The future of warfare is drones and it's going to come down to numbers. Ten million drones swarming a city are going to be easy targets except that there are ten million of them, so it's going to come down to that boring truth of warfare, it's not glory or gallantry, it's logistics.
So a single rail gun shooting 6,000 rounds per minute at 5,000 miles per hour would be able to basically build a pretty formidable wall against a drone swarm of any size. Might some get through? Yea, but again, it's logistics. A swarm of 100 million 5 cent metal rounds costing fraction of the cost of a modern fighter plane.
So here's how the wall works. The stream of rounds paints a spiral pattern starting in the middle and twirling outwards to the extent of the blocked area before turning into the center again and repeating the cycle. This would effectively create an impenetrable wall of red hot metal as every square foot would be covered. If you were to look directly into the line of fire you'd see a round wall of metal.
As has been discussed in science fiction many times, and as we're seeing now, calculations about who would win any engagement might really reduce actual warfare as increasingly who would win any engagement would be known without having to actually do it.
So would this prevent drone attacks? Well, to areas so equipped, yes.
And here's a quandary: might there come a time when both sides push their respective AI war machine buttons and five seconds later a surrender is announced by one side? "We've calculated that our force of 300 million drones to their 100 million drones plus their "Iron Wall" defense system would result in our defeat." Might need an override button saying "Fight anyway despite our being projected to loose."-- doctorremulac3, Sep 27 2024 Here's the target. https://x.com/elonm...1840556547468145043This isn't just a light show, it's an illustration of their strength in this field. Don't need to guess how easy it would be to replace those lights with shaped charges. [doctorremulac3, Sep 30 2024] Wee! https://www.yahoo.c...tles-175040575.htmlPerson A: "This new age of advanced robotics could free mankind from the drudgery of manual labor!" Person B: "Or better yet, we could sick killer robot drones on our fellow humans and kill them for fun and profit!" [doctorremulac3, Oct 01 2024] Nice [+]
Where do the bullets land?-- whatrock, Sep 28 2024 Well, good point, that's the downside of this, wouldn't want to be under this cloud of spent metal so it's a tradeoff with dealing with that drone swarm.
But I'm assuming this would be at coastal areas next to big cities and during an air raid all boats and ships in the area would be told to move out of the spend projectile zones.
Now if they're aimed at a high enough angle you might be dropping at terminal velocity which would bive you a bump on the head if it hit you but not much more than that.
Hmm, gives me another idea.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 28 2024 See the link. With this on the horizon (hopefully just figuratively) putting our money in technology like the F-35 Baby Harp Seal is as foolish as the admiralty's reluctance to heed Billy Mitchell's warning that air power, not battle ships, were the future of combat.
Might be more accurate to cite the longbow at Agincourt and have 35 million dollar fighter planes compared to French knights in their magnificent armor on beautiful horses. Sometimes magnificent gets its ass whooped by new technology that's just better. The charge of the light brigade was probably beautiful, proud warriors with flags waving and swords drawn, as warriors had done for centuries. Just a cheap, ugly machine gun or two and that's it for the glory of the cavalry charge.
Like it or not, this is the future of warfare.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 30 2024 //A swarm of 100 million 5 cent metal rounds// - let's say each round weighs 5g, so this is 500 tonnes of metal - so there's a significant manufacturing and logistics operation backing this up, but that's OK. Then there's an energy cost too: 500 tonnes moving at 5000 mph (or 8000 kmh) has (using 0.5m x v^2) 1.6 x 10^19 Joules of energy (I'm not counting energy wasted in the manufacturing or the firing of these projectiles, or any energy you might use to get projectiles to spin in flight). A reasonable-sized nuclear power station delivers about 600 MW, so dividing 1.6 x 10^19 by 6 x 10^8 gives us 2.67 x 10^10, which is the number of seconds of power from your nuclear power station that you need to get the energy to have all your projectiles to go at that speed. It equates to all the energy from about 845 years of continuous running.-- hippo, Sep 30 2024 I got 1.13 terajoules needed to fire those rounds, about 20 minutes from a typical nuclear power plant. Could be wrong, I was way off in how much I said a typical pickup truck would cost (five million was a little high) but your number is the total amount of energy the entire population of Earth uses in 3 months. I think that's also a little high for throwing some pieces of metal into the air.
But let's look at the price of just using off the shelf chemical launchers. Even if we just used off the shelf prices for a 50 caliber round, that's about $200 million, and that's an order of magnitude more than it would really be if we were to do it that way so 20 cents a round would be more like it. As expensive as that is, that still beats the price of ten million drones in the logistics game.
But I don't think you can throw a bullet into the air by any means available more cheaply than with a rail gun.
But like I said, math ain't my thing. I said a typical pickup truck was five million bucks, which I've since recalculated to be less than a million.
Boy, nukes are looking like a bargain either way. One airburst nuke would take out a swarm for a fraction of the price of anything else. But then they might just not come in swarms creating the need for a more targeted system like the rail gun thing.
But no matter what the real cost of whatever defense system you choose is, gotta look at the alternative. How much does it cost to have ten million drones come in and target specific infrastructure, telecommunications, power sources even specific individuals or groups? Gonna have to come up with something.
At this point it's nuking the aggressor's cities in retaliation and we know how that would turn out. Modeled that scenario a millions of times and it never turns out good.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 30 2024 EMP.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 30 2024 Might do more damage to the city you're trying to protect than the drone attack. Plus you don't necessarily need to ground a faraday's cage to protect from EMP so that's how I'd build my drones.
See why we can't just have a good old fashioned war anymore? All these science nerds wrecking the fun.
Let's bring back settling our differences with horses and swords, not even bows and arrows which was what started the whole train wreck in the first place.-- doctorremulac3, Sep 30 2024 Both horses and swords are fairly recent technological innovations in Human evolutionary terms. I suggest wrestling and bareknuckle boxing. Between heads of state and high officers of rival governments.-- pocmloc, Oct 01 2024 Love it! Let the guys who start the wars fight them themselves.-- doctorremulac3, Oct 01 2024 random, halfbakery