Russian defence against drone swarms

The current generation of swarms being envisaged by US/NATO are based on behaviourial models inspired by examples from the natural world. Foremost among these are the ways in which ‘social insects’ such as bees, ants and termites cooperate and orchestrate the division of labor among their respective ‘networks’as encapsulated by the so called ‘stigmergy‘ principle

Well that makes a lot of sense because we are totally helpless to the natural world and everyone knows that Soviet airspace has been repeatedly penetrated by bees and birds not to mention termites... NOT.

Pesticides have almost wiped out bees and ants would not do well if attacked by a TOS battalion... but if course if the US can produce trillions of drones they might have a chance... but they are themselves vulnerable to attack by much more conventional weapons that are cheaper and easier to use. So in effect they are developing attacks that can defeat a defence that is better than what they currently have... what they currently have will defeat their defences... so they will in effect be developing technologies a generation ahead of what Russia needs to defeat them and Russia will oblige because she wants to defend herself.

The two essential features required for swarming to work are connectivity and autonomy. Connectivity is required to facilitate the seamless coming together of drones that are distributed in a seemingly amorphous mass at the right moment. Also, with connectivity, drones can ‘aggregate’ and ‘disaggregate’, i.e. they can join or leave the swarm, as if one cure. One could even have a situation where a single drone might detach to get a closer look at a target and then either return or be used to carry out an attack, i.e. ad-hoc detachments for specific tasks from a swarm may be possible.

EMP turns them off... and a bee is a miracle of compact design... the size weapon payload a bee could carry for any distance would be tiny... you would need a large number of them to be effective in damaging a target... odds are that they will be rather bigger... more bird like... and with a small payload that will require the highest of accuracy to be effective with a payload likely less powerful than a hand grenade.

The control of drone swarms is done by using a decentralized planning control algorithm handling both stationary and moving obstacles, which owing to its decentralized nature is more resilient than centralized algorithms that have a single point of failure. However, in a decentralized algorithm each entity (drone) has only partial information of the operating environment and the other drones (for example, it can only see a few neighbors). The drones in a swarm therefore need to communicate with each other for information sharing and coordination of actions.

EMP takes them out enmass... if you want to protect them from EMP attack they will need to be bigger and heavier and less effective.

2. From a focus on individual platform survivability, the system moves towards swarm resiliency. As long as there are a minimum number of drones in terms of mission sufficiency, the swarm as a whole is resilient against attack.

Meaning they need to have enormous numbers to be effective relying on the fact that most air defences... especially in the west would rapidly run out of missiles and depth and be overwhelmed... they are hoping for the same with Russian defences... and of course they will be right because Russia simply can't defend every inch of Russian territory, but then the US would not be able to produce enough swarm drones... nor deliver them on site to get the needed numbers.

5. Swarms can saturate enemy defenses. However advanced contemporary air defence systems may be, they cannot handle so many threats at a time. Swarms can overwhelm enemy defenses, with ‘leakers’ getting through to neutralize the target.

The US was talking about swarm attacks in the late 1980s... to suggest the Russians have no answer is absurd... they are developing a range of solutions... there is never going to be one solution that always works, but as a bonus a lot of the solutions are dual purpose and can be used for other roles where they are outstandingly useful too... EMP weapons will work on all sorts of western electronic systems too and will make a very useful payload for some of their weapons... remember C4IR... one of those Cs is computers... EMP will make all western electronic equipment vulnerable to another form of attack... if they can perfect beam weapon models of their systems they might create a system to knock out western satellites in orbit without needing to launch a rocket from a MiG-31...

6. Swarms can perform distributed sensing and attack by dispersing assets over a wide area. A swarm can conduct distributed focused electronic attack, syncing up its electromagnetic signals to provide focused point jamming.

They could probably do all sorts of things... but then they need to transmit the information to something and lets face it... that will be targeted by a Zircon if it is close and a Bulava if it is further away.

Even assuming they don't fuck it up and they come up with capable systems that are cheap and easy to produce and have long range and wonderful payload capacity... it becomes an unusable weapon because Russia will just say you send a swarm to attack us and we will fucking nuke you because your swarms might disable our nuclear deterrent so we might as well use it before we lose it... so can these bees and birds take out ICBM warheads in space on their way to the US and EU?

In the 80s they were certain their carriers were invisible and any platform that managed to detect them would be destroyed leaving them like stealthy things that are invisible...

But in reality there are satellites going up all the time that can track carriers very easily... the radar and optical and IR signature of an aircraft carrier is pretty distinctive.

They are also adding to their satellite network too, but really the only carriers that matter are the ones within striking distance of Russia... which puts them well within range of ground based OTH radar and sensor equipment... aircraft carriers have no where to hide.

Not to say they are useless, but they are not the dominant ship they have been since WWII... the range of the aircraft made battleships redundant... well now they will need to rethink things... a navy is valuable as it gives world wide reach, and a navy needs aircraft to defend surface and subsurface vessels so carriers will be needed, but likely more air defence than land attack... much more a defense carrier than an aggressive attack one.

They are also adding to their satellite network too, but really the only carriers that matter are the ones within striking distance of Russia... which puts them well within range of ground based OTH radar and sensor equipment... aircraft carriers have no where to hide. wrote:

Russia needs a new global satellite system for ship detection. Legenda successor. Without it, it will be difficult to shoot targets beyond the horizon at 1000km. There is currently no successor to the Legend system.

If they are bigger and heavier why will they be less effective ?

Bigger and heavier means costs more to make, can carry fewer at a time, will be less in any swarm you generate, will be easier to detect both visually and electronically. Harder to deliver and require bigger platforms to deliver them. They will use more energy to move around with more drag which will reduce speed and range.

For instance China is employing a similar Swarm Drone strategy. Their drone of choice is a DJI built drone. Something similar to this

And of course Russia will be developing similar technology too, and my money would be on China and Russia doing a much better job because they know about making things simple enough to work in the field and cheap enough to mass produce in the enormous numbers needed.

Look at Metis-M1 and Javelin anti tank missiles. On paper the American weapon is vastly more capable... fire and forget... a simple choice really.

Except it is not that obvious... Javelin doesn't work on just any target... it needs to have a distinct IR signature for the mass produced IR seeker in the missile to get a lock, and you are not always going to get that.

If you can't get a lock then you have two rather slow ATGMs of similar range, with the Russian missile having better armour penetration, and costing a fraction of what the US missile costs. The Russian system can be fitted with a thermal sight so detection and engagement will be similar, but for the price of one Javelin missile you could probably buy 500 Metis missiles... the Javelins cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each, while Metis missiles cost about $5K each... so on a battlefield you can deploy 10 thousand Metis missiles or for the same price perhaps 1,000 Javelins.

In practical terms the difference is cost... in normal conflicts these missiles will be used against almost anything and everything... from a window in a building to a sniper in a tree, or MG position with sandbags, or a toyota truck with a HMG on the back and everything in between... none of which will care a jot whether it is hit by Metis or Javelin... in fact both missiles will likely be manually guided because locks on most targets are not reliable enough anyway.

Javelin is not a bad system.... it is just too expensive... in a few years with a digital video seeker chip that can see in IR and UV frequencies that costs a few dollars per sensor then it will be a good system, but for now it would make more sense to walk over to the taleban position and tell him through an interpreter that you are about to demolish the position he is hiding in with a half million dollar missile... would he accept $100K in cash to just go home and not fight any more... and I would bet more than half the time they would save $400K on that missile shot.

That aside, we cannot and should not judge how effective these systems are based on how effective they will be against Russia.

They don't really need them against anyone else... apart from Syria now....

Their attacks on countries are making those countries upgrade their defences and rendering attacks that used to work rather well impotent... they did the same with over prescribing antibiotics and are creating super bugs.

The amusing thing is that as I said before their development of these attack strategies will force China and Russia to do the same... Russia is already largely immune to their current attack systems and strategies, so when they start working on their own swarm systems and defences along with their hypersonic attack strategies and defences the west is going to be in trouble.

The west wasted all this time with stealth and ignored speed, now they are going for numbers... we shall see how it turns out, but look at UKSK launchers on Russian ships... they are going for numbers AND speed... and swarm technology was on Granit and Vulkan anti ship missiles in the late 1970s... it really isn't new... Zircon will already be part of a swarm...

It could take out major radar sites ahead of a swarm attack...

Probably against Russia they do not stand a chance, but US, NATO can use these Swarm Drones against Asia, African countries. They don't have the tech that Russia has. Consequently they will suffer.

Well of course the thing is that this will promote Russian air defence networks and IADS for a much wider range of customers... most of which right now would probably be vulnerable to conventional cruise missile attack... like most of Europe.

I rather suspect US/NATO will hand over such Swarm drone tech to various terrorist groups who can then carry out such attacks on the behalf of US/NATO.

Agree, they hand out Stingers and Javelins like they are lollies, but few terrorist groups could deliver a large enough drone swarm for it to be effective and as you probably already know the Russians have been working on detection and tracking systems to determine the origin of drone attacks and who they are communicating with... so they will end up handing inert samples of these drones to the Russians (after EMP effects) and also handing them an excuse to direct international attention at the west simply because no terrorist organisation could build these so called sophisticated micro drones with high tech swarm protocols... so local CIA and blackwater or whatever they are called now can be targeted for retaliation.

Russia needs a new global satellite system for ship detection. Legenda successor. Without it, it will be difficult to shoot targets beyond the horizon at 1000km. There is currently no successor to the Legend system.

You mean Liana which is being built up now and will consist of a system of advanced satellites for tracking ships and submarines all round the planet.

The only targets they actually care about are within range of Russia itself and their OTH radars would already detect them within 3-4K kms from Russian territory... which is plenty. Liana will enable them to track carriers anywhere on the planet when it is fully operational, but there is no real hurry at the moment... they are building up that capability.

The other issue is control... imagine the US makes a swarm based on red ants which are ruthless and are expanding north into the US because they are destroying existing ant colonies and everything else in their way... but they need to be able to control them... what happens if an enemy gets control and the swarm just attacks everything in its path.

The US has a history of testing on its own population... they sent vans around major US cities releasing flu virus from the exhaust system of the vehicle and then they monitored the local hospitals and health care centres to determine how it spread... how fast and in which directions...

They also tested the lethality of plutonium by injecting it into terminal patients... they claimed it was a potential cure... some signed up for it but many had no idea what was going on. They all died of course.... much quicker than they would have with no "treatment".

nty. Liana will enable them to track carriers anywhere on the planet when it is fully operational wrote:

But now Russia has only 3 satellites of this type? What coverage does it give? Is the OTH radar able to give accurate indications for anti-ship missiles?

But now Russia has only 3 satellites of this type? What coverage does it give? Is the OTH radar able to give accurate indications for anti-ship missiles?

There is only one ISS but it orbits the earth every 90 minutes... three satellites could be spaced to cover most of the northern hemisphere most of the time... when tracking carriers and subs you don't need to hover above them 24/7... they have a limited top speed and can't just sail in any direction they like most of the time... often they have somewhere to go so you know where they will be...

OTH radars are not tracking radars.... they are search radars that detect the presence and general location of threats and targets.

Russia doesn't have a lot of access to the sea but where it does it has things called ships which in peace time can spot enemy ships and ship groupings as well as airborne threats too.

We´re are soooooooooo off-topic

Quite right... will look for a suitable location for this discussion.

First of all cut the western bullshit, the russians aren't in the Ukraine, that is just Kiev excuses for poor performance and to get western support because they are not killing their own people for speaking Russian, they are fighting Russians.

Second what has this to do with taking out major radar sites as you quote me saying?

This is a case of the Ukraine trying to jam eastern Ukrainian UAVs and moving before they can shell the locations the jamming came from... and that is assuming they are even telling the truth... which is a stretch... why would they start now?

An aircraft carrier group consisting of several destroyers has a very powerful anti-aircraft defense. No one can compare with them. It is not known how much Cirkon is needed to neutralize any destroyer or aircraft carrier. Several rockets against several hundred anti-aircraft missiles?  
A group of aircraft carriers can go with several Virginia submarine that will detect and attack this frigate or other corvette before they realize that someone is following them. The US will have 50 Virginia-type ships, plus other units. It will be the largest nuclear submarine fleet in the world, which will also protect aircraft carrier teams. Destroying an aircraft carrier group is extremely difficult. Even for Russia and China.
OTH radars are deep in Russia and do not cover much of the oceans and seas in the north.
USA that still dominates the seas and oceans. Several Russian  frigates and corvette   with Cirkon and and several Mig-31K will not change their balance of power.
These Americans are idiots building aircraft carriers for USD 15 billion and a small Russian corvette is able to sink them. It's not that easy.

An aircraft carrier group consisting of several destroyers has a very powerful anti-aircraft defense. No one can compare with them. It is not known how much Cirkon is needed to neutralize any destroyer or aircraft carrier. Several rockets against several hundred anti-aircraft missiles?

Zircon moves at 3km/s and will be manouvering... many western radars don't have a refresh rate to even track that sort of target and will often mistake it for a string of different targets that are appearing and disappearing ...

A group of aircraft carriers can go with several Virginia submarine that will detect and attack this frigate or other corvette before they realize that someone is following them.

Even with four Virginias per carrier group, they can only be in one place at a time each... and if those Virginia open fire the Corvette can fire back with 91ER1 anti sub torpedos. Assuming each Virginia class SSN is in the north, south, east and west locations 1,000km away from the carrier, if the corvette approaches from the northeast or northwest or southwest or southeast those subs would be no where near the corvettes and would be in even less position to stop Zircon missiles than the F-18s would.

The US will have 50 Virginia-type ships, plus other units. It will be the largest nuclear submarine fleet in the world, which will also protect aircraft carrier teams. Destroying an aircraft carrier group is extremely difficult. Even for Russia and China.

They will need a minimum of 52 just to provide 4 subs per their 13 carrier groups and more for their marine carrier groups... that is tying up a lot of SSNs just to keep your ships safe.

Also keep in mind that the Russians in this scenario are only committing ONE CORVETTE... in the real world they would use a complete force including SSNs and SSGNs and aircraft too.

An Aircraft carrier greatly extends the detection and active defence range of any surface fleet and will be more essential in the future, not less... but they wont be 100K ton imperial destroyers like they are today, and their strike package will likely degrade and disappear, because missiles like Zircon and the weapons that come after it will be much much cheaper and more expendable than F-35s.

OTH radars are deep in Russia and do not cover much of the oceans and seas in the north.

OTH radars in Russia pretty much cover every approach including european airspace, arctic airspace, the middle east, asia and the pacific.

USA that still dominates the seas and oceans.

The US is still a big bully that buys and owns a lot of guns and is not afraid to use them... in fact prefers to use them instead of talking about things.

It has never dominated everywhere... that is just silly... look at how impotent they were when Russian troops pushed Georgian invaders out of South Ossetia.

Several Russian frigates and corvette with Cirkon and and several Mig-31K will not change their balance of power.

They already have.

BTW made worse by a 13 billion dollar barge called Ford... might be renamed the Flop perhaps...

These Americans are idiots building aircraft carriers for USD 15 billion and a small Russian corvette is able to sink them. It's not that easy.

Yeah, their problem is that they don't have a realistic view of war... after all these years of being the dominant military they began to believe their own bullshit... they are invincible and all their shit is perfect... Patriots knock down Scuds every day of the week, their tanks are super tanks that have never been defeated while the competitions tanks just blow up like bombs, and of course stealth means they wont even see us and our carriers are everywhere and yet nowhere... they can reach out and destroy anything but nothing can touch them because they can't find them or can't reach them.

The problem is that this was never actually true... there is no evidence of even a single Scud being shot down by a Patriot missile, and they fired on average about 32 Patriots to try to intercept those modified Scuds. Could argue they were never designed to attack high speed ballistic targets... which is perfectly fair... but doesn't excuse claims about it dealing with the Scud problem. Abrams tanks blow up just like any other tanks, and when their ammo gets hit they get destroyed even with their fancy armoured doors and blow out panels and other shit that is supposed to make them perfect and invincible. Stealth is costing more than it is worth. And carriers can be tracked on the internet... I am sure the Russians have all the resources they need to do even better than that.

They will make their own carriers, but they wont be spending anything like what the US is spending on theirs, and their purpose will be to protect the Russian navy from air attack while away from Russian land airpowers reach.

And yes, manouvering hypersonic missiles will be a problem for all Russian ships too, but they will be getting rather more time to develop weapons and tactics to reduce the problem.

They will also not be ass holes and pick fights with countries they have no business with like the US does.

And yes of course the Americans are idiots... the current batch are certifiably stupid... they have squandered the so called peace dividend and they made China and Russia the bad guys. They could have been friendly about it... Russia and China would have grown but they could have grown with them too... by using their economic power to damage and stifle the growth of rival countries economies they seriously have weakened their own status and condition... Russia has been calling for countries to not trade in US dollars because it costs more and hugely benefits the US and gives them more power than they deserve.

With the US using its wealth and power as weapons has led to all sorts of countries actively looking for alternatives because they will certainly need them if they manage to get on Americas shit list... the US has been so unpredictable even Micron mentioned the US as a reason that the EU needs an independent army... imagine that 30 years ago?

And it wouldn't be so bad for the US if they had the highest living standard in the world with shining clean new cities and high speed roads and high speed rail links and efficient air networks... but it seems they don't. The focus was on making the rich much richer and fuck everyone else... and that is what they have achieved.

At such high speed (3km/s) manoeuvring is not possible.

So there is no such thing as a MIRV because they travel at more than twice that speed but you are saying reentry vehicles from ICBMs and SLBMs can't manouver because they are moving too fast to be able to?

Interesting because that would mean S-500 can't be very scary because its missiles will likely be moving at that sort of speed too but you say they can't manouver, which means they wont be able to intercept anything at all... RIGHT.

Patriot was not a major success during the first Gulf War, but we never fired 32 Patriot missiles to intercept one Scud. Where do you get such ridiculous figures from ?

I remember the American News reports saying the Patriots were defeating modified Scuds left right and centre... and I didn't say they fired 32 Patriot missiles to intercept each scud because there is no evidence even a single scud was successfully intercepted. I said an average of 32 Patriots were fired at each Scud they tried to engage... which is not really that shocking... how many SA-2s were the US reporting the North Vietnamese were firing at US aircraft during that conflict?

Standard firing doctrine was on average four Patriots should be launched at each incoming Scud. Some Patriots were fired to engage the Scud and the rest would engage the debris. The max number of Scuds launched by Iraq on a single day was 4. Patriot batteries in the area launched 26 missiles (8 at the first Scud and 6 at each that followed) recording kills against all targets.

The modified Scuds we are talking about were modified to increase their range, which increased their speed, so they were falling on their targets at much higher speeds than the design was built for and they naturally started to break up on approach to the target. Standard firing doctrine doesn't come in to it when you are using a weapon against a target it was never designed to engage... they might fire 4 missiles at a bomber, but against an incoming ballistic missile they keep firing missiles while they can to try to maximise their chances of a kill.

Reviews of the evidence show when the Scuds broke up most of the Patriots went for the largest pieces... the fuel tanks and the engines... but even if they went for the warheads the fusing of the patriots and their design to hit manned aircraft meant even if they went for a warhead they wouldn't hit it with any fragments because the warhead was moving too fast and the fragments wouldn't "catch up".

That is why they paid the Russians to buy an S-300V battery, though they didn't get all the bits and pieces of course, but the learned enough to create the PAC-3, which is just a Patriot dedicated to shooting down ballistic targets like the Scud or slightly faster targets like that.

The Russians used the money to upgrade it to S-300VM or Antei-2500, and then later versions like the S-300V4 they use now.

The PAC-3 is a dedicated ATBM system with little anti aircraft or anti cruise missile capability.

As Turkeys interest and purchase choices proves the S-400 is better.

And why not, the Soviets had a lot of battlefield ballistic weapons, so of course they would develop ways of defending from those threats too... just like their navy also had supersonic anti ship missiles and their anti missile defence reflects that with lots of CIWS systems on each vessel.

con moves at 3km/s and will be manouvering... many western radars don't have a refresh rate to even track that sort of target and will often mistake it for a string of different targets that are appearing and disappearing ... wrote:

Zircon flies at 2.8 km / s. This is probably the maximum speed, similar to Kindżal 10M. These missiles certainly do not fly at full speed during the entire flight
AEGIS radars are able to track faster targets. Ballistic missiles flying up to 6 km / s.