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Drone vs Human Held is definitely a question.

My non-professional argument is that, being there in-person grants a better, probably clearer perspective of what’s going on.

If the person threatening you flees at the sign of an in-person firearm, pursuing them isn’t a good option, as who knows what might happen. But….with a Drone? You aren’t in direct danger, which would surely change your internal considerations.

There’s also the risk of someone netting or otherwise downing the drone, and making off with the firearm. So even moralistic what-ifs may not be the main concern.

I’d also question civilian gun drone accuracy. How do you aim it? How do you calibrate that? Do drones automatically compensate for wind and that?

Arguably the better use of the Drone is with a speaker to confirm “look, I’ve seen you. You can see I’ve seen you. I am aware of you, I am armed. I have warned you” type stuff.

Now that won’t dissuade a methed up nutter or even common or garden variety nutter, sure. Because they’re nutters, regardless of why they’re a nutter in that moment. But for burglaries and vehicle theft? Are they gonna risk it further once they know they’ve been rumbled?

I don’t know for sure, I’m not exactly well read on such matter. But from a legal point of view I’d reckon you’re better off with the speaker drone.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:The "why" is to spend money. It is a bureaucratic turf battle.

If we're still engaging in creative fiction, I think the purpose of the M7 is actually to make Soldiers carry more weight so they get swole again. Big Army is finally recognizing that the adoption of the AR platform has been catastrophic for gains, and we need a big beefy battle rifle so our pin-up calendars can compete with firemen's.

Trust me bro.

Flinty wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Pretty much every shotgun that's actually been adopted by the military is just a basic pump action shotgun you can get anywhere. The AA12 does exist, but its not really ever been more than a weird fancy toy. And if they dont want to carry a full extra gun they have a couple guys with the underslung single shot master key shotguns.

What with Drones becoming a thing we will probably see some actual interest in shotgun innovation, but it might take a few years to see what actually happens. I imagine some sort of shotgun firing Proximity airburst shells would have some potential.

Could this pull the OICW or similar capabilities out of the past? Bolters with mass reactive seeker shells ahoy

I looked into this a while back, and found that most successful engagements of drones (at the tactical level) in Ukraine were occurring at very short range, basically a hail mary against a drone on terminal approach. A shotgun gives you a directional spray with minimal fratricide concerns. An airbursting munition could be pretty hazardous to friendlies or the shooter if it's going off below treetop level inside of 50yds.

Even with some kind of directional airburst, there's also the question of whether it's useful enough to be worth bringing a computerized grenade launcher rather than a much lighter shotgun. Part of why the XM25 (the grenade launcher component of the OICW) didn't get much traction is because it added another 15lbs of launcher alone; 75th RR did not feel it was valuable/flexible enough to be worth sacrificing other elements of the combat load. Drone defense is even more specialized than the roles envisioned for the XM25, whereas a simple pump shotgun as a secondary weapon is already tolerated for breaching roles.

While the KAC Masterkey wasn't all that successful- Soldiers and Marines tended to prefer carrying a separate breacher on a sling, rather than weighing down their carbine- I could see something like it coming back for a doctrinally-specified drone defense squad role, similar to how underbarrel grenade launchers are employed by grenadiers.

 catbarf wrote:
If we're still engaging in creative fiction, I think the purpose of the M7 is actually to make Soldiers carry more weight so they get swole again. Big Army is finally recognizing that the adoption of the AR platform has been catastrophic for gains, and we need a big beefy battle rifle so our pin-up calendars can compete with firemen's.

Trust me bro.

It is not creative fiction to understand that the stated purpose is often not the actual purpose. Spending most of my career working in higher headquarters was a true eye-opener. I've seen things you would not believe...

I actually agree with you that the massive weight was a backdoor method to get women out of the combat arms, something that become moot when Hegseth changed the fitness program to a single, universal standard based on career field rather than gender-normed.

The specific point is that the US leadership lives in a fantasy world where logistics don't exist and airlift is infinite. In a true peer conflict, super-special rifles will not move the needle. This isn't 1939 where the US having a semi-auto rifle gave a decisive advantage against turn-bolt armed adversaries.

I will leave it at that, because the failures of US procurement aren't really on topic.

Given that drones are very fragile you can get away with very small warheads that would minimize the risk to friendlies from close in detonations. And if a suicide drone is incoming to your position, I think soldiers will be willing to risk some minor friendly shrapnel from their airburst shotgun shells vs whatever warhead the drone is carrying.

You can always set a minimal engagement distance on the airburst shells so they travel a certain amount before they can detonate as well.

I wouldn't be surprised to see something like the following get developed.

A 12 Gauge shell which can be fired from any shotgun. It contains a programmable warhead with a proximity fuse. The warhead can be programmed with a handheld RFID device which you simply punch in the data you want and then pass it over the shells to program them, either for set detonation distance or for proximity. There is also a minimal safe distance of 5 meters. The warhead is small and has an effective blast radius of only 1.5 to 2 meters with a shrapnel load made up of steel bearings(similar to #4 Birdshot). The bearings would pretty quickly lose lethality beyond a few meters from the explosion so would be relatively safe above friendly troops.

It would probably be developed alongside a high-capacity shotgun of some kind, but with the flexibility to be deployed with any 12-gauge system. So while you could issue out the special shotgun if necessary, you could also just give the shells to guys who have master keys or regular pumps as well. The special shotgun would be more of a specialty item. Troops in fixed or high value areas get them to augment their firepower.

Doctrinally, this will probably eventually lead to some new specialization in US squads. The very short range air defense guy. He's gotta carry a shotgun and a stinger missile. Or maybe its just a DARPA robot dog with the gatling shotgun airburst cannon and a mini-radar set(your cancer is not service related)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Drone vs Human Held is definitely a question.

My non-professional argument is that, being there in-person grants a better, probably clearer perspective of what’s going on.

If the person threatening you flees at the sign of an in-person firearm, pursuing them isn’t a good option, as who knows what might happen. But….with a Drone? You aren’t in direct danger, which would surely change your internal considerations.

There’s also the risk of someone netting or otherwise downing the drone, and making off with the firearm. So even moralistic what-ifs may not be the main concern.

I’d also question civilian gun drone accuracy. How do you aim it? How do you calibrate that? Do drones automatically compensate for wind and that?

Arguably the better use of the Drone is with a speaker to confirm “look, I’ve seen you. You can see I’ve seen you. I am aware of you, I am armed. I have warned you” type stuff.

Now that won’t dissuade a methed up nutter or even common or garden variety nutter, sure. Because they’re nutters, regardless of why they’re a nutter in that moment. But for burglaries and vehicle theft? Are they gonna risk it further once they know they’ve been rumbled?

I don’t know for sure, I’m not exactly well read on such matter. But from a legal point of view I’d reckon you’re better off with the speaker drone.

Legally speaking, it would be pretty hard to justify self-defense hiding behind a drone precisely because you are out of harms way.

As for aiming, the Ukrainians have not been doing too bad with just winging it. I saw some with full on AKs on drones to suppress some trenches. The shotgun ones also have cameras pointed in the general direction of the barrel. Given that they seem to be intended to sneak up on an unaware enemy drone you only need 1-2 shots because thats all you'll get. The drone will either be dead or it will notice you shooting at it.

Depending on the state and what kind/size of drone it is. Putting a gun on a drone in the US is playing with fire, but probably not strictly illegal in most places. That said, outside of target practice and the shiggles it has no practical use other than training for combat. That said, thats going to be quite a dangerous thing to be playing around with. A gun that you have minimal control over where and what it is pointing at is not good for your or anyone else's safety.

If I had the inkling, I would stick to ground drones or emplaced turrets rather than the flying ones for remote controlled gun activities.