ArmouredTopHat

Ok, FPV drones. Here is my current take, apologies for the monster post but its a big subject, even ignoring smart artillery, NLOS ATGMs etc.
Lets start by laying out what I mean by an FPV drone:
Current FPV drones: $1000, 3 man crew (operator, navigator, technician), carries up to a 2kg PG7 warhead which can penetrate 250-500mm RHA. Analogue video feed and digital control signal. Artisanal. Unsafe. 5-10km range. Cant fly in bad weather or at night. Needs to be guided in by an ISR drone or sweep a known location like a road. 
Future FPV drones: $3-5000?, 2 man crew per swarm (commander, technician), On-board terminal guidance and swarming, automatic (pre-planned) route following. Similar warhead performance to now but with safety switch so drone can be returned. Assume more aerodynamic but efficiency cancelled out by more computing power requirements. 5-10km range. Cant fly in bad weather. Mass produced but with modular warhead, optics and control system. 
Note that I looked into EFP warheads The_Capt and unless you know something I don't, they don't seem realistic for this application. SMArt and BONUS seem to use 12kg(!) submunitions with worse penetration values than a 2kg PG7 warhead. 
So lets look at a scary drone swarm scenario: an AWACS aircraft picks up a group of moving vehicles 10km behind the lines and an orlan-type drone confirms it is a mixed battlegroup of tanks and IFVs. A swarm of 50 future FPV drones is launched from a lightweight trailer and dispatched to intercept. They navigate there using INS, with occasional updates from the controller on the actual target position. They travel above treetop height but when the attack is confirmed they split into 2 groups and most drop to 1-2m above the ground, with a few going high for situational awareness to coordinate the attack. The 2 groups attack from 2 different directions, timed to arrive at the same time. Since this is beyond the maximum return distance and therefore all drones will be expended anyway, groups of 3 attack each vehicle simultaneously, jinking to avoid fire and targeting tracks and other weak points. One of the 3 drones carries a claymore charge instead of a shaped charge to damage optics and radars from a distance before the 2 AP drones attack. Up to 16 vehicles can be disabled in this one attack which renders the whole battlegroup ineffective using about 250kg of munitions, costing maybe $250,000, with the logistics burden of moving a single trailer into position near the front lines. Artillery is then used to destroy the immobile damaged vehicles, generously say 5 shells per vehicle for 80 total (4000kg of munitions costing $320,000 from a battery of 40 tonne SPH). 
So lets use the defensive onion to try and stop this attack:
Don't be seen: Focus on deception and EW: target enemy orlan-type drones with roadrunner or FPV drones to avoid identification so whole swarms are wasted on decoys and spoofs. Effects need to be massed not platforms: move in small groups carrying long ranged weapons. Use indirect firing weapons. EW: jam video feed from ISR drones, jam controls to prevent them re-tasking (assume they are on autopilot for robustness), jam radar. Target AWACS with missiles and ground based radars with artillery. 
Don't be acquired: Smaller platforms using multispectral camouflage can use more terrain as cover. Fast movement to increase search times for drones and force them to repeatedly get updates from the controller (which can be jammed/targeted). Use cheap pickets to detect FPV drones from a useful distance possibly using acoustics or scanning for control signals. 
Don't be hit: Pop smoke upon acoustic detection of FPV-type drones. Shoot down incoming drones with APS, self defence using autocannons (pointed in the right direction via acoustics if needed) or defensive drones (note that defensive drones will always be lighter/cheaper/faster than offensive drones since they carry a smaller battery and payload). Use your own drones to find and hit the enemy drone launch platform. Smoke+radar+40mm canister shot from autocannons. Directed overpressure wave (think RPG backblast) to knock drones down at close range.
Don't be penetrated: Swap frontal protection for all-around protection and reduced weak spots. Reduce power requirements (weight) to make it easier to protect weak points like engine ventilation. Laser dazzlers to degrade FPV accuracy so they hit armour not weak spots. Reduce crew to reduce internal volume and increase average armour effectiveness. 
Don't be killed: Redundancy so the platform can still move and ideally operate when damaged by small FPV warheads (things like tracks are a weak point so fix that). Fewer humans on board. Spall liners, fire suppression, suspended seats. 
Maybe the onion above doesn't work at all, maybe it is super effective and all drones are eliminated, or maybe 1-2 vehicles are disabled and the mission continues. I don't think it is super clear cut either way and a lot of testing is required to work that out. Also this is just one scenario: maybe future FPVs are super effective against fixed defences like trenches as well as vehicles? What does that even mean for future warfare? 
In conclusion the situation is unknowable right now since we are still in 1916 and trying to figure this all out. While I lean towards drones having the advantage (especially when used in combinations with other systems to introduce dilemmas), there are lots of clever things you can do to blunt that edge and it also doesn't necessarily mean the death of manoeuvre. Remember too that the tank was only one tool of many that ended the stalemate in WW1; we will likely need tools other than drones in 2050. 
One thing I do know though, is that a) vehicles and tactics will have to change radically and b) the drone/counter drone battle will be likely be a whole new branch of warfare going forward. 

Steve, please stop being so rude. And both Steve and ArmouredTopHat - you know there is no prize for the last word in this right? Everyone else can read what you write and make up their own mind. Evidence, stated assumptions and developed reasoning are much more effective than sniping at each other with off the cuff arguments. Seriously. It should be an interesting debate but both of you please just wait a couple of hours and calm down before posting!

Because they can’t have the little Russians live a better life than the big Russians. That would be the end of Russia. 

A rather specialised vehicle, but it does sort of indicate the trend we might be headed in, at least when it comes to the weapon station for drone disposal. The point being it is an existing RWS system being used for the task, the same as used by the US Army if I recall for Stryker and M1

*note that the 71 million is the package total, not individual cost*

I mean we see it pop drones so its at least seemingly something legit. Ill see what I can dig up. 
 
The point is that stuff is at least around, the building blocks are there. the MIC seem convinced that 30mm airburst is the way to go which is curious. I suppose they have more data on the matter than we do. Do agree that we should be testing more systems, though we know that in Syria a number of systems are being actively tested and some lessons learned. 

A site filled with various counter systems and detectors. Which kinda flies in the face of there 'being nothing in existence' 

Also just caught you were talking about that system I linked a page or so back. Are you suggesting its fake?

https://euro-sd.com/2024/02/articles/technology/36521/36521/

This article perhaps tries to get my point across better: That counter UAS is going to be a multi spectral environment that includes gun based options as well as drone. There is no single silver bullet solution.  

Particular highlight to MIDAS, which has a capacity to apparently down 16 drones with its weapon system.

I am arguing the status quo by saying vehicles need to change and that drone based interceptors are likely going to be the major aspect of defending against drone munitions going forward? Sure. Okay. Pointing out that tanks have a role, or that perhaps such extreme changes might not be so predictable due to potential counters is not my saying everything is fine carry on. Please understand that just once, I have tried to make it clear several times. Stop acting like I am some deep rooted conservative who thinks that drones are a temporary fad. 
 
Then you need to either stop debating with me or figure out how not to so frustrated from a differing opinion, because being so rudely treated is not why I am here. If I want to argue with people I will go on twitter and fight the genuinely brainless. Just because I have a different opinion that is still broadly supportive of the idea that war is and will change should not be getting you and others so wound up. I came here to debate with reasonable people, not be told to shut up and that my argument actually sucks. Its not a good way to change peoples minds. I dont pretend to be some sage who predicts everything, but neither do I expect to be treated as if I am incapable of thinking properly. 
 
I think I will just agree to disagree here. This is a wildly speculative scenario in the first place and its literally pointless to argue it when we can just make up any potential solution. I could point out how you rarely see infantry in and around armoured vics (Unless they are riding on them) or are caught dismounting in Ukraine, so the assumption that a PD system would be ineffective just because of friendly fire risk seems unlikely, at least to me. 

Because as I keep saying, complicating a kill chain as much as possible is so much better than relying on one means of interception, especially when dealing with such a potentially versatile threat. PD that can serve as an RWS in most situations but is optimised for drone munition intercept as a last resort without compromising on the vehicle role seems sensible here and very much worth the money. If it reduces vehicle losses by a certain metric then its absolutely worth it, because no matter what we say about the tank, vehicles in general are not going to disappear overnight. 
 
Could you be so kind as to specify what fully autonomous lethal system you are talking about here, the only thing I can think of is the AI on some FPV drones that allow a terminal approach which is not exactly a standardised thing yet, nor is it fully autonomous. the only thing I could find was potentially Turkish Kargu-2 being used in 2020 in fully autonomous mode. (Not in Ukraine)
 
I have literally given you numerous articles to potential ideas and solutions, so to say there is 'nothing' on hand is just a bald faced lie. The same swarm drone company making offensive drones has literally been tasked to make counter drones as well. 

I'm not sure why the link is not working https://battle-updates.com/small-calibre-solutions-for-c-uas-systems-by-julian-nettlefold/ But this covers the wide range of different RWS systems that are actively signing contracts to do with Ukraine and are all meant for counter UAS. So please stop telling me there is no other solution or that point defence / gun counter UAS stuff is fantasy when that is literally a lie.
 
Just as there are significant problems with actually designing practical fully autonomous systems. Could you actually provide a source that shows how close these swarm drones are to practical deployment? Because a lot of what I read seems a little whishy washy on the subject. Have they been featured in any major NATO exercise?
 
Concluding confidently that there is ' no counter' two years into a war that is probably going to last a fair bit longer seems foolishly premature, especially when there are active potential counters in the works. Gun based and otherwise. The only legitimate conclusion is that CURRENT systems are clearly not going to cut it against drone munitions at scale and there needs to be evolution to counter systems....which is exactly what is happening. Its pure arrogance and conjecture to declare something is a dead end before widespread practical solutions are not even being used at scale yet. 

In other news, the recent airfield Iskandar strikes are now being claimed to of been strikes on decoys. Whenever this is true or not remains to be determined. (The supposed strikes on Patriot stuff is unrelated)

A drone zig zagging is not going to be able to dodge bullets like Neo for very long, it might complicate a kill time, but that is probably where airbursts come in for heavier systems against a swarm. Again, layers of defence spring to mind. Evasion becomes harder the closer you get to target as well. 

A light system using a shotgun type weapon would have less trouble given the spread for the real close in defence that might be fitted to something vehicular...or even around one via portable units. 
 
I am not assuming anything here. I am just pointing out we are largely talking about theoretical and we dont know what the practical result of AI swarm vs AI defence might look like because there is nothing close on that front to existing yet, in military terms anyway. This really is a wild west of possibilities. I am not denying that AI swarms are going to be a future consideration, but I do find it odd that you focus so much on the applications of AI for offense without thinking about the defence. Swarms cut both ways. 

I ask again, what is stopping an AI system from using defensive interceptor drones to nullify an incoming attack, with PD acting as a last resort and cleanup?

I am also pointing out that we are currently seeing increasingly smaller point defence systems that are capable of shooting down drones right now. These systems do in fact exist, right now. The technology is practical, its going to evolve just as much as drone munitions will. 
 

I imagine any defence against this is going to involve layers, medium range airburst munitions from the stuff we see operating in Ukraine against Shaeds being the middle aspect of that combined with interceptor drones replacing traditional missile systems that are just simply not economical against smaller drones. 
 
We already see some pretty small anti drone systems, and even this one shown is something I think can be sized down further and simplified. 

This really does make me wonder if mass drone interception of ISR and loitering munitions will give vehicles a bit more breathing space again.
 
 
Comparing a bulky phalanx CIWS that's optimised for shooting down extremely fast targets like ASMs with a gatling system is not really an apt comparison to anything PD related that's going to come down the line for counter UAS, its just what happens to be on hand for immediate use. Any system designed for small drone and loitering munition destruction is going to be much lighter, if only because whatever it ends up firing does not need to be nearly as heavy or fired at the same rate of fire as something like CIWS, you dont need a heavy and sophisticated radar either, most likely a thermal detection system will be more than sufficient (perhaps combined with an acoustic system) With AI this could be a largely automated process of tracking, acquiring and confirming a drone target in the space of a second or two before destroying it.

This means an extremely fast tracking turret in all likelihood and something that's crucially, likely to be much cheaper too in both system and ammunition used for disposal. (At least compared to missiles or heavier PD) There is also the concept of using APS radars to perform the detection as well that was previously mentioned. The current thought is something in the 20-30mm cannon range with airburst munitions, though I wonder if something that is simple enough to fire shotgun or rifle calibre rounds might be sufficient and a cheaper system that you could mount on the top of most vehicles. It does not have to be pretty, just a sufficiently traversable small turret equipped with a shotgun type weapon. This is not exactly rocket science. 

If AI can be used to coordinate swarms, why cant it be used to coordinate counter measures? Defensive munitions (Ie other drones) being used to intercept a swarm while ensuring PD guns are efficiently used to clean up the rest seems just as plausible as a drone swarm on the offensive.  

Declaring PD to be a dead end just because of current generation PD performance against what is a very new threat is a little odd.

https://www.peoplesproject.com/en/9-types-of-anti-drone-weapons/

https://www.asianmilitaryreview.com/2023/05/naval-rws-more-than-just-uas-swatters/

There is a lot of potentially interesting counter systems in play, time will tell what works and what doesn't. 

A little unfair to imply that was all I was saying, but fair enough. I was getting fed up with the way some people were debating at this point anyway. 
 
In better news, the UK general election finally purged Galloway and his frankly disgusting views regarding Ukraine from sight. 

Why is Russia pouring this massive amount of resources and men into Ukraine?  It seems like its this death spiral that Russia, Ukraine and the West are willing to engage in until the last.  And at this rate its gonna be decades before the war ends and I don't think there is a country on the planet that can sustain these kinds of losses for such a relatively small gain.  Russia even has to go to the tiny backward nation of North Korea to get supplies.  What am I missing here? 
  Do they think the West is just gonna eventually crack and not support Ukraine?  I guess earlier this year it looked like it may happen but I doubt that situation will happen again.?.
  I think that Russia is gonna continue to attack Ukraine until the next US election.  Trump may be, in their minds, their last hope, but Trump isn't gonna give in to Russia. The stakes are just too high.  Maybe I'm thinking of it from a Western mind set and just don't understand the near Eastern thought process.
  You guys have gone over and over this topic in this thread, but I am still astounded by Putin's willingness to throw his country down the tubes.

Since you assume the attackers to be networked, I do the same for the defenders. So the defenders know where their own are. Easier for the vehicles than for the squishies of course. But when I doubt, shoot it. The explosives on the drone will do more damage.
For any numbers of defenders, there is always an 'inside' and an 'outside'. Unless the drone can pop up 'inside', you shoot outwards. There are of course any number of circumstances where this is not true or at least debatable. But in most cases it will.
You know I'm critical about lasers. I just used them wrt the video, because I doubt this PhD would be allowed to use more than a laser pointer in his experiment.
Laser are simply too expensive to use them on a 'PD-for_everyone' solution.
Why? Drones emit a very distinctive sound. They are hot. They may emit radio signals. And last but not least, they are fast moving objects in front of a mostly static background.
Sound will be reduced in the future, as well as the IR signal. Fully autonomous drones will not emit radio, but swarms will need to communicate somehow and that may be detectable. But they will never be invisible.
AI (I say AI and mean ML...) advances in image recognition and pattern detection are simply insane. If you can see it, the AI has seen it 10x and with good optics even better. Optical detection of stuff has been a hard problem in the past and has recently shifted to easy. That will find its way into military sensors.
That is your interpretation of what I wrote, and I think you are wrong.
 
Some ballpark calculations about drone evasion:
Assuming a muzzle velocity of 1000 m/s for the PD, that is 1 s time of flight at 1000 m range. Let's assume the drone can pull 6 g perpendicular to the PD (I haven't found any data about angular velocity of racing drones, so this is just half of the 12 g we had). For 1 s that is 3 m of movement. That sounds survivable for the drone.
At 500 m that is 0,5 s TOF for the bullet and only 0,75 m for the drone.
Half that again to 250 m and 0,25 s and the drone moves just 0,19 m. And that puts it already inside a buckshot circle.
Although the zigzagging of drones looks insane to humans, it is not that fast wrt to bullet speeds.
 

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-****ing-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/
On the topic what AI can and can't do.
 
 

PD is for that last desperate bit of defense if you have a multilayered thing that will statistically remove a huge fraction of the attackers before they get to you.  It's an officer's pistol.  
Artillery/rocket/airborne delivery of drones is a way to get lots of smaller drones farther faster than they could get on their own due to battery energy density limits.

All of this is true, but before we spend tens of billions to equip the ground force with a sytems that claims it can do this the testing needs to be savage. The worst possible place is to spend a bunch of money on drone defenses that don't work, and then develop doctrine that assumes that they do work, and then lose the next war in a day.

Today's Gallioti, he says the British election is unlikely to make much difference. His far more interesting point is that there are only two conditions where Ukraine can truly quit fighting, at least this side of more or less total defeat. Either it smashes Russia out of every inch of Ukraine, and breaks the Russian military in the process, or it gets admitted to NATO with full article five at the peace conference. There really is  no third choice for a good outcome. To clarify he say that NATO membership would allow Ukraine to agree to a settlement where it gives up territory. Nothing else really will. So if we want this war to stop anytime soon...

If you think its entirely down to a consistent effort from numerous defence industries and nations to preserve a status quo that are all in on it despite many being adversaries then at that point I have to wonder if you believe in conspiracy theories. 

Of course you think my arguments were trounced, you are arguing against them! That's not a refuting point at all. You could at the very least respect or concede I am making points at least valid enough to be used by the worlds militaries in this regard.  

I would view the decision from Lithuania to invest into tanks as one example here. The Baltics are pretty up there when it comes to innovation and support for Ukraine, their entire force structure was built around light infantry and surviving until the rest of NATO turns up to help them. They have been pretty big on the drone scene as well. The fact that Lithuania have now decided they need more hitting power despite their limited budgets tells me a lot about how important they view having tanks / armoured platforms. They would not be making such a hefty investment otherwise. 

How about Poland, who has decided that it wants to extensively expand its tank fleet and build towards a Polish version of a K2?

Finland has some pretty extreme terrain, yet continue to wield an armoured force that is pretty large for its size and budget. Are they wrong too?

Have China, Iran or Russia declared tanks to be useless despite their drone programs? Why is China actively seeking to increase its numbers of tanks and vehicles in general?

What about Ukraine? You would think the nation leading this FPV revolution would be happy to consign their tanks to the scrap heap if they are so useless and said FPVS can supposedly do their job. Yet they go to the trouble of making their own tanks, constantly ask for vehicles from NATO and actively repair and refurbish the ones they have. This is hardly supportive of the notion the tank has no purpose on the battlefield. They have more reason than anyone to be extremely careful about how they spend their resources, yet they choose to ensure they have tanks in the field. 

Its been two years of 'the tank is dead', you would expect to at least see some shift at this point. I think people here including you might be undervaluing vehicle based firepower a lot. Is your counter point against this simply that everyone is wrong?

 

Way easier with missile launched systems.  We call that "tuesday" around here.
Think about just about every rocket that's ever left the earth.  Every guided missile since what, the 1960s? Little kids can launch cameras in homemade rockets.  It's not even old technology, it's just a regular day.

Those swarms will be more effective on defense than offense because it will be much easier to lay a defensive drone field than to maintain a bubble around the attack that's resistant to massive amounts of cheap autonomous stuff.
About the best drone defense I can come up with is flying my own enormous drone army dangling bird block.  A ginormous mobile cope cage, but to stop propellers rather than shaped charges.

No, but years ago I visited a production line of a weapon system that was fired out of a 155mm arty barrel.  Designed specifically to take the shock of firing.  It had microcontrollers in it. So the technology exists for that kind of weapon deployment for, at least, decades now.  Just have to design a drone to fit.

Aerovironment has done recon drones that launch from regular mortars.
Drone-40 puts a drone in a standard 40 mm grenade launcher package (not artillery, but accelerated with a bang)

This really does make me wonder if mass drone interception of ISR and loitering munitions will give vehicles a bit more breathing space again.
 
 
Comparing a bulky phalanx CIWS that's optimised for shooting down extremely fast targets like ASMs with a gatling system is not really an apt comparison to anything PD related that's going to come down the line for counter UAS, its just what happens to be on hand for immediate use. Any system designed for small drone and loitering munition destruction is going to be much lighter, if only because whatever it ends up firing does not need to be nearly as heavy or fired at the same rate of fire as something like CIWS, you dont need a heavy and sophisticated radar either, most likely a thermal detection system will be more than sufficient (perhaps combined with an acoustic system) With AI this could be a largely automated process of tracking, acquiring and confirming a drone target in the space of a second or two before destroying it.

This means an extremely fast tracking turret in all likelihood and something that's crucially, likely to be much cheaper too in both system and ammunition used for disposal. (At least compared to missiles or heavier PD) There is also the concept of using APS radars to perform the detection as well that was previously mentioned. The current thought is something in the 20-30mm cannon range with airburst munitions, though I wonder if something that is simple enough to fire shotgun or rifle calibre rounds might be sufficient and a cheaper system that you could mount on the top of most vehicles. It does not have to be pretty, just a sufficiently traversable small turret equipped with a shotgun type weapon. This is not exactly rocket science. 

If AI can be used to coordinate swarms, why cant it be used to coordinate counter measures? Defensive munitions (Ie other drones) being used to intercept a swarm while ensuring PD guns are efficiently used to clean up the rest seems just as plausible as a drone swarm on the offensive.  

Declaring PD to be a dead end just because of current generation PD performance against what is a very new threat is a little odd.

https://www.peoplesproject.com/en/9-types-of-anti-drone-weapons/

https://www.asianmilitaryreview.com/2023/05/naval-rws-more-than-just-uas-swatters/

There is a lot of potentially interesting counter systems in play, time will tell what works and what doesn't.