Comments on: Moore’s Law (Munitions Edition)

By: WryEye

WryEye — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:51:17 +0000

There’s no prospect in this warfare of combatants emerging from their trenches to sing carols together in an impromptu Christmas truce, like the English and the German soliders did a century ago. In this new situation, combatant A targets an icon of combatant B, and unleashes a hellstorm of violence. By contrast, the mourning relatives of combatant B, have, for now, only a symbol against which to project their outrage. Where will this lead? The pace of drone proliferation seems open to debate, but tactics that thus amplify the utter “otherness” of the other do not predict peace.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:54:30 +0000

Drones are slow and undefended. They can operate only in “permissive environments” — those where there’s nothing around to shoot them down, as in Afghanistan or Yemen, or where the local Air Force chooses not to, as in Pakistan.

If they even come close to, for example, Iran, they can be fooled into actually entering that nation’s airspace and captured.

There’s less here than meets the eye.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:42:23 +0000

Right, I think I may have said that above, more or less. The point is that in terms of imperialism–the ability of one nation or territory to administratively dominate a distant nation or territory made up of people with a different culture, language and history than the imperial power–all you need is the ability to make the costs of military force continuously high in order to make direct imperial rule or continuous occupation infeasible. Which I would submit is what happened in the 1940s-1950s, in at least some measure because of the diffusion of cheap and nearly-equivalent small arms and small explosives. Though would-be imperial powers seem to forget it now and again after having learned it the hard way in the early Cold War. (Soviets in Afghanistan, US in Iraq/Afghanistan)

By: Ralph Hitchens

Ralph Hitchens — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:36:03 +0000

I think it was more than just a “brief moment of stark asymmetry.” At the “lower” levels of warfare it’s true that wide availability of some advanced weaponry has leveled the playing field a bit, between the great powers and former colonial states. But in terms of “escalation dominance” the asymmetry still exists. Saddam’s Iraq, Qaddafi’s Libya, or for that matter Egypt, Jordan, and Syria might arm themselves with lots of state-of-the-art weaponry but when you got to a certain level of warfare they could not compete against the USA, European powers, or Israel. Insurgencies are one thing, and today the main thing, but a “big war” is something else.

By: Jay Scott

Jay Scott — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:15:13 +0000

Moore’s Law properly applies only to the digital computing hardware that is already only a small part of the cost of a drone. The cost/performance of the airframe, engine, control surfaces and so on is improving at a much slower rate, probably smoothing to 4%/year plus or minus a couple. (Ask yourself: How fast does car mileage improve?) Things like control software, sensors, and communication may be improving at intermediate rates.

Even slow progress means that we can expect dramatic cost and performance improvements over decades, of course. But don’t be in too big a hurry.

By: Jerry Hamrick

Jerry Hamrick — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:09:26 +0000

When I was a high school teacher many years ago, two high school boys in a high wind plane buzzed a high school homecoming pep rally and shot flares, or maybe roman candles, at the stack of wood that was to become the bonfire. No injuries, no fires, but lots of screams and panic. The boys were caught quickly, I don’t remember what happened to them.

What if some kid decided to bomb the stands in several high school football games one Firday night, simultaneously.

By: mike shupp

mike shupp — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:55:18 +0000

I made a comment to a conservative friend a couple months back: “What happens if other countries start using drones to strike back at people in the US that THEY regard as terrorists — such as the officials who authorize drone attacks?”

“It’ll never happen,” he said immediately.

“Why?”

“Because we have nuclear weapons.”

So clearly there are no real problems ahead of us.

By: A Viescas

A Viescas — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:30:47 +0000

Right, but “small flying robots attached to IEDs” are more like guided missiles than drones. Modern GPS’s are plenty tiny and cheap already, so Moore’s law becomes less important than considerations of fuel efficiency, physical durability vs expense, and data connectivity/latency. Only the latter is likely to see significant change due to technological increases, and even then it’ll change less due to the U.S.’s drone dependence and more due to increased networking backbone (in populated areas) or improved, network-independent repurposed civilian geolocation technology (in less populated areas).

Either way, cat’s out of the bag no matter what we do or don’t do, mostly through civilian tech.

@Fred Bush: Interesting, though the “action radius” is only 1/3 of the Fajr-5 (it’s also 1/10 of the cost, but it’s hard to tell how much of it is related to the computer)

By: Miles Skorpen

Miles Skorpen — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:26:32 +0000

Talking about cheap drones: http://uavstar.en.alibaba.com/product/658346150-213422866/abc.html (via Boing Boing)

By: Jay Scott

Jay Scott — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:49:11 +0000

For attacks on public officials, drive-by shootings are already cheap and effective and the perpetrators are rarely caught. Put bombs in the public trash cans, stick them under the car, all the old tricks. Aircraft don’t seem to change the economics there.

But if you’re a terrorist, there are juicy targets for model-airplane scale attacks. One is jumbo jet on the taxiway, fully loaded with passengers and fuel. Drive near the airport and launch your model plane by hand from the back of your van. With GPS and a small camera and some smarts it can autonomously fly a few pounds of explosive into a running jet engine. That’s technically feasible today, a good university team could build it for you. And I think that no story that we tell about remote-control weapons or indiscriminate military attacks will affect whether it happens.

But for state military use of drones I believe I see increasing pushback against perceived overreaching. The landmine treaty (the Ottawa Treaty) gives me hope. Landmines are (contrary to the arguments of treaty proponents) useful in defending against armies, so the fact that most countries have signed on means that most countries are saying that they foresee no serious need to defend territory–amazing progress even if some are lying or mistaken. A similar international agreement might limit the use of armed drones someday.