The goal is for them to take over unlimited land territory
I’m not sure that goal is achievable. When the drones you’re describing become mature, another pretty horrible technology might become mature as well: smart mines and remote mine-laying systems. A smart mine is cheaper than a drone (because it sits still instead of flying around), much easier to hide and harder to detect (same reason), they can see stuff and talk to each other just like drones can, and they can be deployed at a distance in large numbers.
So that’s the picture I’m imagining. Thousands of mine-laying shells burst over a territory and make it un-takeable, a kind of hostile forest. Your drones will fly over it and see nothing. But the moment your people or vehicles enter the territory, something jumps out of the ground 50 meters away and they’re dead. Or a column of your troops enters, the mines wait and then kill them all at once. Stuff like that.
Not sure there’s any real counter to this. Even in peacetime, removing unexploded dumb bombs and mines from long-past wars (e.g. in Laos) takes more time and money than laying them in the first place. And if the mines fight back, the task of demining probably becomes unrealistic altogether. Especially as the defender can just keep dropping in more mines.
Yes that sure sounds difficult. However if drones can fly over with logistics drones following, you mostly control the territory. Its more like MAD where no-one can settle anymore.
The worst mine I can think of is one that cannot be detected by a metal detector and is a little bit underground. It stays underground, to come to the surface at a random time, then finds a target. Think a large cicada with explosive that can be detonated without needing metal. Not sure how possible, but seems maximally horrible.
Current landmines are very effective because targets are squishy/fragile:
Antipersonnel:
take off a foot
spray shrapnel
Antitank/vehicle:
cut track /damage tires
poke a hole with a shaped charge and spray metal into vehicle insides
Clearing an area for people is hard
drones can be much less squishy
need more explosives to credibly threaten them
Eliminating mine threat requires
clearing a path (no mines buried under transit corridor)
mine clearing vehicle
use line charge
block sensors so off route mines can’t target vehicles
Inflatable barriers that block line of sight/radar
This is enough to deal with immobile off route mines. If the minefield has active sensors, those can be spoofed and/or destroyed or blocked at slightly higher expense. Past this, the mines have to start moving to be a threat and then you’re dealing with drones vs. drones, not mines.
Ideal mine clearing robots and drones in general should be very resilient:
No squishy center like people filled vehicles.
battery powered drone with per wheel motors and multi-part battery pack has no single point of failure.
Doing meaningful damage to such a drone is hard.
flimsy exterior can hide interior parts from inspection/targeting.
Vulnerable systems with fluid like cooling/hydraulics can include isolation valves and redundancy.
alternatively, no fluids, air for cooling and electric motors/generators/batteries?
multiple locations/configurations for important components that can be moved (EG:battery/computers)
I think you’re describing a kind of robotic tank, which would be useful for many other things as well, not just clearing mines. But designing a robotic tank that can’t be disabled by an ATGM (some modern mines are already ATGMs waiting to fire) seems like a tall order to me. Especially given that ATGM tech won’t stand still either.
“Poke hole through armor” is the approach used by almost every weapon. A small hole is the most efficient way to get to the squishy insides. Cutting a slot would take more energy. Blunt impact only works on flimsy squishy things. A solid shell of armor easily stopped thrown rocks in antiquity. Explosive over-pressure is similarly obsolete against armored targets.
TLDR:”poke hole then destroy squishy insides” is the only efficient strategy against armor.
Modern vehicles/military stuff are armored shells protecting air+critical_bits+people
Eliminate the people and the critical bits can be compacted. The same sized vehicle can afford to split critical systems into smaller distributed modules.
Now the enemy has make a lot more holes and doesn’t know where to put them to hit anything important.
This massively changes offense/defence balance. I’d guess by a factor of >10. Batteries have absurd power densities so taking out 75% of a vehicle’s batteries just reduces endurance. Only way to get a mobility kill is to take out wheels.
There are still design challenges:
how to avoid ammo cook-off and chain reactions.
misdirection around wheel motors (improves tradeoffs)
efficient manufacturing
comms/radar (antenna has to be mounted externally)
Zerg rush
Quantity has a quality of its own. Military vehicles are created by the thousands, cars by the millions. Probably something similarly sized or a bit smaller, powered by an ICE engine and mass produced would be the best next gen option.
I’m not sure that goal is achievable. When the drones you’re describing become mature, another pretty horrible technology might become mature as well: smart mines and remote mine-laying systems. A smart mine is cheaper than a drone (because it sits still instead of flying around), much easier to hide and harder to detect (same reason), they can see stuff and talk to each other just like drones can, and they can be deployed at a distance in large numbers.
So that’s the picture I’m imagining. Thousands of mine-laying shells burst over a territory and make it un-takeable, a kind of hostile forest. Your drones will fly over it and see nothing. But the moment your people or vehicles enter the territory, something jumps out of the ground 50 meters away and they’re dead. Or a column of your troops enters, the mines wait and then kill them all at once. Stuff like that.
Not sure there’s any real counter to this. Even in peacetime, removing unexploded dumb bombs and mines from long-past wars (e.g. in Laos) takes more time and money than laying them in the first place. And if the mines fight back, the task of demining probably becomes unrealistic altogether. Especially as the defender can just keep dropping in more mines.
Yes that sure sounds difficult. However if drones can fly over with logistics drones following, you mostly control the territory. Its more like MAD where no-one can settle anymore.
The worst mine I can think of is one that cannot be detected by a metal detector and is a little bit underground. It stays underground, to come to the surface at a random time, then finds a target. Think a large cicada with explosive that can be detonated without needing metal. Not sure how possible, but seems maximally horrible.
The difference in cost between automated mine laying and automated mine cleanup doesn’t seem very large to me.
Current landmines are very effective because targets are squishy/fragile:
Antipersonnel:
take off a foot
spray shrapnel
Antitank/vehicle:
cut track /damage tires
poke a hole with a shaped charge and spray metal into vehicle insides
Clearing an area for people is hard
drones can be much less squishy
need more explosives to credibly threaten them
Eliminating mine threat requires
clearing a path (no mines buried under transit corridor)
mine clearing vehicle
use line charge
block sensors so off route mines can’t target vehicles
Inflatable barriers that block line of sight/radar
This is enough to deal with immobile off route mines. If the minefield has active sensors, those can be spoofed and/or destroyed or blocked at slightly higher expense. Past this, the mines have to start moving to be a threat and then you’re dealing with drones vs. drones, not mines.
Ideal mine clearing robots and drones in general should be very resilient:
No squishy center like people filled vehicles.
battery powered drone with per wheel motors and multi-part battery pack has no single point of failure.
Doing meaningful damage to such a drone is hard.
flimsy exterior can hide interior parts from inspection/targeting.
Vulnerable systems with fluid like cooling/hydraulics can include isolation valves and redundancy.
alternatively, no fluids, air for cooling and electric motors/generators/batteries?
multiple locations/configurations for important components that can be moved (EG:battery/computers)
I think you’re describing a kind of robotic tank, which would be useful for many other things as well, not just clearing mines. But designing a robotic tank that can’t be disabled by an ATGM (some modern mines are already ATGMs waiting to fire) seems like a tall order to me. Especially given that ATGM tech won’t stand still either.
Current ATGMs poke a hole in armor with a very fast jet of metal (1-10km/s). Kinetic penetrators do something similar using a tank gun rather than specially shaped explosives.
“Poke hole through armor” is the approach used by almost every weapon. A small hole is the most efficient way to get to the squishy insides. Cutting a slot would take more energy. Blunt impact only works on flimsy squishy things. A solid shell of armor easily stopped thrown rocks in antiquity. Explosive over-pressure is similarly obsolete against armored targets.
TLDR:”poke hole then destroy squishy insides” is the only efficient strategy against armor.
Modern vehicles/military stuff are armored shells protecting air+critical_bits+people
Eliminate the people and the critical bits can be compacted. The same sized vehicle can afford to split critical systems into smaller distributed modules.
Now the enemy has make a lot more holes and doesn’t know where to put them to hit anything important.
This massively changes offense/defence balance. I’d guess by a factor of >10. Batteries have absurd power densities so taking out 75% of a vehicle’s batteries just reduces endurance. Only way to get a mobility kill is to take out wheels.
There are still design challenges:
how to avoid ammo cook-off and chain reactions.
misdirection around wheel motors (improves tradeoffs)
efficient manufacturing
comms/radar (antenna has to be mounted externally)
Zerg rush
Quantity has a quality of its own. Military vehicles are created by the thousands, cars by the millions. Probably something similarly sized or a bit smaller, powered by an ICE engine and mass produced would be the best next gen option.