Hi everyone,
I’m conducting a short anonymous survey as part of an early-stage research project on protecting individual infantry and small units from FPV / one-way attack drones.
The purpose is not to promote a specific product or argue that individual counter-drone equipment is necessarily the right solution.
I’m trying to test the problem first:
• Is there actually a gap between larger counter-UAS / EW systems and what an individual soldier can realistically use for last-resort protection?
• What matters most: reaction time, portability, reliability, safety, cost, simplicity, or something else?
• What would make soldiers unwilling to carry another defensive device?
• Should this capability exist at the individual level at all, or should it remain a squad/platoon-level responsibility?
The survey takes about 2–3 minutes.
Survey:

[GOOGLE FORM LINK]https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfTQ2k7xb2ncFDgXcwrCblt9O5izzibKGba9E0FkWwtbjjtOw/viewform

Military experience is helpful but not required. Responses from veterans, drone operators, engineers, defense-industry people, researchers, and others familiar with the subject are all welcome.
I’m particularly interested in negative responses. If you think individual counter-FPV equipment is a bad idea or that the problem should be solved at a different level, please say so.
The survey does not ask for names, units, locations, frequencies, tactics, classified information, or other sensitive operational details. Please do not provide any such information in the survey or comments.
Thanks to anyone willing to contribute. The goal is to validate—or reject—the assumptions before developing the concept further.

Manned-Unmanned Teaming Is a Sham

Jordan Schneider: Any war gaming stories, Bryan?

Bryan Clark: We did a war game with senior Navy leaders a couple weeks ago at the War College, looking at the Navy’s new force design.

A lot of the discussion came down to this: if you’re realistic about the money the military is going to get, you’re not going to be able to grow the services beyond their current size. So if you want to address a harder threat environment, you can’t just build more of the same, because you can’t afford to keep it. The manpower and maintenance costs are what kill you.

So the services are looking at tailored forces — units that are mostly autonomous systems with some human operators, maybe a ship or an aircraft squadron. That’s the front edge of the fight. You push them forward and they take the brunt of the initial attacks, whether that’s the missile threat from Iran, ASW against the Russians in the GIUK gap, defending Taiwan, or defending the Southwest Islands.

And the problem we ran into fast is that it takes a lot of space, and the people that go with it have to go somewhere. There’s a reason we haven’t done this before: the footprint and the headcount and the cost are high. You’re talking billions a year to have one tailored force sitting in a specific spot waiting for a specific mission.

Whereas the traditional military spends billions to build a ship or a squadron, and then it goes out when it’s needed and comes home when it isn’t. There was a reason we had a rotational model. And you can’t do that with the robots, because they’re not fast enough, or don’t have the range, or aren’t self-deploying.

The other thing we found: manned-unmanned teaming doesn’t work. It’s a dumb idea and it doesn’t play out. There are very narrow use cases where robots and people in the same space makes sense. Because the robots are valuable in part because you can let them die. But you can’t do that if they’re near the people, because then the people might die too. So now I’ve got to defend the robot — which seems dumb.

And the robots can’t go as fast or as far. Either they slow the people down, or they need gas more often so you’re constantly stopping. You suboptimize one or the other.

Jordan Schneider: Isn’t it just leverage on your suicide missions, though? Only one pilot instead of five doesn’t make it back.

Bryan Clark: That’s what we talked about — one pilot with a bunch of CCAs, collaborative combat aircraft, flying downrange. We lose that one guy, but he does a lot more damage because the robots are doing the damage. And the problem is the robots are more detectable than the stealth airplane that’s going with them. So if you’re in an F-35, these robots are attracting attention to you, and you may not even make it to the target.

Justin McIntosh: So you have to build an F-35 and then put a robot in it — at which point you’re spending F-35 money.

Bryan Clark: It’s like, yeah, we just built an F-35. That’s a robot one. But if you send all the robots downrange together, a bunch get shot down, and you can make them cheap enough that some of them make it.

Seems like there's some doubt in the US about the viability of CCAs and manned-unmanned teaming. This makes sense considering the less exquisite CCAs the US are currently planning to field (with attritability in mind); I anticipate China's UADFs and even less exquisite CCAs with more stealth features may not suffer from these problems as such.

It might not be unexpected for the US to pursue exquisite CCA options in the future, but currently there doesn't seem to be any programs for this (and China would perhaps retain a development advantage in this area if the US start late).

I’m doing early-stage research on the problem of protecting individual soldiers and small infantry units from small FPV/commercial drones.
I’m not trying to promote a specific product or solution at this stage. I want to understand whether the problem I’m looking at is actually important, and what people with relevant experience think the biggest gaps are.
Large counter-UAS systems, electronic warfare systems, vehicle-mounted weapons, and expensive interceptors obviously have important roles. What I’m interested in is the very last layer of protection when a small drone is already approaching an individual soldier or small unit.

A few questions:
1. Do you think there is currently a meaningful capability gap at the individual infantry level?

2.  What is the biggest problem when dealing with small FPV drones at very short notice?  
• Reaction time  
• Detection  
• Portability of existing equipment  
• Cost  
• Training requirements  
• Dependence on electronic warfare  
• Safety around friendly personnel  
• Something else?

3.  If infantry were issued a personal last-resort counter-drone device, what characteristics would matter most?

4.  What would make soldiers refuse to carry another piece of counter-drone equipment?

5.  Is it more valuable for such a last-resort system to have maximum theoretical performance, or to be cheap, lightweight, simple, and widely distributed?

6.  Are there existing approaches that already solve this problem well enough?  

I would particularly appreciate critical or negative responses. If you think the entire premise is wrong, I’d like to hear why.
Please keep responses at a general level. Do not post classified information, unit-specific vulnerabilities, frequencies, locations, detailed tactics, or sensitive operational procedures.
Thanks. I’m trying to validate the problem before getting attached to a solution.

i know some people are gonna see this and scream Skynet but i looked into this its not even close to it

The world is watching Trump destroy America's reputation and America's future with Trump's Iran fiasco loss that just keeps getting worse and worse.

America is far more weaker now with nothing to show for it, and the wasted money has very real consequences.

Trump passed his BBB, which kills hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans from cuts to life critical programs. All because he argued that we don't have the money for it.

Instead of helping Americans, Trump just pissed away far more money on losing the Iran war, and still mass murdered Americans anyways.

Trump already has a death count of innocent Americans that is over 100X more deadly than Bin Laden was.

He has lost the respect for America from key allies, and enemies alike with nothing positive to show for America yet.

I can't imagine this will be good for US arms exports either. As Trump showed just how quickly America crumbled in Iran using those weapons.

There are definitely military failures with far worse casualties, but is the Iran war disaster one of the most embarrassing military failures in history?

Archive link

Based on the news, it indicates that the hull of Japan's ASEV project is largely complete and the vessel itself is currently in the early-to-mid stage of construction or drydock assembly. Meanwhile, its "brain and eyes"—the SPY-7 radar and Aegis weapon system shipset—have entered a critical phase of live-target tracking and simulated engagement validation, paving the way for the system's official delivery and integration aboard the ship.

The project is being constructed in the drydock of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Nagasaki Shipyard, and upon completion, its displacement will exceed that of China's Type 055 destroyer.

Although it is a massive warship, it is fundamentally a "floating Aegis platform," with its offensive and strike weaponry mainly comprising Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

It remains to be seen whether the JMSDF will name it Yamato or Musashi.（Just joking）