US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Since the next conflict is mainly about salvo, saturations and drone swarms. If China can produce 30mil cars per year, it is time to do that with ai military platforms. I heard somewhere that China has 200k certified drone operator technicians. Give each drone operators a few drones for striking missions. That is massive firepower just for the drones. Then it will overlap with other multilayer striking platforms such as rocket force, navy, airforce. Replicator may sound deadly but not when you can produce drones like the rate of EV cars.

The next gen drone need to equip with long range Air to air strike. Make it air superiority.

Where to even start?
First the question of what kind of drone?
The FPV drones?
Ever heard of Leonidas?
It’s a microwave anti drone system that works along the X band frequencies to fry the electronics of a drone. It has a 3 mile range.
How about electric warfare?
Before getting into range of said DEW you have heavy blankets of jamming. The types of cheap drones that we have seen used by Russia, Iran, Syria, DPRK and Ukraine. The $200-400 dollar drones those are highly susceptible to both DEW and Jamming.

It’s part of why you see the systems emerging with seemingly ridiculous prices tags. Because they have to be hardened against Microwaves and equipped with a secure line of sight datalink system. Those? Those mean that drones often cost as much as much as a mid tier BEV car. That’s why Rogue 1 comes in at $94,000. It’s got a secure directional datalink so that it can’t be jammed as easily as a hobby kit drone.
As you start adding shielding and Datalinks the drone starts not just getting more expensive but also bigger and heavier.

Next range. Small cheap drones are cute but they have short ranges. You need a larger drone to cross from sea to shore or a drone that is launched by a mother ship. Battery powered drones lack range so at a point they become air breathing aircraft. Those become more expensive and you start getting more and more something that is actually more of an aircraft. As you go longer ranges the datalink needs to get bigger eventually it either needs a relay by satellite or it needs and onboard AI capable of autonomous operations. That gets to the point where you might as well just make a manned aircraft because the cost and resources are the same but the manned aircraft is more versatile.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Where to even start?
First the question of what kind of drone?
The FPV drones?
Ever heard of Leonidas?
It’s a microwave anti drone system that works along the X band frequencies to fry the electronics of a drone. It has a 3 mile range.
How about electric warfare?
Before getting into range of said DEW you have heavy blankets of jamming. The types of cheap drones that we have seen used by Russia, Iran, Syria, DPRK and Ukraine. The $200-400 dollar drones those are highly susceptible to both DEW and Jamming.

It’s part of why you see the systems emerging with seemingly ridiculous prices tags. Because they have to be hardened against Microwaves and equipped with a secure line of sight datalink system. Those? Those mean that drones often cost as much as much as a mid tier BEV car. That’s why Rogue 1 comes in at $94,000. It’s got a secure directional datalink so that it can’t be jammed as easily as a hobby kit drone.
As you start adding shielding and Datalinks the drone starts not just getting more expensive but also bigger and heavier.

Next range. Small cheap drones are cute but they have short ranges. You need a larger drone to cross from sea to shore or a drone that is launched by a mother ship. Battery powered drones lack range so at a point they become air breathing aircraft. Those become more expensive and you start getting more and more something that is actually more of an aircraft. As you go longer ranges the datalink needs to get bigger eventually it either needs a relay by satellite or it needs and onboard AI capable of autonomous operations. That gets to the point where you might as well just make a manned aircraft because the cost and resources are the same but the manned aircraft is more versatile.

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The drones I am talking about is certainly not DJI commercial drones attached with an ammunition. I know those wont do much because of the distance, short range ammunition, in EW environments.

I want the drone operators to fly drones such as GJ 11, Dark Sword, UUV, Wing Long 3. I want drones able to shoot hypersonic missiles or very long range missiles so it wouldnt be a suicide mission. EV production from start to finish is 90-95%
automated therefore they are able to produce a new EV in every 3 sec. If China's drone plant can be as automated as EV cars, then it is a game changer.
When I use the word drones, I also include whatever ai platform on air, land and underwater.

bebops said:

The drones I am talking about is certainly not DJI commercial drones attached with an ammunition. I know those wont do much because of the distance, short range ammunition, in EW environments.

I want the drone operators to fly drones such as GJ 11, Dark Sword, UUV, Wing Long 3. I want drones able to shoot hypersonic missiles or very long range missiles so it wouldnt be a suicide mission. EV production from start to finish is 90-95%
automated therefore they are able to produce a new EV in every 3 sec. If China's drone plant can be as automated as EV cars, then it is a game changer.
When I use the word drones, I also include whatever ai platform on air, land and underwater.

Click to expand...

First did you bother to read the title of the thread?
Second that’s not cheap. That kind of drone would cost as much as a manned aircraft. So no it’s not realistic to get it as cheap as an EV or produce them like one. Not to mention the maintenance and up keep of such a fleet.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Where to even start?
First the question of what kind of drone?
The FPV drones?
Ever heard of Leonidas?
It’s a microwave anti drone system that works along the X band frequencies to fry the electronics of a drone. It has a 3 mile range.
How about electric warfare?
Before getting into range of said DEW you have heavy blankets of jamming. The types of cheap drones that we have seen used by Russia, Iran, Syria, DPRK and Ukraine. The $200-400 dollar drones those are highly susceptible to both DEW and Jamming.

It’s part of why you see the systems emerging with seemingly ridiculous prices tags. Because they have to be hardened against Microwaves and equipped with a secure line of sight datalink system. Those? Those mean that drones often cost as much as much as a mid tier BEV car. That’s why Rogue 1 comes in at $94,000. It’s got a secure directional datalink so that it can’t be jammed as easily as a hobby kit drone.
As you start adding shielding and Datalinks the drone starts not just getting more expensive but also bigger and heavier.

Click to expand...

But for some reason those elcheapo drones are making a bigger deal in the battlefield instead of the 100K ones.

Primarily as until very recently EW on both sides has been limited. Yet there has already been reports made off the cuff by people on both sides commenting on low end drones hitting jamming. These drones either loose power or return to sender. Because this class of drone has only really had its rise in the last few years the C-UAS counter is not proliferated widely yet. Once it has then the DJI type camera drones start loosing momentum. The mode sophisticated types move to the front.

Anduril is being given a contract for solid rocket motor production, specifically for, “design, build and testing” of the second stage of the Navy’s Standard Missile-6.

Recently announced investments of $75 million USD at Anduril’s McHenry, Miss SRM factory will allow the annual production to, “increase the propellant mixing and solid rocket motor annual production capacity from 600 to more than 6,000 tactical-scale solid rocket motors…”

It will be interesting to see if Andril or other recent startups are able to make headway in expanding SRM production in the US.

More below:

I wrote about this in the hypersonic thread: the US is trying to streamline their solid rocket motor supply chain in order to reduce the procurement cost of hypersonics. A lot of startups doing gliders and solid motors have popped up recently.

US Air Force Buys First Lot of Norwegian Joint Strike Missiles​

So Stryker based Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) will be named after Vietnam soldier and recipient of the Medal of Honour Sergeant Stout. I guess this would make the variant/model name something like M1136 Sgt. Stout or M1136 Stout.

“Stout ran to the grenade, picked it up, held it close to his body, and started to get out of the bunker,” Army Acquisition head Doug Bush told reporters on Thursday. “Upon reaching the door the grenade exploded, and then shielded the blast with his body [to protect] his fellow soldiers from further injury or death.”

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After a two day long period of negations, the Senate Armed Service Committee (SASC) has released its toppling for defense spending in FY 25. The spending breaks the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), which capped defense spending at $895 billion, passing it by a wide margin of $25 billion. This was spearheaded by the Republican co-chairmen of the SASC, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who recently called for defense spending to reach 5% of GDP.

Some highlights:

• SASC chose to keep F-35 procurement at 68 jets
• SASC opted to increase funding for the Virginia-class submarine program by about $1.1 billion, supporting the construction of a second Virginia-class submarine.
• It adds an additional $1.4 billion for a third Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
• Bill also approves a block buy contract for up to 37 CH-53K helicopters for the Marine Corps, as well as multiyear procurement of CH-53K engines.

Much more can be found