“There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.” – Battlestar Galactica (2005)
I hate to make fun of India. I heard they lost power at their largest mall, and hundreds of people were stuck on the escalator for hours.
I was originally going to write about another topic, but then I saw this article (LINK) about how the Army® was testing a fighting force using a system that combines soldiers, flying drones, and land drone vehicles and I couldn’t resist. The short explanation of the system is that flying drones are used for real time reconnaissance, and followed up with both living troops and land drones to attack an enemy. Those are followed up by McDonalds® and Starbucks™.
Based on the simulations that they have run so far, a group of soldiers augmented with the drones was able to attack a defending group of 120 soldiers and win. This isn’t unusual – defending soldiers lose all the time, just ask the Trojans. But in this case, the attackers were a platoon-sized group of only 40 soldiers. They also claimed nearly zero casualties in the simulation, although one participant ran out of GoGurt©.
This version tested well, except in certain areas of Asia.
This is opposite of all of general wisdom about conventional warfare. General wisdom (based on hundreds of years of us killing each other) says that a competent defending force has roughly a three to one advantage – that is, 120 defenders is equal to 360 attackers. In practice, if troops were available you’d probably nearly double the number of attackers to 600-700 troops to overwhelm the defenders and minimize attacker losses. Yet, the Army exercises showed they’d be able to defeat those 120 defenders easily with only 40 soldiers if they remembered to pay Comcast® for Internet.
The reason that this works for the attackers is fairly simple – the flying drones give nearly super-human information about where the adversary is. For soldiers, this is nearly a super power – to be able to see and know where the enemy is without them knowing where you are. It provides a significant advantage so attacks can be precisely planned and ambushes detected. The Army has recently ordered 9,000 Black Hornet® drones from FLIR™ and they’re going into service – at a price tag of $15,000 each.
Every single picture of this drone I found was someone looking lovingly at it as it floated above their hand.
The other type of drone mentioned were land drone systems. When they first ran the simulations, the Army commander would get information from the flying drones and then bring up the troops and land drones, but that allowed the adversary to know that the attack was coming, so in later simulations the attacking commander tried to bring up the air and land drone forces for a simultaneous attack. So what did the land drones look like?
My bet is that they will something like the picture below, a combination of weapons and sensors so that the drone can attack without exposing humans. Sort of a combat Roomba®.
Want an A.I. uprising? Because this is how you get an A.I. uprising.
In the article, the author casually noted that the augmented drone/soldier combination wouldn’t be all that effective against Russia. Honestly, I think he’s being optimistic. When attacking any state-sponsored military, the countermeasures required to detect and stop the drones are generally far cheaper than the drones themselves. The only way to completely stop the countermeasures is to increase the autonomy of the drone systems to the point where they’re making a lot of decisions by themselves, or by air dropping lots of vodka for the Russian troops.
Again, defense costs less than building an attacking force. A great list of ways knock out drones is here (LIST), H/T to the Docent over at Practical Eschatology (LINK) for the link. He always has pretty interesting links and commentary, so consider dropping by on a regular basis. History has shown that advances in military technology are generally short-lived.
In many ways, it is nearly certain that the Russians could easily field sufficient electronic deterrents to knock our small drones out of the air, and also potentially use them against us by using our radio communication signals to pinpoint attacks. The Russians routinely jam our GPS® signals, and it’s likely they’re the reason that my Wi-Fi goes out at 3:00AM, just when I’m trying to upload a post. Fighting Russia, the advantage probably goes away. In some senses, increased technological complexity can work against soldiers in a big way – that complexity must be supported by logistics – the average soldier carries twenty pounds of batteries into combat. If there aren’t spares? What then?
Similarly, China would likely be immune to such attempts at force multiplication, since they’re making most of our electronics anyway and have probably inserted code that turns our electronic hardware into Pokémon® games if we ever declare war on them. Though anecdotal evidence indicates that the quality of the individual Chinese troops would be stunningly deficient when compared with the average soldier of the United States, I believe that they have no intention of ever fighting a stand-up war against the United States. Any attacks China makes will be surprising and asymmetrical and probably focused against Western economic systems.
So who is the Army thinking about using this technology against?
It probably won’t change the outcome in Afghanistan, where the Afghans are fighting a guerilla war using 100 year old rifles and improvised bombs. They don’t depend on holding ground to win – they just have to tire the United States out. Drone technology already is saving their lives, but it won’t win the war. And if it won’t (probably) work as effectively against Russia or China, who are we preparing for?
The Cubans? Venezuela? The Great Heathen Penguin Army of Antarctica?
I’m pretty sure that Barney wore it better . . .
My fear is that the answer is that the technology might be used here in the United States, not by our soldiers, but by our police. Whereas there are plentiful and relatively inexpensive ways to detect and/or defeat drones by a State actor, the idea of using them to control and defeat a semi-organized and relatively low tech group of citizens seems more likely.
The police are already becoming a military force. In 1980, there were 3,000 SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) raids a year. In 2016 there were 50,000-80,000 such raids yearly. Over $5 billion worth of military equipment has been transferred.
In fairness, he also took a Tour of Italy at the Olive Garden®.
I wonder how much of that technology is in Virginia? But I’m sure that if citizens give up their guns, the police will turn all that stuff back in. Right?
What, the cops have no intention of turning it back in? Maybe the Great Heathen Penguin Army has the right idea . . . .
The best current anti-drone weapons available to the Average Joe today are:
1. Shotgun. Federal flight control wads really do give better range. Load with anything between BB and #4 shot.
2. Drone. Play rock-em-sock-em in the air! It helps to have things stick out of/dangling from yours to tangle up the motors of the target.
As Aesop notes below, it’s an escalation, making spicy things spicy faster.
Beware of the future drone swarms. They are real and damn scary.
But they do work both ways – they can (and have been) used for asymmetrical attacks . . . .
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GL0g_UAHVd0
Both are excellent links. The shaped charge was especially fascinating.
Those simulations have a 400% chance of selling worthless drone systems to the idiots at the Pentagon.
In combat, they’d be mostly horseshi…, er, rose fertilizer.
Aerial drones are great at detecting people. In a barren desert. Or above the Arctic Circle.
In triple canopy jungle, bayou swamp, or northern hardwood forest, their detection capabilities are less than that of a good bassett hound. And they’re not particularly difficult to kill, defeat, or degrade. Starting with shooting the operator.
If 40 Afghan jihadis had stormed the pussified base defense in Tonopah NV one day, and rampaged through the drone trailers, killing everyone in sight and blowing up the control trailers, drone warfare in A-stan would have ground to screeching halt, stayed that way for months, and the Air Farce would have started a crash program to steal Army Rangers by the tens of thousands as base defense cops in 30 states of the U.S.
That’s asymmetrical warfare.
In Phase Two, the jihadis would target military dependents off-base in the community, at schools, malls, etc.
So how you gonna harden the entire country, simultaneously, everywhere, against that?
You’re not.
Game. Set. Match.
Land drones?
1) If the supporting troops are close enough to give cover fire, they’re close enough to receive cover fire.
Hint: the guy with the big control box in his hands gets the first sniper volley. Game Over.
2) Those little Fun Sized mini-tanks are cute. So, what’s their industrial fire rating against a wine bottle full of 87 octane and dish soap?
3) Drive one over.
I’ll have a couple of guys throw a wet quilt over its sensor mast as it passes by; now it’s blind.
Then anyone with ten seconds of .mil experience will run up on the blinded droid, and twist the ammo belt. Now the gun is out of action.
Then we lever it on its side, or shove a pipe bomb into the treads; now it’s mobility killed.
then we pop smoke, or otherwise hide what we’re doing from its controllers.
Finally, we pull the pins on the pintle, and carry off that MG, and the can of ammo.
Now I have a machinegun. Ho ho ho.
Then we firebomb it anyways, because we can.
And it cost me a $20 quilt, and $1 worth of unleaded. To kill your $15K tanklet, and steal a functional MG.
Which I’ll happily use on your side when the smoke clears.
Including the operators, the other tanklets, and those aerial drones.
How long before I bankrupt a division for the money I have in my wallet, right now?
And if your live troops are close enough to support it, we’ll take them out too.
If they’re not, they can watch us carry their MG back, and set it up to return fire.
Heads I win, tails you lose.
Use them here?
Okay, let’s play that game.
What’s the defensive capability of any police station you can name?
When I storm it with those same 40 guys, kill everyone there, steal everything I can use, and burn what I can’t, how many more police are you going to need to protect the station house, and every other one you have, 24/7/365?
Who’s going to defend the police when I shoot them off duty getting a burger?
Who’s going to defend their families when they get killed and kidnapped while Officer Friendly is out oppressing the peasants?
(You think their women and children will be off limits if mine aren’t? Sh’yeah, you should live so long. The peasantry will make wind chimes out of those kids’ skulls, for sport, by Week Two. Bet money on it. Tape recordings of their families’ dying screams will be broadcast by PA at the police station daily. Videos of their torture that would make an Apache blush will go viral. So when you have zero cops at work by Week Three, who’s going to stop me from doing the same thing to their masters holding the leash?)
How you gonna gas the MRAPs when folks blow up the fuel tankers?
What are your jack-booted thus gonna eat when the train and highway bridges into town burn down and blow up, and the goods stop rolling?
What happens when the power lines to every police station and Thug Central keep getting cut, and the transformers shot up every night? You got bicycle-powered generators for those radios?
Tell us how many divisions the Nazis needed to garrison unarmed populations, and then tell us what the numbers would be against a population that bought more guns than the U.S., Russian, Chinese, and NATO armies have, combined, in just last year alone.
If I’m a betting man, I like the odds in favor of Team Partisan.
And inside a month, we’ll be using Team Oppression’s drones against them.
Bigly.
If there are any of them left alive to fight.
In a fight in this country between the people (even an infinitesimally small fraction of them) and The Man, we run out of government minions to kill in about two volleys, on Monday.
Forget III-percenters.
This is going to be the Great Three Shot War.
“Why three shots?”
Because after three shots apiece, we were all out of bad guys.”
QED
Aesop could be the new Braken for Spicy Times, CWII. Awesome talent on thinking like a guerrilla. I’d buy the book
Ditto. Great stuff, and well put.
Response wins the Internet. And after the recent Virginia response? I believe it.
Bravo.
Sometimes Mr. Aesop you just warm the cockles of my heart.
I don’t think drones would be all that effective in a tactical sense against insurgents but what they would do is discourage people from gathering in groups, moving around at night, etc. Likewise I can’t see our local cops using drones against civilians because, as Aesop points out, those cops have very vulnerable families and most of the cops around here despise the Federal government almost as much as I do. One of the impacts of our new, browner America is that while the demographic wave will swamp conservatives in elections, it will also swamp law enforcement in concentrated areas. We saw three mass shootings among our vibrant diversity last weekend and we are starting to see more of these mass shootings in mestizo and Asian gangs. I don’t expect major pitched battles, rather it would seem more likely that the urban areas will get out of control. We’ll see but Matt Bracken has written about the use of drones by insurgents as well ( https://www.americanpartisan.org/2019/09/the-future-is-drone-warfare/ )
I think they will, at least initially. The use of them in riot situations would be effective, at least for a while.
When the situation goes full Aesop?
He’s 100% right.
Thanks for the shout out.
Thanks for all great work you do!
Small Drones to search ahead of a Vehicle or Team on foot are definitely useful (for both sides of the coming Troubles) BUT one thing that is overlooked by this article is the actual capabilities of currently-deployed MANNED aerial surveillance systems… the feral government (and some state and local forces) have a large number of relatively small, general-aviation aircraft that are equipped with Military-Grade Cameras and other sensor systems. One of these Aircraft can provide real-time, transmitted to ground Video in Visible Light, Thermal and Night-Vision modes. Telescopic Cameras allow easy tracking of individuals and vehicles from several Miles out, and these aircraft have many Hours of flying time.
There is a Video Technique, sometimes known as “Gorgon Stare” using Computer Imaging Systems using digital archiving of many hours of Video, that can be reviewed, zoomed in on, and ‘backtracked’ from an ‘Event’, allowing identification of where anyone in the area came from. This technique, using Multiple small Cameras on the same Aircraft, is used commercially for Highway Traffic Flow Studies – a single vehicle can be traced through a Metropolitan Area from start to stop.
These Aircraft are located at secondary, or ‘general aviation’ Airports near all major Cities; often they are owned and registered to ‘shell corporations’ to hide Government ‘ownership.
Unlike Helicopters, they are not ‘obvious’ as a Threat, but will be extremely Dangerous Assets of OPFOR when the Troubles begin.
And without fuel, they won’t fly. And the pilots have to sleep somewhere. The analysts as well.
I’m wondering (and I bet someone knows) how much they’ve drilled/prepared for this?
Since Special Weapons And Tactics are so typical now, can we please just admit it and start calling them Typical Weapons And Tactics (TWAT) teams?
Gates saw a need for a special team of highly-trained officers who could be called out for extremely dangerous circumstances. He proposed that this team be called “SWAT,” which originally stood for “Special Weapons Attack Team.” Later, while describing the moment he first brought the idea of SWAT to his superiors, Gates said, “I was almost disowned.” He changed the name to “Special Weapons and Tactics” and sold the idea to higher-ups.
https://www.policeone.com/police-history/articles/police-history-how-swat-got-its-start-A46mInV79ujHNIfW/
The original name is better, much like Navy Seals are more apt to be called “assassination teams”…
I’m in. Or Militarized Unit Police Protection Enhanced Team?
Americans hate freedom with a passion and beg for their chains.
If our overlords decreed that everyone must buy a new snowblower this year, Americans would agree that the law makes sense and must be obeyed.
When guns are banned, Americans will scream with delight.
If Americans are forced to get microchip implants, Americans would fight to be first in line.
When Americans get sent to the concentration camps, they will insist that they live in a free country as they get pushed into the ovens.
You’re telling us more about your neighborhood and friend circle than you are about America.
You may be spot-on about the former, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t know jack about the latter, to the 150 millionth degree.
Half the country would not only not get into the boxcars, but at the mere suggestion, they will blow up the tracks, dynamite the engine, shoot the engineer in the face, stake the conductor to an anthill covered in honey, then go find the president of the railway, set his family on fire in front of him, alive, then cut his head off, and leave him with his jangly bits in his mouth, and make that centerpiece the hood ornament on his limousine. Then nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure. And YouTube the whole thing. Then they’d go hunting for the next guys on the list, with torches, pitchforks, machetes, rolls of wire for nooses, and pliers and blowtorches for the fine detail work.
{Call your office. Virginia’s holding on the line for you.}
Statists gonna statist, it’s what they do.
Freedomistas gonna clean that mess up, it’s what they’ll have to do.
And when the switch suddenly flips from “vote” to “kill everybody responsible” (the only two settings), you won’t be squeezing that toothpaste back into the tube until the job is properly done.
Tremble for the future.
These are the “good old days”.
we shall see on/after 01July, when new laws go into effect in Virginia.
maybe they get on the trains.
maybe they hunt the railroad exec’s.
both sides are mapping out the first few moves.
both sides expect initial speed bumps, before the other side folds.
next up: media and legal “shaping the battlefield” for a few months
6 month pre-employment
work-up.
train TTPs for local target set, and response drills for likely enemy strategy and tactics.
coms.
logistics.
local, local, local.
FWIW – here’s an interactive map of Federal Weapons Loaned to Public Bodies: https://www.openthebooks.com/maps/?Map=1&MapType=Pin
Nice. More data like this will be needing in the near future . . . .
My favorite anti-drone warfare is falconers with eagles.
Birds of prey do NOT like drones. That’s a great way to bring them down, but not a low effort way.