We may even need to revisit what air superiority means in the age of long range, relatively stealthy drones that are cheap to produce using widely available tech.
I also would expect Russian and Chinese Satellite intel being fed to Iran to locate these types of targets, again exactly like how the NATO powers have been providing intel to Ukraine.
China also views the US as a strategic rival and would love the opportunity to take us down a peg.
Don't think that America's strategic opponents -- Russia, North Korea, Iran, China, Algeria do not provide some mutual support, even if for purposes of survival, and view the US as threat. We have already taken out Venezuela, Lybia, Syria and flipped Armenia. Cuba, Iran are next on our radar, but we are active all over the world trying to flip pro-Russian/pro-Chinese governments to pro-US governments.
This is a powerful propaganda tool for Iran waiting to be used to full extent.
[0] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/23/nato_air_defenses/
Iran has thrice the population of Ukraine and 1.5x (nominal) to 3x (PPP) the GDP. With Ukraine building 23560 drones for every F35 the US is building, it would be quite reasonable to expect Iran to be able to build a few thousand per F35 ass well. Iran already has a fairly mature drone industry supplying the Russian side of the UA-RU, after all.
In other words: If it were to come to a race of attrition, the US can't afford to lose a single one. Even ignoring the massive cost difference, F35s simply cannot be constructed fast enough.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/iran-negotiate...
DoD is trying to find US companies that can do drone detection and it isn't going well
Narcissism-speak is easy, once you have figured them out.
For example if they accuse others of something, that means they have done exactly what they are accusing others of.
The box is shipped internationally and sent to a package delivery company that gets a job to deliver the box to an abandoned lot near an airforce base in bumfuck nowhere America.
Once the package is delivered the deployment device cuts the top of the box open and lets the drone out. The drone flies in the direction of the base and then kamikazes on the nearest helicopter or aircraft shaped object that it sees.
What’s the counter to that?
Or imagine a scenario where a country launches a weather balloon full of the same kinds of drones but equipped with solar panels.
The weather balloon explodes like a piñata and deploys all these drones over a vast area. The drones are programmed to make their way to different military or infrastructure targets and stop and recharge high places out of site of people and maybe only travel at night. They slowly make their way over days or weeks until they find their target. They’re designed to self destruct if they sense that they’re being handled by a human being.
What’s the counter to that?
Everything else is a half measure.
Or this: https://www.epirusinc.com/electronic-warfare if you think the C-RAM would get saturated. Whether the weather balloon drones move at night is irrelevant if you stop the last move they need to make.
Militaries have been defending themselves against attacks for as long as they've been around. Drones will change the way they fight a little, but it isn't going to be some magic pill that modern militaries can't adapt to. Hiding an explosive and then blowing it up when your target is nearby? That's almost the same concept as assassinating someone with a car bomb. Putting it in an Amazon box and letting the drone go the final distance changes things a little, but militaries and governments were able to assassinate people remotely before drones.
Swarming attacks with cheap munitions? Saturating an enemy's defenses has been a thing at least since the time of the English Longbow. The longbow regiments would all shoot at the same time, and while you could dodge one arrow it was hard to dodge all of them.
Drones are new and will take some adapting to. If a military refuses to change then it probably will be disadvantaged. But the US military has been buying and testing drones for a while, and is already undergoing the adaptation. As it better understands cheap drones for offense, it necessarily gains a better understanding of what is needed for defense.
To be clear, I'm not advocating for the US attacking Iran. All I'm saying is that the US military is not about to lose the conflict because of this particular tactic.
How's that going to work when the drone hugs the ground, only rising a bit to hop over walls? Are you going to flatten everything a mile around every base, and shoot at head height with zero warning?
> Leonidas EWS
How's that going to work when the drone doesn't show up on radar and has fiber-optic controls?
If drones were this easy to counter, we wouldn't be seeing them play such a massive role in the Ukraine war. The whole problem is that drones massively change how a conflict works, and the entire US military is designed for pre-drone warfare. It remains to be seen whether they can adapt quickly enough fast enough for this conflict - the US doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to asymmetrical warfare...
It becomes defense in depth though, perimeter defense is no longer enough. Thats kinda new.
So realistically a laser drone weapon can eliminate just a couple of drones until a third or a fourth one comes through and destroys your turret.
And then all drones tracked by satellite so any drone that doesnt show up gets shot down anywhere over a large geographic area.
Using cheaper drones to hunt down expensive drones.
Or of course, just eagles.
I bet you could do aiming and firing in less than 0.1 seconds with nearly 100% accuracy in the 50 meter range which would enable ~10 destroyed drones per unit if the drones are going 150 km/h.
Shotgun pellets are also basically entirely safe when shot into the air as they have low falling velocity enabling usage when shooting over populated areas.
Then two drones approach from opposite sides at 200 MPH. Your emplacement costs more than $200 and can only fire in one direction at a time.
Or, as we've seen in Ukraine, once your disposable low-cost drones have precisely identified a high-value, high-effectiveness static emplacement, you send in a cruise missile to clear it out, and then the drones continue sweeping forward.
Can they be hacked, or duped into firing at friendly aircraft?
How will they deal with the enemy adapting their drones to have camoflage?
There's no way automatic turret mounted shotguns are the solution to this problem.
It simply isn't economical to produce, install and maintain all of these things, and now you've sunk a massive amount of resources into this infrastructure when the enemy doesn't even really have to launch a real attack.
Yeah, doable. I went to a clay pigeon range last week (company outing). These are targets that move quite fast. They don't spring out from the same spot and some roll over the ground. I had never handled a gun before. I am 50, with the attendant poor eyesight and lack of twitch reflexes.
And yet, I still nailed 20/25 moving targets. A turret with a shotgun is going to hit much more than that.
In the case of the AWS scenario someone driving by who decides to nick it?
Or the courier puts the box down upside down?
Just by the way is a package delivery company going to be willing to deliver a package to an abandoned lot?
Your solar panel equipped, "rest and recharge" idea is interesting.
But why go through all that when you can just have someone in the country launch it, or drop it off?
I'm not sure what anyone can do about that but that to me is my biggest fear about the future of all this technology.
And these are either autonomous drones (more expensive?), or fpv with the fiber optic line out the back - either way you have to get them in range without being detected somehow.
In short, i think this is an unrealistic scenario - fun to imagine as a horror-sci-fi idea but unlikely to be deployed. Just one opinion.
China already has created a UAV that is designed to launch at least 100 drones. If they can make that 1000 drones and then fly out 1000 of these motherships at one time, that's already 1 million.
And yes the drones would be autonomous, there's no reason for any person to be controlling them in the age of AI.
Have you seen the price tag on some of the US jets? Are they not doing just this?
get real please.
