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To reinvent itself, the US Air Force must go big on small drones

“The changing character of war is coming upon us,” said Gen. David W. Allvin, the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, warning, “The theater of war is going to require us to fight different. This will be part of the reinvention of our Air Force and airpower into the future.”

....it will need to operate in the air littoral — the airspace from the Earth’s surface to about 15,000 feet, below the level where high-end fighters and bombers typically operate.

A single system cannot persist indefinitely in this airspace, but large numbers of them can achieve persistence indirectly, by continually rotating in and out of the air littoral.

With no significant history of either at-scale, small-drone operations or air-denial tactics, the next critical step will be to cultivate innovation and creative new ideas and tactics. This will likely not come from today’s legacy pilot force — instead, the Air Force needs a fresh dose of airminded thinking from “digitally native” airmen, who are intuitively much more capable than senior pilots of understanding the non-linear, and one-to-many interactions of humans and machines. Development of that airmindedness, then, is the critical foundation, and one which should be laid from the ground up. From basic training onward, airmen should be as familiar with small drones as Marines are with their rifles.

Col. Maximilian K. Bremer, U.S. Air Force, is the director of the Special Programs Division at Air Mobility Command.

Defense News - Good Read with examples of how this plays out

The U.S. could wind-up with "Drone Force", separate from the Air Force to get the dedication required.

Is there a device that can identify and take over the frequency of everything floating around in the air?

Only in Hollywood movies.

They can be shielded against this, and fly 100% autonomously, based on landscape.

Identify - sure, take over? Don't know.

Good question. "Shields are up Captain!"

The Battle of the Coral Sea went down as "the first naval engagement in history in which the participating ships never sighted or fired directly at each other". Not going to claim this recent fight between Israel and Iran was the first Drone vs Drone battle, but it was a step in that direction and some significant issues occurred:

1. "We" probably spent a bizillion dollars on stuff we shot off to shoot down $50,000 worth of junk the Iranians cobbled together. Somebody in the basement of the Pentagon has probably already compiled the numbers on that one.

2. Launch to target was nine hours and visible.

3. Creepy Joe is trying to convince everyone that it was no big deal, apparently because it was just some stuff in the air that got blown-up and nobody was really hurt.

#1 and #2 are going to be considered unacceptable by warriors of every stripe and work is underway to solve those.

#3 seems to me to be a potentially bigger problem. Defining the definition of war and limits. The Chicoms floated balloons over the U.S. Some guy like Creepy Joe going to try to convince us if they fly 500 drones over, that's ok cause "well, they were just flying over"?

The genie is outa the bottle now, the race to refinement and perfection has begun. Then of course some of it will be adopted to civilian control, because that's what happens.

Stay tuned folks, and buy Ratheon stock.

Our Military-Industrial mafia will ensure that the simple, cost-effective solution will not be tolerated. Better to select an overly complex, multi-million dollar per copy drone over a $1,000 drone to accomplish the exact same outcome. People's pensions and bonuses are at stake afterall. This is war.

Meanwhile in Ukraine - https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/?rdt=60707

More like spam the frequencies drones use so that the pilot's communication gets overwhelmed. But those either need to identify the drone first and target it directly, or require a ton of power to have short range broad coverage. Here is one on a Russian tank in Ukraine with a expedient anti-drone fencing:



I think that still got blown up by a drone though, probably because as Hawkeye says a lot of drones now can autonomously hit whatever target they identify if they get EW'd like above.

But the fact is EW works pretty well for now. The videos of drones blowing stuff up make it seem disproportionate, but the the majority of drone attacks are stopped by EW or old school interception like in Iran's attack on Israel. The problem with that is drones are absurdly cheap, their tech is getting better for almost no increase in cost and it is possible to make and deploy them in very large numbers. The defender will spend 100x what the attacker does, to stop only 90something % of the drones tossed at them.

If DJI was publicly traded it'd be a great defense stock.

This will be the future. Program in a target and let it fly.

"Target" could be a fixed object like a building or the image of an object such as a model or models of tank.

Or on a micro scale a face.

Think of hundreds or thousands of hummingbird sized drones with a small explosive charge launched from a van near an open air event such as a stadium. Facial recognition software to assassinate a politician, or just general "find a human" and fly into their head and explode."

How many drones can one fit into a container? The ship in Baltimore had like 9,800 containers on board. How many ChiCom ships are off our shores or in port at any given moment? How many containers are laying around just the other side of our southern border? Etc, etc, etc......

+1

Keep in mind, EW is a two way street. Transmitters give away their position and can be targeted. We've had anti-radiation missiles since the last 60's. Our newest HARMS (High Speed anti radiation missiles) can target an emitter, continue on course after the emitters shuts off, and use radar and IR to search for valid targets when it arrives in the target area. Our new hypersonic air launched missile began life as part of this program, so I'll let you guess what that says about it's capabilities.

One strategy could involve a variety of drones. Electronic warfare drone search for transmitters and jammers. Scout/recon drone fly around looking for the enemy and enticing them to activate their systems, so EW drones can find them, and the FPV and anti radiation drones can kill them.

Of course they are all networked as part of the "any weapon any shooter system", that provides decision makers with an all the most complete battle field picture and the ability to engage any target with any weapon on any system that can hit it. This decision making will be AI augmented to minimize reaction time.

Got to wonder how many drone you can fit into something like the P-8A Poseidon, or into a C-130 and C-5 via a palatized system.

The old Soviet mantra of “quantity has a quality all of its own” would really apply to drone warfare.

Why this subliminal fantasy about ChiComs overtly blowing up anything in this dying opium den? They provide everything we want or need at a dependable delivery rate and profit, and they hold the mortgage on our future. They don't have to buy up more T (toxic) Bills to keep the music playing either. But our closest ally in the Middle East now? Pick that pony!

War strategy and implements change constantly. New stratagems are deployed then abandoned when the enemy overwhelms them. Russia is using a derivative of their old strategy to great success now that they have operational control of the battlefield. Hitler took Europe with his blitzkrieg tactic and maneuvered around static defensive boundaries put in place after WWI. WWI was static trench warfare but proved to be unworkable. Stuff changes. Ukraine managed to find out what Russian forces could do. We built them a nearly 500K man army of well trained troupes that are now gone. you cannot build an army on the fly as we've tried to do with NATO and the EU's help. It has broke us all from sucking that egg but the present administration is stoic in their lunacy. Russia has proven that it has no interest in taking all of Ukraine but we are forcing them to do just that.

Sadly true

Shove your reddit app up sideways.

We’re hopelessly behind in drone warfare. The Army needs to be in charge of the drones. I can guarantee that if the Air Force is in charge it will leave the army naked. In this article it’s discussing US army doctrine and has a video with an interview with a US Abrams tank commander. Very interesting take on our readiness to fight a modern ground war. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/inferiority-of-the-western-way-of

NOTE: Mexican cartels have been using drones for several years now.
They use them to map out "infiltration" maps and CBP locations, strengths and concentrations!

How long until "rogue drones" take out political rivals on US soil?