Yeah I agree that the physics favors the autoturrets over the drones. I don’t think there will be silent drones and even if they are, visual identification will probably work well enough anyway. (There will totally be fixed-wing drones that turn off their propellers and glide silently towards the target btw...)
But even if you have a perfect autoturret, it can probably only take out, like, 10 drones before one gets through and kills it. So your autoturrets can’t cost more than 10x the cost of a drone… so, like, $10k. Also, even if you have a $5k autoturret that can reliably take out 10 drones before they close the distance, the drones are way more mobile and so can concentrate force, retreat, etc. and thus will have a huge role to play even if they generally stay away from autoturret-defended areas & even if every vehicle has an autoturret on it.
So I think drones are well worth investing in on the current margins, even if we assume that autoturret tech will advance by leaps and bounds and achieve perfection in the next few years. Which is a very generous assumption.
Yeah I agree that the physics favors the autoturrets over the drones. I don’t think there will be silent drones and even if they are, visual identification will probably work well enough anyway. (There will totally be fixed-wing drones that turn off their propellers and glide silently towards the target btw...)
But even if you have a perfect autoturret, it can probably only take out, like, 10 drones before one gets through and kills it. So your autoturrets can’t cost more than 10x the cost of a drone… so, like, $10k. Also, even if you have a $5k autoturret that can reliably take out 10 drones before they close the distance, the drones are way more mobile and so can concentrate force, retreat, etc. and thus will have a huge role to play even if they generally stay away from autoturret-defended areas & even if every vehicle has an autoturret on it.
So I think drones are well worth investing in on the current margins, even if we assume that autoturret tech will advance by leaps and bounds and achieve perfection in the next few years. Which is a very generous assumption.