[Goose]

HIMARS is a great weapon, but when paired with the real-time drone reconnaissance from some pretty cheap and basic drones it can be used to snipe like this. Russia clearly is struggling with the very widespread Ukrainian drone coverage all over the front, but I do wonder how good the US capability would be. Seems like drone offense is much better than drone defense at this technological moment.

The US drone capability would be adequate to do what Ukraine is doing. One can argue ours are "better" (and they certainly cost more) but we can do the same. The asymmetry in the Ukraine vs. Russia front is that 1) Russia doesn't have a drone capability to go "find" the HIMARS, and 2) even if they did, Russia doesn't have a precision weapon that can hit the HIMARS. Russian tube artillery (and NATO tube artillery) does not have the range. The SMERCH and Tornado-S systems in theory have available precision guided rockets similar to a HIMARS. However, it appears Russia has very few of these missiles. That explains the virtually invulnerability of the HIMARS to date.

In theory, Ukraine, Russia, and NATO also have the ability to attack the HIMARS systems with aircraft. So far, Russia hasn't succeeded in doing this. Even more stunning, Russia has not attempted to deal with Ukrainian drones using aircraft. They have planes that are not doing anything else. They are available. They have Mainstay aircraft that can "see" the TB2 class drones. We know this because they did it in Syria. The convoys being attacked are in Russian controlled areas so the Russian aircraft don't have to worry about MANPADS. They are far enough away from the Ukrainian Air Defense Zone that they don't have to worry much about S-X00 systems or the like. So why doesn't each convoy have an airborne escort to destroy/chase away the drones? Because Russians suck at war?? Probably more that Russia hasn't trained to do this and are too rigid to improvise. Also, the Army hasn't figured out yet who in the Air Force they should talk to :-).

What would our aircraft be doing differently in CAP? It seems unsustainable to use a million dollar AMRAAM to shoot down 4 figure cost surveillance/targeting drones.

Well, drones don't evade well and aren't very fast. Guns would work fine. That isn't the big cost driver though. The operating costs of the aircraft would be quite large. However, if you don't have any other viable approach and want to win the war, you pay what it costs. The Russians have all those planes and people available anyway, and right now have more fuel than they wish they did :-). It is a "sunk cost", so doing it would make sense. After a while, Ukraine would run out of drones.

The US would fight this war so differently that one doesn't know where to start. However, if we suddenly transported ourselves into the Russian situation, we would destroy the Ukrainian HIMARS. We would do that by either locating them with a drone that got lucky or by using AWACs/JSTARS/counter battery radar to find the launch point. We would use that datum to send a drone to the general area to find the HIMARS. This won't be too hard since the HIMARS has to stay on the roads and their engines will be hot from driving. Their IR signature will be considerable. Once they are found, we would use our own HIMARS (with ATACMS if they were too far away) to blow up the HIMARS. If the geometry was right, we could also use an armed drone to blow up the HIMARS and eliminate the middle man.

If necessary, since we would have complete air supremacy we could involve Tac Air to do the dirty work of shooting down Ukrainian drones and blowing up detected HIMARS units. They can use SLAMERs against the Ukrainian HIMARS in order to be "safe". Since we would know exactly where the drones were as they approached the FEBA, the zoomies wouldn't have to loiter there, they could just meet them. Saves Fuel and time. We could also use EA against the drones.

[Goose]

HIMARS is a great weapon, but when paired with the real-time drone reconnaissance from some pretty cheap and basic drones it can be used to snipe like this. Russia clearly is struggling with the very widespread Ukrainian drone coverage all over the front, but I do wonder how good the US capability would be. Seems like drone offense is much better than drone defense at this technological moment.

The US drone capability would be adequate to do what Ukraine is doing. One can argue ours are "better" (and they certainly cost more) but we can do the same. The asymmetry in the Ukraine vs. Russia front is that 1) Russia doesn't have a drone capability to go "find" the HIMARS, and 2) even if they did, Russia doesn't have a precision weapon that can hit the HIMARS. Russian tube artillery (and NATO tube artillery) does not have the range. The SMERCH and Tornado-S systems in theory have available precision guided rockets similar to a HIMARS. However, it appears Russia has very few of these missiles. That explains the virtually invulnerability of the HIMARS to date.

In theory, Ukraine, Russia, and NATO also have the ability to attack the HIMARS systems with aircraft. So far, Russia hasn't succeeded in doing this. Even more stunning, Russia has not attempted to deal with Ukrainian drones using aircraft. They have planes that are not doing anything else. They are available. They have Mainstay aircraft that can "see" the TB2 class drones. We know this because they did it in Syria. The convoys being attacked are in Russian controlled areas so the Russian aircraft don't have to worry about MANPADS. They are far enough away from the Ukrainian Air Defense Zone that they don't have to worry much about S-X00 systems or the like. So why doesn't each convoy have an airborne escort to destroy/chase away the drones? Because Russians suck at war?? Probably more that Russia hasn't trained to do this and are too rigid to improvise. Also, the Army hasn't figured out yet who in the Air Force they should talk to :-).

What would our aircraft be doing differently in CAP? It seems unsustainable to use a million dollar AMRAAM to shoot down 4 figure cost surveillance/targeting drones.

Well, drones don't evade well and aren't very fast. Guns would work fine. That isn't the big cost driver though. The operating costs of the aircraft would be quite large. However, if you don't have any other viable approach and want to win the war, you pay what it costs. The Russians have all those planes and people available anyway, and right now have more fuel than they wish they did :-). It is a "sunk cost", so doing it would make sense. After a while, Ukraine would run out of drones.

The US would fight this war so differently that one doesn't know where to start. However, if we suddenly transported ourselves into the Russian situation, we would destroy the Ukrainian HIMARS. We would do that by either locating them with a drone that got lucky or by using AWACs/JSTARS/counter battery radar to find the launch point. We would use that datum to send a drone to the general area to find the HIMARS. This won't be too hard since the HIMARS has to stay on the roads and their engines will be hot from driving. Their IR signature will be considerable. Once they are found, we would use our own HIMARS (with ATACMS if they were too far away) to blow up the HIMARS. If the geometry was right, we could also use an armed drone to blow up the HIMARS and eliminate the middle man.

If necessary, since we would have complete air supremacy we could involve Tac Air to do the dirty work of shooting down Ukrainian drones and blowing up detected HIMARS units. They can use SLAMERs against the Ukrainian HIMARS in order to be "safe". Since we would know exactly where the drones were as they approached the FEBA, the zoomies wouldn't have to loiter there, they could just meet them. Saves Fuel and time. We could also use EA against the drones.