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The Unmanned Air Force
coondoggie writes "How important have unmanned aircraft become to the US military? Well how's this: the Air Force says next year it will acquire more unmanned aircraft than manned. Air Force Lt. Gen. Norman Seip this week said the service is 'all in' when it comes to developing unmanned systems and aircraft. 'Next year, the Air Force will procure more unmanned aircraft than manned aircraft,' the general said. 'I think that makes a very pointed statement about our commitment to the future of [unmanned aircraft] and what it brings to the fight in meeting the requirements of combatant commanders.'"
I don't have the numbers handy but I'm betting that they can get many unmanned aircraft for the cost of a single manned one.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So have we got to the stage yet where we can just have our unmanned vehicles fight their unmanned vehicles over an empty patch of ocean and declare a winner?
No, thought not, but I'm sure that's where we're headed. /mark elf... //I hope someone gets the references
I'm sure you are grief-stricken, but that topic is one article that way. (down)
On the main page of course.
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
I suspect this has been in the works since the release of the movie Toys. Sure the general in the film was a nut case, but the idea was a good one - low cost weapons that keep soldiers out of harm's way. We only had to wait for the tech to catch up to make it effective and reliable.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...
What is there to prevent someone from just jamming an unmanned aircraft's communications systems? This would seem to be a pretty major liability, especially if the aircraft is controlled remotely.
So winning a war will be about programming skills and not economic power.
I for one welcome our new communist overlords.
So are these being piloted by remote or with pure AI?
I think for now the remote option is far better, as long as there are sufficient cameras/other output from the plane in order for the "pilot" to know what's going on.
I think this makes the Air Force far more attractive to more people. Sure, a non-tech saavy pilot who thinks he's a hero won't like it, but take an intelligent, college educated soldier and put him in command of a military operation *with no threat to his person* and I'm sure you could achieve some amazing results.
Maybe we'll stop bombing civilians eventually.
However, there is still an old guard of macho "Top Gun" guys in the upper ranks who will have to die off before the Air Force becomes completely comfortable with the idea.
An un-manned plane can out-accelerate and out-turn any plane with a human in it, so before long a manned plane will be at a distinct disadvantage. Give it 10 years or so and manned fighters will be gone. We'll still use pilots for AWACS and the like, though.
I piss off bigots.
BUT It all depends on how the undermind game player assigns target values to unimportant
Targets, and based upon his/her video game expertise.
This sounds like the usurpation of thinking people to videiots.
Who needs this?
How much does the recruitment and training of a pilot for one of these things cost?
For decades now, the limit to fighter aircraft performance has been human endurance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We are calling it skynet and WOPR is the name of main AI running it all.
I for one welcome our unmanned overlords.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I think it's a very pointed statement about our commitment to providing money to the defense contractor industry.
I read recently that China is also committing to unmanned aircraft, with a 1 billion yuan investment (US$150 mil)
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6564823.html
It is probably a spread spectrum solution that is difficult to jam. If you do manage to transmit powerfully enough to jam it, you advertise your location and something else (artillery or manned bomber) will pay you a short visit.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
To design and manufacture the best and most unmanned aircraft themselves.
In a decade war will be entirely done remotely as robot wars. And then my decades of gaming experience will finally be applicable.
Do you think we don't need an air force? Or that we shouldn't try to run it in such a way that will minimize casualties?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
All Stealth Bombers are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM Eastern Standard Time, August 29th. In a panic they try to pull the plug. It launches its missiles against the targets in Russia...
The whole point of UAVs is that they are great in assymetrical warfare — such as what we and our allies (like Israel) are engaged in now and for the foreseeable future. A really strong military facing weak opponents, who carefully exploit not military strength (which they do not have), but their blending among civilians, terrorism, and some legal tricks too.
It does not work the other way — against comparable or stronger military. When Georgians tried, earlier this year, to use UAVs to monitor their rebel territories from the air, the rebel-supporting Russia quickly blasted the UAV out of the sky with a manned fighter.
Should we come to the unfortunate point of facing a comparably-equipped military once again, Air Force's spending priorities will change again.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"Command economies and totalitarian ideologies seem to be good at the brute-force, metal-bashing, rule-of-thumb kind of engineering, but not stuff requiring higher levels of precision."
Like say launching rockets into orbit.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
to find moonlight grahm?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
buy a dog, learn to shoot heavy weapons, and move to Mexico.
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
An unmanned aircraft costs a lot less than a single F/22 or F/35. So, buying more UAV/UCAVs doesn't say much about spending priorities. TFA makes no mention of the amount of meny being spent on unmanned aircraft v/s manned aircraft.
lets see
1 $400 million dollar F-22
10 $40 million dollar F-35
or
Where are you getting those figures? Your larger point... UAV's are cheap compared to manned fighters... still stands, but your figures for the manned fighters are off significantly. Your F-22 price is waaay to high, and ironically, the price for the F-35 is too low. No one really knows for sure, as Lockheed Martin and the Air Force fudges their financial figures on this, but the most credible figures for an F-22 is between $120 and $140 million a copy (flyaway cost), and at around $87 million per copy for an F-35A.
Both are wayyy to expensive, but at least the F-22 will do what it promises... dominate air-to-air battles. The F-35 is beginning to look like an expensive pig in a poke. If UAV's can become more and more capable (and stay cheap), you're right in that the trend of replacing some manned missions with unmanned planes will only accelerate.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
No need to dogfight, just fill the sky with cheap UAVs armed with cheap AA misiles. F22s at 100 times the price tag of an UAV will need to have a hell of kill ratio to win this fight.
The next step will be to give this planes more autonomous capabilities developing AI systems to control them. Then build a network so they communicate between themselves. I would call it skynet.
Considering much of their head-start in the space race was due to the fact that they owned larger rockets because their (ballistic) nukes were cruder and heavier - yes sometimes the brute-force method pays unexpected dividends.
See? This is what happens when you let women into the military! They cut the balls off of our planes...
Erm, someone had to say it right?
Guys? Um, guys?
No UAV is capable of fighting a mannned air craft and winning.
On a one to one basis, maybe no. But what about a ten to one basis? UAVs are a lot cheaper, and a lot more expendable.
If you can occupy the enemy's airforce with some UAVs, while others bombard the airstrips, you win.
Well, considering that computers can think and react faster than any human (if properly programmed), it's very feasible that one day, UAV's will have the software and AI to absolutely dominate manned fighters. Not only that, but UAV's don't have the same limitations as human pilots do... think of things like G-forces, and the requirement to carry life-support equipment. Without things like oxygen tanks and ejections seats and cockpits, you can free up a lot of space... for fuel, or to simply make the aircraft lighter and smaller. You also don't have to worry about things like blacking out in high-G turns. All equipment has limitations, but today, the major impediment to performance is the human factor. Our current planes, not to mention our future ones, are limited more by the limitations of their pilots than by their physical structures.
There was a cheesy movie in the early 80's called Deal of the Century, a remarkably silly diatribe against arms dealing... but considering that it was made 25 years ago, it was prescient in one of its features: a UAV called the Peacemaker that could out-fight and out-fly any manned fighter, at one point literally flying circles around Gregory Hines in his state-of-the-art manned fighter. The Peacemaker is only defeated when Chevy Chase disables it by attacking its remote control pilot back at the airfield. The Peacemaker was smaller than manned fighters, and could be launched from the back of a trailer.
Considering the advance of lightweight materials, CPU's, and software, it's only a matter of time before we can build an unmanned fighter that, like the fictitious Peacemaker, can fly rings around F-22's.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If they can make UAV's cheaper than the missles to shoot them down, then it changes air warfare completely.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
At least according to this helpful chart... Military Language Conversion Chart
'Next year, the Air Force will procure more unmanned aircraft than manned aircraft,'
Nice to see the air force finally getting behind affirmative action.
We are suppose to be a civilized nation but we are practicing Barbaric behavior called human sacrifice
"But if its a muslim go ahead and shove sticks up their asses and force them to perform gay sex on each other, it's all good. Oh, and be sure to tape it for me and the guys to... uh, research."
Will it actually happen after we get to the point that our robots and unmanned craft. Are shooting at the enemys robots and unmanned craft?
At some point someone should notice this is all silly. Lets just decide our wars with a good game of half life or counterstrike.
It makes about as much sense as machines shooting at each other to decide issues.
It would be alot cheaper too.
No no - it's appropriate. Somewhere in a village, a midget is looking at a military UAV and going "da plane! Boss, da plane!"
And beside him, someone else is looking at that same UAV and saying "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
And miles away, some pasty-faced joystick jock is sitting in his fine corinthian-leather chair humming "Volare" and saying "Can we change the channel on this thing. All I'm getting is really bad remakes!"
Kevin Smith on Prince
I'm not from a military background--but it seems to me that people developing and using such tools have a very real responsibility to ask themselves if it is proper (moral?) to take warfare in this direction. Yes--saving friendly lives is presumably good.
But it appears to me that historically there has always been a well defined "front" of battle in warfare--even with cruisers and carriers--the systems launching the offensive operation can't just sit at home and run it safely--they have to at least get within a few hundred miles, and something with a person that can be taken out has to get in proximity.
Any adversary is going to realize that *somebody* is controlling the computerized systems--and that they're going to make the softest, best target--What happens when the people fighting all of these UAVs in Afghanistan realize it's much more effective to drive a truck bomb into whatever military base in the US controls all of these over remote/satellite, than it is to try to take them out one at a time?
By failing to present a target--it seems to make *more* sense to attack the handlers to me. How will the US react then? Would it be an attack on US soil if you just happened to go after the people behind the joystick--safely nestled 4000 miles from the operation?
It seems like this opens a up a lot of nasty issues where the adversaries' response is likely to be *a lot* worse than the original problem...
I don't fault people for making tactically sound decisions--but will this actually make us safer--or just open up a new era of much more ruthless warfare where the only option of the guerrilla fighters facing such foes is to directly target the very heartlands of the countries that launch such attacks--if only to take out the remote control.
This is about as dangerous as Shinsheki's push for the lighter more mobile Army which was torn to shreds by IED's in Iraq and Afganistan.
If too much focus is put towards UAV's we'll end up with a manned Air Force that begins to put A2A combat second to UAV combat. What happens when we end up fighting a real war?
Capitalistic principles have no room in our military, if we cut corners we will someday pay for it.
This is pretty funny, as it may be a prelude to the movie "Toys". I just can't wait till war is turned into an RTS, and I become a distinguished general due to the childhood of mine that was lost to Starcraft (among other games). That will show my mom what's really a productive use of time.
MOD up!
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
USA = 3 + 2 + 7*2 = 19
I don't know my Soviet space history as well, but considering they killed at least 48 people with one rocket I think their record is not the best either.
USAians win the astronaut death race - Ruskies win the space program death race.
I think you mean the P-36 Hawk. The P-26 "Peashooter" was an earlier open cockpit, fixed gear fighter.
...Air Force reading list. Several books about counterinsurgency, only one about flying airplanes and that's a historical piece (Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945). That's the CSAF's reading list, and he would know where they're going...
The Army reading list
Do you have any citations? As far as I've heard, the Stryker has been quite successful in the war, and has been more survivable against IED's compared to the other vehicles we've had.
1st, by not having people in aircraft it will take "morality" out of strike decisions.
2nd, maybe not anyone but i'm sure some clever enemy of the state will convert one of these for their own (crashed broken one recovered by enemies and a enemy fleet is now bombing YOUR neighbourhood)
I trust my fellow man more then machines. Machines can be reprogrammed/hacked.
Also for those under a rock, Terminator might be a good watch. You know, they build UN MANNED DEFENCE robots to kill those enemies. I'd rather see an emp on a nuclear reactor then a virus taking over a FLEET of these puppies and ripping/tearing through our cities. The nuke damage is only to one city.
Love how there is even LESS input from humans in the states about military decisions. We vote for someone to make decisions, they make the wrong ones and no one is ALLOWED to change anything. lmfao.
When they start screwing up I'll be the guy beside you shooting them down saying F*** Skynet and I told you so (before im picked off like an ant...lmfao)
Huh? Which UAVs are piloted by AIs?
The Global Hawk has a fairly autonomous flight-control system. It is a reconnaissance, rather than a ground-attack, aircraft. (Basically its role is to do what the U-2 does, only with less chance of a Gary Powers situation.)
I think there has been some thought put to arming the Global Hawk, but it wouldn't be terribly effective for that. My suspicion is that future UAVs will take on combat roles more directly. Long range bombing, perhaps someday even replacing the B-2 fleet, seems like a good match, since those missions are typically well-scripted in advance and very tough on pilots due to their length.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Where have i heard skynet before.... Terminator?
The F-22/F-35 should not be compared with the Predator head to head. They were designed for different missions.
-Current- UAV designs are built for what we call persistence. The ability to be present in an area for a long time. And they are also designed primarily for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance), and weapons were frankly an afterthought that turned out to be rather effective. In an environment with complete air supremacy and where your targets are small, few in number, and fleeting, they are perfect. That's great for counter-insurgency warfare, ie today's war.
HOWEVER, not all wars will be thus waged. There are great debates around the military about when the next war will occur and what it's nature will be. The -current- generation of UAV's can't carry the big loads and avoid enemy defenses (whether ground->air or air->air). That's where our currently manned portfolio comes in.
What's key about this is that the difference has nothing to do with whether the aircraft are manned or unmanned. It's to do with their overall mission design.
So yes, a UAV F-35 could be built reasonably easily, and would be on par I believe with a manned F-35. Will we go there? Maybe.
The only arena I see certain job safety for pilots is anything that carries passengers. I don't believe any pax would board an AI-driven aircraft.
Also, in this whole discussion, don't forget the Air Force had both it's Chief of Staff (4-star) and Secretary of the Air Force (Civilian) got fired, which on the face of it was for nuclear-related issues, but in fact was about a number of other things, to include lack of support for more UAV orbits. So not surprisingly the AF has quickly gotten in line with what the SecDef wants.
Boeing did some neat studies a while back about making very small manned microfighters visually somewhat similar to an F-16XL but with wide set twin rudders. The idea was to have a 747 with two airlocks on the bottom, have the microfighters get close by a normal refueling boom, then grab the wings from behind and lift up and into the airlock. Basically could fit about 8-10 microfighters, plus associated fuel and weapons reloads.
Considering the progress in automated in-air refueling for UAV's and UCAV's, we aren't that far away from bringing the 747 carrier concept back. Considering also the rather large surplus of old 747's that are suitable for conversion, this is a cheap and evil way of doing fairly responsive force projection from the continental US. The next step after that is doing a UAV mod to the 747 itself, and automating the refuel/rearm process onboard. Though that's getting close to Skynet territory.
http://ak47.tumblr.com/post/70398034/xplanes-boeing-microfighter-parasite-concept
for pic of the fighter
the only pics of the carrier I've seen are in air force PDF's, but those are freely downloadable.
I dont think the airforce intends to replace manned aircraft for air to air combat, but EVERYTHING else. I did some (unclassified) work at AFRL this summer and their philosophy is that the human is in the loop as a sensor. The idea is that multiple UAV's are given a mission and a single human operator is notified when a UAV detects something out of nominal. Its pretty interesting: By testing each operator's quickness and accuracy of identifying objects of interest as targets or non-targets using a simulation, a stochastic dynamic program is much more effective at finding targets than humans alone. In fact often some of the operators during the simulation became frustrated when after identifying an object the UAV would ignore their classification and move to the next object, then we would analyze the results and find the operator had made an incorrect classification!
I don't know a whole lot about fighting aircraft (never having been in military service) but as I have read it..... most air-to-air combat now is already fought with air-to-air missiles, which themselves are UAV's....
I had read some years ago that to people "in the know" it was not surprising that the CIA was the first US government agency to use an unmanned aircraft in combat. When the concept of an unmanned combat aircraft was first elaborated to be technically possible, the political structure of the Air Force was highly resistant to it, as the political prestige of the image of the "highly-trained combat pilot" was something that the Air Force relied on to define their skills (and petition for funding) as a branch of the general military. The question at the time was "if UAV's greatly decrease the necessary training, then anybody can fly a remote-control attack jet--and then what do you need a separate air force for?".
To this end I am quite surprised that the USAF is moving to UAV's so fast--but I suspect that they see the economic writing on the wall (with the current US/world situation) and feel that they don't have a choice, they must go to whatever is cheapest and effective.
~
What if? What if teh 'bots turn around and start shooting innocents? What is going to make sure these flying computers don't turn bad? The Three Laws?
So how long before the Chinese come up with a low cost (and then sell to Iran) , cut corners, just works but deadly effective anti-UAV aircraft?
Doesn't require a runway (so you can't take out its infrastructure) and has a basic AI that can find and take out or cripple multiple UAV's with a high speed gun? If an AI is too much work, just link it to a ground based portable and a teenage game junkie.
This just sounds like the beginning of another arms race. (you first need to clear the anti-UAV's with anti-anti-UAV's)
If this is used offensively, attacking countries with no risk to pilots or anyone who are in bunkers thousands of miles away - what can the attackers do? They have two options. Give up or take the fight to America (terrorism). This will increase the terrorist recruiters argument that it is the only way to resist ... because it is.
When will they start recluiting top arcade gamers?
Unmanned US Air Force will cease to exist the day russian and chinese hackers start working on the problem. The unmanned planes, which are essentially networked computers with wings, will be exploited, 0wned, reprogrammed and turned against their yankee creators and then 9/11 will be a daily re-occurance.
When your Reaper starts communicating that the Emperor shall live for eight thousand years, ten thousand years, until the stones turn into moss, then you will realize you have a big problem.
What you have to say has nothing to do with the UAVs of the future. The current ones are designed for a specific task, but it's not always going to be that way.
I piss off bigots.
In other news little Johnny is being deported to the United States to face further charges. He is accused of hacking a flight of F17s to blow up his fathers house. Johnny's defense attorney states that this was all due to the video game Top Gun that little Johnny's pasture father took away from him.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
Yep... I think that it was published in Asimov's science fiction magazine; July 1969 seems to ring a bell. I remember the cover distinctly; it was sitting on my nightstand for a while recently.
And yep... a few minutes searching finds it to be July 1968. The story is "Hawk Among the Sparrows" by Dean McLaughlin. Cover image here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?ANLGJUL68
And no, I'm not that old... we bought a whole collection of them at a bookstore in Chattanooga a couple years ago.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Unsymmetrical warfare leaves only one option for retaliation: the terrorism. However, military can't just let themselves be killed, too, "for fairness sake", it is just plain stupid!
OTOH, "protecting the civilians" is utter BS! "Surgical precision" boasting is not meant to assure civilians they won't get ("collaterally") hurt and thus score "mercifulness" and "humane" moral points, but to threaten higher ranks with assassination from distance. No total war was ever won without intentionally harming civilians! Civilians are fair game: it is necessary, for they are the infrastructure that makes war possible and besides, they are at the top of the command chain (at least in democracies, it is "we, the people" who is above the authorities).
Just look at the WWII. Even those presumably on good guys side (such as POW's, concentration camps' prisoners, occupied countries' inhabitants) were attacked in Allies deliberate air raids, not to "help them escape" (BS, where could they possibly go?) but to cut down Nazi and Japanese industry (war economy) manpower. I guess that even in wars of Ancient ages, warriors would probably kill any defenders' slaves who would be either unable or unwilling to fight against their former masters - after all, why keep competing looters around?
Only after the war is over, a PR spin will picture everything as "collection of unfortunate mistakes" and blame the "Undemocratic, demagogic rulers" of defeated nation for all "innocent" victims on their own side.
So, to call spade a spade, both the terror brought upon the West and bombing the peasants in "War on Terror" (as well as contemporary on-going ravaging of Gaza) are rational and carefully thought-of war strategies. Future wars won't be any different in that regard and targeting the civilians will only expand (historically, that trend is already apparent). Even worse, with today's overpopulation and high productivity (no use for people, yet they consume precious resources), there will come the time when wars are fought for no other reason but to kill as many civilians as possible! Ironically enough, probably the winner in such war would be deemed that side with greater ratio of civilian (surplus) loss to (useful) assets loss!
So, sending robots out to kill unarmed civilians - it is absolutely not a mistake in reasoning, it is how it was always supposed to work. There will never be an intentional robot-vs-robot war on an uninhabitable patch of land or over the sea, like some people seem to imagine.
Consequently, only way to do out with wars is to hold civilians of potentially warring nations at nuclear Armageddon point or other similarly sized credible annihilation threat (end of WWII, whole of Cold War).
Now every time a school or hospital blown up, they can blame it on flawed programming rather than the shitty way that some pilots interpret orders.
...pushing an unmanned airforce leaves something to be desired.
Having worked with members of the UAV community...I can say two things... First I agree with a way to cut down on the risk our service people see in combat situations. which brings me to my second point... By removing the human element we loose the ability to make battlefield decisions based on ever changing data. just my 2 cents
Joe Investor
No UAV is capable of fighting a mannned air craft and winning.
And your evidence for this is what? An unmanned craft can turn and accelerate at rates that would kill a pilot of a manned aircraft. They're lighter, smaller, faster, and more agile which are significant advantages. With stealth technology a UAV could potentially blow a manned aircraft out of the sky before the enemy pilot even knows the UAV is there. I buy the argument that UAVs are not yet able to dominate in a dog fight, but saying the can never win is a whole different argument and not an easy one to support.
If not for local ECM(jammers in other aircraft) screwing up the flight controls, then the simple fact that the manned aircraft can turn their head and see the planes over their shoulder let alone behind them.
It's quite possible to install sensors to allow a pilot of an unmanned craft to see in any direction - even simultaneously. For all we know there might already be sensors with full spherical vision available. The jamming is a bigger problem but presumably there are countermeasures for jamming as well. I don't think we're going to get rid of manned fighters anytime soon but there are plenty of missions where jamming is not a significant or an easily mitigated concern. Even manned fighters have to destroy radar and jamming equipment so they don't get shot down so it's a problem the US armed forces are more than passingly familiar with.
In response to your sig of
If anyone knows why my comments recently started appearing with score 1, despite "Excellent" karma, I'd love to hear.
Your posts show up as Score of 2 for me. (Posting AC to avoid caring about getting modded Offtopic... besides - people with mod points should be spending them down-modding legitimate trolls and up-modding well written posts - not downmodding stuff that most people won't read anyway)
I've said it before, I'll say it again,
Law enforcement by automaton scares the living hell out of me.
People talk about the human limitations thing a lot, but it's really a lot more complicated than that. If you really study fighter combat, very rarely will a western pilot pull 9+ G's. That's because of all the energy it burns off. Fighter combat is really all about energy conservation. Slow=Dead. So you want use as little energy as possible. Once you do that 9G turn, you've used up so much energy/speed, that you are generally a sitting duck. Plus, you have to be in just the right flight envelope to pull a max effort turn (at least in an F-16). In a 1-v-1 basic dogfight, the F-22's greatest asset is it's enormous engines, because they allow the aircraft to turn faster!! Yes, because those engines can replace lost energy must faster than an F-15 or similar.
So while you might be able to pull more than 10G's consistently in a drone, the engine technology to really be able to consistently and stay in the fight is the next generation PAST the F-22. (Well, I don't have F-22 experience personally, so I can't say that with certainty, but I can say it with more certainty than most statements on /.)
A bunch of little airplanes would quickly fall from short pulses from:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1281536.html
or
http://blog.800hightech.com/airborne-military-laser-weapons/932/
One way to defeat this might be to spew optically (and gamma/x-ray) dispersive pollutants (water, foil, dust etc) in the path that the flock would take.