I am kind of surprised that I have yet to run across the words for any DoD Sources Sought or Request for Proposals for drone defeating technology or technology demonstrators. I don't follow FedBizOps and haven't for more than a decade but I would have thought other bloggers or military types would have put up the language for any such proposals so we could get some idea just how the military plans to defeat drones non-kinetically and to be honest the only way I see to defeat a near infinite number of combat drones is with something that defeats their communication capabilities, disables their geo-location mechanisms or employs directed energy.
Kamikazes are not new and the old methods will surely defeat the unmanned alternatives put up by combatants today but I don't see our warships returning to the days where we bolted crew-served 50 cal, 20mm, 40mm and other dual purpose guns on every available surface. The manning alone would kill current naval budget estimates that have been based over the last 40 years on squeezing out the number of required sailors at virtually any cost.
I think we are looking at that old favorite of Julian Corbett's and will see nothing but Uncommanded Seas in the future. Obviously this spells the end of the Marine Air Ground Task Force embarked on amphibious ships because the only way to justify that kind of risk is with the stated understanding that the USN is going to enjoy multi-domain superiority over the surface, subsurface and airspace for at least 400 miles in all directions from such vulnerable ships. We won't see that kind of warfare again.
Yep, I did it. I picked up Red Storm Rising and read through it again. Can you picture our timid leaders risking a BLT, MEU, MAGTF, ARG, MEU-SOC, Yes, those are all probably obsolete terms for an obsolete concept: Battalion Landing Team, Marine Expeditionary Unit, Marine Air-Ground Task Force, Amphibious Ready Group and Special Ops capable MEU. These are like sailing ships, leftovers from another age of war that has now passed.
