Polish defense manufacturer WB Group has unveiled Gladius 2, a new loitering munition built for a reduced radar and heat signature and powered by a turbojet engine for a fast run into the target area. The company also refers to

The Polish military is truly a behemoth, these coupled with Poland’s growing AH64E fleet make the idea of suppressing or even predicting the regional location of Polish deep strike capability a hopeless task, even in a scenario where Poland has been significantly degraded in defensive capability from preceding strikes these two tools alone in the hands of competent military leadership could gut any real traditional landwar threat to Poland in the throat… and no matter how good your intelligence is on Poland do you really know which shipping crates are the danger crates?

On the otherhand seeing where an Apache is one day doesn’t tell you much about where it will be the next unlike traditional strike systems… which makes russian/iranian style mass flying bomb attacks a dubious proposition even with endless planning and subterfuge.

Traditional static airbases are highly vulnerable to drones like this which is where the synergy comes in with helicopters that can network and command them while operating out of adhoc improvised positions.

note the UK military has this same strength as well, so does India…

    • supersquirrel@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      The bottleneck is only access to capital and small jet turbines… unless of course you don’t have a fleet of hovering command centers/dragons that are hauling a dizzying array of armament, two highly trained humans, high powered sensors, countermeasures and the communications infrastructure to serve as eyes for your blind mass produced flying bombs… if you don’t have that then the bottleneck is mass producing mini autonomous fighter jets which is a massively more difficult and ethically fraught challenge*.

      In particular radically simple pulse jet engines may proliferate on (nonstealthy) platforms that fit the former type, especially in interceptor/decoy roles.

      *the best example of this latter, much harder to nail down design goal is Turkey’s Kizilelma, and don’t take this as an indicator this is easy, take it as an expression of Turkey’s strength + them being in many ways blocked manned fighter jet access.