Comment by SkyeCA
5 hours ago
> If drones become a big enough problem for countries like the US, then drone factories in China will be bombed
Bombing China would be an insane course of action to take for virtually any reason.
That aside consider this: You currently have the power to buy a handful of the shelf parts and assemble your own deadly drone at home. You don't need very specialized parts to do this. Bombing drone factories would do nothing to stop the use of drones.
And making drones and drone parts for massive assaults on stationary targets in the US is not an insane course of action?
For proxy wars, super powers won't bomb each other. But if one of them is attacked by weapons from another, then they will.
> You don't need very specialized parts to do this.
So making drones and drone parts do not require any highly advanced technology or manufacturing processes? Then why weren't they widely used in the first world war?
> So making drones and drone parts do not require any highly advanced technology or manufacturing processes?
I'll understand if you aren't a hardware person, but I think you severely overestimate how complex a drone needs to be if you only intend for it to be single use (which is apparently all the rage in modern war).
You don't even need drone specific parts, the parts you need are used in all kinds of other applications...many are even in your home right now whether you know it or not.
To destroy the supply of these generic parts you would have to destroy...basically everything.
> Then why weren't they widely used in the first world war?
This statement alone makes me not take your argument seriously. You aren't arguing in good faith.
No they're exactly right: drones need cheap, powerful parts which have only become possible due to highly concentrated mass production in places like China. You aren't fabbing up integrated machine learning SOCs in a shed in Ukraine, and the cheapness of the parts depends on large unfettered supply chains. They're not "with some skill, you can build a lathe and then machine a pipe gun" simple.
In a direct conflict, no one is going to sit back and be destroyed by drone swarms: they'll bomb the industrial districts.
In war, the enemy gets a say in your plans: Iran can't beat the US directly, but it can hit energy infrastructure around the Gulf which is politically untenable for the US.
But it works the other way too: if your enemies plan is "you won't bomb the big industrial facilities so we'll just win" then you break out the fancy expensive missiles and bomb the industrial facilities. Or the power plants.
1 reply →
> is not an insane course of action?
No? Flat out arming proxies is literally the point of overt proxy warfare. Sometimes one tries to to be deniable and source other weapons, but other times it's just, enjoy quagmire, cry about it. It's like suggesting PRC going to start blowing up Lockheed plants if they ever lose anything to US munitions.
Yes, if mainland China is successfully invaded by a country being supplied with American military equipment and having their fixed infrastructure destroyed - like described in the article - you can be dead sure that they will try to destroy American military plants.
None of the super power countries will ever accept defeat in their homeland and being conquered without using all means possible to hinder it. That's why the USA has strong opinions on how the Ukraine uses long range weapons in the war with Russia.