- in the block where you mention americas glide bomb, you made a typo 40.00 -> 40.000 $)
- SPAAG afaik dont use coventional ammo, but sort of explosive shells that litter the surrounding area in shrapnel. So i think they are even better against swarm attacks ? From a cost-effectiveness point of view, these should (imo) really stand out. Your point "from different directions" obviously is valid.
- In terms of the stinger, Wikipedia (yes i know you dont like it) states unitcost at 120k $ in 2020.
The contract you state is factual, but im wondering is this contract actually for the launch system and missiles 1:1, or is it a just missiles ? They can be reused and obviously you need way more missiles than launchers and that would possibly explain the skew in the unit cost ?
- That said, stinger missiles obviously overkill when trying to destroy drones, both in terms of speed as well as damage potential. I would think ideally you would want something that is like 1/4 of a Stinger. Accurate tracking, less mass, less weight, smaller warhead and then lots of them.
- Since current manpads were basically designed to be able to handle "actual" aircraft like helicopters and possibly jets (remember stingers are from the 60s, where helicopters were a big deal), they are STILL way oversized to handle
I would expect there to be "downsized" manpads (missiles) "soon" (tm), im sure Raytheon and friends is already designing them ?
Im thinking one interesting way to neutralize drones would be another (friendly) drone that is able to emit a jamming signal towards its target. Essentially get a cheap but fast drone that can at least match the targets speed. Get close, then try to jam it (could even use an EMP to make your own suicide drone).
I feel like (just a feeling really) that ground based jamming (gear or installation) is somewhat inefficient due to quadratic loss in energy effiency over distance (not sure i worded that right but i believe you what i refer to?)
Anyways lots of rambling from my end, thanks for this article and the substack in general.
On the SPAAG, they do use frag shells and in theory this is likely the best available weapon system. Like all wars, there's a constant back-and-forth of new weapon/new countermeasure and in the long term something like the Gepard might offer an actual cost effective solution to the cheap drones. But I'm not counting out the drones on this score yet, since changes to their flight profile can make them very hard to hit.
I saw the Wikipedia cost but it's based on very old data. I think if the U.S. tooled up for very high volume (like WWII) we would see much lower costs, but the simple fact is that the Stinger factory was supposedly kept "warm" for production restart yet the missiles are still costing a fortune. That said, the little MANPADS is probably the second best option.
In the end, I expect the drones will force modern military units to carry some additional defensive system (whatever that turns out to be) which will have its own cost to the effectiveness of that unit in terms of absorbing resources that could have been used for offensive weapons. Perhaps a SPAAG that is equipped to operate as an IFV as well might be best.
I like the idea of countering drones with drones. Maybe the future battlefield has a protective halo of friendly drones overhead, detecting and trying to counter incoming threats (and also able to suicide themselves perhaps, if a target of opportunity arises).
And yes, I understand (and agree with) the point about jamming equipment or even EMP guns to take down drones. If the drone has both GPS and INS then it can fall back on inertial navigation and the accuracy will decrease but the bomb will still get delivered. For EMP, a very large system may be needed to just knock the drone down - these drones can use very simple electronics that are hard to damage via EMP.
A lot of precision munitions use both GPS, but with INS (inertial navigation) as backup. I haven't yet found enough technical info on the Shahed-136 to know if it's reliant on GPS. INS isn't as accurate but it's still pretty good, especially if the weapon was on GPS first.
Of course the drone probably uses the Russian GPS system (GLONASS) so the U.S. can't just shut down access to the system. I'm not sure what it would take to disrupt the system - a typical GPS device will be tracking signals from many satellites located in different areas of the sky, not satellites directly overhead.
Signal jamming might be possible but if you don't know drones are incoming, or from where, or what the target is, it's hard to blanket enough area with jamming radiation to be effective. And of course this will impact your own communications if it's blanketing the area.
In theory you can hit the drone with a jammer, or a big EMP device, and maybe kill the navigation but if the electronics are very simple then the INS will still work and you will have degraded accuracy but not stopped the weapon.
Area blanketing is also very energy intensive - there's a reason the U.S. Navy has special F-18s (the EA-18G, or Growler) just to fulfill this role.
Having worked with expensive accelerometers, I doubt that $20k drones do much inertial navigation. Meanwhile, the status of GPS in Ukraine on this map looks like a state secret: https://gpsjam.org/
It's true that jamming/spoofing could need a lot of energy. But MWh are cheap compared to $500k missiles. Maybe one reason for Russia to attack Ukraine's electric grid is to disable grid-powered electronic warfare. Then again, it ought to be within Russia's capability to setup drones that seek out radiation sources.
Great article.
Some thoughts tho
- in the block where you mention americas glide bomb, you made a typo 40.00 -> 40.000 $)
- SPAAG afaik dont use coventional ammo, but sort of explosive shells that litter the surrounding area in shrapnel. So i think they are even better against swarm attacks ? From a cost-effectiveness point of view, these should (imo) really stand out. Your point "from different directions" obviously is valid.
- In terms of the stinger, Wikipedia (yes i know you dont like it) states unitcost at 120k $ in 2020.
The contract you state is factual, but im wondering is this contract actually for the launch system and missiles 1:1, or is it a just missiles ? They can be reused and obviously you need way more missiles than launchers and that would possibly explain the skew in the unit cost ?
- That said, stinger missiles obviously overkill when trying to destroy drones, both in terms of speed as well as damage potential. I would think ideally you would want something that is like 1/4 of a Stinger. Accurate tracking, less mass, less weight, smaller warhead and then lots of them.
- Since current manpads were basically designed to be able to handle "actual" aircraft like helicopters and possibly jets (remember stingers are from the 60s, where helicopters were a big deal), they are STILL way oversized to handle
I would expect there to be "downsized" manpads (missiles) "soon" (tm), im sure Raytheon and friends is already designing them ?
Im thinking one interesting way to neutralize drones would be another (friendly) drone that is able to emit a jamming signal towards its target. Essentially get a cheap but fast drone that can at least match the targets speed. Get close, then try to jam it (could even use an EMP to make your own suicide drone).
I feel like (just a feeling really) that ground based jamming (gear or installation) is somewhat inefficient due to quadratic loss in energy effiency over distance (not sure i worded that right but i believe you what i refer to?)
Anyways lots of rambling from my end, thanks for this article and the substack in general.
First, thanks for finding the typo.
On the SPAAG, they do use frag shells and in theory this is likely the best available weapon system. Like all wars, there's a constant back-and-forth of new weapon/new countermeasure and in the long term something like the Gepard might offer an actual cost effective solution to the cheap drones. But I'm not counting out the drones on this score yet, since changes to their flight profile can make them very hard to hit.
I saw the Wikipedia cost but it's based on very old data. I think if the U.S. tooled up for very high volume (like WWII) we would see much lower costs, but the simple fact is that the Stinger factory was supposedly kept "warm" for production restart yet the missiles are still costing a fortune. That said, the little MANPADS is probably the second best option.
In the end, I expect the drones will force modern military units to carry some additional defensive system (whatever that turns out to be) which will have its own cost to the effectiveness of that unit in terms of absorbing resources that could have been used for offensive weapons. Perhaps a SPAAG that is equipped to operate as an IFV as well might be best.
I like the idea of countering drones with drones. Maybe the future battlefield has a protective halo of friendly drones overhead, detecting and trying to counter incoming threats (and also able to suicide themselves perhaps, if a target of opportunity arises).
And yes, I understand (and agree with) the point about jamming equipment or even EMP guns to take down drones. If the drone has both GPS and INS then it can fall back on inertial navigation and the accuracy will decrease but the bomb will still get delivered. For EMP, a very large system may be needed to just knock the drone down - these drones can use very simple electronics that are hard to damage via EMP.
Appreciate the follow up. Have a good day !
Really enjoy your articles John
Thank you. It's nice to get encouragement now and again, and since I'm not a writer by profession it's even more meaningful.
Interesting article. Don't do the drones use some kind of satellite navigation? Maybe that can be disrupted.
A lot of precision munitions use both GPS, but with INS (inertial navigation) as backup. I haven't yet found enough technical info on the Shahed-136 to know if it's reliant on GPS. INS isn't as accurate but it's still pretty good, especially if the weapon was on GPS first.
Of course the drone probably uses the Russian GPS system (GLONASS) so the U.S. can't just shut down access to the system. I'm not sure what it would take to disrupt the system - a typical GPS device will be tracking signals from many satellites located in different areas of the sky, not satellites directly overhead.
Signal jamming might be possible but if you don't know drones are incoming, or from where, or what the target is, it's hard to blanket enough area with jamming radiation to be effective. And of course this will impact your own communications if it's blanketing the area.
In theory you can hit the drone with a jammer, or a big EMP device, and maybe kill the navigation but if the electronics are very simple then the INS will still work and you will have degraded accuracy but not stopped the weapon.
Area blanketing is also very energy intensive - there's a reason the U.S. Navy has special F-18s (the EA-18G, or Growler) just to fulfill this role.
Having worked with expensive accelerometers, I doubt that $20k drones do much inertial navigation. Meanwhile, the status of GPS in Ukraine on this map looks like a state secret: https://gpsjam.org/
It's true that jamming/spoofing could need a lot of energy. But MWh are cheap compared to $500k missiles. Maybe one reason for Russia to attack Ukraine's electric grid is to disable grid-powered electronic warfare. Then again, it ought to be within Russia's capability to setup drones that seek out radiation sources.
With so little disclosed about electronic warfare, I suspect it's a big part of the action. https://sofrep.com/news/gps-spoofing-how-iran-tricked-us-patrol-boats-into-capture/
Your article makes clear that air defense missiles are not the answer to kamikaze drones.