As of December 29, 2023, Shield AI has a valuation of $2.8 billion and has raised $742.5 million in funding across nine rounds. It has funding from the top silicon valley and technology venture capitalists. The new silicon valley drone companies are pushing more aggressively than previous DARPA-Lockheed Gremlin drone swarm projects.
Modern warfare between advanced militaries is no longer about 1v1 weapons capability but forcing the enemy to consistently expend higher-priced weapons on your cheaper assets. V-BAT Teams unlocks intelligent, affordable mass that will overwhelm adversaries through superiority of numbers which will saturate area defense systems and will force them to waste guided-munition stockpiles and trade them for comparatively cheap aircraft.
Shield AI drones are integrating night time sensors and laser targeting. They include compact and effective missiles. the claim 6 pounds of precision explosive will 80% as effective as a 500 lb bomb.
They show upgraded and fully software control systems to coordinate across 30,000 miles of battlefield and are simulating cross Europe coordination.
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“Modern warfare between advanced militaries is no longer about 1v1 weapons capability but forcing the enemy to consistently expend higher-priced weapons on your cheaper assets.”
What a profound statement! Also tells me why Vietnam and Afghanistan were difficult for US and China would be impossible to beat.
Meh. I prefer drone ‘armada’.
swarm sounds like those pesky midges that you bat away and are but a nuisance.
No one gets underwhelmed when you say: gee look there’s an armada approaching.
How many drone armadas and how soon to Ukraine? – I wish to see the sky there ‘dark’ with ‘threat’ of impending russia’s ‘doom’.
All undone by future directed energy weapons.
I will become very difficult to keep flying assets alive once lasers and masers reach a certain level.
What’s next?
Ground drones?
Below ground drones?
Mobile mines?
Millions of insect sized drones?
Energy weapons can be challenged by cheap measures such as reflective or ablative measures. Also a coordinated attack can take out a laser, for example shoot cheap shells that explode near it with a cloud of IR and radar chaff, followed by Javelins that get through as the laser is temporarily ineffective.
See for example
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oDXqwKzbACZf2qnKw/drone-wars-endgame
I did mention future energy weapons and a certain level… We are not talking about a massive AI-drone fleet vs an incompetent defender.
Speed of light is unbeatable as we know it and targeting computers are very quick. We are talking about pulsed lasers with a huge energy density capable of targeting 10 – 100 drones per second 5 – 10 km or more out. There are tricks to mitigate atmospheric dampening by projecting a lead laser beam to create a path for the high yield beams. It doesn’t take much to cripple the sensitive rotors of a drone. If there is armor, there is weight and a lot of drawback.
Line of sight is a problem so long range platforms are likely to be airborne (drones). Attacking drone swarms are likely to fly low so new weapon systems need to be developed to counter that.
I would guess there will be much more advanced, integrated decoy systems in such an environment. If one can make the drone swarm hit some decoys, the defender will gain a lot of time. If the attack drones mainly use optical sensors, they will face a blinding, blinking hell of laser just to confuse the sensors.
The biggest weakness of a drone fleet is probably the slow approach speed relative to defending weapons. When they come flying just above ground, they will probably run into drone-mine-fields. Something simple as claymores directed upwards and triggered by triangulating microphones.
Interesting rock, scissors, paper game…