Russia for sure but why would China take such an active position?

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won't happen for now, drones are generally too slow for that. Unless it's stationary/on the ground. Ukrainians did manage to shoot down 2 russian KA-52 helicopters mid-flight last week though.

We already have rocket powered autonomous drones capable of destroying fighter planes, they're called missiles.

There US has more then 600 of those with more coming. Losing one is insignificant.

What else would anyone expect from a combative elderly person? It's always "I don't need help!" as they continually find something new to fuck up. The only difference here is there were a bunch of fools who thought it was a good idea to put this type of person in charge of our country instead of forcing him into a memory care home.

That means it's exactly from Zelensky that he wants help.

Narcissism-speak is easy, once you have figured them out.

For example if they accuse others of something, that means they have done exactly what they are accusing others of.

The usual thing that most of us do is not do things that make other folks want to blow our vehicles up. That's how I've avoided getting my stuff blown up, at least.

Everything else is a half measure.

This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM With a software update to track drones. They can hit birds and mortars, they can take out a drone.

Or this: https://www.epirusinc.com/electronic-warfare if you think the C-RAM would get saturated. Whether the weather balloon drones move at night is irrelevant if you stop the last move they need to make.

Militaries have been defending themselves against attacks for as long as they've been around. Drones will change the way they fight a little, but it isn't going to be some magic pill that modern militaries can't adapt to. Hiding an explosive and then blowing it up when your target is nearby? That's almost the same concept as assassinating someone with a car bomb. Putting it in an Amazon box and letting the drone go the final distance changes things a little, but militaries and governments were able to assassinate people remotely before drones.

Swarming attacks with cheap munitions? Saturating an enemy's defenses has been a thing at least since the time of the English Longbow. The longbow regiments would all shoot at the same time, and while you could dodge one arrow it was hard to dodge all of them.

Drones are new and will take some adapting to. If a military refuses to change then it probably will be disadvantaged. But the US military has been buying and testing drones for a while, and is already undergoing the adaptation. As it better understands cheap drones for offense, it necessarily gains a better understanding of what is needed for defense.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for the US attacking Iran. All I'm saying is that the US military is not about to lose the conflict because of this particular tactic.

Something very similar to this was pulled of by Ukraine last year

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb

> What’s the counter to that?

In the case of the AWS scenario someone driving by who decides to nick it?

Or the courier puts the box down upside down?

Just by the way is a package delivery company going to be willing to deliver a package to an abandoned lot?

Your solar panel equipped, "rest and recharge" idea is interesting.

I think going low-tech and deploy netting around critical things would be the most effective. Sure they are a pain but they'll catch drones before they reach any targets.

Laser turrets near highest-value targets?

It becomes defense in depth though, perimeter defense is no longer enough. Thats kinda new.

Ironically, Ukraine sort of did this to Russia and destroyed several long range strategic nuclear bombers.

Automatic turret-mounted anti-air shotguns. Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.

I bet you could do aiming and firing in less than 0.1 seconds with nearly 100% accuracy in the 50 meter range which would enable ~10 destroyed drones per unit if the drones are going 150 km/h.

Shotgun pellets are also basically entirely safe when shot into the air as they have low falling velocity enabling usage when shooting over populated areas.

Mandatory package screenings to detect explosives? I don't know if that's technically feasible at scale, or if that's already implemented (and I'd prefer not to ask that kind of question to Google/ChatGPT)

I would imagine the counter is computer vision defense systems that cover an entire base. And then eventually infrastructure.

And then all drones tracked by satellite so any drone that doesnt show up gets shot down anywhere over a large geographic area.

Using cheaper drones to hunt down expensive drones.

Or of course, just eagles.

I feel like this was a plot/subplot of either Diamond Age or one of the Gibson novels

The counter to this and more such scenarios is letting the world alone

Park your aircraft in hangars. And hope you hid your tracks well enough once the generals start eyeing their almost expired bunker busters with a twinkle in their eye

Customs inspection. An xray paired with some ai.

But why go through all that when you can just have someone in the country launch it, or drop it off?

1-10 million drones. At $400 a pop that’s $400,000,000-$4,000,000,000. A lot to throw at a single attack when you don’t actually know what defenses are in place. Maybe there is an EMP. Are you willing to spend a billion dollars to find out, while also murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians?

And these are either autonomous drones (more expensive?), or fpv with the fiber optic line out the back - either way you have to get them in range without being detected somehow.

In short, i think this is an unrealistic scenario - fun to imagine as a horror-sci-fi idea but unlikely to be deployed. Just one opinion.

Right now one of the limits is just controlling that many let along sourcing it. Putting that many actively controlled drones in one area at once and you'll swamp the bandwidth.

Aren't drones quite short-ranged, especially when carrying a payload?

>"1-10 million drones at once"

get real please.