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ZiggyStardustEP t1_j1vakkj wrote

Reply to comment by dkf295 in S. Korea military sorry for failing to down North’s drones by diadectes

I love your response and it's well thought out. Thank you for it. Per the article:

“We have a plan to create a military drone unit tasked with monitoring key military facilities in North Korea. But we’ll advance the establishment of the drone unit as soon as possible because of yesterday’s incident,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said during a regular Cabinet Council meeting. “We’ll also introduce state-of-the art stealth drones and bolster our surveillance capability.”

Right now it appears the mentality is for anti-drone drones (there's gotta be a better word lol). Dont know if thats the correct route. I'd argue with continuing miniaturization of semiconductors you can focus on more advanced radar and detection capacity. My concern with fixed defense assets is they are sitting targets and once they are knocked out its not an easy fix. With drones your line of defense is now variable vs fixed. Some info I've seen on Gen 6 fighters is a hybrid system of manned aircraft that link with supporting drones. We may see something similar on defensive positions. A central hub connected to a network of drones that act in concert with each other for screening and response. How do you rapidly coordinate a kill chain from detection to coordinated attack/response? However, this is all pure speculation on my part. I could see a differentiation of disposable drones vs studier built reusable drones. Different design philosophies and implementation in the battle space/area you want to protect.

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dkf295 t1_j1vc0kl wrote

While it's not 100% clear, I read the above as connecting "state-of-the art stealth drones" as being connected to "bolster our surveillance capability.”, especially considering the previous statement regarding monitoring facilities (presumably used to launch drones). That being, that the drone development is for surveillance, not for interception of drones. Later in the article it also states:

"Kang said South Korea will establish drone units with various capacities and aggressively deploy military assets to shoot down enemy drones."

While military assets can definitely INCLUDE drones, I'm not really seeing anything in the article stating that the focus is on developing drones to shoot down drones.

>My concern with fixed defense assets is they are sitting targets and once they are knocked out its not an easy fix.

I was speaking more towards man-portable systems such as the Stinger. Quick, dirty, easy to deploy, generally not super obvious to spot like various larger batteries with dedicated launchers, radar, and control vehicles.

Overall as you touched on a bit, there's definitely use cases for air to air drones but at a certain point, you have to start asking yourself what is a drone and what is a missile, and whether you're better off developing large drones with long range and high speed that can keep up with your 6th gen fighter, that have their own munitions to counter drones. Or just creating smaller drone-specific munitions for the existing fighter.

Then again I'm just some rando on Reddit and hardly an expert.

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ZiggyStardustEP t1_j1velfm wrote

You're 100% good and appreciate the thought process. Better we think these things through before spending billions on research that is a dead end. I lean more towards bleeding edge technology that gives you a decisive advantage because I don't believe in fair fights lol. Man portable systems will definitely have their place. I'm sure military analysts are getting plenty of data from Ukraine on best practices, tactics & techniques. I like the idea of a system where we don't have to put everything on a solider responding in a fast acting situation like that.

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