by mrguyorama | 2025-09-29 18:30:03+00:00
>NATO needs to start working on more low-tech high volume solutions.

It has. Don't be fooled that just because you haven't seen it means it doesn't exist.

>The Netherlands and Germany used to have old anti-air systems that were basically a tank undercarriage with a radar and two rapid fire machine guns

The GEPARD. Every country has similar. Soviet countries had the Shilka vehicles, US built https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M163_VADS (and the Duster before it). Even before we put radar on these things, slapping a bunch of 50 cals on the back of a truck was standard, and Ukraine does that right now, to mild success.

Currently the US is building some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM which is basically just a non-self propelled (but still technically mechanized) SPAAG, but is modern so it can even take out missiles and sometimes mortar shells! Also, Rheinmetall has been working on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyshield for quite some time, but holy shit is it pricey for what it is, and it uses special ammo too so that's sucky. Pretty much every arms manufacturer in Europe though is taking their default 30mm or 40mm cannon and slapping it and a generic small radar on whatever mobility platform they can find. The market is ravenous for it right now. It's just not a premier product though, as it's basically off the shelf hardware. Except for the US, who struggled and failed to make the M247 Sergeant York

The West's current plan to entirely null small drones and Shahed style things that fly slowly is the APKWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon...

The gyst is, you take dirt cheap ($3000) rockets that we have a million of, slap a $10k laser guidance package on them, and then use an F-literally whatever (or even helicopters) with bog standard targeting pods to click on a drone and make them go away. I don't think this is viable against DJIs with grenades but I'm pretty sure the plan for that is the MK-82 special delivered to any patch of warm on the FLIR

If you think that can't scale, understand that since WW2, the US's entire air strategy is "fly 1000 sorties all day every day forever". It's why the US doesn't actually have that much in terms of Anti-Air platforms. Their anti-air platform is 3000 planes. They also managed to actually execute such a strategy in the first Gulf War.

There's a lot happening in the Ukraine war that absolutely will not carry over, because you must understand that the Ukraine airspace is basically unused. Neither combatant has enough air power or anti-air systems to control the airspace, or to project air power. They mostly just have the occasional sortie to lob a bomb or launch cruise missiles. This would not be the case with NATO, as long as the US joins in.

IMO, the biggest oversight in the west is that we should be building roughly a billion copies of the Russian Krasnopol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system) . The power of drones has been cheap precision. It used to be only the US had precision in quantity, but shitloads of drones with laser designators is a vast "democratization" of precision in weapons. The US has the Excalibur guided artillery shell, but it's been basically nulled out by GPS jamming and was too expensive anyway.

Some western countries have various more effective semi-guided artillery munitions, things like the BONUS round, but they're expensive, and it's nice to have a commodity version of "I point a laser at that square centimeter and am sure that it dies for like $30k"