Here Comes the Swarm

I am actually really, really surprised this has not been posted on ATS here on the aviation boards as yet. However, let's get to it.



As we know, the US Navy has been looking at the technology for swarming drones for a bit now and ran a test a while back where they released small PERDIX drones from flare dispensors on F/A-18s. Now, they have taken it to the next level and had a swarm of 103 PERDIX drones acting together as an aggregate intelligence so as to not have a central control drone or whatnot. The effect is pretty scary.

theaviationist.com...

The while PERDIX itself is not likely to be much of a hunter-killer (though not impossible), the navy is also looking at extending the above tech to the Coyote drone, which is much larger, but still relatively cheap and small. It would be large enough to carry a nontrivial warhead...and in a swarm...yikes.

www.janes.com...

At one point I suggested we could add these to a-10 load out at the end of the burst to provide more loiter and more small munitions over fighters heads to provide cover and more negative factors for the enemy.

Also this reminds me of battlefield 2 where one could spam the drone onto the map and it looked alot like that image. Kinda funny really.

There was the ambush incident in Afghanistan where an assault went a little wrong due to in part extreme preparations and pre-placing of assets in a village area.

On top of that the lasers US soldiers were using were visible since the enemy had the foresight to bring night vision. Anyhow a small cluster of these even for a short duration to spot and lase enemy fighters would also confuse the hell out of the enemy.

Admittedly the drones would have to be specialized to be delivered like that. With that velocity the drones could reach a full charge if energy harvesting could be added at the nano-scale or a little larger.

One can only dream sometimes of better ways to kick enemy combatants asses.

Trump needs to change the policy in Afghanistan or leave anyways let china slither on in and see how they do.

If you are going to post anything aircraft related you need to check Zaphod58's threads first.

Yes, this has been posted before. A couple of times.

There are a few posters that do beat him to the punch at times but he is the "expert" here.

originally posted by: anzha
I am actually really, really surprised this has not been posted on ATS here on the aviation boards as yet. However, let's get to it.

As we know, the US Navy has been looking at the technology for swarming drones for a bit now and ran a test a while back where they released small PERDIX drones from flare dispensors on F/A-18s. Now, they have taken it to the next level and had a swarm of 103 PERDIX drones acting together as an aggregate intelligence so as to not have a central control drone or whatnot. The effect is pretty scary.

theaviationist.com...

The while PERDIX itself is not likely to be much of a hunter-killer (though not impossible), the navy is also looking at extending the above tech to the Coyote drone, which is much larger, but still relatively cheap and small. It would be large enough to carry a nontrivial warhead...and in a swarm...yikes.

www.janes.com...

Lol they sound like the music before horror movie scene. That would freak me the f out.

Watch the end of the video from the ground view to get what I'm saying

a reply to: anzha

There are many types of swam drone in development, smaller, faster and more manoeuvrable than a piloted aircraft they are the undoubted future of aerial warfare.

How long before, if they have not already done so that is,
we see smart guided micro munition's that can be packaged in a missile then separate from it over a target location and each small tiny drone home in on any target carrying a gun, a micro missile smart guidance swarm delivered to hostile location's and able to depopulate them with little or no collateral damage.

Such is well within our current technical capability's it is just down to the software implementation, then there is instead of fighters even smaller anti-fighter/anti-bomber drone swarm's and anti missile drone swarm's that could not only home in on a target but mob it in flight overcoming it's countermeasures by area saturation.

Discreet drone fighters like the predator and the teranis will have a limited life in favour of these ever small and more capable drone swarm's system's which are able to tie there system's together and fly in far more complex formation than human pilot's ever could and instead of a flight of two or three you will see flight's of hundred's and even thousand's like a flock of birds.

It is a branch of technology which may even (potentially) breath new life into the air craft carrier concept as a drone swarm delivery platform for re-usable drone technology's or long range drone delivery system's (were they would be air launched from the larger drone delivery system near to there target location).

Of course as there power/fuel to range ratio increases as technology expands even further not only will they get smaller and more discreet, cheaper as well but also have much longer duration so even the drone delivery idea has only a limited shelf life but as a human control facility it does still have merit.

You can imagine the reaction if in a hypothetical scenario China thinking it was one of the big boy's now suddenly found it's sky filled with hard to shoot down, impossible to catch micro drone swarm's that could destroy both it's ICBM's and it's air craft in minute's but it is not an impossible scenario and indeed one that would even worry the Russian's as they found there dead hand system virtually useless against such capability.


I do wonder though if this is like the old story of Frank Whittle and his jet engine and the old brass thinking it was not needed so the UK got it's jet fighter perhaps ten years later than it may have had, how long would the German war machine have lasted if the RAF top brass and Whitehall over here in the UK had been more forward sighted and leaped on the idea, not very long at all as once the German air superiority was removed they had to fight conventional and there blitz tactic's failed as was shown by the Russian fighter's destroying German tank formation's in Russia after the German's lost there air superiority.

If so you will see drones but they will remain slow in the implementation as both some in the military resist there uptake and the civilians whom are supposed to fund them argue about cost's as usual.

Then again in the US the NAVY has always looked into advanced technology's so they will quite likely surprise us if given sufficient funding.

a reply to: anzha

Interesting technology, but wouldn't they be vulnerable to electronic defences, like interrupting their comms and / or frying their electrical systems?

An enemy missile could probably fire off electronic countermeasures into the heart of the swarm and disable most or all of them at once.

Please add your thoughts to the existing thread.

Thank you.

Thread closed.