Air Support in a Backpack: The Switchblade

https://asianometry.substack.com/p/air-support-in-a-backpack-the-switchblade

by picture • 4 years ago

136 101 4 years ago

asianometry.substack.com

dredmorbius12• 4 years ago

This is an excellent long-form article on the history of AeroVironment and their history of developing light-weight long-endurance aircraft. Beginning with the Gossamer Albatros and Solar Challenger, which may surprise some.

That largely confirms a view I'd previously formed that the principle beneficiaries of lightweighting materials and solar (or small-engine) aircraft + nav & comms capabilities will be in warfare and surveillance applications.

A solar + battery styrofoam + balsa aircraft with cameras and transmission capabilities could loiter for weeks or months over a region transmitting close-range realtime imagery. Given comparable mission costs for manned aircraft (listed in the article) at $20k -- $40k/hour, it would be possible to "darken the skies" (or at least saturate regions of interest) at very low cost.

A smaller number of response UAVs could address specific points of interest with a response of a few minutes to hours.

All without putting pilots in harm's way.

The nature of ground (or surface naval) warfare will be profoundly changed. This is to bullets and shells what bullets and shells were to pikes.

philipkglass• 4 years ago

In related news, the Airbus Zephyr just set a new record for endurance flight and is still aloft:

https://www.space.com/airbus-zephyr-drone-long-endurance-fli...

An experimental aircraft tested in conjunction with the United States Army has been in the air above the Sonoran Desert for 42 days, breaking its own record for longest uncrewed flight.

The solar-powered, high-altitude Airbus Zephyr S took off from the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground on June 15, 2022 and has since been flying patterns over the Yuma Test Range and Kofa National Wildlife Refuge.

The flight has now broken Zephyr's previous record of 25 days, 23 hours that it set in August 2018. The latest flight has seen Zephyr reach a number of additional milestones including its first flight over water, first flight into international airspace, the longest continuous flight while being controlled through satellite communications, and the farthest flight from its launch point, according to a U.S. Army statement (opens in new tab).

dredmorbius12• 4 years ago

Thanks, yes. That's the "weeks or months" I was talking about.

I'd be interested in knowing what its flight profile looks like. The Solar Impulse manned solar-powered aircraft that flew around the world (though with stops) performed energy potential banking by climbing over the course of the day, then descending through the night. Altitude was thus a large part of the "battery" storage system, banking energy received during the day.

Article below describes the aircraft, if not the energy management element.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/inside-first-solar...

gumby• 4 years ago

AeroVironment and their history of developing light-weight long-endurance aircraft. Beginning with the Gossamer Albatros

Before the Albatross there was the Gossamer Condor, which is the one that won the £50K prize mentioned in the article. For some reason the name of the aircraft wasn't given.

I remember when this prize was won. I was taking Unified (MIT aero-astro department requirement) and this achievement astonished me.

dredmorbius12• 4 years ago

GC was also MacCready:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacCready_Gossamer_Condor>

I also remember when these flights were made. Part of the reason why TFA is having such a strong impression on me.

Also MacCready was the Quetzalcoatlus pterosaur:

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8WFmpEmmzOU

tiahura• 4 years ago

https://youtu.be/cH_vFJctl9I

Solar loitering for a few hundred bucks.

dredmorbius12• 4 years ago

Is there a particular segment of that hour-long video which specifically addresses capabilities / features / other elements of interest?

UncleOxidant• 4 years ago

Beginning with the Gossamer Albatros and Solar Challenger, which may surprise some.

Yeah, wow, I would not have even had the remotest idea that the Gossamer Albatross and the Switchblade were somehow connected prior to reading this article.

marktangotango• 4 years ago

with cameras and transmission capabilities

I think the "transmission" part here is the real story for military applications. To get real time video further out than a few kilometers, not many nations have satellite datalink capabilities. Those that don't will be at the whim of commercial providers (Starlink for now). Otherwise, the long duration drone flight discussed here could be most valuable for aerial, orbiting, microwave transponders.

semi-extrinsic• 4 years ago

To get real time video further out than a few kilometers, not many nations have satellite datalink capabilities.

Suppose you capture video at 4k resolution and 2 frames per second, and you compress it with h.265 at reasonable quality. Most of your image will be the same from frame to frame, so encoding will be really efficient. Then you're looking at ballpark 70 kilobytes per frame, or 1120 kbit/s. If you transmit that over 1.3 GHz and the receiving station has a good antenna, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to reach 100-200 km range?

nine_k4• 4 years ago

Fly a larger re-translator drone 50-100 km away from the area of interest, which can relay the signal over a higher-power microwave link to a ground station another 100-200 km away.

It could relay signals from many front-line drones.

nradov2• 4 years ago

In future high end conflicts, satellite communications will be unreliable due to heavy use of anti-satellite weapons and electronic attacks. In order to maintain communications, military forces will need relays in the air and on the ground, plus agile orbital launch capabilities to quickly replace satellite attrition losses.

dredmorbius12• 4 years ago

Drones themselves could provide mesh networks, possibly / probably with narrow-band communications (laser or tight-beam microwave) between units.

Even a few hundred metres of elevation gives a highly extended transmission range, and dedicated high-altitude comms drones (FL40 -- FL60 or better) could communicate to distances of 100s of km.

These themselves would still be cheap, would be difficult to spot, let alone target, and would require high-altitude-capable missiles to reach, though beam weapons (e.g., lasers) are another option.

Balloons (think weather balloons) would be another option, operating even higher. Again, cheap and easily replaced, but costing $100ks or $1ms to destroy. Think Google's Project Loon.

themodelplumber• 4 years ago

It'd be interesting to look at cheap counter-loiter tech and e.g. light exostructures and materials that are more difficult to penetrate at layers and readily repairable after drone attacks. I would guess that there is some interesting low-hanging fruit in that area.

It also seems like a possible co-creative opportunity with the concept of covering ground properties with solar panels. Defend against airborne threats but also make the protective layer pay for itself if possible.

Given additional sensor and environmental control development (vs breathing in munitions byproducts, etc), I wonder if over time the rationale for going outside, especially in a war zone, will simply fade away.

pelorat• 4 years ago

In the future all these things will be countered by portable LASER systems.

hutzlibu2• 4 years ago

"This is to bullets and shells what bullets and shells were to pikes."

Mainly these drones are for scouting and directing the shells of the artillery and the bullets of the soldiers, so I am not sure the comparison is adequate as they are not making the shells obsolete.

Once they are so cheap, that a drone with explosive is cheaper than an artillery round, they might make artillery obsolete, but so far they are strenghtening the value of artillery.

dredmorbius12• 4 years ago

Drones obviously provide several capabilities.

One of those is precise pinpoint attacks.

Russia's extraordinarily high losses of senior general staff officers would highlight these capabilities.

The ability to identify, inderdict, and disable high-capital equipment (e.g., tanks, the Moskova missile cruiser, another.

There's an interesting observation in an unusual source that I've had come to mind:

Regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command are qualities which, in modern armies, are of more importance towards determining the fate of battles than the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their arms. But the noise of firearms, the smoke, and the invisible death to which every man feels himself every moment exposed as soon as he comes within cannon-shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to maintain any considerable degree of this regularity, order, and prompt obedience, even in the beginning of a modern battle. In an ancient battle there was no noise but what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke, there was no invisible cause of wounds or death.

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...

Smith discusses the earlier realm of shorter-ranged and melee weapons as well.

Bullets have typically required soldiers somewhere in the immediate region, at distances of a few tens, hundreds, or at the extreme, a thousand or so metres. Artillery has longer range but has typically required larger launch systems, even where those are portable.

Human-portable drones extend range to tens or hundreds of km with loitering and seeking capabilities. Again, the range of peril is extended greatly.

nine_k4• 4 years ago

An artillery round flies much, much faster, supersonic for a good part of the trajectory. It hits a target 10-15 km away in well under a minute.

A drone would take 10-20 minutes to cover such a distance, and it would likely be easier to spot and destroy while en route, even if it tries to fly low and maneuver.

jeffreyrogers7• 4 years ago

The nature of ground (or surface naval) warfare will be profoundly changed. This is to bullets and shells what bullets and shells were to pikes.

They said this about torpedo boats, submarines, tanks, and guided munitions among others. It will require countermeasures and changes in tactics but I doubt much will change. Since these systems are cheap and slow everyone else will have them too and they will be easy to shoot down.

ethbr0• 4 years ago

Torpedo boats led to substantially-reinforced secondary batteries on capital ships and eventually mixed composition fleets. Submarines led to ASW (as a doctrine and embodied in single-purpose aerial and surface platforms). Tanks led to ATGMs and decades of penetrator and armor evolution. Guided munitions (and specifically, nuclear ones) led to radically dispersed combat and logistics deployments and the C3 necessary to support them.

All of those are very big changes.

The most likely effect of loitering munitions will be a revolution in SHORAD and an understanding that even dug-in infantry can't operate outside of an air defense bubble. Or countries with the manpower and ethical flexibility going all-in on poorly-equipped cheap numbers over exquisite platforms.

carabiner• 4 years ago

the principle beneficiaries of lightweighting materials and solar (or small-engine) aircraft + nav & comms capabilities will be in warfare and surveillance applications

Isn't that the explicit reason these technologies were developed? Just as 7000 series aluminum and carbon fiber were made for fighter aircraft before they trickled down to iPhones and golf clubs.

InCityDreams• 4 years ago

before they trickled down to iPhones and golf clubs.

Oh, and $€10k bicycle frames.

dredmorbius12• 4 years ago

I don't believe military capabilities were high on the reported benefits of the Gossamer Albatross or Solar Challenger at the time.

Contemporaneous account:

<https://www.nytimes.com/1979/06/17/archives/over-the-waves-i...>

There was a long article in National Geographic at the time (where I likely saw it). I don't know if that's online though it appeared in the November 1979 issue:

<https://nationalgeographicbackissues.com/product/national-ge...>

Internet Archive doesn't appear to have the issue.

ransom1538• 4 years ago

The key learning from the Ukrainian conflict from a military standpoint is the use of hobby drones + old artillery. You can either drop artillery rounds or use the drone as a way to direct artillery fire. This has totally changed the game. The switchblade is amazing, but, realistically they wont be built in any quantity to matter.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wa74hd/ukrai...

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wamxri/ua_dr...

simonh• 4 years ago

To give an indication 4,000 of these things were deployed in Afghanistan since 2013, I'm not sure if that counts as a significant quantity. I've no idea what their manufacturing capacity is now, but that's an average of about 600 a year.

SolarNet• 4 years ago

I think the interesting question is how they will "compare". If they compare favorably to that key learning, as "this kind of thing, but a better iteration on it" it won't much matter the quantity. As the article points out, it's not about this conflict, it's about the next one.

rr888• 4 years ago

I think Ukraine and the Russians have learned to track consumer drone signals with aeroscope https://www.dji.com/aeroscope. There are a few videos out there of drones taking off then artillery shells arriving very soon after.

dilyevsky2• 4 years ago

It’s real easy to root device and disable aeroscope but there are jammers on the market that equally easy land/home your device

dilyevsky2• 4 years ago

This has been done in mass in syria and karabakh before and no not a game changer.

dukoid• 4 years ago

Does this threat make the retired German Gepard air defence tank "modern" again? Alternatively, could one mount something like Phalanx CIWS on a truck? I suppose one wouldn't want to use (expensive) missiles (stinger?) against small drones?

BTW: Why is the ammunition for these systems still on chains -- opposed to "just" shovelling it into some kind of funnel?

ISL• 4 years ago

Funnels can plug/jam, chains rarely fail.

Chainguns generally depend upon an external drive to pull ammunition through a gun -- whether a round in the chamber has fired or not, it will be extracted and a new one put in its place. As I understand it, this is the primary difference between chainguns and belt-fed guns (which use part of the energy expended by the cartridge to cycle the weapon and feed the belt) -- reliability.

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_gun

dogma1138• 4 years ago

The chain in a chain-gun refers to the motor drive not a chain that hold the cartridges, it just an auto cannon that has its action being operated a motor drive basically it’s a very fast repeating rifle.

It doesn’t have much to do with how the ammo is loaded. Also most auto cannons today even the high fire rate ones that are used for CIWS and AA aren’t chain guns.

adolph• 4 years ago

The chain in an externally powered weapon is distinct from the belt [0] (which can be all metal) which is used to feed the ammunition. Its confusing since the sections of a disintegrating belt are referred to as "links."

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_(firearms)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M242_Bushmaster

vladTheInhaler• 4 years ago

Apparently it has been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS#Centurion_C-RAM

323• 4 years ago

Lasers are supposedly the next big close range drone killers, less than $100 per shot, and infinite rounds (as long as you have fuel obviously).

zmgsabst5• 4 years ago

There may be a question for swarms though:

An air burst round doesn’t require the system stay pointed as a single target, whereas a laser needs a few seconds on target.

At speed-of-sound, a munition moves at about 0.2 miles per second, or about a mile in the engagement time. Which caps the number of targets it can intercept to a handful.

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

"But the Ukrainian conflict has certainly put this thing on the map, and despite heavy competition I think AeroVironment is going to be finding a whole bunch of new customers soon. And the US military is going to learn a whole lot about what exactly these things can do."

Small wars are like marketing campaigns for military-industrial suppliers around the world. They also drive up commodity prices. Since Dec 2021, average share prices for the oil majors and the defense contractors have increased from 25-50% depending on the company in question, as of last month.

hef19898• 4 years ago

Added benefit a lot of old stock, from ammunition to whole systems, finally hets ised and expended and needa replacement. Training alone only consumes so much over a given year.

nine_k4• 4 years ago

This particular war, with a frontline of many hundreds of kilometers, and about 75k personnel losses on the Russia's side alone, is not a small war. This is more personnel than the US lost in Vietnam.

mlyle• 4 years ago

This is more personnel than the US lost in Vietnam.

In about 1/30th the amount of time.

strictnein• 4 years ago

That's 75k wounded and killed, not 75k deaths. Still, it is a staggering number of injury and death in such a short time.

"75,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the field"

[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-suffered-more-75-000-1...

ncmncm3• 4 years ago

Supposedly between 20,000 and 40,000 Russian Federation troops killed. Of course many of them, maybe most? are from former SSRs other than Russia.

Russia is getting better at spotting with drones. I gather they just managed to wipe out a fleet of M777s that parked too close to Russian artillary. Or maybe it was rockets?

imwillofficial5• 4 years ago

“I wouldn’t want to be a Russian tank, if it was even working in the first place.”

I don’t understand one sided barbs in pieces trying to appear like unbiased analysis.

Denying reality does nobody any good. In fact, denying Russias continuing victory only helps them, as people rest on their laurels.

signatoremo• 4 years ago

Russia isn’t winning. It’s essentially a stalemate at this point. Russia “paused” and “restarted” the war to shore up their force.

Paywalled, but still:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/28/ukraine-russ...

jeffreyrogers7• 4 years ago

Aren't they occupying something like 20% of the country? Maybe they're overextended and will lose eventually, but sure seems like they're winning at the moment.

happyopossum3• 4 years ago

Denying reality does nobody any good.

True, so why deny the reality that Russian tanks have proven to be horribly unreliable?

imwillofficial5• 4 years ago

Hardly, info from the front outside of Twitter propaganda channels has shown otherwise.

You don’t get 20% of a large country without reliable armor. Fact.

rlpb• 4 years ago

I've started to notice that this is what you always post about Russia/Ukraine, but never with any links to evidence.

krzyk• 4 years ago

There is also Warmate drone (commercial https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zzzOH5fBAqw) that is used by Ukraine forces.

bigodbiel• 4 years ago

The current conflict hasn't seen the best employment of loitering munitions, from both sides actually. Maybe as a function of the current paradigm (artillery duel), the low yield explosive of the S 300 fielded, or lack of experienced fixed wing drone operators, in comparison with multi-rotor drones, which are retrievable with much longer flight times.

Tube launched loitering munitions are the future nonetheless and will replace the mortar and multi rotor drones, once all the issues have been figured out.

zmgsabst5• 4 years ago

I think the bigger impact will be when the larger variants are deployed among artillery.

We already have artillery that can reach 50-100km, but when that can be used to deploy drones with payloads capable of destroying tanks — then your entire style of fighting can change.

I actually wonder if this will bring back something like battleships: a 6” gun firing off drones in a 50-100km range would likely be able to penetrate modern point defense and hit critical systems — like radars, point defense, or weapons. At least, as a swarm from a broadside.

happyopossum3• 4 years ago

I actually wonder if this will bring back something like battleships: a 6” gun firing off drones in a 50-100km range would likely be able to penetrate modern point defense and hit critical systems — like radars, point defense, or weapons. At least, as a swarm from a broadside.

Battleships have disappeared for several reasons, but the biggest one is that it's an incredibly expensive way (in money and manpower) to launch those 6" (or even much bigger) shells. Changing the value of the shell doesn't change the fact that it's still incredibly expensive.

I think we'll be much more likely to see these launched in swarms from other aircraft - the Air Force is already exploring what they refer to as Arsenal Planes, which are basically cargo planes with the ability to launch or drop tons (literally) of long range munitions. These aircraft would remain hundreds of miles from contested airspace and still be able to bring hell down on a target.

Something like the Switchblade 600, launched by the dozens and controlled en-masse by either in-craft or remote pilots would be the modern version of launching these from the Mighty Mo's main cannon.

gpderetta• 4 years ago

But artillery is already more than capable of killing tanks. Terminal guidance for artillery shells is likely to make more of a difference.

On the other hand drones appear to be excellent for directing artillery and general reconnaissance.

ncmncm3• 4 years ago

Why don't we hear anything about Switchblade anymore, in Ukraine? Did they use all theirs up? And didn't buy more, because artillery is cheaper, and lately just as precise?

wrzuteczka• 4 years ago

The smaller one turned out to be hardly useful, the larger one isn’t available. Warmates seem to be more effective in Ukraine, and Ukraine bought/received more of those.

ncmncm3• 4 years ago

The smaller one, used on fuel trucks, could oblige the enemy to abandon tanks. But I guess wiping out the fuel depot would work better. That is anyway best done right before pushing back the front, so the abandoned equipment is left somewhere accessible.

_kbh_3• 4 years ago

We have a video from three days ago of Ukraine taking out a number of plain clothes FSB officers in Russia using a switchblade.

https://twitter.com/uaweapons/status/1552012564485267456

MegaDeKay• 4 years ago

Meanwhile, this Ukrainian soldier wearing FPV goggles took a cheap commercial drone armed with explosives and flew it right to its target. Scary that almost anybody could do this anywhere, anytime.

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1553090460352135169

AustinDev• 4 years ago

People have been doing this in a game I play call Squad for years. Interesting to see it realized in real life.

https://youtu.be/SctREcQ-D94?t=191

Air Support in a Backpack: The Switchblade

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