08-28-2017, 12:36 PM
I think that drone technology is going to develop a lot further over the coming decades and play an increasing role in combat all around the planet. I imagine that various forms of 'arms race' are likely to take place, in terms of both offensive and defensive uses of drones.
For example, if (for sake of argument) China develops swarms of attack drones, other powers are likely to develop swarms of anti-drone drones which deploy various countermeasures, including ECM and simply crashing into the attack drones.
Where this gets interesting is that it's not clear where the bottom level is in this kind of warfare. Meaning that just as China could hypothetically develop more sophisticated systems than the US in some ways - other countries (or even groups and individuals) that are otherwise much weaker than China could in turn develop more sophisticated systems than what China has (at least in some ways). And of course, it's not like the US (or China, or whomever) would find it impossible to rapidly turn any strategic advantage around - making up the ground in a particular area and then pulling ahead - aided by the fact that drones and their software are cheap and readily developed with a fraction of the resources that go into current big ticket weapons.
Coming at this from another direction - with the right control systems, there's no reason you couldn't have drone swarms of thousands or millions of units - essentially swarms of locust or wasp size drones. This would take us into how things are described in OA for some types of weapons - and could turn into rather strange warfare by current standards.
Todd
For example, if (for sake of argument) China develops swarms of attack drones, other powers are likely to develop swarms of anti-drone drones which deploy various countermeasures, including ECM and simply crashing into the attack drones.
Where this gets interesting is that it's not clear where the bottom level is in this kind of warfare. Meaning that just as China could hypothetically develop more sophisticated systems than the US in some ways - other countries (or even groups and individuals) that are otherwise much weaker than China could in turn develop more sophisticated systems than what China has (at least in some ways). And of course, it's not like the US (or China, or whomever) would find it impossible to rapidly turn any strategic advantage around - making up the ground in a particular area and then pulling ahead - aided by the fact that drones and their software are cheap and readily developed with a fraction of the resources that go into current big ticket weapons.
Coming at this from another direction - with the right control systems, there's no reason you couldn't have drone swarms of thousands or millions of units - essentially swarms of locust or wasp size drones. This would take us into how things are described in OA for some types of weapons - and could turn into rather strange warfare by current standards.
Todd