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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

We're already very much in a theoretical territory, but: Given small size, how do you detect a swarm? Hovering cubes would be ignorable noise to radars. At f22 flight speeds, you can't exactly manoeuver around them.

If you knew where the plane is headed, the question could become: can you create a wide enough curtain ahead of time that can home in on the incoming plane? Chasing is not needed that way.

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The sky is too big, the distances are too large, and a fighter jet is moving too fast. What are these drones supposed to do, hope the jet flies close enough that the drone can act as a proximity mine?

Plus, the kind of small drone you’re describing can’t operate at the altitude of a fighter jet. As the air thins out you need a lot of speed to keep sufficient oxygen flowing into the jets, and non-jet aircraft can’t operate. So unless the drones are going to be blimps, a drone that can climb to fighter jet altitude is going to be pretty big and look a lot like a fighter jet.

Considering that a F-22's RCS is roughly the size of a marble, and it is expected to fight similarly stealthy aircraft I'd imagine that you're very much under estimating the ability of a modern jet to detect your swarm of tiny cubes. Next, how exactly do your cubes stay up in the air for long periods of time? You'd need a great deal of energy in order to fly at the altitudes which an F-22 would be flying at. And presumably to loiter up there for long periods of time. Suddenly your cheap tiny swarm is expensive, large, and unweildly.

There's no way to put up that many drones at 40K feet. It's just impossible regardless of cost per unit. The sky is a big place.

Any large set of hovering things grouped tightly enough to ensure damage to a passing F-22 would definitely show up on radar. Flocks of birds show up; a flock of drones would too.

If you knew exactly where the plane is headed then, yeah, the drones might work.

Sure, and if you know exactly where a plane is headed than a anti-air missle, anti-air gun, or plane with radically less speed/agility would be fine as well.

So that's a big if.

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