The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the age of aircraft carriers is at its end, because of drones/cheap missiles. These things are only going to get cheaper. A lot cheaper... radically cheaper, compared with their current cheapness already. When I watch an interception, I see two problems with defense.
First is the cost - I can see that the experience we're gaining here is telling us that expensive defense is a dumb against cheap offense. So, interception will be bullets or drones, and if you watched the defense of that embassy last night, maybe you'll agree - i think bullets are the way. There's also that company with the lasers, which seem very impressive, but that won't work in the near future, despite working quite well, because of the second problem...
All the interception video I've seen shows only one or two missiles at a time, and I've only seen one drone at a time. In the case of that embassy, the drones were coming in fairly quickly, but were still one at a time. That won't continue. If you can shoot down one, they'll send two. If you can shoot down two, they'll send three. Etc. As long as attack is cheap - not necessarily cheapER, just cheap - then the attacker always has the option to just send more simultaneously. This has been my main criticism of Iran's tactics so far - everything makes sense except this one thing : they could have saturated every target, but didn't. I'm not rooting for them, just to be clear. If an cutting edge system like lasers can defend an area effectively, then you just send a dozen of the flying lawnmowers at the same time at that one target, and then everything behind it is freebies. Or two dozen. Is that really how 'dozen' is spelled? Anyways. Or you send in a combo - that nifty Sejjil is surely the most advanced system in this fight, and all the moreso if it slams down immediately after defenses engage a bunch of the cheap drones.
And, as I said initially, these things are going to get even cheaper. And smaller, and faster, and more precise, all at once. Its hard for me to imagine us pouring billions into carriers in the age of drones. Similarly, **_any_** large and relatively immobile target - like bases - is too vulnerable. All force will have to be mobile or stealthy, and all will have to be hyper reactive to changing environments. Slow convoys from point A to point B are not going to work.
Well anyways. This is just my current favorite thing. I'm no expert.
First is the cost - I can see that the experience we're gaining here is telling us that expensive defense is a dumb against cheap offense. So, interception will be bullets or drones, and if you watched the defense of that embassy last night, maybe you'll agree - i think bullets are the way. There's also that company with the lasers, which seem very impressive, but that won't work in the near future, despite working quite well, because of the second problem...
All the interception video I've seen shows only one or two missiles at a time, and I've only seen one drone at a time. In the case of that embassy, the drones were coming in fairly quickly, but were still one at a time. That won't continue. If you can shoot down one, they'll send two. If you can shoot down two, they'll send three. Etc. As long as attack is cheap - not necessarily cheapER, just cheap - then the attacker always has the option to just send more simultaneously. This has been my main criticism of Iran's tactics so far - everything makes sense except this one thing : they could have saturated every target, but didn't. I'm not rooting for them, just to be clear. If an cutting edge system like lasers can defend an area effectively, then you just send a dozen of the flying lawnmowers at the same time at that one target, and then everything behind it is freebies. Or two dozen. Is that really how 'dozen' is spelled? Anyways. Or you send in a combo - that nifty Sejjil is surely the most advanced system in this fight, and all the moreso if it slams down immediately after defenses engage a bunch of the cheap drones.
And, as I said initially, these things are going to get even cheaper. And smaller, and faster, and more precise, all at once. Its hard for me to imagine us pouring billions into carriers in the age of drones. Similarly, **_any_** large and relatively immobile target - like bases - is too vulnerable. All force will have to be mobile or stealthy, and all will have to be hyper reactive to changing environments. Slow convoys from point A to point B are not going to work.
Well anyways. This is just my current favorite thing. I'm no expert.
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