In general, lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian war are not very relevant for a “state of the art” conflict, because both sides have weak air forces. It is like watching two armies fighting with bayonets because they are out of ammo and concluding that you should arm your soldiers with swords and shields.
Also, this makes many assumptions which are dubious (like, sniper drones aren’t anywhere close to practical use, and it is not clear if they are viable), but also some which are strictly false:
Bullets can’t carry enough chaff to “surround” a tank
Lasers can destroy artillery shells (which are made of steel) in flight, there is no practical way to harden a light drone against them.
OK firstly if we are talking fundamental physical limits how would sniper drones not be viable? Are you saying a flying platform could never compensate for recoil even if precisely calibrated before? What about fundamentals for guided bullets—a bullet with over 50% chance of hitting a target is worth paying for.
Your points − 1. The idea is a larger shell (not regular sized bullet) just obscures the sensor for a fraction of a second in a coordinated attack with the larger Javelin type missile. Such shell/s may be considerably larger than a regular bullet, but much cheaper than a missile. Missile or sniper size drones could be fitted with such shells depending on what was the optimal size.
Example shell (without 1K range I assume) however note that currently chaff is not optimized for the described attack, the fact that there is currently not a shell suited for this use is not evidence against it being impractical to create.
The principle here is about efficiency and cost. I maintain that against armor with hard kill defense it is more efficient to have a combined attack of sensor blinding and anti-armor missiles than just missiles alone. e.g it may take 10 simul Javelin to take out a target vs 2 Javelin and 50 simul chaff shells. The second attack will be cheaper, and the optimized “sweet spot” will always have some sensor blinding attack in it. Do you claim that the optimal coordinated attack would have zero sensor blinding?
2. Leading on from (1) I don’t claim light drones will be. I regard a laser as a serious obstacle that is attacked with the swarm attack described before the territory is secured. That is blind the senor/obscure the laser, simul converge with missiles. The drones need to survive just long enough to shoot off the shells (i.e. come out from ground cover, shoot, get back). While a laser can destroy a shell in flight, can it take out 10-50 smaller blinding shells fired from 1000m at once?
(I give 1000m as an example too, flying drones would use ground cover to get as close as they could. I assume they will pretty much always be able to get within 1000m against a ground target using the ground as cover)
The point about chaff is that a regular size sniper rifle bullet can’t contain it in any significant quantity. Smalest existing chaff shells are for 23mm cannons, and a drone carrying ~20mm cannon has to be rather large.
In general, lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian war are not very relevant for a “state of the art” conflict, because both sides have weak air forces. It is like watching two armies fighting with bayonets because they are out of ammo and concluding that you should arm your soldiers with swords and shields.
Also, this makes many assumptions which are dubious (like, sniper drones aren’t anywhere close to practical use, and it is not clear if they are viable), but also some which are strictly false:
Bullets can’t carry enough chaff to “surround” a tank
Lasers can destroy artillery shells (which are made of steel) in flight, there is no practical way to harden a light drone against them.
OK firstly if we are talking fundamental physical limits how would sniper drones not be viable? Are you saying a flying platform could never compensate for recoil even if precisely calibrated before? What about fundamentals for guided bullets—a bullet with over 50% chance of hitting a target is worth paying for.
Your points − 1. The idea is a larger shell (not regular sized bullet) just obscures the sensor for a fraction of a second in a coordinated attack with the larger Javelin type missile. Such shell/s may be considerably larger than a regular bullet, but much cheaper than a missile. Missile or sniper size drones could be fitted with such shells depending on what was the optimal size.
Example shell (without 1K range I assume) however note that currently chaff is not optimized for the described attack, the fact that there is currently not a shell suited for this use is not evidence against it being impractical to create.
The principle here is about efficiency and cost. I maintain that against armor with hard kill defense it is more efficient to have a combined attack of sensor blinding and anti-armor missiles than just missiles alone. e.g it may take 10 simul Javelin to take out a target vs 2 Javelin and 50 simul chaff shells. The second attack will be cheaper, and the optimized “sweet spot” will always have some sensor blinding attack in it. Do you claim that the optimal coordinated attack would have zero sensor blinding?
2. Leading on from (1) I don’t claim light drones will be. I regard a laser as a serious obstacle that is attacked with the swarm attack described before the territory is secured. That is blind the senor/obscure the laser, simul converge with missiles. The drones need to survive just long enough to shoot off the shells (i.e. come out from ground cover, shoot, get back). While a laser can destroy a shell in flight, can it take out 10-50 smaller blinding shells fired from 1000m at once?
(I give 1000m as an example too, flying drones would use ground cover to get as close as they could. I assume they will pretty much always be able to get within 1000m against a ground target using the ground as cover)
The point about chaff is that a regular size sniper rifle bullet can’t contain it in any significant quantity. Smalest existing chaff shells are for 23mm cannons, and a drone carrying ~20mm cannon has to be rather large.