Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook
157 comments
·August 6, 2025maxglute
energy123
Strategic depth is a factor. In the Israel/Iran war, Iran's Shahed drones weren't useful due to the large distance. They could be shot down at a leisurely pace. If Iran was fighting a nearby country like Iraq, it would be a very different story. On the other hand, Israel made use of surveillance drones inside Iran, but only due to methods employed to shrink the strategic depth, either by smuggling them into Iran, or doing a clandestine launch from allies like Azerbaijan. But obviously, such tactics are not durable in a war of attrition, and they're not applicable to high-volume Shahed-like suicide attacks.
In the Pacific theatre, Taiwan is very close to China, so possibly, attack drones will be useful similar to the Ukraine/Russia war.
There are also many different types of drones being employed. The short-range small quadcopters, all the way up to large Predator drones. Shaheds are kind of in the middle in terms of size. The boundary can be blurred too between loitering munitions (Switchblade) and drones.
For the suicide quadcopter drones, there is a realization that Skynet is the next step in the arms race. Full edge autonomy over the kill chain. No need for data link (susceptible to electronic warfare) or trained pilots or added round-trip latency.
Anti-drone tech is also changing. Interceptor drones, net-dropping drones, ground-based laser, electronic warfare, and small guided ground- or air-launched interceptors.
Also have to consider the combined arms picture, none of this can be reasoned about in a vacuum.
But I suppose my main takeaway is - no two theatres are the same, AND there is a diversity in drones. So to collectivize a takeaway around "drones" would be a reasoning error.
One thing will be certain when it comes to wars between nearby countries. You need to knock out the enemy's industrial production quickly with bombers. Or have your own industrial production that can maintain pacing and avoid culmination in a war of attrition.
maxglute
My comment was more specific to the article, i.e. counter "SMALL" UAS / tactical / infantry battlefield scale.
Pacific theater / operation/strategic scale, IMO bigger drones and traditional loitering munitions kind of just blend together. A shaheed is just a poor man's cruise missile. Iran didn't have #s or ability to coordinate / mass #s for any strategic effect. I think Israel has like magazine depth of ~800 interceptors for low tier / subsonic threats and 1000s in stockpile. Iran was (E: *NOT) capable of saturating that.
Depending on relative size / force balance, can still drag on war of attrition after factories turn with sufficient stockpiles. I'm kind of thinking nation state actors, the hedge is really storing a few 10-100,000 loitering munition tier drones in tunnels to ensure some sort of conventional MAD with neighbours. But really that's for... competent / connected nation state actors who has backup ISR, i.e. piggy off US/ eventually PRC global ISR for targeting. I imagine a resourced nation can build out shaheed tier manufacturing underground.
Incidentally, we had news earlier this year that PRC/Polytech is acquiring 1M, as in 1,000,000 loitering drones. Presuming shaheed tier (2000km sky moped) since Polytech has show shaheed clones in past. That's enough to easily saturate all defenses in first island chain even if US+co prepositions every piece of interception hardware ever made or plan to acquire in next 10+ years. That's strategic level shaheed spam.
My main takeaway is cheap loitering munition/drones can reasonable replace potentially short range fires (~2000km), if there's enough of them to casually bleed interceptors, AND if there's survivable theater level kill chain. Last part is really... what separates Ukraine, Iran... maybe Russia's current... hobbyist tier efforts. RU launching 500+ salvos are still trying to evade anti air, with many interceptions because they don't have ISR / killchain to eliminate antiair. It's easy to build a lot of shooters, it's hard to build out the sensors to hit important things. In a highend fight, at least one side (and possibly both) side is going has the ISR and magazine depth to ensure antiair becomes irrelevant and then it will be matter of munitions + concrete attrition math
whizzter
I'm fully agreeing with your assessment (see my squad-level-airpower comment beside here), however I think there'll probably be cheap-enough counter-measures, like the latest CV-90 variation that has anti-drone munitions and built-in sensors to detect them at close quarters.
I think we're due to a cambrian explosion of drone types and counter-measures in the coming decade, in your mass-drone scenario I think smaller drones will probably be possible to counter with cheap "technical"-like vechicles armed with cheap enough sensors/radars and automatic-/machine- shotguns (there has always been experiments but no pressing use for them in the past).
XorNot
The problem with Shaheeds and other slow air like them is they're not substantially different to the type of vehicle which would be needed to intercept them.
So a stockpile of Shaheeds can be largely countered by launching something very similar provided you can detect it. You could very much imagine having a vehicle which can simply leave the payload behind for better air speed when used in interception mode.
This is quite different to most conventional missile threats where the time between detection and interception, as well as the performance characteristics, necessitates extremely high performance interceptors.
An analogy would be that you can hit a baseball with a bat, but not a bullet even though they're both just ballistic projectiles.
BobaFloutist
>Full edge autonomy over the kill chain.
I wonder how susceptible these would be to Potemkin targets (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_tank)
Things could get very MGS V very fast.
emchammer
If AI can distinguish between sex and race by finding differences in X-ray pictures that humans cannot, then it can figure out fake tanks. I’m glad that the Marines are being given these toys to play with now.
whizzter
I think because drones impact at the time is because it's filling an previously untapped niche with a cheap and ridiculously useful alternative.
In my mind I'm calling it "squad-level-airpower" , regular airpower started with spotters, then fighters and CAS in WW1. By WW2 it had expanded the role to achieve operation and theater levels goals, and finally with nukes also a strategic level, and still remains required to achieve goals on larger levels.
However with air-defences creeping down to MANPADS, CAS became more problematic and adding then the cost of planes and pilots made it far from universally useful in a close war.
Drones being man-luggable and -operatable and cheap with hardly any infrastructure more or less flooded a that useful niche, and it's not like that niche was unsurprising, just not successfully exploited previously as the US army tried with the VZ-1 and HZ-1.
Like you mentioned with the Iran conflict, classic air superiority still holds the crown to achieve larger goals on strategic levels (even if drones helped out on an tactical level).
esseph
I've been trying to judge this impact on doctrine and procurement but these things are hard to judge when it's happening. Hindsight is cheating ;)
It's huge, though. Many tiers of equipment, doctrine, vehicles, product time to market improvements, RF equipment, radars, stealth tech, software, battle drills, and even new job specializations of various levels. It's intense, and a constant iteration cycle at a pace we haven't seen for at least a long time, but possibly forever.
energy123
One possible future is that wartime casualties decrease because humans in the field are just completely useless. Accompanying this positive development will be the negative tail risk of exinction.
dmurray
American military doctrine seems to include the assumption that you will always have the manufacturing capacity and the supply lines to get all the materiel you need to the front, that you'll be bottlenecked by something else like manpower.
This works pretty well for fighting limited wars where part of the justification is to develop and maintain military readiness. Would it still be true in a large scale war against China - could you pump out a million drones a day - or would you wish for a doctrine that included reusable drones?
maxglute
In Pacific war... with standoff distances involved most of determinant fighting all going to be one way trip, i.e. 2000km+ = disposable. I suppose question is how much US can value engineer their stand off missiles, which will inevitably have more requirements than PRC because when US moving shit across salty ocean, each shot is logistically more expensive. PRC can just haul them out of conditioned depots and get firing.
And how many US can actually produce, i.e. bluntly, US military has _never_ fought any adversary on the scale of modern PRC. WW2 JP+DE had like <50% of US economic and industrial power, while being ganged up by multiple other allies with reasonably large militaries. Peak cold war USSR also similar scale (1/2 US) and realistically US war plan for NATO invasion was to stall and nuke the Fulda gap. Asymmetrically stomping Iraq still took 5 carriers on high tempo operations (not sustainable for more than 1-2 months), favourable coalition basing, completely compromised IADs... multiple months to dismantle power charitability 1/100th size of modern PRC. Even Korean war vs peasant PRC fought US+UN to stand still. Vs modern PRC with 150% US GDP by PPP and and industrial gap like current shipbuilding #s, in their backyard, I suppose the answer is, get defense spending back to 10%-15% of GDP (at least Korean or Vietnamese wartime economy) and go figure out form there.
BobaFloutist
Another way of putting that is that for all that people love to point to gunship diplomacy, the US is if anything more fond of using diplomats to aid our military than the other way around.
dgoldstein0
Good question.
I think something to keep in mind, the US hasn't fought a war on the home front since 1865. The Spanish American war, WWI and WWII, Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf war, Afghanistan, Iraq - none of these were fought on American soil, with the exception of Pearl harbor, which was a navy base, not a major manufacturing site. So we haven't really had to reckon with what happens if our homeland is under fire - sure, we drilled for it during WWII, worrying about Nazi bombers and Japanese sabotage but neither actually happened.
It doesn't look like our wars are going to get closer anytime soon, but modern planes and rocketry have much greater range than in the 1940s the last time we were at war with countries with significant resources. If we ever come head to head with China, their missile capabilities could be a real concern.
bell-cot
> American military doctrine seems to include the assumption that ...
Since at least WWI, the US military has been very aware of their dependence on the industrial base:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower_School_fo...
(That I know of, their awareness of high-capacity supply line issues goes back to at least the Civil War.)
Historically, the US military had a considerable industrial base of its own - arsenals, navy yards, etc. - which could manufacture anything from a pistol cartridge up to an aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, Congress shut all of that down in the later 1900's, in favor of defense contractors. Gov't-owned facilities just couldn't compete at greasing Congressional palms.
Thlom
The US would loose a war against China simply because China can outproduce the US many times over. I have no idea why the US keeps teasing a war with China, a war they would most certainly loose. What is the point?
energy123
Can China protect their relevant industrial base from being quickly degraded by intelligence + bombers? In WW2, Japan had no power projection into the US mainland, so the industrial base of US sealed the deal.
PJDK
Does it keep teasing a war with China - seems like China keeps teasing an attack on Taiwan and the US is deliberately ambiguous on how it would respond to such an attack.
I think all this talk of who would win often ignores that factor to. There is no realistic total war scenario between China and the US - China doesn't have any desire or capacity to role tanks into Washington and the US doesn't have any desire to role tanks into Beijing.
The war, if it comes will be China trying to take control of Taiwan and the US intervening on the side of Taiwan. Victory for China looks like Taiwan under PRC rule, victory for the US looks like Taiwanese independence.
With that in mind "all" the US needs to be able to do is make the cost of the invasion/maintaining the supply lines too high. If I was China the drones I might worry about the most would be underwater!
BobaFloutist
>Image fuse some cheap rgb/ir/thermo with edge compute to maim any warm bodies at 100km+ speeds.
"Sir, we have successfully culled the enemy deer population by 30%. Thei Department of Wildlife is issuing no further permits for this season, and their hunters are emotionally devastated. The impact on their civilian morale cannot be overstated. Where should we direct our next billion dollars? I was thinking maybe drones with long-range microwave to boil off their swimming pools...?"
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Sharlin
The large majority of drones used in UKR is already of the expendable munition-like type.
echoangle
I don’t know if that would matter in an actual war between china and the US but sending explosives at anything that’s warm sounds like a war crime. That would probably violate proportionality.
Havoc
If there is a hot war between them any notion of civilities like war crime rules will be out the window by day three
maxglute
TBH once these platforms become deployed, noncombatants are signing their own suicide note even being close to battlefield. I imagine rules of engagement, expectations on civilians will simply change/devolve, i.e. most you can expect from "responsible" users is some map coordinates for murder bot no man's land where they shouldn't be. This without even mentioning we'll likely also see loitering drones hibernate as proximity mines / area denial munitions if they don't find targets. It will get very, very messy.
lan321
Only the losers get to trial for war crimes, so just don't lose.
hovering_nox
lol
XorNot
That's an artillery shell. You're describing an artillery shell. What kills cheaply and indiscriminately is an airburst artillery shell.
maxglute
No? Modern artillery shells cost 5-10k per (50-70k for guidance kits + programmable) and kill at medium distance, with entire logistic park (including self propelled) and isr chain for proper deployment. It's a different tier / type of capability. It kills lots/plurality of casualties... and historically... relatively cheaply. Autonomous drones potential for scenarios like close quarters, interiors, entrenched positions. Depending on battlefield transparency you can autonomously transport a shitload drones to frontlines and have them hunt / deny difficult targets that artillery can't effective engage. Drones that don't find target can area deny by being proxy mines for limited time etc etc. All potentially much cheaper once you eliminate 1 drone 1 operator constraint.
XorNot
And the drones which can do this cost (???) with a range of (???) and a flight time of (???).
The problem with the "drones will do it!" narrative people put out there is that it's anything and everything but what the drone is, what it weighs, it's volume and current production are all absent figures which simply fill in as "better then whatever you just said".
For example, a reasonably portable drone capable of ISR and limited infantry scale strike would be the Switchblade 300, already provided to Ukraine. This has a range of 30km a top speed of 161km/h and 20 minutes of flight time, with a 1.6 kg explosive payload - which is respectable. You could carry quite a lot of these to the front if you wanted to.
That particular system cost about $50,000 a unit - optimistically. It's likely that price could be bought down, but it does include the drone, launcher and ground control system. A reasonable price today would be closer to $15,000 judging from more recent products being offered.
If I hunt around a little then locally I could buy something like this[1] locally for $1,300 which has a 1kg drop payload...but only 10km of range, and a 45 minute flight time - and let's remember better radios will eat into that payload and flight time.
Now obviously different drones can do different things, but the core point is the same: drones don't magically not have logistical "mass". You can't fly a bunch of drones to the front for free - you need to either recharge or refuel them at the destination. Which means you need to stockpile them. Which means they can be spotted and destroyed on the ground. The loiter times aren't "days", they're still better measured in minutes counting hours at most.
All of these disadvantages apply to artillery too, of course but the point is that once you start considering the actual range brackets involved and the parameters of real systems built with current technology, including limiting technologies like energy storage, payload and physics of real explosives, the generic superweapon slips away. Ukraine is using a lot of drones because Ukraine can buy drones but can't easily get artillery and gun barrels for it. But Ukraine was also having a lot of trouble with Russia's considerable artillery advantage up until quite recently, and still is because of North Korean shell resupply.
The word "drone" gets substituted in for a superweapon fulfilling every role perfectly, with no actual physical parameters which would make it imperfect - and that type of thinking should give a lot of people pause particularly in the context of Ukraine where any number of systems have had their moment in the spotlight before either falling out of favor due to adaptation or simply no longer being the most applicable to the task (i.e. the various anti-tank weapons are still doing excellent anti-tank work...there's just very few Russian tanks any more).
ipnon
For infantry it is now as indispensable as an automatic rifle, grenades, radios, and so on. Fighters in Ukraine without drone support are at significant disadvantage.
galangalalgol
Why doesn't duckshot make short work of these things?
rpcope1
Even bubba's pissin hot 3.5 magnum bird shot is probably not getting above 300 or 400 feet vertical for starters, and then you've either got to deal with hitting it dead on with a tight pattern wad or accepting that the shot is going spread enough to make it unlikely to hit it. So far as I have ever seen the energy in a shot shell wad dissipates much faster than a regular bullet, and I think you're better off trying to hit it with a regular old 556.
rpcope1
Following on to this, I would not be remotely surprised if drones continue to be a threat to see something like a man portable gepard hooked up to an EW system, as given the speed those things move and how hard even hitting regular old Canadian Geese or errant clays under non-combat situations, I don't know how you would economically fight drone swarms short of a mini Phalanx CIWS or something.
Maybe ironically, I wonder if we won't see things like the Bofors 40mm guns continue to be prolific if they get successfully retasked to fighting drones (and they would end up like the M2, fighting long after it was initially conceived).
SauciestGNU
On this particular note, both Ukraine and Russia have developed anti-drone sabot rounds that fire from the respective cartridges their infantry service rifles are chambered for. I do not know their efficacy however.
ipnon
Drones are most effective as tools of psychological warfare I think. Infantry in a trench can maybe disable a wave or two of drones before becoming overwhelmed, but the drone operator can remain safe and calm in their bunker kilometers away. Most drones don’t make it on target or even inflict lethal injury but their presence or the threat of their presence constantly draws the enemy’s attention away from your units. In Ukraine soldiers seem to worry much more about drones more than small arms or indirect fire. And both sides use this to influence the tactical decision making of their enemies.
SilentTiger
Because they're incredibly fast, exceeding 40 meters per second. You can't fire a shotgun at 80 meters. A typical shotgun's effective range is only 40 meters, and once it's within range, you only have one second to fire.
Furthermore, drones are generally difficult to detect at 400 meters unless you're using a synthetic detection system. By the time you spot them, it's too late.
prawn
My experience is only with consumer drones, but you could fly over a target area and release an explosive before anyone heard that it was there, especially in a noisy environment. Above 100m, unless you're at high speed/power, most people won't notice a drone at all. It's often a change in speed/direction that gives them away, otherwise it will be past you before you first notice the sound.
esseph
FPV drones can hit 80mph+ / 128kmph+ , other drones can fly much higher than a shotgun can reach.
Also, swarms.
somenameforme
Large scale swarms will probably never be a major issue for infantry. You have a finite number of drones, even at extremely high rates of production, spread across all things you want to target. Sending a swarm at individual infantry, or even platoons is just wasteful. At scale that's thousands of drones, per day, that you could have instead sent towards more valuable targets.
This, btw, is also why claims that some side is targeting civilians in otherwise 'productive' warfare (e.g. actually achieving things instead of bombing for the sake of fear/terrorism/headlines/photo ops) is usually just lying propaganda. Civilians are a worse than 0 value target meaning you completely wasted your munitions.
mrheosuper
Drone attacks in many ways. Some use suicide method that just ramming themself into you. Some just drop explosive from high above.
somenameforme
They do. There's a lot of videos of them being taken out with birdshot. I also saw one video about modding underbarrel grenade launchers to fire a shotgun cartridge.
esseph
A lot of US under barrel launchers have "factory" buckshot rounds.
M79/M203/M320/etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M576_40_mm_grenade
AK would be a different story, but Ukraine has a lot of 3d printers and those shells are one time use and not hard to make.
Cthulhu_
Those got lucky, lucky in that they detected them in the first place and that they were able to land a shot.
tra3
A lot of these fpv drones are capable of 30mph. That’s not a lot of time to spot em and react.
lazide
Some of them can go 90-120mph (off the shelf). Custom FPV drones can go even faster - some fancy ones 330+ kph (200+ mph)
senectus1
also.. detonating an explosive drone at only a few meters away is still likely to take you out...
energy123
This is a quality discussion about this question:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1b0u0k0/how_eff...
haunter
Judging by /r/CombatFootage/ you can't really do anything against them unless you wear a full EOD suit. Once you hear it you are already dead.
datpiff
We're not likely to see the footage where someone destroys the drone
distances
There's a lot of footage where incoming FPV drones are destroyed by different means.
echoangle
I don’t know how you would actually defend but there is probably some selection bias too. The videos are published by the drone operators, they probably have an interest in publishing videos of successful strikes.
Brybry
Small arms fire can take out small drones.
I believe both Russia and Ukraine train some soldiers via shooting target/dummy drones and skeet.[1]
And there are videos out there of Ukrainians and Russians successfully shooting down fpv drones. [2][3][4]
(Content warning: war videos but there shouldn't be any gore in them)
[1] https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1948675201983553864
[2] https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1920365175766483080
noeltock
We produce drones in Ukraine, yes, hit-rate is lower, but still worth it given cost.
worldsayshi
I heard of Ukrainian drone operators that had +500 kills and that was a couple of years ago...
Cthulhu_
r/ukrainewarvideoreport has been full of it for three years, but mind the survivorship (well, opposite of that) bias - the Ukranian war propaganda / media machine only publishes successes, the Russian one is suppressed or simply not posted on Reddit. Just because you don't see failed strikes doesn't mean they don't happen. The vehicles have drone shields, the roads have nets, and there's heaps of electronic countermeasures in place.
That said, if you're out in the field and there's one above you, you're boned. Can't imagine the horrors of vibing, then having a grenade plop down next to you.
wiseowise
> the Ukranian war propaganda / media machine only publishes successes, the Russian one is suppressed or simply not posted on Reddit
They are literally posted there, stop spreading fud.
Havoc
The sub is biased towards the successful attempts though
Kuinox
Wouldn't a flame thrower be crazy effective against a drone ?
masteruvpuppetz
Saw the importance of drone fighting in Pakistan's recent clashes with India. They sent drones to big cities like Lahore/Karachi so IMO even Police and Civil Defense should also get these trainings.
roncesvalles
Both India and Pakistan were surprisingly well-prepared for drone warfare in the recent exchange in May, for both offense and defense.
The US seems behind in comparison.
Yizahi
So, what is the effective range of this handbook? Can it be used to intercept and destroy ruzzian Lancet drone? Is it single use handbook or can be reloaded?
andoando
On the upside of drones, hopefully in the future war will just be among machines
carabiner
It will just be like countries burning piles of money until one runs out.
Cthulhu_
Isn't that how it goes nowadays too? The US pulled out of Afghanistan after twenty years of occupation and... didn't actually change anything there, the regime went back to the one from before.
I don't think that at this point there's ever any winning a war, not unless you brainwash three generations (NK) or genocide the population and remove any trace of them like in Gaza at the moment. And that's a relatively small stretch of land.
petesergeant
Got to imagine there are going to be a lot of well-paid PMC jobs for Ukrainian veterans in other countries that neighbor Russia after the war.
MaxPock
I also see Russia transferring all that drone experience and technology to America's enemies.
s5300
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Daugh2005
This is a great post. I like this topic. I found many interesting things on this site. Thanks for posting this.
Larrikin
Is the book actually available to read?
Animats
The manual from 2020 is available.[1] But nobody took drones that seriously back then. In that document, they're treated mostly as recon assets, not primary attack weapons.
[1] https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-L...
SJC_Hacker
The US military had almost exclusively considered drones as expensive systems like the Predator used for standoff ground fire support much like an attack helicopter, or for use in counterinsurgency like the Switchblade
But in their defense, they never anticipated having to fight a near peer adversary on land to the extent Ukraine has. But I would argue no one really saw this coming to this degree. The Bayraktar for instance, was much along the lines of US drone philosophy, costing several million a piece, The drones used in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict were mostly used along that philosophy as well
aaron695
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MaxPock
Took them long .Drones are democratizing the battlefield and that is a welcome development. In a future conflict America engages in,social media will be full of videos of Smiths from Iowa and Kansas being chased and blown by drones in some country in Asia or Middle East.
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yahway
《Now
UKR almost feels like yesterday's drone war. It seems pretty obvious purpose built murder bots by technologically capable powers like PRC would be fully autonomous and expendable like actual munitions. Image fuse some cheap rgb/ir/thermo with edge compute to maim any warm bodies at 100km+ speeds. Don't even bother to reusable / save material. Just send them out to indiscriminately detonate like cheap smart munitions that they should be.