With aimbots you could shoot them down, but even an autoturret would probably only be able to take out 10 or so before they closed in on it and blew it up.
It doesn’t seem unlikely to me, dependent upon terrain, that an aimbotted CIWS-esque system would easily take out a 1000 unit swarm of drones. I’m curious about your reasoning that leads you to conclude otherwise.
Good point; I should think more about this. I think the key here is the terrain. I was imagining a drone swarm flying down city streets, maybe hopping over a building or two, and thereby becoming visible to the aimbot only a few seconds or less before making impact. If instead we imagine a big open field, such that the aimbot can start shooting, say, two miles out, then yeah probably it could kill far more than 10. One of the nice things about these drone swarms is that they’ll be able to hug the terrain closely when needed. This is why I compare them more to infantry than to airplanes.
Stationary drones (autonomous turrets/aimbots) will always be cheaper and/or more powerful than mobile ones, AND more adapted for the particular terrain they’re installed in. A “swarm” of drones attacking an area that’s defended by equal cost of installed turrets and anti-drone devices is doomed to failure.
City streets will be defended by lasers or miniguns on every streetlamp, _AND_ by a force of good-guy drones that can be rapidly dispatched to areas that need additional force.
But really, our modeling starts to break down when we extrapolate this far. What does “winning” mean for attacking drones?
I mean, I did say as much in the OP basically. Defense is always more cost-efficient than offense; the problem is that when you sacrifice your mobility you have to spread out your forces whereas the enemy can concentrate theirs.
For attacking drones, winning means the same thing it usually does. I don’t see how it would be different.
In the limit of large swarms of cheap, small drones, the attacker always has an intrinsic advantage. The attacking drones are trying to hit large, relatively slow moving targets while the defender is trying to “hit a bullet with another bullet”. The only scalable countermeasure in my mind are directed energy weapons; you can’t get faster or smaller than elementary particles. If a laser is fast and accurate enough to shoot down mosquitoes out of the air, it can probably shoot down drones, too.
It doesn’t seem unlikely to me, dependent upon terrain, that an aimbotted CIWS-esque system would easily take out a 1000 unit swarm of drones. I’m curious about your reasoning that leads you to conclude otherwise.
Good point; I should think more about this. I think the key here is the terrain. I was imagining a drone swarm flying down city streets, maybe hopping over a building or two, and thereby becoming visible to the aimbot only a few seconds or less before making impact. If instead we imagine a big open field, such that the aimbot can start shooting, say, two miles out, then yeah probably it could kill far more than 10. One of the nice things about these drone swarms is that they’ll be able to hug the terrain closely when needed. This is why I compare them more to infantry than to airplanes.
Stationary drones (autonomous turrets/aimbots) will always be cheaper and/or more powerful than mobile ones, AND more adapted for the particular terrain they’re installed in. A “swarm” of drones attacking an area that’s defended by equal cost of installed turrets and anti-drone devices is doomed to failure.
City streets will be defended by lasers or miniguns on every streetlamp, _AND_ by a force of good-guy drones that can be rapidly dispatched to areas that need additional force.
But really, our modeling starts to break down when we extrapolate this far. What does “winning” mean for attacking drones?
I mean, I did say as much in the OP basically. Defense is always more cost-efficient than offense; the problem is that when you sacrifice your mobility you have to spread out your forces whereas the enemy can concentrate theirs.
For attacking drones, winning means the same thing it usually does. I don’t see how it would be different.
In the limit of large swarms of cheap, small drones, the attacker always has an intrinsic advantage. The attacking drones are trying to hit large, relatively slow moving targets while the defender is trying to “hit a bullet with another bullet”. The only scalable countermeasure in my mind are directed energy weapons; you can’t get faster or smaller than elementary particles. If a laser is fast and accurate enough to shoot down mosquitoes out of the air, it can probably shoot down drones, too.