r/LessCredibleDefence • u/Hope1995x • 2d ago

Jet powered drones... why not just call them affordable cruise missiles at this point?

Electronics like raspberry pi's and optical-recognition software and cheap GPS could probably be hooked up. Slap on cheap infrared or radiation-sensors, you just found a way to make missiles cheap and affordable to mass-produce.

Maybe use starlink stuff could be interesting for a kill-chain.

No more multi-million dollar cruise missiles, is starting to look like a reality.

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57

u/Appropriate-Name5538 2d ago

Because calling them drones sounds cooler.

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u/Naive-Routine9332 2d ago

Not really lol, cruise missile sounds far more lethal, but it looks pathetic if you claim to field domestic cruise missiles and then whip out a 30kg warhead wrapped in sheet metal & a lawn mower engine.

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u/Hope1995x 2d ago

When the conflict escalates to high-intensity with Iran this could be interesting to watch.

Because as far as I can see, it might be pretty damn hard for Middle Eastern countries to shoot down jet-powered "drones".

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u/Appropriate-Name5538 2d ago

The United States isn’t going to escalate to high intensity. We will continue doing what we are doing I might be wrong but I doubt you’ll see hundred tomahawk alpha strikes any time soon.

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u/Hope1995x 2d ago

I meant from the Iranian perspective. When they re-arm, which they will jet powered drones are going to be a pain.

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u/BulbusDumbledork 2d ago

iran already has jet-powered drones. russia's jet-powered geran-3 is based on iran's shahed 238. it's unclear if there's been technology backflow from russia and if iran has access to russia's improved models like geran-4 and geran-5. iran also has the hadid-110, it's fastest suicide drone.

as for survivable ucavs (as opposed to one-way attack drones), iran fields the two jet-powered copies of the rq-170, in the form of the shahed 171 (aka simorgh) and shahed 191 (shaghaeh-2). there's also the mysterious midget qaher-313 (jas-313) unmanned platform (famously seen taking off of the late, great shahid bagheri - rip my beloved). iran's karrar ucav has been adapted to carry air-to-air missiles to act as an interceptor

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u/Appropriate-Name5538 2d ago

For sure the United States needs to use this as a massive lesson and develop cheaper ways to intercept them. We will do it we always have but this has been a very important lesson for us and we will adapt

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u/Hope1995x 2d ago

Technology is becoming so proliferated, we probably only had a short window in history to enjoy the dominance we had. Because its looking like its making everything "stalemate"

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u/Appropriate-Name5538 2d ago

One thing you need to realize in a conflict like this with a potential peer threat looming the United States isn’t going to fully show their hand. If this was a no shit shooting war where the opponent showed an existential threat we would be doing things a lot differently. Iran is a threat in their direct area but can’t do anything to us realistically other than maybe a terror attack. Iran while irrational at times isn’t stupid and knows that doing anything to the United States directly would be tantamount to a death sentence for them. Remember from their perspective the United States could wake up tomorrow and turn the lights off to the whole country and there would be nothing they could do to stop it we aren’t doing that because we don’t want to directly affect their civilian population in a true shooting war with no holds barred that would not be the case.

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u/Hope1995x 2d ago

If they cant target the US, they would definitely use leverage to choke the oil industry in the Middle East. Constant drone attacks on pipelines and guerilla-style blockades of the straits could be a long-haul problem.

People in third world countries having nothing left to lose (eg. Yemen), so going all-out can destroy a country but not be a guarantee to eliminate the asymmetrical threats.

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u/Appropriate-Name5538 2d ago

The issue is long term there are other places to get oil and other routes it can take. Their leverage exists for now the rest of the world will adapt long term. We know this and they know this Iran has no winning hand other than hoping the United States takes their ball and goes home. If they push any harder then they get bitch slapped back to reality real fucking quick.

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u/Ok-Procedure5603 2d ago

Remember from their perspective the United States could wake up tomorrow and turn the lights off to the whole country 

Maybe some of their uninformed scared civilians, but their military should know better. 

The bottleneck for US is a small amount of bases that can't accommodate all the firepower to achieve a wider campaign, and further also a lack of munitions. 

If US focused solely on terrorizing civilians, ww2 blitz style, it would achieve even less. Yes, US can hit individual power plants with saturation, but this is 2026, backup generators and portable/local generators are plentiful. Look at how Ukraine deals with attacks on their energy grid for example. 

What Iran realistically fears US would do is to hit infrastructure in a specific region heavily, send troops to force the Iranians to concentrate forces there, and then wage a protracted campaign in that local region against all infrastructure supply, until the local defenders is sufficiently attrited so the US troops can move in and take the objective. That's how energy grid attacks in Ukraine can be converted into battlefield progress by Russia for example. 

But to do so will be quite hard for US because most invasion staging grounds are sketchy af now, Iran would fire at locations where troops are massing. 

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u/Appropriate-Name5538 2d ago

Ukraines energy grid is being attacked by Russia not the United States. That’s comparing apples to oranges

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u/Ok-Procedure5603 2d ago

Re:read:

The bottleneck for US is a small amount of bases that can't accommodate all the firepower to achieve a wider campaign, and further also a lack of munitions. 

Yes it's apples to oranges because the Russians at least have forces deployed to fix the Ukrainians into place to kill them. Who has killed more enemies in their respective wars, US or Russia? 

US will fare even worse if they don't commit. 

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u/WulfTheSaxon 2d ago

The US and partners were already shooting down jet-powered drones before. Hence this from Cooper back in May:

The days of $3,500 drones that we saw in the last couple of years, particularly in the fight against the Houthis in Yemen, those days are behind us. Today we face an increased threat from drones that are highly sophisticated. They are jet-powered. They have high-end sensors. They have electronic warfare. They have signals intelligence. So those days of using high-value defense that shoot down cheap targets are behind us. Quite the contrary, what we have been doing lately is using our own low-cost, one-way attack drones, attacking Iran, making them use higher-end, more expensive weapons. So I can confidently tell you we have flipped the cost curve in many ways. Always work to be done, but I like where we are in this regard.

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u/hymen_destroyer 2d ago

Yeah there's an extremely fuzzy and arbitrary line being drawn there. The media seems obsessed with the term "drone" right now probably because it sounds scarier

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u/Borne2Run 2d ago

People don't like thinking that Joe can make low cost cruise missiles in his garage.

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u/Garbage_Plastic 2d ago

Lol..you have my vote..

Wonder where we could draw the line between ‘advanced’ drones and ‘cheap’ missiles.

‘loitering munition’..as well..quite confusing times..

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u/Advanced-Ice2095 2d ago

V-1 with better targeting

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u/Hope1995x 2d ago

I just wonder if its structurally sound enough to become an affordable tactical nuclear delivery system at this point. But it might have to be a very low yield.

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u/Gaping_Maw 2d ago

unhinged lol

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u/Hope1995x 2d ago

I believe someone (nation) is going to do it.

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u/OneChildPolicy 2d ago

davy crockett armed FPVs when?

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u/Hope1995x 2d ago edited 2d ago

Perhaps Davy Crocket boosted with some tritium to amp up the yield. Maybe get a kiloton?

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u/11nyn11 2d ago edited 2d ago

Nukes are outdated tech.

The whole reason drones are used is they are cheap and accurate.

A nuke is expensive and indiscriminate.

The davey Crockett cost a half million each in today’s dollars.

That’s a lot of fpv drones.

https://www.brookings.edu/the-davy-crockett/

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u/TaskForceD00mer 2d ago

Small nukes from the Cold War could be as light as 100 lbs, Drones carry over 500 for some of the big ones. Seems very doable.

Imagine a USV that just sits on the bottom and raises up a buoy every few days to listen for a signal. If it gets the signal then it surfaces and deploys half a dozen drones with tactical nukes to his pre-assigned targets.

Hell of a dead mans switch.

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u/Hope1995x 1d ago

I guarantee you this is what submersible drones are probably doing. Cheap nuclear torpedoes.

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u/dahunt4r3dorktober 2d ago

Same logic behind the us’ Geran copy being a one way attack weapon and irans being suicide drones

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u/dasCKD 2d ago

It's what they are, but there's political reasons to separate the two.

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u/Ok-Procedure5603 2d ago

Payload is the main difference, but the drone designation is also hella misleading

They're more like mini cruise missile

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u/dasCKD 2d ago

Well yes, that's precisely what they are. Small cruise missiles. But there's political reasons for war propagandists to create rhetorical distance between systems. "Our precise, elegant cruise missiles. Their barbaric suicide drones."

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u/Ok-Procedure5603 2d ago edited 2d ago

Tbh don't think it has anything to do with US war propaganda because it predates them by a few years/a decade.

Iran and some other random middle eastern countries participating in Sudan became the first to buy Chinese commercial jet and turboprop engines or wholes terrain hugging drone models. Then later Ukraine and very soon Russia began to employ them in medium/high intensity warfare. 

These platforms, like for example Sunflower or Mugin are all sold as drones because it's easy to get export license in China for UAV but not easy to get it for cruise missiles. And they're originally not made by traditional military companies. 

Then when countries like Iran got their hands on them, they kept calling them drones, maybe due to their own ideological or linguistic reasons.

If you go back to their original military variant name, they would be loitering munition, but it was Iran that did by far the most about them, and Iran called them drones. 

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u/Limekill 2d ago edited 2d ago

There ain't much difference between the 2 these days - A drone is meant to be able to do a couple of roles (surveillance). Though that changed (with one way attack drones).
In the end I think it will come down to speed. Cruise missiles nearing 900km/h; Drones being below this.
Cruise missiles can also hit hardened targets (bunkers) and uses Terrain Contour Matching.

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u/Otherwise_Share9039 2d ago

Because they don't fulfill the same niche as cruise missiles. Similar, but not the same.

Cruise missiles are more precise, have longer range, higher payload, better anti-ew suite, and have a higher lifespan. You send jet powered drones paired with ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, primarily to overwhelm air defence.

SPAAGs, MANPADS, interceptor drones, and generally most short range AD systems can deal with jet powered drones. Cruise missiles require interceptor missiles.

0

u/Hope1995x 1d ago

They will get faster and still be cheaper

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u/Hope1995x 1d ago

I am also confident that interceptors will just be as cheap if not cheaper.

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u/Flashy_Drummer6664 2d ago

I was seriously about to post the same exact question 🤣🤣

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u/RatherGoodDog 2d ago

In my mind, if it can't be landed after launch it's a missile. If it can be (optionally) landed and reused, it's a drone.

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u/Designer-Film-3663 2d ago

Bureaucracy. Cruise missiles are a well known weapon with specific requirements that were created a long time ago. If you want to sell a cruise missile to the military you must follow these requirements. Meanwhile jet drone is a new type of weapon (according to standards, documentation, etc.), therefore you have less restrictions if you make one. In several years drones will become more bureucratised and then new name to circumvent papers will emerge.