These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For

No points for guessing the life expectancy of that spiffy Honda generator in
combat once the range is hot in both directions. These things are going
to be worse in combat than Combat Barbies are, with a notably shorter
operational life expectancy. Well done, combat jedi drone masterminds.

In today's post, John Wilder (whose blog should be your regular go-to, every time he posts, just because, unless you've already found too many blogs that are smart, funny, and true, all at the same time) links to and talks about the fapulations of some folks who think Droney the Drone will be the new shizznit when it comes to warfare.

We disagree with those self-serving Military Industrial Complex self-pleasuring prognostications.

Just a wee bit.

To wit:

Those simulations have a 400% chance of selling worthless drone systems to the idiots at the Pentagon.

In combat, they’d be mostly horseshi…, er, rose fertilizer.

Aerial drones are great at detecting people. In a barren desert. Or above the Arctic Circle.
In triple canopy jungle, bayou swamp, or northern hardwood forest, their detection capabilities are less than that of a good bassett hound. And they’re not particularly difficult to kill, defeat, or degrade. Starting with shooting the operator.

If 40 Afghan jihadis had stormed the relatively pussified base defenses in Tonopah NV one day, and rampaged through the drone trailers, killing everyone in sight and blowing up the control trailers, drone warfare in A-stan would have ground to a screeching halt, stayed that way for months, and the Air Farce would have started a crash program to steal Army Rangers by the tens of thousands as base defense cops in 30 states of the U.S.

That’s asymmetrical warfare.

In Phase Two, the jihadis would target military dependents off-base in the community, at schools, malls, etc.

So how you gonna harden the entire country, simultaneously, everywhere, against that?

You’re not.
Game. Set. Match.

Land drones?

1) If the supporting troops are close enough to give cover fire, they’re close enough to receive cover fire.
Hint: the guy with the big control box in his hands gets the first sniper volley. Game Over.

2) Those little Fun Sized mini-tanks are cute. So, what’s their industrial fire rating against a wine bottle full of 87 octane and dish soap?
[Bonus Extra Credit Question:
How about when I drop that little Easter Egg from one of my COTS drones?
Or use a soda can full of home-made thermite, at $2@?
You gonna deploy Sopwith Camel drones for air cover??]

3) Drive one over.
I’ll have a couple of guys throw a wet quilt over its sensor mast as it passes by; now it’s blind.
[Paintballs work pretty well too. Just saying.]
Then anyone with ten seconds of .mil experience will run up on the blinded droid, and twist the ammo belt. Now the gun is out of action.
Then we lever it on its side, or shove a pipe bomb into the treads; now it’s mobility killed.
 Then we pop smoke, or otherwise hide what we’re doing from its controllers.
Finally, we pull the pins on the pintle, and carry off that MG, and the can of ammo.
Now I have a machinegun. Ho ho ho.

Then we firebomb it anyways, because we can.
And it cost me a $20 quilt, and $1 worth of unleaded. To kill your $15K tanklet, and steal a functional MG.

Which I’ll happily use on your side when the smoke clears.
Including the operators, the other tanklets, and those aerial drones.

How long before I bankrupt a division for the money I have in my wallet, right now?
And if your live troops are close enough to support it, we’ll take them out too.
If they’re not, they can watch us carry their MG back, and set it up to return fire.

Heads I win, tails you lose.


Use them here?

Okay, let’s play that game.
What’s the defensive capability of any police station you can name?
When I storm it with those same 40 guys, kill everyone there, steal everything I can use, and burn what I can’t, how many more police are you going to need to protect the station house, and every other one you have, 24/7/365?

Who’s going to defend the police when I shoot them off duty getting a burger?

Who’s going to defend their families when they get killed and kidnapped while Officer Friendly is out oppressing the peasants?
(You think their women and children will be off limits if mine aren’t? Sh’yeah, you should live so long. The peasantry will make wind chimes out of those kids’ skulls, for sport, by Week Two. Bet money on it. Tape recordings of their families’ dying screams will be broadcast by PA at the police station daily. Videos of their torture that would make an Apache blush will go viral. So when you have zero cops at work by Week Three, who’s going to stop me from doing the same thing to their masters holding the leash?)

How you gonna gas the MRAPs when folks blow up the fuel tankers?

What are your jack-booted thugs gonna eat when the train and highway bridges into town burn down and blow up, and the goods stop rolling?

What happens when the power lines to every police station and Thug Central keep getting cut, and the transformers shot up every night? You got bicycle-powered generators for those radios?

The Enemy ALWAYS Gets A Vote.

Unlike in canned simulations, 140 guys aren't going to sit obligingly like stunned bunnies and wait while your 20 guys with BATTLEBOTS! walk remorsely up on them and hose them down, while your SKYDRONES! have unanswered mastery of the air. And that same enemy isn't going to helpfully wear red coats and march in straight lines on open fields. They're going to hide, slide, and glide in the same outfits as innocent bystanders, until they blow up in your faces.

Pop Quiz: a) Which side has drones now, and
b) which side is slinking out of Iraq, Syria, and A-stan with its tail between its legs, because it simply cannot win against people who refuse to roll over and die?
Does Vietnam ring a bell? Beuller? Beuller?? Ferris Beuller...?

c) Everyone who figures rednecks, hillbillies, and sketchy neighborhood city-folk from the U.S. of 1B Guns and 2Trillion Rounds of Ammo, are going to be easier meat and bigger pushovers than illiterate fourth-grade dropout goatherders with rusted bolt-action rifles, signify by setting yourself on fire.

I'll wait, while those industrial military wannabe Sun Tzu geniusii answer those questions.

Tell us how many divisions the Nazis needed to garrison unarmed populations, and then tell us what the numbers would be against a population that bought more guns than the U.S., Russian, Chinese, and NATO armies have, combined, in just last year alone, and every year since they've kept stats?

If I’m a betting man, I like the odds in favor of Team Partisan.

And inside a month, we’ll be using Team Oppression’s drones against them.
Bigly.

If there are any of them left alive to fight.

In a fight in this country between the people (even an infinitesimally small fraction of them) and The Man, we run out of government minions to kill in about two volleys, on Monday.

Forget III-percenters.
This is going to be the Great Three Shot War.

“Why three shots?”
Because after three shots apiece, we were all out of bad guys.”

QED