The Status of Drone Warfare
BY Herschel Smith
1 month, 2 weeks ago
First, the Army is intending to deploy tank rounds intended for drones. See here.
The U.S. military is thinking about drones. Doctrine usually doesn’t survive first contact, but at least it’s a start. I especially approve of the shot shells for tanks.https://t.co/HOGeDehsWE
— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) July 13, 2025
Second, Big Country Expat has been doing some thinking about the more quick and easy to develop stuff.
Now, as far as (and I know this’s going to go over like the proverbial lead balloon,) but I have a COTS idea that could be implemented right here, and right now… As I discussed with Herschel last evening or the night before…
My Idea utilizes pre-existing stuff… In this case it’d be the M7/M243 LVOSS or Light Vehicle Obscuration Smoke System to dispense an anti-drone package. The anti-drone rounds would be new, but easily and cheaply made/manufatured.
I make my own ‘timed/fused’ fireworks legally here for holidays for my 37mm Launcher… If -I- can make them here, utilizing a glue gun, some black powder, and learning how to time my visco?
So easy, even an Airborne Infantryman can do it LOL.
As it is, currently, the LVOSS is/was used to ‘throw mad amounts of smoke’ in Iraq and Afghanistan during ‘negative crowd issues’ i.e. protests and/or riots. The launchers themselves individually look like this:
Each tube on a M7 launch tube is 66mm in diameter wide round, and about 5.75 inches (the round itself) in the pic above long… meaning the overall length is about 7.28 inches long, but the Boomy-Boom part of the round itself is about 5.75 inches by 66mm which is 2.6 inches wide. The round has the capacity in that picture of having a 19oz payload…
Remove that Red Phosphorous/Butyl Rubber Smoke Composition?
Replace that and Load the shell with #4 Turkey Shot?
Well the payload for the above-stated round is 19 ounces.
The math said a comparable 19-ounce load of #4 lead shot would contain approximately 2,584 pellets. #4 lead shot contains about 136 pellets per ounce. Therefore, 19 ounces * 136 pellets/ounce equals roughly 2584 pellets.
Finally, there is the extremely high tech.
🚨 Here’s What Leonidas, the U.S. Army’s New Microwave Defense System, Is Capable Of.
No bullets. No missiles. No sound.
The Leonidas system uses high-powered microwave bursts to instantly disable enemy drones mid-air by frying their electronics — not jamming, but physically… pic.twitter.com/rG2gT7KMJM
— Defence Index (@Defence_Index) July 15, 2025
So for microdrones, if you want to be capable of defense in a real-time big war, this has become a rich man’s game.
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On July 15, 2025 at 7:54 pm, Dan said:
Tank rounds for drones….sounds like a case of killing flies with hammers. Expensive, destructive and of dubious efficacy.
On July 15, 2025 at 8:30 pm, Ozark Redneck said:
Interesting… It should all be tried in Ukraine, keep what works, discard the rest…
On July 15, 2025 at 10:12 pm, Big Country Expat said:
Appreciate the mention Sir!
M1028 is unfortunately meant for hi-density human wave ‘issues’ or something that needs to be ‘granularly disintegrated’ as my instructors at Fort Knox told us when we went thru 19K (M1 Crewman MOS training)
The problem is the bore of a M256 Rheinmetall 120mm (which is the main gun of an M1A1/2… I intimately know it due to the damage it did to my noggin and spine which put me out of the DotMil LOL) has like the equivalent of a “Modified” choke on a 12 gauge…
It’s VERY tight so ergo, for the M1028 to actually spread enough for the pellets to spread? It’d probably be measured in MILES as opposed to meters/yards.
Not so good vis-a-vis anti-drone capability UNLESS they spot them WAYYYYYY the Hell out there, and as I said in my poast, if you xcan SEE a drone, you’re already dead in most cases
On July 15, 2025 at 10:57 pm, 0007 said:
Use BCE’s idea except use steel shot instead of lead. it’ll go farther faster and there’s more of it because it’s lighter. Kinda like the antipersonnel skirts on “Hammer’s Slammers” tanks
On July 15, 2025 at 10:59 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@Big Country Expat
Those shot-shell rounds for the 120mm gun remind me of the Japanese equivalent during WW2, when their designers and engineers came up with giant shot-shells for the 18″ main guns of Yamato-class battleships. Much ballyhooed as a wonder weapon against attacking enemy aircraft, they ended up being an expensive and spectacular failure.
I’m way out of my lane, expertise-wise, but that Leonidas micro-wave weapons platform has one potentially fatal flaw seemingly-apparent even to an amateur: It is directional, and unless you have a battery of them to provide 360-degree coverage, knocking one out will be as simple as swarming drones to its blind side.
And I don’t know the cost of even one Leonidas – but I’m guessing big $ – and the enemy can afford to trade cheap-but-effective drones all day for one of those.
On July 16, 2025 at 7:46 am, I R A Darth Aggie said:
Somewhere, Napoleon smiles.
On July 16, 2025 at 3:45 pm, Bill Buppert said:
There is a far larger problem here with munitions in general.
In the feedback loop for drone interception, the enemy gets a votes and they are two generations ahead of America in “Affordable Mass”.
The US is years behind in refilling the larders and magazines from the largess afforded the goblins in the Ukraine and Israel.
America does not have the means nor the manufacturing base to ramp up production and rare earth availability is quite constrained and if the FIM-92J Block 1 Stinger use case is any indication, substitution of rare earth shortfalls is no mean feat in engineering even legacy munitions.
No one thought this through when they started the wholesale emptying of magazines with no plan for reconstitution.
This actually calls for a defense acquisition declaration of an emergency under Part 18 – Emergency Acquisitions in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).
Once you fail to aggregate over years a plan to build more and rotate out the oldest lot numbers the more extreme this problem becomes.
When you look at TLAM Tomahawk production it has been reduced from over 200 annually (2015/16) to less than 22 per annum. The defense industrial base can’t simply idle mass production means and then flip a switch and restart lines of production without huge scalability problems that will take months if not years to remedy.
No service is doing the right thing and there is such a strategic deficit disorder in the Pentagon and the Joint planning and acquisition organizations are simply not paying attention to the changing peer conflict space.
Is it possible the classified aspects and projections are better? I doubt it.
The Navy is emblematic of the poor thinking, rake stomping and bad planning:
“The Pentagon and Congress should remedy this immediately by boosting the procurement of vital U.S. munitions in the pending defense appropriations bills. Unfortunately, the Pentagon is not asking for a significant change in munition procurement relative to prior years, and Congress is not only failing to increase munitions orders significantly, it is actually discussing procuring less munitions while denying the use of multi-year contracting authority. That is despite wargames showing that the U.S., in a war with China, would run out of key munitions in about a week.”
https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/the-us-navy-running-dangerously-low-munitions
On July 16, 2025 at 5:04 pm, Paul B said:
I would have say we need to work on hitting stuff on the move with some rifles. But not sure where you would find a range for that.
On July 17, 2025 at 11:58 am, Beast5 said:
Can anyone explain how a tank crew is going to detect a dot or a dozen dots loitering in the sky when they are buttoned up doing 40 kph on rough terrain? And do it without an electronic emission? If troops can’t see a 155mm round laying undisguised on the side of a road they surely aren’t going to see a tiny drone coming in from a high angle or be able to scan a truly 3D battlespace. Talk about primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of fire. That leaves us with auto detecting and auto firing systems that are not advertising your position with electronic emissions. In addition, you probably wouldn’t want to be a dismount when a drone or a bird or a fast moving decoy flies by. The system will need to be reloadable on the move or you’ll be like that poor sitting patriot battery that got hit from about six different directions.
On July 18, 2025 at 2:02 pm, Gryphon said:
Drones have been a “Game Changer” in the sense that being able to send a Grenade (Antipersonnel or Antitank) a few Kilometers with little chance of Detection, but like all new Weapons, quickly there are developed Countermeasures, and the latest “Wunderwaffen” becomes just another Battlefield Threat. The Red Army is proving that, with Shotguns/Wire Mesh Shells, Man-Portable and Vehicle Mounted Jammers,Chain-Fence Cages on Vehicles, and it is Rumored that they are developing small Lasers for Anti-Drone use.
Just another Day if MechWar….
On July 19, 2025 at 3:22 am, Unknownsailor said:
If the Army had not divested itself of self propelled AA gun in the 1990s, we would not be having this discussion. Something like the old 1980s era M247 Sgt York would work great, provided it could be fielded without the bugs. Dual rapid fire 40mm medium caliber guns with onboard sensors would be about tailor made for drone defense.
All the services need medium caliber gun systems with mass produced prox fuse shells to take out drone swarms, in both semi-fixed mounts and mobile, but no one wants to go there, and western MIC is all about electronic toys that they make fantastical claims that they can sell for huge mark-ups.
On July 19, 2025 at 12:37 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@Gryphon
Regarding stand-off counter-measures for drone payloads, such as chicken-wire or fencing barriers – that makes sense for many types of vulnerable vehicles. The same method was used as long ago as WW2 to defeat shaped-charge munitions or at least weaken their effects.
What about unprotected men in the open, infantry? What’s going to be their protection? Shotguns with wire-mesh shells sound good, for dealing with one or a few drones. If a bunch of them catch men in the open, then what?
@Unknown sailor
Proximity-fused shells are a great idea, and they would work. Wonder if the blue-prints for the Sgt. York are still laying around somewhere or if they have been destroyed/discarded?
On July 20, 2025 at 5:38 am, Alex Lund said:
How much does a drone cost?
How much does ONE use of Anti-drone munition cioost?
Can the system defend against a dedicated drone attack?
Russia used 600 drones in one of the last attacks.
Now hypothetical:
If such an attack would be launched on a tank column, coming from one side only, maybe even being directed at one tank only, would the system work?
And what if there are more than one attack, and these would come in waves, one ofter another?
These are the questions that need to be asked and answered in the affirmative to say a system is good to use.
On July 21, 2025 at 8:44 pm, Latigo Morgan said:
I wonder if a high pressure fire hose will knock a drone out of the air, or disable it? It’s probably too cheap of a solution, though.
On July 22, 2025 at 11:53 am, Michael Gladius said:
The Army manual says to use machine guns against drones first, and only mentions the 120mm gun at the end. That said, canister shot is basically a ‘roided shotgun; in Vietnam, canister shot was used to blast away vegetation to expose communist bunkers, and drones in the sky are much more fragile. Even if a stray pellet hits only the fiber optic cable, that still eliminates the threat.
Smoke is invaluable against drones; they can’t ‘see’ through it the way human eyes can. Using smoke launchers as shotguns would be a very handy backup.
@Beast5 tanks wouldn’t be driving at 40 kph with closed hatches unless they were in a rear area. One with a decent drone detection/counter network established. And likely escorted by armored cavalry scouts.