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By now, most everyone has forgotten about the war. It's still going on now, still killing probably 200-300 men a day, every day. Neither party wants to end it so, it's expected -by war nerds who follow it in detail- to go on until 2027..
Not that much has changed, it's still largely a war of attrition, though most killing is now done by FPV drone and artillery is now less than half of casualties. (at least for Russians it's true. Last I checked, <5% were by small arms).
There's a few new things, but one development itself is noteworthy. Both for what it says about the West, and for the prospects for the West. Geran-2 (Shahed-136, 'Dorito') is an originally Iranian drone, a very cheap
$50k marginal cost two-stroke piston engine powered kamikaze drone(or a particularly shitty cruise missile). Russians have modified it and are now producing it wholly indigenously, except for the engines that are imported from China. As you can see in this video, in which an infantry ammunition dump, probably near the front, gets hit by one.Russia is now producing and using up to 200 a day, with Zelensky saying it might go up to 500 a day. Why is this a big problem? It's been upgraded to fly high, so you can't take them down with machineguns, but need guided munitions of really big flak guns - 35mm, 40mm, 57mm- or use planes. When they flew at a low altitude, Ukraine used to shoot them down with .50 machineguns from trucks.
Now it's diving on targets from 3km, so unless there's a very brave gunner on the spot, a .50 won't help you. There are variants with a datalink that can have a target assigned while they're flying. Here's Ukrainians talking about a drone that has been 'circling the town for 90 minutes'. (endurance is 5 hours).
Despite Russians having telegraphed this move (increased production) since the very start, West doesn't seem to have prepared in the slightest. There's no new cheap missile to take them down, nobody is building cheap pulsejet drones that can catch up & blow them up. Nobody was far-sighted enough to modify a 100 high-performance trainers with gun pods and fire control to allow shooting these down. Even the thoroughly obsolete A-10 Warthogs would serve great as drone interceptors, hundreds of kilometers from the front, finally putting that cannon in use somewhere. Even though right now they depend on GPS systems for accuracy, no one's figured out a way to jam them either. I thought the West was supposed to be innovative? Russia engages in a series of dead simple moves, doesn't even keep it secret, and the West does.. nothing?
Ukraine kept shooting expensive, high-performance missiles like Piorun or Stinger ($300k) at these till it ran out. Total production of Piorun missile is only 1000 a year, Stingers.. are in very limited production. So.. what now?
As total Russian cruise/ballistic missile production of all types is only 20 a day (contrast with the 80 a year Tomahawk production), an additional 200 strikes with 90 kg of HE to a range of 1000 km matter quite a lot. Between informers, long-range recon drones and so on, this could make front-line logistics situation of Ukraine even worse and even complicate frontline drone supply, as with 200 a day, drone workshops that get snitched on can get bombed. And while a 90 kilogram bomb is pretty bad, it's not going to take down an entire block of buildings like the half-ton cruise missiles, so even workshops in apartments blocks could end up on the target list.
The prospects are ..bad . We know from WW2 that jet engines can be cheaper to produce than piston engines. In the eventuality that Chinese develop a copy of a cheap drone jet engine (2 kN should push it to ~600 kph), one that currently sells for $70k, or make something like this at a lower cost, Russians could end up having a huge stocks of fairly cheap and capable cruise missiles. Unless Europeans wake up and develop an affordable counter- that'd be enough to deter European response to a Baltic occupations, as the drones themselves would exhaust stocks of European air-air missiles in a week and the air war would be unwinnable as dismantling Russian air defences would take far longer than it'd take for Russia to blow up all military objects within 800 km of the border.
Realistically, Geran-2 is not the most credible threat. It's big, slow and loud, so you don't really need radars or AA missiles to counter them. Flak can shoot them down and acoustic or optical targeting is sufficient. Even Ukraine can protect most of its military infrastructure and the bulk of its dual-use critical infrastructure with sufficient countermeasures. If you can resist the voices of populists demanding that every single flying bomb over the centers of population has to be shot down no matter the cost, you don't really need to worry about them.
You didn't even read his comment.
They're flying them high specifically to make shooting them down with guns hard.
The amount of computerized heavy flak systems to cover a country the size of Ukraine (let alone the amount of gunners you'd need to train and sustain) is profoundly cost and logistics prohibitive.
If this worked, why aren't they doing this already instead of using expensive interceptors and then running out and asking for more.
Of course I did. Like @No_one correctly understood, I meant point defenses that shoot the drones down as they dive at the target. You can't cover a country the size of Ukraine, but you can protect the parts of your infrastructure that you can't just move underground or at least into a forest.
The interceptors are there mainly for cruise and ballistic missiles.
Ukraine has ..about 40 Gepard systems, I think. Maybe in total 60 high performance point defense systems. Definitely not enough to cover all targets of military importance around the country.
Gepards are not the only things that can shoot down drones. Tunguska is not exactly a cutting-edge product (neither is Gepard), but it works.
I'm not sure how many they have and what's the spare parts situation there.
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It flies at 3.500 meters. Flak at 35mm barely gets up there. Horizontal range to engage Gerans at cruise altitude with 35mm is maybe 1 km.
They're planning out routes all across Ukraine. It's much faster than a car. There's no way to realistically counter them from the ground unless you have massive amounts of accurate flak. Germany theoretically has 400 Gepard flak vehicles. Yeah, had they started upgrading them with modern electronics (I think it was 1970s equipment) back in '22, around now Ukraine would be able to create a 'barrier' 500 km long against Gerans. Or maybe 800, if we assume 2 kilometers horizontal range. They didn't - the 400 of so obsolete Gepards are sitting somewhere, waiting to be scrapped.
You can defend point targets if you put multiple flak systems on them. (and nobody tries something funny like having 20 dive at once etc.
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I read this sentence, and my first thought was: which war? Israel-Gaza? Israel-Iran? Syrian civil war? Or (as it turned out) Russia-Ukraine?
You might have wanted to be more specific — or at least give an explanation why, out of all those ongoing conflicts, Russia-Ukraine is the war.
Or Sudan, or Myanmar
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Israel-Gaza aren't waging war, and neither is Israel-Iran.
Is this you saying that Hamas doesn't represent Gaza, that without statehood Gaza can't be considered a political entity capable of international relationships such as existing in a state of war, that it's only a wider aspect of Israel's war against Iran due to Hamas being a proxy (unlikely, given that you state Israel-Iran is not a war), or that the war is so one-sided that it hardly counts despite Hamas's best efforts to put up a fight?
It's a profoundly uninteresting, predictable and depressing semitic squabble that doesn't involve continuous high-intensity ground combat between armies. In short, it's not actually a war.
Did our war in Afghanistan involve "continuous high-intensity ground combat between armies"? For that matter, how about the Yugoslav wars?
I don't think it was a real war. More like police action / counterinsurgency operation.
Yugoslavia.. there was a fair bit of pitched combat there, no?
Pitched, yes, but would you consider those fighting "armies" — particularly if you contrast "insurgencies" as something distinct, as your comment applies.
In any event, you seem to have a pretty narrow and idiosyncratic definition of what constitutes "a real war"; one which, it seems to me, most people do not share.
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Israel and Iran seem to at least have stopped shooting at each other for the moment, but Israel and Gaza are still going at it.
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It was much more or a Current Thing than the other ones. You are allowed to not give a hoot about them, but Europe was in a COVID-tier psychosis at the beginning of Russia-Ukraine.
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Pretty sure they're using GLONASS, the Russian version of GPS.
At the end of the day war is mostly about mass. If there's broad technological and political parity (not a colonial stomp or a guerilla war), then it's about numbers. How can a European NATO of over 600 million lose to a Russia of 140 million? What level of unpreparedness and inexperience can counter 4:1 in numbers? And they have the defender's advantage too.
If Russia can quickly make lots of cheap jet drones, so can Europe. Anything Russia can do, Europe can replicate. The asymmetry is this: just as Russia can hammer Ukraine down in attritional fighting after early reverses, so can Europe to Russia.
Only if there's a political failure, if the whole edifice just implodes as the Turks nope out, the Serbs and Hungarians decide it's not their war, if Britain and France won't really use nukes to defend Polish or German territory... then Europe loses. But so long as they're united they can fight on to victory, if only by drowning Russia in men. The US need not even show up IMO.
Let the Gerans fly, let the Oreshniks blow up Patriot batteries, let the T-90Ms thrust into the Baltics, let the Russians run wild for 6 months. They've got a huge front to man from Finland to the Caucasus. They'll be hemmed in at sea. They'll still be facing vast reserves of wealth and manpower, a foe with time on his side and talent to spare. At the end of a long attritional war they'll have to fall back on their strategic nuclear forces to broker a peace.
I don't buy that they'd risk a war with NATO unless China suplexes the US in Asia, at which point we all have much bigger concerns.
Modern chips use every single satellite out there to calculate position. They probably use something similar, possibly improved to be jamming resistant.
Europe can't even supply the simplest, WW1 piece of technology Ukraine needs: artillery ammunition. We are on year 3.5 of an artillery war. Despite having what, 50x the GDP, Ukraine could theoretically get less than half of what Russia makes.
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/04/22/germanys-new-plant-to-flood-nato-with-350k-artillery-shells/
The French army allegedly told Macron to go hang after he floated the idea of sending them into Ukraine, just as 'peacekeepers'. You know, not 'on the front' just station them around key strategic areas where they'd be getting shot at with Russian missiles. (I'll include the translated article in a reply)
Talent? Firstly, Russians would say they don't care about Germany/Poland, and they aren't South-Africa tier idiots who would say "just not yet". And maybe they'd be even correct, what Russians really care about is Americans out and being able to deal with Europe on a country basis. Even if conquest were possible (theoretically) it'd not be worth it - mass mobilization isn't what Russian citizens want, China wouldn't want it either.
As to ...what talent? NATO, the organisation, basically exists as sinecures for officers. European armies are small and have zero experience with modern warfare and not much critical equipment. No vast reserves of artillery. Shortages of air-defense missiles. Drone components would have to come from China, too.
Nick, 30 ans is not willing to let himself be conscripted by the million by governments he know doesn't care about him one iota and sent to the eastern front. Do you think all the young 'citizens' of immigrant origins who don't care about Europe one bit would let themselves be conscripted by the million, without starting to chimp?
Also, under ideal conditions- no pesky politicking, no sabotage by the courts, no foreign interference and vast reserves of veterans officers, it still took Germany what, 8 years to return from a small professional force to a large conscript army.
Not sure they'd want to take the Baltics, but I'd not rule it out either. They really hate them, Balt elites hate them back and are very keen on anti-Russian agitation, militarily it's doable and hey, it's not like the younger population of Baltics wouldn't just emigrate.
That US bows out or gets defeated in East Asia is likely. If they couldn't take on Houthis and convincingly win, what hope is there against Chinese?.
US Navy isn't ready to fight a missile-heavy war against China, near Chinese coasts. Aircraft carriers are of little help there. It'd need a lot more missile platforms and a lot more missiles. Both are in short supply.
How hard can it be to conscript these migrants? The US conscripted blacks in ww2, despite an extensive segregation regime and discrimination... Just blare war propaganda about how the enemy is subhuman nazi-commie orcs looking to rape and murder everyone you love. Go out on the street and grab them, draft them. That's what the Ukrainians do and it works out for them despite horrific casualties. The real problem is that the migrants aren't good at fighting compared to Europeans or Russians. One Russian brigade could've kept Assad in power, tiny Russian forces easily coup African nations: the MENA riff-raff are no match for European troops,. Nevertheless, if the Ukrainian population pool were 500 million rather than 20-30 million, I can't see how they could possibly lose the war save nuclear escalation.
The Ukrainians surely know their govt is grossly corrupt and doesn't care about them, sending them on pointless cross-river incursions, defending random towns to the last man for political reasons. Yet they fight on.
However, I admit that if the political front collapses then Europe does lose.
But if they go in on the Baltics and NATO gives up then NATO is a complete joke, they're dispensed to the cuck chair of history. Poland would be on their own. Germany would be on their own. And only then would they truly be in danger because Poland or Germany alone are no match for Russia. Surely you know how much the 'Putin Soviet Empire Imperialist Expansion Warstarter' crowd howls now, they'd be screeching and wailing if Putin did go in on the Baltics. Their frame is already dominant in elite circles and would only be further strengthened by an invasion. Taking Putin's word that he won't go further would be too much of a humiliation for these people.
The industrial capacity Europe retains is still considerably more than Russia in terms of machine tools, steel and especially high-tech industries. And let's remember that this is still Europe, these are the people who conquered almost all of the world. Even appallingly misled there's still latent competence on the continent. There isn't so much in the way of artillery but the raw fundamentals are just superior to Russia. A scale-based advantage beats a time-based advantage in a long war. European armies are small? They'll learn and grow in battle like America in WW2, like Ukraine and Russia today. They have some 2 million professional soldiers!
The US may well lose in Asia but at that point it's a new world order and all bets are off, NATO may well disintegrate or we see full WW3 or something else.
Yeah but recent immigrants are very literally mobile towards wherever suits them and know the right buttons to press in terms of media representation. Where was this hypothetical black American conscript going to bail off to? Europe was a complete mess at the time, people were fundamentally far less mobile.
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In WW2, US largely used blacks in non-combat roles. The few combat units that existed were a very mixed bag. Also performed quite badly, at least the infantry division in Italy. US also suffered low overall casualties. In Vietnam, US casualties overall were miniscule (by European war standards) and yet there was quite a lot of popular discontent around the draft.
And? That's the predictable outcome. What else can you say about current EU leadership except that they're stupid cucks?
They let themselves be signed up for the American plan of showing Russia who is who in Ukraine. That plane was based on the assumptions Russians have the same level of agency as pudding.
Well, now it's years later and Ukraine still isn't getting enough weapons, European governments are ever more distrusted by the population, half of Germany's welfare goes to foreigners. In short, these people are cucks and their countries rightfully belong in the 'cuck chair of history' until the regimes are overthrown and unfucked. Welfare state over, migrants gone, retirees half starving. Who has the will to do that? Nobody. (but I'm a pessimist)
Despite knowing since at least 2020 that there'd be war, the same governments haven't done anything to secure popular support such as getting rid of the migrants. Iran and Pakistan can do mass deportations, but France or Germany can't. Trust in government in Germany is at an all time post-1950 low.
No, they aren't. They are the retarded liberal grandchildren of people who weren't even sure conquering the world was a good idea.
There won't be a 'full WW3' because even as bad as US getting kicked out of East Asia could be-and I suspect it'll happen gently, in a 'face-saving' way - a total nuclear exchange is way, way worse. Worst case if it loses hegemon status, Americans are losing at 1-2 decades of very shitty politics and economics.
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Translated article from Marianne on Macron's troop proposal: https://archive.is/u1j76#selection-3005.0-3323.65
By refusing to rule out sending troops to Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has triggered an uproar across Europe and earned a rebuke from the United States. Several French officers, speaking to Marianne on condition of anonymity, say they were “knocked sideways.” “Let’s not kid ourselves: against the Russians we’re a cheer-leading squad!” scoffs a senior officer, convinced that dispatching French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “unreasonable.” At the Élysée, the stance is unapologetic: “The President wanted to send a strong signal,” says an adviser, describing the wording as “carefully measured and calibrated.”
At the Ministry for the Armed Forces, those close to Sébastien Lecornu defend the president’s wording: “The state of Ukrainian forces is deeply worrying. The president’s remarks are meant to jolt everyone and show we’re at a turning point.” How did we get here? Several classified defence reports, seen by Marianne, speak of a “critical situation.” Here are the three key findings—far removed from official talking-points.
Finding 1: A Ukrainian military victory is now impossible.
For months European chancelleries clung to the hope that Kyiv’s 2023 spring counter-offensive, backed by Western kit, would push the Russian army all the way back to Moscow. After-action reviews written this autumn are damning. “It gradually bogged down in mud and blood and achieved no strategic gains,” states one confidential defence report on the “failure of the Ukrainian offensive.”
The planning—drawn up in Kyiv and Western headquarters—proved “disastrous.” “Planners assumed that once the first Russian defensive belts were breached the whole front would collapse … These crucial preliminary phases ignored the enemy’s moral strength on the defensive: that is, the Russian soldier’s determination to cling to the ground,” the report notes, calling Western planning a “bankruptcy.” Another lesson is the poor training of Ukrainian soldiers and NCOs: “Newly formed brigades existed mostly on paper” and training never lasted more than three weeks. Lacking cadres and a critical mass of veterans, these “Year-Two soldiers” were thrown against a Russian fortification line that turned out to be impregnable. With no air support, a mish-mash of Western kit inferior to old Soviet gear (“obsolete, easy to maintain, usable in degraded mode,” says the report), Ukrainian troops had no chance of breaking through.
Add to that “Russia’s overwhelming dominance in electronic warfare, crippling Ukrainian drone use and command systems.” Today, “the Russian army is the tactical and technical benchmark for conceiving and executing defensive operations,” the report concludes. Not only does Moscow have the heavy engineer kit to build defensive works—“almost completely absent on the Ukrainian side, and impossible for the West to supply quickly”—but the 1,200-km front, known as the Surovikin Line, is mined on a colossal scale (7,000 km of mines). Another observation: “The Russians have also managed their reserve force to ensure operational endurance.” According to the document, Moscow reinforces units before they are exhausted, mixes recruits with seasoned troops, gives regular rear-area rest periods—and “has always maintained a coherent force pool to handle the unexpected.” Far from the Western cliché of a Russian army mindlessly feeding men into the meat-grinder… “To date, the Ukrainian general staff lacks a critical mass of ground forces capable of combined-arms manoeuvre at corps level able to challenge their Russian counterparts and break the defensive line,” the classified report concludes, warning that “the gravest analytical and judgement error would be to keep looking for exclusively military solutions to end the fighting.” A French senior officer sums up: “Looking at the forces on the ground, it’s clear Ukraine cannot win this war militarily.”
Finding 2: Kyiv has been forced onto the defensive.
The conflict entered a critical phase in December. According to our military sources in Paris, the Ukrainian army has been compelled to go on the defensive. “The combat motivation of Ukrainian soldiers is deeply affected,” notes a 2024 outlook report. “Zelensky needs 35,000 men a month; he is not recruiting half that, while Putin can draw on 30,000 volunteers each month,” says an officer just back from Kyiv. The balance of materiel is just as lopsided: the failed 2023 offensive “tactically destroyed” half of Kyiv’s 12 combat brigades. Western aid has never been lower. It is therefore clear no Ukrainian offensive can be mounted this year. “The West can ship 3-D printers to make drones or loitering munitions, but it can’t print soldiers,” the report notes. “Given the situation, the idea has been floated to reinforce the Ukrainian army not with fighters but with support troops in the rear, freeing Ukrainian soldiers for the front,” admits a senior officer, confirming a “quiet build-up” of Western troops in civilian clothes. Even if two American rail-cars—likely used by the CIA—are attached to the daily train from Poland to Kyiv, the West only half-admits the presence of special forces in Ukraine. “Besides the Americans, who let the New York Times visit a CIA camp, there are plenty of Brits,” says a military source, who does not deny the presence of French special forces— notably combat swimmers on training missions…
Finding 3: The risk of a Russian breakthrough is real.
This is the latest lesson from the Ukrainian front that gives French observers cold sweats. On 17 February Kyiv had to abandon the city of Avdiivka, north of Donetsk, until then a fortified bastion. “It was both the heart and the symbol of Ukrainian resistance in Russian-speaking Donbas,” notes a report on the “Battle of Avdiivka,” drawing a series of damning lessons. “The Russians changed their modus operandi, compartmentalising the city and, above all, using glide bombs on a large scale for the first time,” the document states. Whereas a 155 mm artillery shell carries 7 kg of explosive, a glide bomb delivers 200–700 kg and can pierce more than 2 m of reinforced concrete—hell for Ukrainian defences, which reportedly lost over 1,000 men a day. Moreover, the Russians now fit small-arms suppressors to foil acoustic detection on the battlefield. “The decision to withdraw Ukrainian forces came as a surprise,” the report notes, highlighting “its suddenness and lack of preparation,” raising fears it was “imposed on, rather than decided by, the Ukrainian command,” hinting at the start of a rout. “The Ukrainian armed forces have just shown tactically that they lack the human and material capacity… to hold a sector of the front under sustained enemy pressure,” the document continues. “The Ukrainian failure at Avdiivka shows that, despite the emergency dispatch of an ‘elite’ brigade—the 3rd Air Assault Azov Brigade—Kyiv is unable to shore up a collapsing sector locally,” the report warns. The art of “Maskovkira” What will the Russians do with this tactical success? Continue the current pattern of “nibbling and slow erosion” along the whole front, or push for a deep breakthrough? “The terrain behind Avdiivka allows it,” the recent document notes, adding that Western sources tend to “underestimate” the Russians, masters of “Maskovkira”—the practice of “appearing weak when you are strong.” According to this analysis, after two years of war Russian forces have demonstrated the ability to “develop operational endurance” enabling them to wage “a long, slow, high-intensity war based on the continuous attrition of the Ukrainian army.” A sobering conclusion for what comes next. Is this new strategic landscape—where the Russian army seems dominant and the Ukrainian army exhausted—what prompted Emmanuel Macron, “dynamically” as he put it, to consider sending troops? A realistic perspective given the current operational situation, described as “critical” by observers on the ground. “But what may look realistic from a strictly tactical standpoint can prove unrealistic from a strategic and diplomatic one,” sighs a French senior officer.
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Eventually lasers will render this obsolete again, I suppose.
Lasers suffer from range issues in air to a great degree. Close to the ground power delivered falls with square of distance. So keeping the sky clear from 20 kilometers is really, really difficult even if you can track the target flawlessly and it'd be extremely costly even now. Not realistic.
I've heard both sides are reporting some success with some adapted laser welding units against FPVs, which aren't exactly sturdy and at 200m it might work. These units are now cheap ~$5000, but require a power supply.
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Range issues, power issues, and the fact reflective/ablative coating hasn't even been explored yet makes me bearish on lasers.
The USA's most recent DEM-SHORAD trial got sent back to the drawing board, if I remember correctly
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I'm somewhat surprised I haven't seen anyone develop a miniature-CIWS to counter drones yet. Something like a small phased array radar paired with a 22LR (lol) minigun (you don't want to have to manually cycle it when it misfires) at a price point that allows "slap one on every vehicle larger than a pickup truck". Nothing about the small quadcopter drones has enough redundancy to take much of a hit, it seems (and I doubt drone-dropped explosives do either), so I doubt it would take much firepower. Speed, precision, accuracy, and attentiveness are all problems that can be solved mechanically (see the CIWS). An effective range of even 100m would at least protect a moderate-value mobile asset pretty well.
This sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting lol
True, but the idea of low-cost accurate cruise missiles was too much to ask for a couple decades ago. I don't see a reason the counter technologies (and current FPV drones seem weak to hard counters) can't see a similar volume production tradeoff.
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Small phased array radar is going to bring down thunder and fire on you. If you're spewing out EM emissions on the front lines of a modern battlefield you're going to be in trouble. Better off with electro-optical or infra-red, something passive.
What if they come in like a flock, 5 or 10 or 20 from multiple angles to overwhelm the turret? I've seen videos of that happening against even these up-armoured, orky looking vehicles. They achieve mission-kill eventually, then the crew have to flee because they're stuck. Then they die. 5 or 10 or 20 FPV drones won't cost that much compared to the minigun CIWS integration, especially if AI guided. And the drones kill not just the CIWS but the vehicle as well.
LPI radar exists, but if drones are the specific concern you could just listen acoustically (or IR) to only turn it on when it's actually necessary to emit. Drones are loud.
Lidar (leveraging self-driving car sensors) might also be worth considering, but could still be prone to detection.
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For now, you could go with 80 GHz automotive radars. Extremely short range, most current military radar equipment won't detect those ultra high frequencies, and it always could just be a newer Mercedes on adaptive cruise control.
Also, the sensors are cheap (because automotive sensors are a cut-throat business) completely integrated packages (even the phased antenna array needs to be directly on-chip), and at that frequency it's trivial to not only detect the quadcopter, you detect every single moving blade of its propellers, and the rounds you're shooting at it.
The bigger issue is also just that if your countermeasure is close range CIWS you're not in a great spot to begin with. That's deep in the survivability onion.
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That's why they fly them high up now
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There is actually, the APKWS laser-guided rocket, which has already been used by US fighters to take down Geran-type weapons.
A single F-15 can carry fifty of these, [edit: sorry, at least 42, although I'm sure larger pods could be introduced] introducing video game ammo logic to real life and allowing a squadron on station can defend a vast territory from even hundreds of Gerans pretty easily and more effectively than static air defenses (Gerans are slow and ~easy to detect if they are flying at 3km). At somewhere around $20 grand it trades nicely in cost with a $70,000 cruise missile.
Ukraine can't use this particularly effectively because it has been unable to degrade Russian air defenses and fighter coverage (and in fact I wonder if Russia modified their Gerans to fly at higher altitudes specifically to deny fighter interceptors ground clutter cover). NATO's air forces and capability to degrade air defenses are vastly superior to Ukraine's, so the APKWS is a more viable defense strategy for them.
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People have often claimed that a wunderwaffe would soon massively shift the tide of the war, and they've been wrong every time in this conflict so far. Some like HIMARs have legitimately moved the needle, but it wasn't a revolution, just a needle-change that was soon adapted to (with some minor costs associated with the adaptation).
I haven't heard Perun talking about this much and he's been a pretty good barometer for the tempo of the war so far. He actually had a video out recently that went into the use of drones as anti-drone weapons, so I don't see why those couldn't be adapted to this.
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