If you’re trying to ship goods through the Suez Canal, they already have. Houthi rebels using drones have effectively shut down 50 percent of commercial shipping through the Red Sea, which leads from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. A whopping 15 percent of global maritime trade transits the Red Sea and Suez Canal each year, according to the International Monetary Fund. As much as seven percent of all oil trade makes use of those important waters. In short, if all trade between the Middle East, Asia and Europe were to be shut down, lights would go off in Europe and people would freeze in winter.
I'm sure when our ancestors lived in the trees they were as savage as the chimps of today fiercely defending their territory. Same after they came down from the trees and moved into caves. War has raged just as strongly ever since with more and more deadly weapons being developed. Lucian points out so well the vulnerability of our old defence systems.
I don't know anything about modern weaponry but I wonder if in the case of an attack by several hundred drones at one a weapon could be developed like a giant shotgun firing hundreds of ball-bearing type projectiles over a wide area instead of trying to shoot down individual drones? Or maybe better still, a battery of high powered lasers? Or better still some kind of weapon that would send a massive electron cloud that would neutralize the guidance or fry their power supply?
I've been wondering about an EMP weapon. An EMP pulse will kill electronics. The problem is aiming it away from your own electronics. Drones could be shielded from EMP, but that raises their cost, perhaps enough that it's not worth the cost?
Good idea too. I assume the DOD scientists are working feverishly on drone defence systems, but specifically on defending against and destroying swarms of drones as outlined by Lucian.
Your article gives the impression our military will not have our own swarming drones . The whole way war will be conducted is going to change for both sides . Not sure if for good or bad but probably cheaper.
Who could not be stunned by the videos of hundreds of small lighted drones forming various pictures for crowds at night events? Those hundreds of drones were not flown by hundreds of people, but by some incredible AI program. When I saw this video of 1500 drones, I said to myself that the Navy was f'd, we are all f'd. This video should terrify every civilized person. Only good electronic counter-measures (ECM) may save us.
And those drones are recognized by the hooman eye, by optics, and by different types of sensors as drones so for that family countermeasures from electronic jamming to filling the sky with AA fire. So, recognition is the key.
US Mil is way behind in fielding smaller drones because the US mil subscribes to bigger is better and the more it costs the better it must be, then makes certain they have spooky names like The Reaper.
You did hit upon the future of mil drones, miniaturization, AI, and an often-overlooked 3rd, type of explosive/ord. There is a 4th, zoomorphism where the drone is an animal or insect. And that includes flyers and crawlers as well as mimicking other creatures. That family of drones is not designed to overwhelm defenses, whether on the sea or land. It is meant to infiltrate, remain and send intel back, and/or explode on a target. So, it needn't be a swarm deployment, it can be singles up to swarms and everything in between.
Since they are AI, they are autonomous as well as working together. They will reflect local wildlife because a 3D printer to knock off a shell over the guts. Therefore they will be a drone hybrid, part drone part robotic. A single one disguised as an urban rat (Rat Touille, couldn't resist ) outfitted with ONC (explosive) or worse, Azi-Azi (Azidoazide azide) would be extremely lethal. A pack of them could create havoc and terror in an urban environment (inc. in a mega-city) or at a mil base or ship.
Said another way, it will be a long time in the future before they're adapted for productive civilian use. Weapons and war come first in a "civilized" society.
FTR: Am a fan of drones and developing more in order to protect lives on our side. Much rather send different types of drones into hostile territory than 2 and 4 legged fighters to do certain tasks. Hopefully this time we simultaneously develop countermeasures rather than the old way of allowing that to lag and lag and lag.
"Much rather send different types of drones into hostile territory than 2 and 4 legged fighters to do certain tasks."
This brought to mind the thought of military invasion which is coercive without being destructive or deadly. An example of this was pictured in H.G. Wells' 1936 motion picture, Things to Come.
Agree and great get, Don. due to reinforcing science (which requires thinking) precedes fiction in Sy-Fy for good reason. At its core are the philosophical and practical differences between Clausewitz's On War with Sun Tzu's The Art of War.*
The former is an oversimplification and a still snapshot (frozen in its time and place) of war/warfare while the latter is comprehensive, transferrable, and timeless. The former asks to be applied, the latter to be adapted. Said another way, the Prussian is to War what Ayn Rand is to Philosophy. Affirming the idea of long is wrong and is oft used to cover one's deficiencies and lack of epistemology.
Ironically it's the classical Clausewitzians USMA 3, and 4-star GOs who prove that very point when they say w/o ever thinking or following their advice don't engage in a land war in Asia. Note: omitted 1 and 2star GOs because it is far more difficult journey for them to get to 3 and 4 w/o doing just that. And of course, ending in epic fail after epic fail.
One day it will dawn on the West that WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) should be replaced with WLD (Weapons of Least Destruction). Alas, won't be in my lifetime.
*The Art of War: a shout out to the Jesuits who first introduced Sun Tzu to the West.
There are many ways to store data—digitally, on a hard disk, or using analog storage technology, for example as a hologram. In most cases, it is technically quite complicated to create a hologram: High-precision laser technology is normally used for this.
However, if the aim is simply to store data in a physical object, then holography can be done quite easily, as has now been demonstrated at TU Wien: A 3D printer can be used to produce a panel from normal plastic in which a QR code can be stored, for example. The message is read using terahertz rays—electromagnetic radiation that is invisible to the human eye. *******
Backyard insect inspires invisibility devices, next gen tech
by Pennsylvania State University
Pictured are brochosomes produced by leafhopper G. serpenta. Brochosomes are hollow, nanoscopic, buckyball-shaped spheroids with through-holes distributed across leafhoppers' body surfaces. Lin Wang et al. studied the relationship between the optical properties and the geometric designs of the brochosomes. The authors found that the through-holes of these hollow buckyballs play an important role in reducing the reflection of light. This is the first biological example showing short wavelength, low-pass antireflection functionality enabled by through-holes and hollow structures. Credit: Lin Wang and Tak-Sing Wong/Penn State
Leafhoppers, a common backyard insect, secrete and coat themselves in tiny mysterious particles that could provide both the inspiration and the instructions for next-generation technology, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers.
In a first, the team precisely replicated the complex geometry of these particles, called brochosomes, and elucidated a better understanding of how they absorb both visible and ultraviolet light.
This could allow the development of bioinspired optical materials with possible applications ranging from invisible cloaking devices to coatings to more efficiently harvest solar energy, said Tak-Sing Wong, professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering. Wong led the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The unique, tiny particles have an unusual soccer ball-like geometry with cavities, and their exact purpose for the insects has been something of a mystery to scientists since the 1950s. In 2017, Wong led the Penn State research team that was the first to create a basic, synthetic version of brochosomes in an effort to better understand their function.
*****
Sign up for the Science X DAILY newsletter & I guaron-damn-Tee! you'll find at least a half dozen every day that are cutting edge borderline "sci-fi" / "Any sufficiently advanced technology is conceptually indistinguishable from magic" / Arthur C. Clarke territory studies results, albeit plenty requiring much more peer-review and replication...
Nine months after the Ukrainian revolution, Manafort’s family life also went into crisis. ...[W]hen he called home in tears or threatened suicide in the spring of 2015, he was pleading for his marriage. ...Manafort had rented his mistress a $9,000-a-month apartment in Manhattan and a house in the Hamptons, not far from his own. He had handed her an American Express card, which she’d used to good effect. ...Because he clumsily obscured his infidelity—and because his mistress posted about their travels on Instagram—his family caught him again. ...He entered the clinic in Arizona... according to [his daughter] Andrea’s texts. “...in the middle of a massive emotional breakdown.” ...[B]y the early months of 2016, Manafort was back in greater Washington... He wrote Donald Trump a crisp memo listing all the reasons he would be an ideal campaign consigliere...
Franklin Foer, "Paul Manafort, American Hustler: Decades before he ran the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington." (March, 2018) The Atlantic
Over the decades, Manafort had cut a trail of foreign money and influence into Washington, then built that trail into a superhighway. When it comes to serving the interests of the world’s autocrats, he’s been a great innovator. His indictment in October... alleges money laundering, false statements, and other acts of personal corruption. ...[H]is personal corruption is less significant, ultimately, than his lifetime role as a corrupter of the American system. That he would be accused of helping a foreign power subvert American democracy is a fitting coda to his life’s story.
Franklin Foer, "Paul Manafort, American Hustler: Decades before he ran the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington." (March, 2018) The Atlantic
For more than five years... Paul Manafort, lobbied for a Washington-based group [the Kashmiri American Council]... [charged with operating] as a front for Pakistan’s intelligence service. Manafort’s work... was only one part of a wide-ranging portfolio that, over several decades, included... foreign clients ranging from Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, to an Angolan rebel leader accused by human rights groups of torture. His role as an adviser to Ukraine’s then prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompted concerns within the Bush White House that he was undermining U.S. foreign policy. It was considered so politically toxic in 2008 that presidential candidate John McCain nixed plans for Manafort to manage the Republican National Convention...
Michael Isikoff, "Top Trump aide lobbied for Pakistani spy front" (April 18, 2016) Yahoo! News.
Nations invested in global trade (all are) won’t allow it to continue for too long, I suspect. Hungry and cold citizens cause political unrest after all. It has to be checked. International players will act, don’t you think? Of course the trick will be not to destroy themselves while stopping it.
I’d guess there’s already a plan. But perhaps that’s giving everyone too much credit in the chaos so deliberately distributed by the architect of much of what we see. He certainly has allies, but I doubt they are as narrowly focused as they’ve been in the past and even they have a line it makes no sense to cross.
State sponsored extra-national interference in trade will ultimately be deal breaker. Cause havoc? Kill innocents? Shrug. But oil? Goods? Even the charade that is the Security Council at the UN will have to sit up and notice. Even act.
Yes, the crew members of the cargo ships going through the Red Sea are facing increased danger - thus my saying "Damn the Houthis!" But modern cargo ships are loaded by dockworkers, and sail with a minimal crew, who are not much more likely to get hit by a small explosion somewhere on a big ship. I care more for their safety than the Houthis, obviously, but it's a bad precedent to let the fanatics claim the right to close the shipping lanes whenever they want to.
Rockets and drones have greater range than most artillery, but the problem of coastal forces firing on ships is not new to this century, and the needed response is pretty much the same: Defeat the attackers by destroying them and their weapons.
The State Department must make a (probably) futile effort to convince Iran to stop supplying the Shahed drones to the Houthis, while the allied intelligence services determine where the drones are being manufactured (you don't make a $20,000 drone in a garage); if the Iranians insist on continuing, take out the factories. Yes, we need to be wary of escalating the conflict, but if all it costs Iran is money, they will continue their assault-by-proxy on the hated West. Iran has more to lose by escalation than we do, and we need to make that point.
"Gentlemen may cry, 'Peace! Peace'. But there is no peace." - Patrick Henry
Insightful analysis, Lucian. What is amazing to me is how our side was taken so off guard in how to defend against this new technology but, more so, how in the case of the Houthis our national defense establishment seems to timid and reluctant to strike with the one advantage we still have. Massive firepower and delivering precision guided munitions on target via our strategic bombers.
OK I get the Houthis have the geographich advantage of sitting abreast of the Red Sea and the straits leading to the Suez but we have both human and satellite technology to show us where their launch sites, depots and C and C are located. Why do we seem insistent on striking these targets with tactical air from carriers. Why not load up some B-52s and B-1s before we retire these fleets with JDAMs and make the rubble bounce whenever and wherever the Houthis show themselves and launch their drones. No, it won't overcome the problem overnight but if we want to really send the message we are going to respoond with force sufficient to at least mitigate the problem we need to rethink our targeting priorities.
Short of nuking Tehran there is no short term solution to what the Houthis are doing and are going to do. But, we could IMHO make them pay one hell of a higher price than we seem to be willing to extract. Would like yours and the thoughs of others. I am not a war monger and realize there are limits to our power but in this case we have the Western world and economies on our side to act as the policeman on the beat and to make these 21st century Barbary pirates pay a much higher price for their criminality.
We have so much technology to destroy these swarms if the stupid Republicans would get off trumps pot and perform their jobs, they could be in Ukraine hands to eliminate the commies weapons…
Thanks, Lucian, for putting drones in a proper perspective. The implications for the war-making industries, of which there are many, many, would seem to be extensive, and dire for their obscene profits. $12M tanks destroyed by $2,000 drones makes the tanks pretty useless, along with many other expensive war machines. But the history of war-making has always been a tit-for-tat business. As one method is made obsolete, a new more effective tactic becomes dominant. How long will it be before there are anti-drone weapons? Certainly there will be huge pressure from shipping dependent corporations to end the drone scourge. I’m quite sure that’s very much in the works already. Plus the military-industrial complex is not going to sit still while its profits evaporate, so it will conjure new expensive anti-drone systems to sell to governments and terrorist groups. Ending war never seems to be a realistic option. There’s always too much money involved. Could we breed out human hate, jealously, and greed? What would life be like then. I’ve often wondered about that.
The Houtis are costing Egypt a fortune in Suez Canal tolls. Surely the Egyptian government isn't going to sit still for such an economic hit for very much longer. Where is their navy? Why aren't they making an effort to shut down the Houtis as effectively as the Houtis have shut down the canal? It is a puzzlement.
The metaphors of conflict will change. The 300-pound tackle in pro football is no match for the 110-pound speedster who can dart through small spaces. "Slow and steady wins the race" --- not anymore. Microdose will be the new megadose. A sprained ankle will matter as much as a hammer to the knee. And a 6-year-old will win a war.
Our species is so good at making war, and so bad at making peace.
Only idiots prefer war over love.
There are apparently mostly idiots in the human species then
Maybe 80 percent?
Guess im in a minority.
At 83 i spent the last 3 days in love.
I'm sure when our ancestors lived in the trees they were as savage as the chimps of today fiercely defending their territory. Same after they came down from the trees and moved into caves. War has raged just as strongly ever since with more and more deadly weapons being developed. Lucian points out so well the vulnerability of our old defence systems.
I don't know anything about modern weaponry but I wonder if in the case of an attack by several hundred drones at one a weapon could be developed like a giant shotgun firing hundreds of ball-bearing type projectiles over a wide area instead of trying to shoot down individual drones? Or maybe better still, a battery of high powered lasers? Or better still some kind of weapon that would send a massive electron cloud that would neutralize the guidance or fry their power supply?
I've been wondering about an EMP weapon. An EMP pulse will kill electronics. The problem is aiming it away from your own electronics. Drones could be shielded from EMP, but that raises their cost, perhaps enough that it's not worth the cost?
Good idea too. I assume the DOD scientists are working feverishly on drone defence systems, but specifically on defending against and destroying swarms of drones as outlined by Lucian.
The drone swarms are already becoming a reality; the rest will follow as surely as every other weapon of mass destruction.
AMEN!
Your article gives the impression our military will not have our own swarming drones . The whole way war will be conducted is going to change for both sides . Not sure if for good or bad but probably cheaper.
Who could not be stunned by the videos of hundreds of small lighted drones forming various pictures for crowds at night events? Those hundreds of drones were not flown by hundreds of people, but by some incredible AI program. When I saw this video of 1500 drones, I said to myself that the Navy was f'd, we are all f'd. This video should terrify every civilized person. Only good electronic counter-measures (ECM) may save us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNcMDoBmhGA
And those drones are recognized by the hooman eye, by optics, and by different types of sensors as drones so for that family countermeasures from electronic jamming to filling the sky with AA fire. So, recognition is the key.
US Mil is way behind in fielding smaller drones because the US mil subscribes to bigger is better and the more it costs the better it must be, then makes certain they have spooky names like The Reaper.
You did hit upon the future of mil drones, miniaturization, AI, and an often-overlooked 3rd, type of explosive/ord. There is a 4th, zoomorphism where the drone is an animal or insect. And that includes flyers and crawlers as well as mimicking other creatures. That family of drones is not designed to overwhelm defenses, whether on the sea or land. It is meant to infiltrate, remain and send intel back, and/or explode on a target. So, it needn't be a swarm deployment, it can be singles up to swarms and everything in between.
Since they are AI, they are autonomous as well as working together. They will reflect local wildlife because a 3D printer to knock off a shell over the guts. Therefore they will be a drone hybrid, part drone part robotic. A single one disguised as an urban rat (Rat Touille, couldn't resist ) outfitted with ONC (explosive) or worse, Azi-Azi (Azidoazide azide) would be extremely lethal. A pack of them could create havoc and terror in an urban environment (inc. in a mega-city) or at a mil base or ship.
Said another way, it will be a long time in the future before they're adapted for productive civilian use. Weapons and war come first in a "civilized" society.
FTR: Am a fan of drones and developing more in order to protect lives on our side. Much rather send different types of drones into hostile territory than 2 and 4 legged fighters to do certain tasks. Hopefully this time we simultaneously develop countermeasures rather than the old way of allowing that to lag and lag and lag.
"Much rather send different types of drones into hostile territory than 2 and 4 legged fighters to do certain tasks."
This brought to mind the thought of military invasion which is coercive without being destructive or deadly. An example of this was pictured in H.G. Wells' 1936 motion picture, Things to Come.
Agree and great get, Don. due to reinforcing science (which requires thinking) precedes fiction in Sy-Fy for good reason. At its core are the philosophical and practical differences between Clausewitz's On War with Sun Tzu's The Art of War.*
The former is an oversimplification and a still snapshot (frozen in its time and place) of war/warfare while the latter is comprehensive, transferrable, and timeless. The former asks to be applied, the latter to be adapted. Said another way, the Prussian is to War what Ayn Rand is to Philosophy. Affirming the idea of long is wrong and is oft used to cover one's deficiencies and lack of epistemology.
Ironically it's the classical Clausewitzians USMA 3, and 4-star GOs who prove that very point when they say w/o ever thinking or following their advice don't engage in a land war in Asia. Note: omitted 1 and 2star GOs because it is far more difficult journey for them to get to 3 and 4 w/o doing just that. And of course, ending in epic fail after epic fail.
One day it will dawn on the West that WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) should be replaced with WLD (Weapons of Least Destruction). Alas, won't be in my lifetime.
*The Art of War: a shout out to the Jesuits who first introduced Sun Tzu to the West.
phys.org/news/2024-03-holographic-message-encoded-simple-plastic.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
There are many ways to store data—digitally, on a hard disk, or using analog storage technology, for example as a hologram. In most cases, it is technically quite complicated to create a hologram: High-precision laser technology is normally used for this.
However, if the aim is simply to store data in a physical object, then holography can be done quite easily, as has now been demonstrated at TU Wien: A 3D printer can be used to produce a panel from normal plastic in which a QR code can be stored, for example. The message is read using terahertz rays—electromagnetic radiation that is invisible to the human eye. *******
phys.org/news/2024-03-backyard-insect-invisibility-devices-gen.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter
MARCH 18, 2024
Editors' notes
Backyard insect inspires invisibility devices, next gen tech
by Pennsylvania State University
Pictured are brochosomes produced by leafhopper G. serpenta. Brochosomes are hollow, nanoscopic, buckyball-shaped spheroids with through-holes distributed across leafhoppers' body surfaces. Lin Wang et al. studied the relationship between the optical properties and the geometric designs of the brochosomes. The authors found that the through-holes of these hollow buckyballs play an important role in reducing the reflection of light. This is the first biological example showing short wavelength, low-pass antireflection functionality enabled by through-holes and hollow structures. Credit: Lin Wang and Tak-Sing Wong/Penn State
Leafhoppers, a common backyard insect, secrete and coat themselves in tiny mysterious particles that could provide both the inspiration and the instructions for next-generation technology, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers.
In a first, the team precisely replicated the complex geometry of these particles, called brochosomes, and elucidated a better understanding of how they absorb both visible and ultraviolet light.
This could allow the development of bioinspired optical materials with possible applications ranging from invisible cloaking devices to coatings to more efficiently harvest solar energy, said Tak-Sing Wong, professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering. Wong led the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The unique, tiny particles have an unusual soccer ball-like geometry with cavities, and their exact purpose for the insects has been something of a mystery to scientists since the 1950s. In 2017, Wong led the Penn State research team that was the first to create a basic, synthetic version of brochosomes in an effort to better understand their function.
*****
Sign up for the Science X DAILY newsletter & I guaron-damn-Tee! you'll find at least a half dozen every day that are cutting edge borderline "sci-fi" / "Any sufficiently advanced technology is conceptually indistinguishable from magic" / Arthur C. Clarke territory studies results, albeit plenty requiring much more peer-review and replication...
And targeting the drone's launch bases, and the central command bases, and the tech that allows the terrorists to communicate with each other.
And making sure this guy doesn't help re-elect his nominal U.S. boss in the service of his real bosses abroad, that would help too!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trials_of_Paul_Manafort
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort
Quotes about Manafort
Nine months after the Ukrainian revolution, Manafort’s family life also went into crisis. ...[W]hen he called home in tears or threatened suicide in the spring of 2015, he was pleading for his marriage. ...Manafort had rented his mistress a $9,000-a-month apartment in Manhattan and a house in the Hamptons, not far from his own. He had handed her an American Express card, which she’d used to good effect. ...Because he clumsily obscured his infidelity—and because his mistress posted about their travels on Instagram—his family caught him again. ...He entered the clinic in Arizona... according to [his daughter] Andrea’s texts. “...in the middle of a massive emotional breakdown.” ...[B]y the early months of 2016, Manafort was back in greater Washington... He wrote Donald Trump a crisp memo listing all the reasons he would be an ideal campaign consigliere...
Franklin Foer, "Paul Manafort, American Hustler: Decades before he ran the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington." (March, 2018) The Atlantic
Over the decades, Manafort had cut a trail of foreign money and influence into Washington, then built that trail into a superhighway. When it comes to serving the interests of the world’s autocrats, he’s been a great innovator. His indictment in October... alleges money laundering, false statements, and other acts of personal corruption. ...[H]is personal corruption is less significant, ultimately, than his lifetime role as a corrupter of the American system. That he would be accused of helping a foreign power subvert American democracy is a fitting coda to his life’s story.
Franklin Foer, "Paul Manafort, American Hustler: Decades before he ran the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington." (March, 2018) The Atlantic
For more than five years... Paul Manafort, lobbied for a Washington-based group [the Kashmiri American Council]... [charged with operating] as a front for Pakistan’s intelligence service. Manafort’s work... was only one part of a wide-ranging portfolio that, over several decades, included... foreign clients ranging from Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire’s brutal dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, to an Angolan rebel leader accused by human rights groups of torture. His role as an adviser to Ukraine’s then prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompted concerns within the Bush White House that he was undermining U.S. foreign policy. It was considered so politically toxic in 2008 that presidential candidate John McCain nixed plans for Manafort to manage the Republican National Convention...
Michael Isikoff, "Top Trump aide lobbied for Pakistani spy front" (April 18, 2016) Yahoo! News.
Nations invested in global trade (all are) won’t allow it to continue for too long, I suspect. Hungry and cold citizens cause political unrest after all. It has to be checked. International players will act, don’t you think? Of course the trick will be not to destroy themselves while stopping it.
I’d guess there’s already a plan. But perhaps that’s giving everyone too much credit in the chaos so deliberately distributed by the architect of much of what we see. He certainly has allies, but I doubt they are as narrowly focused as they’ve been in the past and even they have a line it makes no sense to cross.
State sponsored extra-national interference in trade will ultimately be deal breaker. Cause havoc? Kill innocents? Shrug. But oil? Goods? Even the charade that is the Security Council at the UN will have to sit up and notice. Even act.
Many won't like this, but...
Damn the Houthis! Full speed ahead!
Yes, the crew members of the cargo ships going through the Red Sea are facing increased danger - thus my saying "Damn the Houthis!" But modern cargo ships are loaded by dockworkers, and sail with a minimal crew, who are not much more likely to get hit by a small explosion somewhere on a big ship. I care more for their safety than the Houthis, obviously, but it's a bad precedent to let the fanatics claim the right to close the shipping lanes whenever they want to.
Rockets and drones have greater range than most artillery, but the problem of coastal forces firing on ships is not new to this century, and the needed response is pretty much the same: Defeat the attackers by destroying them and their weapons.
The State Department must make a (probably) futile effort to convince Iran to stop supplying the Shahed drones to the Houthis, while the allied intelligence services determine where the drones are being manufactured (you don't make a $20,000 drone in a garage); if the Iranians insist on continuing, take out the factories. Yes, we need to be wary of escalating the conflict, but if all it costs Iran is money, they will continue their assault-by-proxy on the hated West. Iran has more to lose by escalation than we do, and we need to make that point.
"Gentlemen may cry, 'Peace! Peace'. But there is no peace." - Patrick Henry
Insightful analysis, Lucian. What is amazing to me is how our side was taken so off guard in how to defend against this new technology but, more so, how in the case of the Houthis our national defense establishment seems to timid and reluctant to strike with the one advantage we still have. Massive firepower and delivering precision guided munitions on target via our strategic bombers.
OK I get the Houthis have the geographich advantage of sitting abreast of the Red Sea and the straits leading to the Suez but we have both human and satellite technology to show us where their launch sites, depots and C and C are located. Why do we seem insistent on striking these targets with tactical air from carriers. Why not load up some B-52s and B-1s before we retire these fleets with JDAMs and make the rubble bounce whenever and wherever the Houthis show themselves and launch their drones. No, it won't overcome the problem overnight but if we want to really send the message we are going to respoond with force sufficient to at least mitigate the problem we need to rethink our targeting priorities.
Short of nuking Tehran there is no short term solution to what the Houthis are doing and are going to do. But, we could IMHO make them pay one hell of a higher price than we seem to be willing to extract. Would like yours and the thoughs of others. I am not a war monger and realize there are limits to our power but in this case we have the Western world and economies on our side to act as the policeman on the beat and to make these 21st century Barbary pirates pay a much higher price for their criminality.
We have so much technology to destroy these swarms if the stupid Republicans would get off trumps pot and perform their jobs, they could be in Ukraine hands to eliminate the commies weapons…
Thanks, Lucian, for putting drones in a proper perspective. The implications for the war-making industries, of which there are many, many, would seem to be extensive, and dire for their obscene profits. $12M tanks destroyed by $2,000 drones makes the tanks pretty useless, along with many other expensive war machines. But the history of war-making has always been a tit-for-tat business. As one method is made obsolete, a new more effective tactic becomes dominant. How long will it be before there are anti-drone weapons? Certainly there will be huge pressure from shipping dependent corporations to end the drone scourge. I’m quite sure that’s very much in the works already. Plus the military-industrial complex is not going to sit still while its profits evaporate, so it will conjure new expensive anti-drone systems to sell to governments and terrorist groups. Ending war never seems to be a realistic option. There’s always too much money involved. Could we breed out human hate, jealously, and greed? What would life be like then. I’ve often wondered about that.
As someone once said, " Can't we all just get along?"
Contending with drones, from rogue operators, just amplifies scary times ahead for the US and our allies.
The Houtis are costing Egypt a fortune in Suez Canal tolls. Surely the Egyptian government isn't going to sit still for such an economic hit for very much longer. Where is their navy? Why aren't they making an effort to shut down the Houtis as effectively as the Houtis have shut down the canal? It is a puzzlement.
I will never forget this one — “Slaughterbots”:
https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA?si=MwEfq79Fr1cSbiRP
One answer is and has been in the works for awhile Lucian. That is the use of lasers.
Look for drone swarms to attack USA federal buildings in DC.
The metaphors of conflict will change. The 300-pound tackle in pro football is no match for the 110-pound speedster who can dart through small spaces. "Slow and steady wins the race" --- not anymore. Microdose will be the new megadose. A sprained ankle will matter as much as a hammer to the knee. And a 6-year-old will win a war.
The stragety of Luke Walker?
Down the toilet air vent?
The world of Terminator, here we come. MAD with drones instead of Nukes.