Yep. Was bound to happen eventually. The US combat doctrine is to overengineer it, not because simpler solutions aren’t available, but because now every one of our adversaries are going to blow the budget recreating it.
I don’t see how this is overengineered, in my opinion this is the natural next step of the US strategy of mount a .50 cal on lots of vehicles for distributed air defense that began in WW2, but brought into the modern day.
The design seems easily adaptable to an extremely wide range of vehicles which is crucial.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid point-defense platform, no doubt, but it’s absolutely going to have automated targetting software, a sensor package that rivals a CCP spy sat, and a dash-ten as long as a dissertation. That’s just how Uncle Sam does things.
This isn’t as easy as it looks. Russia and Ukraine both have a strong reason to have already built this and haven’t. Ukraine has built larger stationary versions of this but hadn’t tried putting a small one on a tank to my knowledge. So I think this will be expensive because it is hard. That or I am wrong and everyone else are just fools.
With drones, there seem to be a few points of failure. Physical intercept of a drone is the obvious one and likely the most difficult to enact. We’ve seen success with single-use net launchers, with follow-up attacks being the achilles’ heel. We’ve tried scramble-intercept of the signal, which falls apart with fiber optic drones. We’ve tried flak-fire rifle rounds which are heavy and limit an infantry’s universal kit.
All those simple solutions did not meet the risk-assessment of our tactical think-tanks. So now, we design a targetting intercept platform so robust it can hit a 90mph 4lb fastball with rotors. We went down the avenue that only money and research can take you.
Never saying any of this is easy, just on brand for our military. I have no doubt this piece of kit is invaluable for the cost.
Yep. Was bound to happen eventually. The US combat doctrine is to overengineer it, not because simpler solutions aren’t available, but because now every one of our adversaries are going to blow the budget recreating it.
Of course it’s CWIS for drones. Of course.
I don’t see how this is overengineered, in my opinion this is the natural next step of the US strategy of mount a .50 cal on lots of vehicles for distributed air defense that began in WW2, but brought into the modern day.
The design seems easily adaptable to an extremely wide range of vehicles which is crucial.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid point-defense platform, no doubt, but it’s absolutely going to have automated targetting software, a sensor package that rivals a CCP spy sat, and a dash-ten as long as a dissertation. That’s just how Uncle Sam does things.
This isn’t as easy as it looks. Russia and Ukraine both have a strong reason to have already built this and haven’t. Ukraine has built larger stationary versions of this but hadn’t tried putting a small one on a tank to my knowledge. So I think this will be expensive because it is hard. That or I am wrong and everyone else are just fools.
With drones, there seem to be a few points of failure. Physical intercept of a drone is the obvious one and likely the most difficult to enact. We’ve seen success with single-use net launchers, with follow-up attacks being the achilles’ heel. We’ve tried scramble-intercept of the signal, which falls apart with fiber optic drones. We’ve tried flak-fire rifle rounds which are heavy and limit an infantry’s universal kit.
All those simple solutions did not meet the risk-assessment of our tactical think-tanks. So now, we design a targetting intercept platform so robust it can hit a 90mph 4lb fastball with rotors. We went down the avenue that only money and research can take you.
Never saying any of this is easy, just on brand for our military. I have no doubt this piece of kit is invaluable for the cost.