China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) just demonstrated its latest drone swarm tech on state TV, showing a single soldier controlling 200 units.
According to the South China Morning Post, the drones are launched from the Swarm I land vehicle, A.K.A the High Mobility Swarm Weapon System, which can simultaneously launch 48 fixed-wing drones that work together.
Each unit can then autonomously communicate with each other, allowing the entire swarm to fly in precise formation and divide tasks among themselves, like conducting multi-target reconnaissance and strike operations, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said in the report.
I don’t really see this as surprising. Drones have been used in mass coordinated swarms for things like new years light displays for years.
It was only a matter of time that gets used as a weapon system/platform.
A swarm doesn’t give you much advantage over a single drone though. There’s more targets to shoot down, so perhaps there’s a better chance of getting one through drone defenses; but they also lose the stealth factor a single drone brings… Maybe a really wide surveillance view if you combine their camera feeds?
IDK, doesn’t really seem all that beneficial.
Drone swarms are most useful for many individual soft targets. Personally, as a soft target, I don’t like that.
The economics of war are the only thing preventing more of it. Cheap drone swarms are going to become a blight not unlike land mines. I want them made illegal.
Making drones illegal won’t stop your enemy using them in you.
I don’t think they’ll be like land mines. They’ll cause many problems though. Giving a solider 300 cheap drones with bombs on them, will cost little money. That solders range, to cause trouble, will be extended to 2km, from the 100m that their machine is currently effective from.
Let’s say that it is economical to waster up to $100k to kill one solder. A drone fleet of a hundred drones, costing $100k is then cost effective. This is basically replacing the AK47 machine gun, with drones that are used like bullets at this point.
Theoretically, a single operator controlled swarm could be used to all strike a hardened target at once, rather the current tactic we see in Ukraine of multiple drones which all have a dedicated operator being tied up striking an armored vehicle or hardened emplacement.
The ability to have one operator in control of the ability to strike a heavy target would come in mighty handy if you…say…have to eliminate a lot of prepared coastal defenses on an independence-minded island nation.
The drones used in the Russia Ukraine war aren’t stealth. They’re very loud. It’s rare you see combat footage where the victim isn’t aware of the drone. They’ve been effectively used as anti personnel and anti equipment devices. A swarm could be used effectively to overwhelm positions. I have suspicion that this is to counter the upcoming anti drone technology that shoots them with lazers. It could also allow one person to push groups into kill zones.
How long before you get swarms of small supersonic, cheap, missiles and rockets, that people can’t hear coming?