Small combat air patrol swarms are necessary to defend our forward infantry.
This article is about coping with enemy night-fighting capabilities that are eroding our boast that we "own the night." But it makes a point about air defense I've addressed:
Consider, for a moment, the potential effect a suicide drone swarm of the sort seen in the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would have on a dismounted rifle company. While the company might feel insulated and secure as it moves under cover of darkness, a swarm of relatively inexpensive suicide drones with electro-optical targeting would find such a target irresistible and easily targetable by identifying thermal or beacon strobe patterns.
I don't think our troops can carry around enough air defense weapons to protect themselves from the swarming drone threat without crippling their primary infantry missions.
So in Army magazine I proposed air defense drone swarms that protect the forward combat units without requiring those troops to degrade their ground combat capabilities just to survive.
