I’ve read about many instances of Houthi drone attacks and missiles being successfully intercepted by US warships. I have no doubt that these ships are capable of completely neutralizing these types of attacks in a vacuum… but given the cost disparity between the drones/missiles and the defense equipment used to stop them… what’s stopping the opposition from spamming so many at once that the ships can’t keep up?
Instead of repeated, futile attacks, what would happen if the opposition stock piled all of their resources and launched them at once, in waves, one right after the other?
Surely there must be some finite limit to the amount of defensive ammunition (not sure of the right term here) the ships are able to carry at sea.
Is it just a matter of the ships being so well equipped that any force capable of exhausting their supplies is simply impractical- even if the drones are pennies on the dollar in terms of comparative cost?
In: Engineering
It’s always been costlier to counter an attack than to launch it. “What happens if the attack is too big?” is a credible threat. It always will be. The only solution is to either be certain you have overwhelming force, or to be proactive and reduce your opponent’s capabilities until you do.
*But*, there’s a *lot* of defenses on our ships, and it’s going to take your drone a while to get to them. And, if a quadcopter with a surplus frag grenade *does* reach our ship, it’s not a huge deal.
Meanwhile, larger drones are easier to shoot down and considerably more expensive.
Either way, the scenario you describe is possible, but unlikely and I’m sure engineers are working on solving it before it becomes a problem.
No specific warfare knowledge here but I’d point out that a ship can move if the fire is heavier than they can handle and in the age of radar and satellite, the ship knows if artillery is moving into their area and it’s impossible to mount a “waves after waves” missile attacks.
Well we saw it in Ukraine and now the US is installing massive lasers on Destroyers to handle drones and other threats
If you are in range to launch huge waves of drones, you are in tactical missile or airstrike range. Especially if you have a trail of radar signatures going back to some origin.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS) is ludicrously effective against “close” threats.
My guess is the factor you’re not accounting for is reconnaissance and intelligence — massing enough people and weapons to launch that type of attack would be more easily spotted by intelligence, allowing the US or other regional power to either strike first or maneuver out of harms way.
Since these groups rely on staying spread out and hard to attack directly this would actually be in the US’s favor
depth of magazine is a major known weakness of ships. significant investment in lasers, high power microwave and railguns were meant to provide a solution. unfortunately, none of those have really worked out. lasers on ships is sorta working for counter drone, but it’s not hard to defend against, e.g. mirrored surface.
The entire world’s stage is watching what Ukraine are doing with their sea-drones. Because a tiny rowboat sized thing can sink something worth 3 towns spending to build.
The US Navy is working on a defensive / offensive drone program right now, called Replicator: https://www.diu.mil/replicator
Well, the next step of a counter offensive is neutralizing threats. Your question is basically “how long can one kick a beehive until they unleash the swarm?”. At some point any offensive body will either have counter measures to stop an attack and eventually neutralizing measures to prevent a further attack. The US has a pretty fucking big stick. They’re gonna swing it to stop being attacked but after being provoked they are gonna start smashing threats. This is basically “fuck around and find out”.
There isn’t anything stopping this, if the warring party can amass the numbers needed, they will get some through.
Soviet doctrine during my time in the Sixth fleet was to shoot massive amounts of anti ship missiles at the battle group, the anti air ships only had some many missiles, then it came down to close on defenses, which are also ammo limited.
Something will always leak through and if it gets a lucky hit, kaboom, you sunk my aircraft carrier.
Now with smaller, faster drones, they can take out ships with little stings, get enough of them.
Toss in the drone ships coming at you – it just comes down to numbers, and the rate of fire vs range/detection, Lots of factors to consider,
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