In the first Gulf War it was said that the US had air superiority, in the second it was stated it was the first time the US had true air supremacy. Just something I remember from the news reports of that time, if that is true or not is not important for the sake of this discussion.
What is the question is how does cheap handheld smart armed drones change this going forward? It would appear even if you can’t launch a single aircraft, all your runways are craters, your plains have all experienced explosive rapid disassembly courtesy of the enemy , and their planes fill the sky, could launching cheap handheld ‘smart’ drone cause a massive shift in power, adding another theater of warfare that is enough removed from standard aircraft as it be it’s own and be perhaps provide a much needed air strike & surveillance ability even with the above conditions of air supremacy.
Further small drones don’t have the range really for offensive warfare, but could they can provide effective alternative for air coverage comparable to conventional aircraft when used for defensive purposes?
The vast, vast majority of drones are, and will continue to be, sitting ducks for any kind of anti-aircraft missile for quite a few years to come. They just simply are not strategically relevant in a contested airspace.
People have gotten this bizarre idea that if you don’t have a person on an airplane, it becomes some kind of superweapon. The difference between a Predator drone and a Cessna 152 basically breaks down to two differences: first, there’s no pilot on a drone. Second, the wings are much longer on a drone so it can stay aloft a lot longer. Other than that, they weigh roughly the same (the Pred is a few hundred pounds heavier), the engine on both of them are just about as powerful, they are about the same length, they fly about the same speed, need about the same size runway, and both are equally stealthy. That is to say, they aren’t.
Does anyone think of a Cessna 152 as being able to evade SAMs and air interceptors? No? Then why would a Predator?
Sure, there’s other kinds of drones. But virtually all of them, too, are about as capable of surviving in a contested air environment as a Sopwith Camel.
Yes, one can imagine a time where swarms of small, cheap drones overwhelm conventional piloted aircraft and maybe this transition could lead to some temporary setbacks for rich countries relying on the old ways. But eventually rich countries will have even bigger swarms of superior drones.
Was thinking more along the lines of autonomous armed ‘Amazon type’ delivery drones, along with fixed wing types, perhaps by the 100’s, 1000’s or 10,000’s over a localized contested battle area. But yes other drones also considered.
In any kind of contested environment, such things would be useless because their data links and/or navigation links would be jammed.
The odd thing about today’s state of warfare is that UAVs are becoming more and more common, but they aren’t yet a huge battlefield issue. To the extent that they become a larger and larger part of military operations – which is inevitable – adversaries will spend more time finding ways to counter them. And as of now through the relatively near future, there are a heck of a lot of ways to counter UAVs on the battlefield, and not a lot of ways that UAVs would be survivable. Given a high-end fight as you proposed – sort of a Gulf War-like scenario – the side defending against the drones are going to have an awful lot of weapons at their disposal, and the side with the drones is likely to suffer quite heavy losses.
Drones and ammunition are now being combined, kinda, by smart autonomous, artillery shells. I don’t know if anything is deployed yet, but there are shells being given sensors and the smarts to recognize and attack certain types of targets once they arrive at some predetermined point. Typically I read about such attacks against an armored division, a barrage of shels get fired over them, the shells identify the tanks and alter their courses to drop on them.
This seems pretty close to what the OP was asking about, though with somewhat different technology.
