This will happen again with drones. No doubt China is watching Russia closely and ramping up their production. What we're seeing now with FPV and bomber quadcopters is literally the equivalent of WWI biplanes tossing grenades and mortar shells, which only took a decade to become long range strategic bombers dropping thousands of pounds. Once the production is in place, autonomous swarms are an inevitability. And we will be forced to match.
Great observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the place of the US in WW2 parlance.
There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though, with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce heterodoxical ideas.
There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our current times in the US and the world, groups of countries pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries want their shot at power and riches too.
One other factor that may help the U.S. is that America will have an easier time getting access to some resources as production ramps up than China given our excellent geographic position and China's lack of a blue water navy that can cut off American supply lines. However, while America's navy may get pushed back from the first island chain, there are several other chokepoints it can use to stop materials from coming in to China by sea (which is one of the only cost-effective ways to ship the amount of mass needed to produce war materiel at scale), and many of China's neighbors are not friendly to the CCP and not liable to support shipments of material to support a war through their territory even if it is economical to do so.
I'm terrified that America won't be able to match Chinese industrial capacity for killbot type drones.
Does anyone know if anyone has stared the infrastructure to produce these things en masse in the US? If so, how can someone with heavy construction experience, CAD skills, and embedded experience become a part of that?
The USA wouldn't fight an 'in the trenches war' where drones will come into play. We would fight a stand off siege type war. Hence why we are developing Rapid Dragon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system), which would convert our entire logistics feel (something we excel at) into stand off bombers that would overwhelm Chinese defenses. We would effectively have an addition 1500 bombers in the form of C-130s, and 200+ C-17s.
I'm guessing the system is named after an old Chinese siege weapon system to give China a message.
There's a reason LRIP for rapid dragon is molasses because planners recognize trying to move C130s and C17s in theatre is ridiculous. They all have to operate within 1IC to even be within standoff range to hit PRC MIC, well within operating ranges of J20 with PL17s specifically designed to pick off AWACs and other large targets like tankers... and rapid dragon. Like AGM158Bs with 1900km range (vs 1500km JASSMER for rapid dragon) is being made at... 5 per month. Until they pump that out to 100-1000s per month, it's token capability that's not being taken seriously. Not to mention US doesn't remotely have access to enough airfields in region or tanking capacity to deploy that much converted transport bomb trucks. US defense logistics is nice, but it pales to PRC mainland logistics designed to defeat the relative trickle of US standoff attacks airforce can actually deliver with basing US has access to, that itself is being targetted so US can't deliver any without hilariously inefficient/suboptimal tanking logistics from beyond 2 IC to the point it's likely not viable. Hence zerg rush to 100 B21 fleet.
US fighting standoff war also throws allies / partners in region with security guarantee to the dogs. PRC going to start hitting US military infra in JP/SKR/PH to drag US into fighting in 1IC.
- LRIP: low-rate of initial production, the early phase of weapons development where kinks are being ironed out before mass-production begins
- C-130, C-17: large, US-made cargo aircraft that we have a lot of
- 1IC: first island chain -- Kuril islands, Japan, Taiwan, Phillippines, and Borneo
- 2IC: second island chain -- Guam, Marianas, Bonin islands. 1IC and 2IC are also references to US defense policy in the pacific, namely to contain the USSR (and later, China) by projecting force westward in the pacific, using islands as stopovers for logistics, etc.
- MIC: military industrial complex
- J-20 fighters: a fighter jet, Chengdu J-20, China's counterpart to the F-22
- PL-17 missiles: China-developed long range air-to-air missiles that are capable of hitting/taking down large cargo aircraft like C-130s
- AWACS: airborne warning and control system, a type of radar system capable of detecting (and defend against) incoming missiles. these systems are large and mounted on purpose built aircraft, so I think the "system" part refers to having enough of such aircraft mixed in with your fleet to reliably detect incoming missiles over a large area
- AGM-158B: US-made, a type of long-range air-launched cruise missile that is being adapted for the rapid dragon
- zerg rush to 100 B21 fleet: refers to the US push to develop a long range strategic bomber, the B-21
And that fleet of ad hoc bombers would exhaust the entire supply of missiles in the first strike, leaving the surviving aircraft with nothing to do. Today the production capacity for all AGM-158 variants is ~500 missiles/year, with plans to increase it to 1000 missiles/year. In an all-out war, the right scale would be more like 1000 missiles/day.
For more on how dire this situation is with the American industrial capacity to produce missiles in a war with China check out this comprehensive report:
There is the "replicator initiative" within the DOD but I have no idea if it's moving quickly or not. The U.S. defense establishment still seems stuck in a pattern of buying big extravagant and expensive systems (e.g. aircraft carriers, million dollar missiles) which are vulnerable to asymmetric attacks from low cost drones or land to sea based missiles.
I am not worried. History likes to rhyme and I think China will do a switcheroo on Russia and align itself with the West for the purpose of dismantling Russia's military and industry, just like the Soviet Union switched sides from being an ally of Germany in 1939 to working with the Western Allies on breaking Germany's neck. The West will make some concessions, but they will be seen as worth the price of breaking Russia up.
> Soviet Union switched sides from being an ally of Germany in 1939 to working with the Western Allies on breaking Germany's neck.
What are you smoking? Germany is the one that attacked the USSR. I can hardly see how they'll remain anything but allies after that. Actually Germany didn't just attack, they prepared and executed the largest invasion in human history.
> I think China will do a switcheroo on Russia
China is not going to do a switcheroo on Russia. If it wanted to, it'd wait until Russia is exhausted/broken and invade/recover the lands it used to historically belong to them (+resources that come along). Instead, they want Russia to remain as an annoyance to the West.
China is never aligning with the West. They won after WWII and the West tried to break into them in two wars (Korean and Vietnamese) to no avail. They'll fight till the end.
The USSR was on non-war terms with Germany until 1941, it was even exporting stuff like rubber to Germany until then.
Those Russian lands don't 'belong' to China any more than China 'belongs' to Mongolia or the Jin dynasty 'belonged' to... well itself and just got appropriated as people then like people today and look at borders imagining things were always like that when they werent remotely the same.
> What are you smoking? Germany is the one that attacked the USSR. I can hardly see how they'll remain anything but allies after that. Actually Germany didn't just attack, they prepared and executed the largest invasion in human history.
The Soviet Union helped Germany evade restrictions imposed on them after WWI. Specifically, they helped Germans develop mechanised forces, air forces, and gas warfare
The Soviets switched sides when Germans attacked them. Then the Germans lost, got divided, then were allowed to re-unite and ... ran straight to Moscow to sign deals that undermined security of Eastern Europe.
Make no mistake, Russia and Germany fight and then can't wait to fall into each other's arms.
> China is not going to do a switcheroo on Russia. If it wanted to, it'd wait until Russia is exhausted/broken and invade/recover the lands it used to historically belong to them (+resources that come along). Instead, they want Russia to remain as an annoyance to the West.
They just told Putin to pound sand when he asked them to finance his Siberian gas pipeline during his recent visit to Bejing. They know Russia is weak.
Agreed. If you look back at the Cold War era, you'll lose count of the number of times China and Russia embraced each other with lofty rhetoric, each proclaiming to be the other's BFF, only to end up butting heads again after a few years.
In 1969 the Unites States strongly hinted that they would retaliate with nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union used pre-emptive nuclear weapons on China (which it was rumored they were considering). We risked nuclear war against ourselves to prevent nuclear attacks on China.
China may see the US as an enemy, or at least a competitor, but it would not be able to project power or be recognised as a global player if it was not for the massive US investments in the country. In the end, when push comes to shove, China would rather align itself with the US rather than Russia so the scenario illustrated by Budanov's cake showing Russian Federation broken up into smaller pieces may not be that unrealistic:
And the USA would rather be friends with China. We threatened nuclear war with Russia in order to protect China in 1969. We created special carvouts to help industrialize China. The USAs actions are not those of a country that wants to be adversaries with China. I friggen loved 2010's Shanghai and the people there (though I'm told it's nothing like that anymore).
In exchange for food or being able to sell limited amounts of their natural resources in exchange for small amounts of hard currency. They are amazing at not being able to feed their population when they start a big war.
Without using Chinese parts the US found that making their own small drones would cost $2,100. And those were just the observation drones for use by the Department of Interior.
They were also only 20% as capable as Chinese drones.
It's a bit more complicated than just production capacity of shitty quadcopters. The limiting factor with them isn't the airframe, you can make that out of literal tree branches and duct tape. The part that's important is the chips and US leadership seems very intent on fixing that, the question is if they're capable of doing so.
We also don't know what form drones will take as the technology matures. Quadcopters are common right now because they require exactly zero aerodynamic knowledge to build or fly. Any tween with an AliExpress+YouTube account could design, build, and fly all of the systems we've seen to date. As the systems become more automated in the face of EWAR, lasers, shotguns, whatever, expect a reversion to high speed fixed wing systems that trade a little bit of CDF knowledge for order-of-magnitude performance improvement in basically all realms (payload, range, endurance, speed, survivability etc).
Quantity has a quality all its' own. A swarm of a thousand quadcopters negates any drawbacks you've mentioned, and would be cheaper than even a single Bayraktar or Reaper (not even including their 6 figure weapons payload). And we're already seeing drone carrying "motherships" that drop multiple quads and have RF repeaters to extend range to 50km+.
It's a lot like the switch from battleships to aircraft carriers in the early 20th century. When a single squadron of cloth and wooden biplanes became capable of sinking a 50,000 ton armored warship that took 5 years to build, the writing was on the wall, and the countries who didn't adapt lost.
I'm still talking about the tiny high quantity quads, they can't do anything if they don't have the range to get from the launch location to the target and stand off range is the oldest advantage in warfare.
I guarantee the ones fielded in the next ~5 years will start to look like the new high speed bullet quads but with a blended wing between the rotors so they're not wasting energy plowing diagonally through the air. You may see configurations that can tail stand or enter a hover briefly and some that fly entirely conventionally, but the current paradigm of quads hovering near targets is going to be short lived as defenses ratchet up.
As I said, the chips are going to be the issue. If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything. They'll be moving toward relying on spread spectrum and variations of basic image recognition up through spicier algorithms for localization and targeting.
>they can't do anything if they don't have the range to get from the launch location to the target and stand off range is the oldest advantage in warfare.
They can. Ukraine and Russia both have started using repeater drones for over-the-horizon capabilities with quadcopters. They can also be mesh linked, and combined with carrier drones to give you arbitrary standoff range for FPV attacks: https://x.com/wilendhornets/status/1772345701772513445
>If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything.
But you can't. If you could, we wouldn't be seeing hundreds of these videos per week. The inverse square law applies no matter how advanced the jamming technology gets. You can protect fixed installations with huge high powered EW arrays, but the individual soldier on the battlefield is completely defenseless. The best they can hope for is a small bubble of protection from whoever in your unit is carrying the 30lbs of jamming gear and batteries, or the limited capabilities of a vehicle mounted system (that can easily be destroyed with artillery or ATGM).
I would be willing to bet a very large sum that China has the capability to drop 10,000 drones from a high altitude plane over US soil in one go, with the range to strike anywhere on the US mainland. I have no basis for this claim apart from the fact it's a really obvious thing to do.
Yep. Imagine a near future with a mothership balloon carrying thousands of drones the size of a deck of cards or so with a 20g explosive, gps, facial recognition, and something to detect cellphone signals and a small solar panel.
Drop a load over an area with the faces of targets preprogrammed into them and let them flit about looking for cell phone signal sources and if the face that's near the signal is a match explode on their neck.
Imagine releasing that over an airbase. These things can either attack immediately or just fall down to the area around and lie in wait recharging with their panel.
The USA isn't going to fight a trench warfare style war with China. We would fight a standoff/siege war and would overwhelm China's defenses and take out China's production capabilities. China's production is mainly in the east, whereas the USA's is spread out across the country. China imports it oil (making them susceptible to siege) while the USA is a net exporter.
There is a reason we are developing Rapid Dragon (named after a Chinese siege weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) . It quickly converts our 1500+ supply chain heavy aircraft fleet into stand-off attack platforms.
>Anduril says they have a focus on industrial capacity and cost effectiveness
US Military contractors have a very different conception of "cost effectiveness" than most of us.
Anyone outside of Ukraine designing drones right now should simply stop what they are doing and watch and listen and learn from the innovators on the ground there. All of those pie in the sky ideas will probably be completely useless in the face of reality.
