Think Tank Highlights #Global Defense Dynamics #US Military Dynamics #Russian Military Dynamics #Taiwan Issues #Micro Shop for Sale
#South Korea #Raytheon #Japan #Electronic Warfare #Northeast Asia Military Dynamics #Drones
The following article is sourced from System Technology Exchange, reproduced from System Technology Exchange
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has continued since February 24, 2022, for two years. This conflict, known as “the largest military conflict in Europe since the 21st century,” still shows no signs of resolution. Over the past two years, various new weapons have been widely used on the battlefield, profoundly impacting military transformation and future warfare. On the second anniversary of the conflict, the Pengpai Defense has launched a series of articles exploring the weapons and technologies that have triggered military transformation during the conflict.
On the front line in the Zaporizhia region, a member of the Russian 42nd Motorized Rifle Brigade’s “Beaver” group operates a suicide drone (FPV) in an underground bunker. After searching the air, it targets an armored vehicle of the Ukrainian army. The drone dives from the air and crashes into the armored vehicle, the signal disappears, and a consumer-grade multirotor drone conducting reconnaissance nearby captured the attack, showing the armored vehicle was destroyed.
On the front line in Kharkiv, a consumer-grade multirotor drone controlled by a Ukrainian army soldier slowly approaches an abandoned advanced T-90M main battle tank of the Russian army, drops a small bomb into the open hatch, and then quickly pulls up. After the bomb explodes, it ignites the ammunition inside the tank, causing a catastrophic explosion that blows the turret into the air. This soldier also hides in an underground bunker, launching the attack outside the tank’s firing range.
● In future warfare, the foundational position of air combat in seizing comprehensive battlefield control will become even more solid.
● On the modern battlefield, drones and manned aircraft work together to carry out combat missions in high-threat environments, fully leveraging the characteristics of drones such as low cost and difficulty in detection, and continuously attacking enemy air defense, air superiority, or ground and naval forces.
● The purpose of air combat is not to pursue the quantity of targets struck, nor to compete for a specific direction or airspace, but to pursue the effectiveness of strikes and the contribution rate to joint operations.
In recent years, the rapid development of high-tech and its extensive application in the military are influencing and changing traditional air combat modes. The air combat weaponry, operational theories, and more are undergoing significant changes. Fully understanding the development and changing patterns of air combat will help grasp the “pulse” of future air combat and win the initiative for victory in the future.
Seizing comprehensive control has become the core requirement of air combat.
In modern warfare, air combat is increasingly becoming the preferred method for initiating warfare. Compared to long-range assault methods such as ballistic missiles, air attacks are more covert and penetrating, with a higher capability to capture and strike time-sensitive targets, and can terminate operations at any time. This form of combat, which combines powerful firepower with agile maneuverability, provides commanders with more options for planning and decision-making combat strategies, making it an excellent way to ensure the surprise of campaign initiation. Under this influence, air combat is expanding from the traditional seizure of air superiority and support for land and naval operations to seizing comprehensive control. Victory in air combat often becomes a prerequisite for success in other domains of combat. It can even be said that if air combat does not achieve an advantage, it is challenging for land and naval combat to succeed. From recent local wars, the saying “whoever controls the air controls the world” remains relevant; wars often begin from the air or focus on air combat, and commanders can even rely solely on air power to complete a battle and achieve operational objectives. In future warfare, the foundational position of air combat in seizing comprehensive battlefield control will become even more solid.
The integration of air and space has become a prominent feature of air combat.
With the continuous development of navigation, remote sensing, and other aerospace technologies, as well as the rapid advancement of networked information technology, modern warfare increasingly requires support from space-based information, especially the empowering effect of information and electromagnetic support provided by spacecraft, which can sometimes influence the outcome of battles and achieve the goal of “strengthening the ground with the sky.” Foreign militaries believe that air and space have a natural coherence in physical space, and in modern warfare, air superiority and space control are often inseparable. In recent years, driven by navigation and material technologies, the boundaries between aircraft and spacecraft are becoming increasingly blurred. Air-space combat vehicles represented by aerospace fighters have become a focus of research and development for military powers seeking the high ground in future warfare. The theory and styles of integrated air-space combat have become a development trend, and “controlling the sky from the air” may become a reality. A few years ago, the US Space Force commander first acknowledged that the US is developing directed energy anti-satellite systems to maintain asymmetric advantages in the space domain. Relevant theories from foreign militaries suggest that using air forces and ground air defense forces to conduct anti-satellite operations has gradually matured, especially using high-altitude, high-speed fighter jets to significantly enhance operational flexibility, missile range, and lethality; emphasizing the use of combat aircraft to attack satellite ground stations, data link nodes, etc., to disrupt the opponent’s space-based information support and achieve the goals of “controlling the sky from the air” and “controlling the sky from the ground.”
Unmanned combat has become an important trend in air combat.
With the rapid advancement of intelligent military technologies, drones are moving from the supporting role to the spotlight in the air combat arena. In the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the large-scale and diverse use of drones became the norm. From aerial reconnaissance to “swarm” operations and all-weather support, the status of drones in modern warfare is increasing day by day. Supported by the joint operational system, drones can fully leverage their advantages of multiple payloads, long endurance, and flexible take-off and landing. They can perform tasks such as communication, jamming, precision strikes, and operational assessments, as well as high-difficulty confrontation tasks such as aerial interception and intelligent air combat. On the modern battlefield, drones and manned aircraft work together to execute combat missions in high-threat environments, fully utilizing the characteristics of drones such as low cost and difficulty in detection to continuously attack enemy air defense, air superiority, or ground and naval forces. Large-scale manned/unmanned cooperative combat will also drive the transformation of air combat command concepts and methods. Foreign militaries believe that in future warfare, more manned aircraft and pilots will shift from frontline combat to unmanned formation command, while ground command institutions will primarily perform strategic campaign planning and command control functions. Air command posts centered on early warning aircraft will share the tactical control pressure brought by the surge in air targets.
As the conflict continues and drone consumption increases, both sides have begun to use consumer-grade drones extensively, which generally cost over 8,000 RMB and have a control range of around 8 kilometers. Initially, they were mainly used for reconnaissance and monitoring to calibrate artillery strikes, but later began to carry grenades and small-caliber mortar shells, becoming a kind of “mini bomber” frequently used to bomb each other’s living forces and weaponry in the stalemate of trench warfare.
David Betz, a professor of modern warfare studies at King’s College London, analyzed for Pengpai News that this conflict shows that some old or refurbished weapons can play a significant role when combined with relatively cheap new technologies (especially reconnaissance drones).
After discovering the military potential of FPV drones, both sides began to use suicide drones in large numbers to attack each other’s tanks and positions. Compared to ordinary quadcopters, FPV drones are faster and more maneuverable, and the FPV drones carrying anti-tank rockets can choose to strike at the weak points of tanks, such as the rear and tracks, achieving strike effects comparable to or even exceeding those of high-power anti-tank missiles.
For the Ukrainian army, which lacks armed helicopters, armed quadcopters and suicide FPV drones have provided ground forces with a certain level of air-ground support capability, and the cost investment is far lower than that of forming armed helicopter units.
Entering 2023, both Russia and Ukraine began using long-range suicide drones to attack high-value targets deep within each other’s territories. These drones are characterized by their long range, low cost, and difficulty in detection, possessing a certain degree of long-range precision strike capability. Although the warhead weight is not large, the damage caused by the attacks is significant, being referred to as a low-cost version of cruise missiles.
The Ukrainian army primarily uses UJ-22 and modified Tu-22 suicide drones, which generally have ranges exceeding 600 kilometers for long-range attacks. Some of the suicide drones that attacked the Russian capital Moscow were intercepted by Russian air defense forces, while some managed to successfully strike.
There are two technologies that can be used for communication between GCS and drones. The first technology is GCS based on swarm infrastructure, and the second is Flight Ad-Hoc Network (FANET). The swarm-based GCS has its own GCS for centralized communication. All drones in the swarm will communicate with the GCS to enable the group to operate. However, one drawback of this technology is that it relies on the availability and proper functioning of the GCS. If the GCS is disrupted, the entire drone swarm will also be disrupted. In contrast, FANET uses a transmitter to send commands to a certain drone, which then forwards these commands to a second drone. These commands will then be distributed to other drones either serially or concurrently. All drones will communicate and have a list of commands given by the transmitter, so if this transmitter fails, all drones can still execute commands because each drone has a valid command list. Finally, by using this FANET technology, each drone will have redundancy and not rely entirely on communication infrastructure. However, this technology also has drawbacks. For example, an intruder or an unknown drone can enter and disrupt the drone swarm. Furthermore, authorized members of the drone swarm cannot detect unauthorized participants’ drones, allowing them to access the command list that authorized drones would execute.
To overcome the issue of unauthorized drones, blockchain technology could be applied to prevent unauthorized drones from using the drone swarm commands to obtain the list. Blockchain has been widely used in the financial sector to eliminate third-party involvement in the verification process of each transaction.
In blockchain, when data is distributed, it becomes difficult for hackers to attack and obtain complete data because it is verified by a network using cryptographic means. Each block consists of the hash value of the previous block, the random number verifying the hash value, known as nonce, and a timestamp. The guarantee of integrity is provided by the blockchain for the formation of the first block, which is the result of a verified transaction known as the genesis block. Since the hash value is unpredictable or unique, fraud or duplication will be detected. Each verified block has its hash value, and any change to that block will affect other blocks. If all or most nodes give permission or consent, that block will be added to the chain, as the consensus mechanism arranges the validity of transactions in the validity of a certain block.
This consensus mechanism on the blockchain can be conducted in three ways: proof of work, proof of stake, and practical Byzantine fault tolerance. In the world of cryptocurrency, proof of work is used for mining. It works by performing mathematical equation calculations on each node, and the first node to complete the calculation has the right to input the latest block into the blockchain. Using proof of stake, only legitimate nodes can perform calculations to reach consensus. On the other hand, practical Byzantine fault tolerance is based on voting, requiring at least one-third of authorized nodes to be Byzantine.
The authentication process is conducted by generating a one-time password (OTP) with a pseudo-random function. Drones are registered on the blockchain, and each drone determines the nearest drone it can authenticate based on the relationships stored in the blockchain nodes. Authentication requests are sent from one drone to the relevant drone, which observes and checks whether it has a relationship with that drone and can authenticate it. This scheme can thwart attacks from external malicious drones or third-party attacks, even if the opponent knows the first token.
Reprint Statement
This article is sourced from publicly available information or has been authorized for reprint through a whitelist from the original public account, and the copyright belongs to the original author. The content of the article does not represent the views of this platform and does not take responsibility for its authenticity. The purpose of reprinting is to convey information and for online sharing. If there are any copyright issues, please contact us promptly, and we will delete it as soon as possible.
