M.5: Counter-Strike
Post 6 of 10 in a series about how cheap drones changed warfare.
Click here to for the rest of the series.
Countering drones is not optional. Early reports have suggested the lack of counter-drone forces may have been a contributing factor in the recent fall of the Asad Regime in Syria.(64) Ukrainian troops who have been brought off the line to receive NATO training have been caught off guard by how little western forces know about drones. The US army is woefully behind on fighting with — and against — cheap drones.
Some of this, sadly, is because western forces have been dismissive of the new technology. Senior generals in the US Army have downplayed the value of lessons learned from Ukraine. In multiple pre-command courses (PCCs) over the last year, I’ve sat in lecture halls while a constellation worth of generals’ stars told us there’s nothing to see there. In the Brigade PCC we wasted over two hours discussing beards; drones barely warranted a passing mention. One general denigrated the ongoing conflict as just ‘two bad armies fighting’ and thus not really worth the US Army’s attention. Another claimed we needn’t be concerned because ‘Our tanks drive fast’.
First off, as we’ve already covered, no they don’t. This willful ignorance will lead to needless American deaths in the next fight. Thanks to Jevon’s Paradox, drones are cheap and they’re not going away. So, what are our options?
Using Electronic Warfare (EW) tools to jam drones has had mixed results. While EW can be effective, both sides of the Ukraine conflict have found ways to adapt to each other’s innovations, often inside just 12 weeks.(65) The frequencies used to guide and jam are constantly changing, and both drones and counter-drones must be rapidly configurable to adapt and capitalize on brief gaps in the spectrum.
Further innovations like placing heavier ‘repeater’ style drones above the strike area has reduced EW’s impact.(66) Last year also saw wire-guided drones fill another exposed niche. It turns out high-end fiber optic cable can cost less than $5 USD a foot. Just another example of Jevon’s paradox compounding.
Don’t get me wrong, we need EW. Every soldier in the army needs to know about it, have a basic understanding EW ‘noise discipline’, and be prepared to operate basic jammers. Without these changes we are inviting death. But EW alone is not going to solve our problem.
Lasers and other alternative directed energy weapons — these include microwaves — have been promised for decades, with little to show for it.(67) Currently they still require significant power to operate, leaving them moored to either fixed sites or sizable naval ships. It is also not clear drones won’t be able to continue to adapt, possibly with things like simple coatings.(68)
This has left physical intercept — aka hitting them with other things — as the principal way to counter drones. This can be done through ‘dumb’ direct fire weapons or ‘smart’ air defense missiles. For the US, the latter has proven incredibly costly.(69)
At one point in last year’s Red Sea operations, the US Navy expended “a year's production of SM3s in an hour”.(70) This Raytheon interceptor “hits threats with the force of a 10-ton truck traveling 600 mph” at a cost of over $15 million dollars a round. Meanwhile the Houthi drones, most Iranian made, cost between $2,000 and $20,000 each.(71) That is, at the best case, 1/750th the cost.
The US Navy is currently burning money like a memecoin trader, torching billions to combat the Houthis. Meanwhile, the Houthi Rebels' entire strike budget is likely less than the cost of only two of our interceptors.(72) The UN estimates the Houthis are taking in $180 million dollars a month in ‘protection fees’. At this rate, they can sustain their operations forever. Meanwhile, the US Military spent $5 billion last year to make no measurable dent in the additional $200 billion cost to global shipping the Houthi attacks have incurred.
The US defense industry historically spends twice as much on a defensive interceptor than on an offensive missile, but that is to intercept major missiles, not cheap ones. Our defense industry 'primes' whole development and production pathways are designed to build military technologies that most governments never actually use. In the fight against cheap salvos, these interceptors are like capitol ships falling to Hughes equations. Faced with mass-produced low-cost drones, the economics are not sustainable.(73)
So, what do we do to cover this gap?
Kill Cheap With Cheap
In some cases, the plunge in costs for sense and strike has enabled drones to fight drones.(74) The past year has seen a variety of these counter-drones on the Ukrainian battlefield, each a fraction of the cost of US “high end” systems. Some simply crash into the other drones, occasionally attacking from above where drones typically lack cameras. There are examples of drones armed with small caliber munitions — though with limited ammunition.
AI/ML systems are also starting to be employed to drive smaller caliber direct fire weapons. While we’ve had high end systems like the older fixed site counter rocket, artillery, and mortar (CRAM) systems, the future is going to require a lot more of these cheap remote turrets. They need to be small enough — both in mass and in power requirements — to fit onto individual vehicles.(75) Autonomy is poised to move ever closer to the edge as drone swarms and armor continue their Red Queen races.
Cheap drone sensors have also made their way into the pockets of foot soldiers. One such device Ukrainian soldiers now have is a pocketable drone detector, named “Tsukorok”, or “sugar”. The tiny sensors beep loudly when a drone enters their detection range. These don’t stop the drones, but they provide critical moments of early warning to find cover or fire up counter drone systems.(76)
Defending against drones is no longer an option, and yet it continues to be one the US military is hand waving away. Soldiers at the army’s CTCs have found they cannot train with cheap drones because of the administrative hurdles and paperwork required.1 Well-intentioned safeties have raised the concern about what might happen if a helicopter were to hit a blue drone. But no one is asking those same units, ‘What if it was a red drone?’ Because there is no battlefield without cheap red drones anymore.
We aren’t ready. We aren’t even getting ready.
You can find posed photo ops of all sorts of senior leaders holding ‘drone defender’ EW guns, but I can’t find a single clip of one in use on the front in Ukraine. ‘EW is going to magic away the cheap drones’ is just one of several bad faith, strawmen arguments against needed change. Well, next post, we’re going to Burning Man.
Combat Training Centers. Where the army ostensibly goes to prepare for high intensity combat but mostly does Gulf War cosplay.
Keep up the good work sir. We start every war re-fighting the last one. We can't seem to maintain a culture of curiosity that will put us ahead, unless the MIC sees a profit. I hope your work is being read widely throughout our services and not just by retirees like me.
Awesome work here!