today with a handful of drones.
Perhaps. But people forget the strategic reason, and ask why the quote is so high.
That said, of course some important components can't really be protected passively. E.g. comms and sigint will always have expensive, hard to replace antenna arrays exposed. But narrowing vulnerability down to those assets means you can focus scalable air defense and EW measures there.
Again, this benefits the country on the defense, especially against distant enemies, since you can build bunkers etc. at home, but can't really bring them along. And bunkers are one time investments, theoretically good for centuries (WWII/Soviet bunkers are still all over the place in Europe). I think, it would be viable for a peaceful country to almost entirely invest military funds in bunkers, drones, drone comms and crews/AI, and possibly nukes, to discourage any aggressor, while minimizing peacetime running costs . Additionally, highly decentralized renewable energy like solar and wind makes that sectors really hard to disrupt. Especially individual solar installations, battery storage and electric cars potentially enables quasi autarky for large portions of the population. Mighty "petrol station" Russia, got fucked by their reliance on ICE. Solar and wind will work even in nuclear wastelands, and replacing that solar panel is still cheaper than the cheap drone, which damaged it.
Ukrainian yong adult in 2051: ouch!
Old Ukrainian: first time in a bunker? mind your head.
Making wars unending quagmires is an excellent form of preventing them. Had Putin known how bad it would turn out, I doubt an invasion would be his option of ensuring long term access to Sevastopol.
Then again, the US learned nothing from Ukraine and still attacked Iran - the Shahed country. Hopefully, China is a bit more considerate about Taiwan.
The "Low accuracy, low speed, drone" concept has not changed since the V1 was invented by the Germans. Who then went ahead and built a more modern one back in the 80s. It should look very familiar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_DAR
It has all the bells and whistles you can recognize: GPS guidance, shitty small piston engine, lumbering speed, launched from a box truck using a small booster rocket.
See, the funny part is that the project was considered a failure because they were designed as anti-radar munitions, to just hang around until a radar transmitted and home in and destroy it. But that part of the project never figured out a good seeker.
It's just convergent evolution. That's what the design requirements imply.
Now, for the defense model of "western" nations (once again, not saying this is a bad thing nor wrong), a dumb warhead that just lands wherever and explodes makes no sense, no tactic would be enabled by it, so I guess the natural course of actions is you get heavier guidance requirements (case in point, radar homing), then you get operation in GPS-denied environment, then some other part of the army decides it needs to be carried on fighter jets, and another team wants it carried on frigates, and suddenly you have developed a million-€ loitering munition instead of a 10k€ V1 tactical-analogue!
The problem is, will there be enough of a demand? Part of why military procurement programs are stretched so long now is because the hot war that these things might be used in (aka, an all out direct war with Russia or China) is... increasingly unrealistic, but at the same time the US (or EU) still have to maintain the know-how, and we don't need hundreds or thousands of unit which makes the unit price including R&D extremely high.
Make the Pentagon finally pass an audit. Cut its funding. It is clear the profligacy is incentivizing bad decisions - the new normal in the Strait of Hormuz being only the latest.
It's clearly too much of a toy and too much capability for the past few decades of both civilian and military administration. An entire generation only knows the United States military as an institution of blunder, excess and failure.
The United States should also bring back the draft. More social spending should be paired with more public service. It will be harder to start wars of choice when everyone's kids will have to sacrifice. This will not degrade capability, many of the most capable militaries in the world have a draft - notably Israel. Making people from Iowa and New York serve together would be good for a dangerously fracturing country. The "volunteer professional" military was created to get around opposition to Vietnam. It's a disgrace.
However, in today's society, I think it would be most important to have a draft for everyone, not just young man. Otherwise it would be social dynamite. See South Korea.
Personally, I would prefer a mandatory choice for everyone (no bone spurs) between social services (e.g. working in a hospital), ecological services (e.g. reforestation), technical services (e.g. firefighters) and military service. Everyone having to do one year for society. It would be a unifying shared experience if done right. People of different background would be exposed to each other, a reliable way to fight bias and prejudice.
Americans should get free education and free healthcare. But as JFK said, one should also ask what they can do for their country. The military has a lot of jobs, relatively few members actually serve in combat. There are more than enough tasks to go around. Most every type of work you identify already exists as a subset of military service.
In Germany it's been like that: You objected military service, you had to do mandatory civilian service, e.g. aiding disabled people, for 9 months . I would prefer there to be a choice right from the beginning. So while mandatory to spend a certain amount of your life time for the collective, some agency remains.
Israel is bad example, because there objection is notoriously hard, yet more relevant than ever.
I would just say while generally your last point is true, we also shouldn't underplay the vast extent of civic protest against the current administration in Israel prior to October 7th. It is easy to forget given how quickly October 7th changed Israeli priorities, but I would actually suggest prior to the current "state of emergency" like suspension of internal policy disputes, Israeli society was well demonstrating the democratic benefits of having a country where (mostly) everyone has to serve. You had senior military figures, active military service members, former generals, and civilians (most of which served or had family who served or were serving) all standing up to prevent what was essentially a far-right takeover of the judiciary.
That is no small thing, and the political optics and ability of Israeli democracy to protect itself in this (and other instances) is I think grounded in large part by the fact that the majority of that society sees defense as a collective responsibility of all, rather than the sequestered task of a few. This allows for more checks on state power. Obviously, Israel is not a great example for other reasons. But it is hard to imagine such an act ever occurring in the modern United States under present conditions. Take the Jan 6th attack. Why is it the job of the Capitol Police alone to prevent such an attempted decapitation of American democracy? Every American should feel a sense of patriotic duty and capability to protect the foundational organs of the American state. It doesn't exist in this country because for the vast majority of Americans, the federal government is really something of an alien entity. It's a piece of paper or a tax or a headline. The problem of modern America is we are supposed to be a democracy yet we are alienated from our own institutions, our own government, and our own military. In Israel, despite its numerous other problems, this problem does not exist.
Athenian democracy - that which the West and the American founders lauded - had the same sort of emphasis on the inculcation of civic virtue through public service. Even the gadfly Socrates was a veteran.
Overloading the military with civilian functions aids fascistoid developments. The military should serve defense, not power projection. Making it a welfare institution makes warfare a way of life. Relevant documentary: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/
https://www.dodig.mil/DoW-Financial-Statement-Audit-Explaine...
In the meantime, cutting funding accomplishes nothing and only punishes troops who can't do anything to fix the core problems. Despite the enormous budget the DoD is actually underfunded for their assigned missions. This is causing escalating failures and reducing readiness. The only solution is to scale back the missions, and that can only be done by Congress and the President. This is fundamentally a political issue so vote accordingly.
The notion of bringing back the draft is stupid. Most US senior military leaders don't even want conscripts: they're generally unmotivated, cause morale problems, and don't stick around. For an offensive expeditionary force they're worse than useless. Comparisons to Israel are irrelevant because they operate a territorial defense force which isn't expected to conduct sustained power projection far beyond their own borders. And it the new era of autonomous systems there's little need for mass armies anyway.
Veterans are hardly treated like beggars. Those who complete a full 20+ years of service (or are medically retired) receive a solid pension and medical benefits. While there are some flaws in the military retirement and disability system, and occasionally veterans don't get the services they deserve, it generally works pretty well for such a huge system.
Israel gave presentations to DoD that said they could affect regime change in Iran. The DoD said “lol yeah, okay buddy, ain’t now way in hell.” Israel had a single audience, Trump, and just had to play into his ego + pretending that this would be Venezuela 2.0.
If this is due to post Venezuela kool-aid, then he drank from the same cup. Many others in the natsec space have resigned or been fired for standing by their convictions in the Trump era. The DoD is not without responsibility for this failure. Blaming Trump alone has been the sad redoubt of modern American discourse, a rather depressing reflection of a country that cannot look itself in the mirror, that treats Trump as a cause rather than a symptom.
If the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq had not occurred, Trump would likely have never been elected. His entire electoral premise has always been institutional incompetence. He famously was elected the first time by destroying the Republican guard from the inside, by tearing down Jeb Bush - a proxy for his brother and his two wars of failure.
If most Americans don't want to fight sustained wars overseas, America should not fight. That is the point. It is easy to make declaring war a distant political issue when a tiny subset of the population fights, yet creates problems for generations across the world. The effects of interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran will likely continue to be felt for generations, and likely make future attacks on the homeland more likely given the asymmetric consequences of the United States continuing to create failed quagmires abroad.
The Iraq War would have probably not happened the way it did if there was a draft. If most Americans don't want to fight, then America should not go to war. What could be a simpler democratic principle?
Instead you seem to support and make excuses for a volunteer military, one with an (at minimum) two decade history of failure, whose hubris and excesses have multiplied in a time of increasing political polarization, lack of faith in institutions (gee, I wonder why?), and as you say, technological change.
Why would this not be a time for radical reform? Why should we ever allow any president or congress to inherit such an institution?
Generals shouldn't always get what they want. Civilian oversight cannot be effective if the gap between civilians and professional service members is so wide. Kennedy famously had to talk down professional generals that bordered on homicidal. Luckily, he was was a veteran himself and was willing to resist their more outrageous impulses. We may not be so lucky next time. More people in the room, and in the military can only lead to better outcomes. If this makes a few trigger happy generals less happy, so be it. It should not be so easy to send men into battle. That is the problem you are failing to appreciate. The problem with the military is that it is too easy. As such, your claim about it being underfunded strikes me as some type of semantic game. If you listen to the alcoholic running the Pentagon, we are wildly succeeding. He doesn't seem to take his job seriously enough. Perhaps it is because it is rather easy for him to obliterate targets and cause chaos from the sky, with minimal repercussions? The cost of this escapade approaching what, $100 billion? And you want to give them more? For what mission are they underfunded? A land invasion? More bombs? More air defense? What more should we take from the American taxpayer to make this make sense? Maybe we should repeat 2003 and invade an adjacent country that has nothing to do with this again?
If everyone had to serve, then perhaps the next time they will have to actually convince the country and the men in their care of the virtue of their purpose. Nothing could be more desirable in a democratic society.
I don't want to give the military more funding. I favor a less interventionist (but not totally isolationist) foreign policy, and a corresponding reduction in military mission requirements.
This is an interesting angle I hadn't considered. Why do you think territorial defense vs force projection matters for motivation/morale? Is the idea that territorial defense is more moral? (I'm not the parent, nor am I an advocate for the draft--I'm just curious as I haven't thought much about it)
“Saab has unveiled its A3 collaborative combat aircraft concept—an autonomous, tailless, supersonic, double-delta-wing air vehicle”
Nothing happened. I went home and read the manual. S stand for sport. It keeps the engine in a higher gear than normal for quicker response
https://youtu.be/7WZ-D_HT3y8
They used to make cars but also at some point, computers [1] and even space stuff. Perk of coldwar, independent country (=requires own military industry), strong industry to begin with (= frequent M&A with other industrial companies such as Ericsson) positioned the company to become what it is now (a heavy engineering focused company)
[1] https://youtu.be/UXSBGjWSG7Y?si=sYxvlgPl7fwwTsJN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_35_Draken
Though I prefer this picture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20171007130915!Saab_Drake...
Reminds me of Apogees Raptor and similar fighter plane DOS games.