Comment by ipsum2
4 months ago
There's plenty of military drones companies, the US military has the budget for them. But now I'm wondering, who would win, 1,000 military drones or 1,000,000 consumer DJI ones?
4 months ago
There's plenty of military drones companies, the US military has the budget for them. But now I'm wondering, who would win, 1,000 military drones or 1,000,000 consumer DJI ones?
"Quantity has a quality of its own". Consumer DJI Drones are useless in a fight (good only for reconnaissance or maybe crashing into military drones to disrupt them), but Russia is showing that drones can be made on the cheap (e.g. there was footage of a drone of theirs using a plastic soda bottle as the fuel reservoir) and still be disruptive.
DJI drones are ubiquitous on both sides in the Ukraine conflict. They have excellent cameras and long flight durations, which make them an ideal aerial observation platform. The battlefield is a very different place if you can't hide behind terrain and have to assume that if you can see the sky, then you can be seen by the enemy. These drones have drastically improved the effectiveness of conventional artillery, because you can seek out targets and get real-time reports on exactly where you shells are landing. Consumer/prosumer drones are vulnerable to jamming or being shot down, but they're also cheap enough to be essentially expendable. Ukraine are reportedly losing 10,000 drones a month, but that's a bargain for what they achieve on the battlefield.
DJI drones fitted with grenade-dropping mechanisms have been used extensively and still see some use, but DIY FPV drones are now the preferred offensive weapon, used in a kamikaze role as a kind of cheap guided missile. They're cheaper, faster and more agile than the DJI drones. A good FPV pilot can hit the weak spots on a moving tank, or fly through a narrow opening to hit troops sheltering in a bunker. They're invariably used with DJI drones in hunter-killer teams, with a DJI drone acting as a spotter for an FPV pilot.
The sound of a DJI drone is known to everyone on the front line and it means exactly one thing - that you need to find hard cover now. If you can hear it, then chances are that it has spotted you, the pilot has passed on your coordinates and a kamikaze drone or an artillery shell is already flying towards you. If you ignore it or take pot shots at it, then you're gambling with your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjsemcB7I9o (subtitles available)
UKR also has limited access to latest PRC drones, DJI T60 is $8000 consumer agriculture drone with 60kg payload and AESA radar. That's enough to start swarming and engaging almost any ground vehicles.
Wow, that was a terrifying video. The description is kind of surreal too (fundraising for buying kamikaze drones). Thank you for sharing it.
Why are they useless? Could they not carry a payload, and swarm their way past defenses that aren't equipped for "volume"?
Getting signal through a hostile radio environment comes to mind. But as it stands now it looks like this might be a field were a hundred "macguyvers on typewriters" adapting consumer drones are more effective than a Shakespeare trapped in the bowels of the military industrial complex.
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They do. In fact they graduated from simply dropping grenades on soldiers and IFVs to suicide roles taking out actual tanks. I'm not sure actual DJIs are being used in suicide missions or custom, still inexpensive, drones.
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There's a coalition to supply Ukraine with a million drones (although that figure might be exaggerated) I'm guessing they'll be slightly cheaper than the Black Hornet ($100K+)
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/02/european-coalition-bids-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano
1,000 electronic warfare-hardened drones vs. 1,000,000 drones using simple, documented radio on ISM bands?
Exactly 0 of those 1,000,000 consumer drones will be flying in US operating areas.
At what distance do those jammers work?
As long as they work inside the useful engagement window, they will serve their purpose.
In what volume of space? You don't want them to be packed densely enough that the enemy can fire a buckshot in a random direction and shoot down two dozen drones.
It's an open ended question :). It's reasonable to assume both sides are intelligent and will do whatever it takes to win.
None of those are cheap FPV quadcopters, are they?