Specifically in the military realm, there's also a speed issue. During actual war, everyone pulls out all the stops and stuff develops at breakneck speed. But during peacetime, there's no need to do that. So we war-game out what we'll need, and leisurely work on that, and then when war happens, we go to war on day 1 with the military technology we have. But, you can, in all-out war, move fast enough to pre-empt your opponent's wartime adaptation.
The question is, what if one side develops a sufficiently cheap/effective offense (say, based on the war-time development incentives in a small, regional conflict) that can be deployed quickly enough not to just win the first battle, but destroy the capability (either by destruction of resources/factories, or political will) of the other side to restore the balance?
"As long as there is any investment they can make that costs less than $10,000,000,000 dollars and neutralizes the drones, they will make it."
But investments also take time and political capital. If the 10,000 drones wipe out a carrier group, the domestic political damage will exceed even the dollar price tag. "Too big to fail" can apply to more than just banks.
I'd add that, in practice, states will mostly value weapons systems such as aircraft carriers instrumentally--for acquiring or protecting intrinsically valuable interests--and if so, the relevant threshold for a carrier-protecting investment is the value of the intrinsic interests at stake, rather than the cost of the carrier. If a state spent $10bn on a carrier in order to protect a far-flung island chain that it values at $15bn, and a breakthrough drone technology renders the carrier vulnerable to cheap destruction, the state should invest in an effective anti-drone system for the carrier if it costs less than $15bn (or, if possible, find a cheaper way of protecting the islands).
I agree. I think this argument works best when thinking about long term stability. E.g. if someone invents weapon X, in the long term someone will develop weapon Y to counter it and equillibrium will be restored.
But in the short term, if someone develops weapon X and nobody else has it, they may be tempted to use it before anyone builds counterweapon Y. See for example John Von Neumanns arguments that the U.S. should nuke the USSR as soon as possible to prevent them from making their own nukes.
The consequence of technological progress is that people can regularly develop weapons A, B, C and constantly be ahead of defenders. Though in fairness, defense technology can also outpace offense in this manner.
I've been putting off writing a cheeky post on open-source weapons development. By ensuring that every country has equally-good weaponry, the offense-defense balance is stable and nobody goes to war.
The drone/carrier pairing makes sense to me in a single-round scenario, but what happens when the pattern repeats and the next $10,000 offensive system imperils the now drone-impervious $19,999,999,999 carrier?
Now their willingness to pay to protect such a carrier ought to be anything <$19.9B. By this reasoning then within only a few rounds, the cheaply innovating attackers with their drones, mines, and zodiac bombs and whatever else, could increase the cost of a carrier by many times, without the carrier necessarily becoming more useful or productive.
Particularly if you are a country that perhaps has not maintained sufficient debt backdrop (or appetite for military losses) to finance such things.
Americans believe they paid 20B for a carrier to be an invincible, global symbol of their might. They will not accept paying more for it to cower in port, being slowly refurbished to protect it from thousand dollar weapons systems that resemble what they used to take pictures of their wedding, and they will even more not accept it being sunk (or even slightly damaged) by such devices.
This has not sunk (pun intended) in. We have carriers currently deployed in places that they are very, very likely to be within range of not just imagined threats, but ones we've literally seen deployed successfully in combat on youtube. I 100% believe that people are working very hard on protection and have probably deployed some, but I am not sure they would hold up to a determined enemy.
I agree with the overall thesis, but a long range bullet did get within inches of President Trump. Part of the equilibrium is not just the cost but the institutional capacity to adapt to new offensive/defensive balances, and some institutions might be sclerotic and require serious reforming first. (Not sure to what degree that describes the Secret Service in particular)
The question becomes, what sort of cost-effective measures can we imagine that would neutralize a dozen autonomous drones with grenades strapped to them?
Imagine twelve of these: https://youtu.be/9pEqyr_uT-k?si=kj8d4foDmjkWsXrM flying at the president giving a speech. You could place a cardboard box a mile or two away containing them a week ahead of time, and the time until impact would be measured in seconds, not minutes. Radar wouldn’t be especially effective either, as they can easily remain out of line of site until the last 10 seconds or so.
Current countermeasures rely almost entirely on jamming or spoofing. These interfere with the operators control, and the drones GPS. The thing is, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that drones will need GPS and an operator to fly in the very near future. Self driving cars are complicated since they need to avoid crashing and operate extremely close to obstacles, leaving little margin of error. Suicide drones need to stay far away from obstacles until crashing into the target, can accept a high failure rate, and thus can very plausibly act autonomously in the near future.
That leaves active countermeasures like projectiles or very powerful directed energy weapons, which just aren’t anywhere near what we would need.
Of course there might be unimagined countermeasures in the near future, but that’s not guaranteed.
Specifically in the military realm, there's also a speed issue. During actual war, everyone pulls out all the stops and stuff develops at breakneck speed. But during peacetime, there's no need to do that. So we war-game out what we'll need, and leisurely work on that, and then when war happens, we go to war on day 1 with the military technology we have. But, you can, in all-out war, move fast enough to pre-empt your opponent's wartime adaptation.
The question is, what if one side develops a sufficiently cheap/effective offense (say, based on the war-time development incentives in a small, regional conflict) that can be deployed quickly enough not to just win the first battle, but destroy the capability (either by destruction of resources/factories, or political will) of the other side to restore the balance?
"As long as there is any investment they can make that costs less than $10,000,000,000 dollars and neutralizes the drones, they will make it."
But investments also take time and political capital. If the 10,000 drones wipe out a carrier group, the domestic political damage will exceed even the dollar price tag. "Too big to fail" can apply to more than just banks.
I'd add that, in practice, states will mostly value weapons systems such as aircraft carriers instrumentally--for acquiring or protecting intrinsically valuable interests--and if so, the relevant threshold for a carrier-protecting investment is the value of the intrinsic interests at stake, rather than the cost of the carrier. If a state spent $10bn on a carrier in order to protect a far-flung island chain that it values at $15bn, and a breakthrough drone technology renders the carrier vulnerable to cheap destruction, the state should invest in an effective anti-drone system for the carrier if it costs less than $15bn (or, if possible, find a cheaper way of protecting the islands).
I agree. I think this argument works best when thinking about long term stability. E.g. if someone invents weapon X, in the long term someone will develop weapon Y to counter it and equillibrium will be restored.
But in the short term, if someone develops weapon X and nobody else has it, they may be tempted to use it before anyone builds counterweapon Y. See for example John Von Neumanns arguments that the U.S. should nuke the USSR as soon as possible to prevent them from making their own nukes.
The consequence of technological progress is that people can regularly develop weapons A, B, C and constantly be ahead of defenders. Though in fairness, defense technology can also outpace offense in this manner.
I've been putting off writing a cheeky post on open-source weapons development. By ensuring that every country has equally-good weaponry, the offense-defense balance is stable and nobody goes to war.
The drone/carrier pairing makes sense to me in a single-round scenario, but what happens when the pattern repeats and the next $10,000 offensive system imperils the now drone-impervious $19,999,999,999 carrier?
Now their willingness to pay to protect such a carrier ought to be anything <$19.9B. By this reasoning then within only a few rounds, the cheaply innovating attackers with their drones, mines, and zodiac bombs and whatever else, could increase the cost of a carrier by many times, without the carrier necessarily becoming more useful or productive.
Is this not an outcome that should concern us?
Particularly if you are a country that perhaps has not maintained sufficient debt backdrop (or appetite for military losses) to finance such things.
Americans believe they paid 20B for a carrier to be an invincible, global symbol of their might. They will not accept paying more for it to cower in port, being slowly refurbished to protect it from thousand dollar weapons systems that resemble what they used to take pictures of their wedding, and they will even more not accept it being sunk (or even slightly damaged) by such devices.
This has not sunk (pun intended) in. We have carriers currently deployed in places that they are very, very likely to be within range of not just imagined threats, but ones we've literally seen deployed successfully in combat on youtube. I 100% believe that people are working very hard on protection and have probably deployed some, but I am not sure they would hold up to a determined enemy.
I agree with the overall thesis, but a long range bullet did get within inches of President Trump. Part of the equilibrium is not just the cost but the institutional capacity to adapt to new offensive/defensive balances, and some institutions might be sclerotic and require serious reforming first. (Not sure to what degree that describes the Secret Service in particular)
I believe this about presidential assassinations. But in a total war, by definition you dont have any additional resources you can invest in defense.
The question becomes, what sort of cost-effective measures can we imagine that would neutralize a dozen autonomous drones with grenades strapped to them?
Imagine twelve of these: https://youtu.be/9pEqyr_uT-k?si=kj8d4foDmjkWsXrM flying at the president giving a speech. You could place a cardboard box a mile or two away containing them a week ahead of time, and the time until impact would be measured in seconds, not minutes. Radar wouldn’t be especially effective either, as they can easily remain out of line of site until the last 10 seconds or so.
Current countermeasures rely almost entirely on jamming or spoofing. These interfere with the operators control, and the drones GPS. The thing is, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that drones will need GPS and an operator to fly in the very near future. Self driving cars are complicated since they need to avoid crashing and operate extremely close to obstacles, leaving little margin of error. Suicide drones need to stay far away from obstacles until crashing into the target, can accept a high failure rate, and thus can very plausibly act autonomously in the near future.
That leaves active countermeasures like projectiles or very powerful directed energy weapons, which just aren’t anywhere near what we would need.
Of course there might be unimagined countermeasures in the near future, but that’s not guaranteed.