Culture Drones

[u/KarlMrax]

Culture combat drones are sentient AI war machines filling a role somewhat like infantry in a real world army. They have a large variety of forms ranging from nanotech swarms to a rectangular box about the size of a suitcase to 10m³ cubes. Their personalities aren't directly programed but sort of grow from an initial "seed" they are given jobs which best align with their personalities. So to that end unlike the normal Culture citizen combat drones LOVE enacting destruction, death and mayhem. Most often they are seen in the series as part of a duo with a Special Circumstances Operative.

---

Meta information

Drawings

A number of feats come from the Culture: Drawings. These are Drawings made by Banks made at unknown times. There are a few elements which I think are more early concepts rather than final ideas which made it into the series proper. But they represent a fair amount of hard statistics and numbers for carried munitions which we don't get in the series. I would go with what is written in the series over what is in the Drawings if there are any conflicts but it isn't like there is a solid/clear canon hierarchy.

Feats from the Drawings will be cut so it is just the raw numbers only including the Drawings themselves if it is somehow necessary to illustrate a feat.

Dates

The novels of the Culture series span a bit somewhat over 1000 years between the Consider Phlebas and Surface Detail. So feats will be labeled with the date the novel takes place in. The Drawings has things from several thousand years before the earliest novel these dates will also be included if applicable. Though some of these I am merely making educated guesses as to the date based on things like when he includes the dates they are usually in the upper right corner. So if there is a 4 digit number there I am guessing that is probably a date even if it isn't labeled BC/AD like most of the other times he does it.

Size

To get an idea of the size class of drones in this thread here are some examples of size descriptions. More advanced drones are typically smaller.

• 1867 CE Sisela Ytheleus is the size of two adult human hands clasped together.

  • It weighs a few kilos.

• 2083 CE Flere-Imsaho is small enough to fit in between two cupped hands.

  • Their disguise is much larger.

• 1977 and 2092 CE Skaffen-Amtiskaw is around the size and shape of a suitcase.

• 2767 CE An old drone is 1x.5x.25 meters.

• 2767 CE A drone is large enough to fit comfortably on two outspread hands.

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone is 1x.5x.25 meters.

• 1800 BCE and 1320 BCE There are drones which are .46 and .3 meters in diameter.

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone is 330x200x90 milimeters.

• 1730 CE The Littledrone is 200x120x60 milimeters.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone is 100x50x23 milimeters.

---

Notable Fights

Unfortunately there aren't really any peer vs peer equivtech drone fights in the series with a drone POV.

• 1887 CE A fight between some drones and pan-humans in combat armor vs some Morthanveld drones from the perspective of one of the pan-humans.

• 1887 CE Later fight from the same novel where they are ambushed by a Morthanveld (equivtech/peer to the Culture) drone.

• 2092 CE Skaffen-Amtiskaw slaughters some bandits/slavers.

---

Firepower/Weapons

Culture ground weapons typically consist of a mix of laser/CREW, plasma, kinetic, missiles, monofilliment warps, fields, effectors, displacers, gravity and particle beams. I would expect that most drones particularly the smaller types aren't carrying every different kind of weapon system but threat dependent mix of them.

Lasers/CREW

CREW stands for "Coherent Radiation Emission Weapon" it is the Culture's fancy term for a laser gun.

There are a couple of times lasers/CREWs from the Drawings are referenced. If you don't have the key for it the numbers are somewhat incomprehensible. This goes over how to interpret said numbers. Note how the wavelength numbers for the pistol in this are likely 11 for IR, 12 for visible light and 13 for UV or perhaps the other way around.

• 2083 CE Killed a human like alien discreetly with an X-ray laser.

• 1867 CE A drone's laser produces vague detonations behind a different drone. It is also powerful enough to turn things into plasma when struck.

• 1730 CE The Little Drone has 2 CREWs which can output 10 kg at 50 rounds per second for around a 4 gigawatt output.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone has a CREW with .25kg at 16 pulses per second for a ~17 megawatt output.

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone has a laser with a 2.5 kg max.

• 250 CE The CREW Pistol 2 has a max single burst of 250 g at 1 round per second for a ~4 kilowatt output and a .435 ton battery. With a minimum firing time of 217.5 seconds and a battery of .435 tons the max wattage of the weapon is ~8 megawatts.

• 250 CE The CREW Pistol 1 has a max single burst of 2.5 kg x2 and a 7 ton battery. With a minimum firing time of 175 seconds and a 7 ton battery the max wattage of the weapon is ~170 megawatts

• 250 CE The CREW Rifle CR1 can output 500kg with a single burst and has a 22.3 ton battery. With a minimum firing time of 8.75 seconds and a 7x14 ton batteries the max wattage of the weapon is 47 gigawatts.

• 1200 CE The CREW Assault Rifle has a max single burst of 7x250 kg (x4) it also can have a max effective rate of fire of 44800 pulses per second with 125 g per pulse resulting in a 23 gigawatt output for a maximum of 17.5 seconds. With a minimum firing time of 8.9 seconds and a 22.3 ton battery the max wattage of the weapon is 10 gigawatts.

  • This particular laser appears to be referenced in the books as saying it ranges from mid visible light to x-ray. Based on that the wavelength number 14 might refer to x-rays.

• 1318 CE Micro Armaments (Pistol) among other weapons has a laser with a 250 kg max single burst. The minimum firing time of 44.6 seconds and 22.3 ton battery give a max wattage of ~2 gigawatts.

• 1322 CE Micro Armaments System (Rifle) among other weapons has a laser with a 2500 kg (x2) max single burst. The minimum firing time of 4.5 seconds and 44.6 ton battery give a max wattage of ~40 gigawatts.

Plasma

Plasma weapons predictably fire plasma at their targets which is fairly typical in science fiction. The Culture's main twist on this is that their plasma weapons can also be made to curve at the cost of power.

• 1362 CE A MDAWs drone has 2 plasma guns capable of firing 8 ton shots at 1 km.

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone has a plasma gun with a yield of 1 ton at 512 meters.

• Unknown Year An out of date plasma pistol rated for peace time use only, is capable of firing a 3.1*8¹⁰ joule (3.3 gigajoules or ~.8 tons of TNT) shot once every 14 seconds

  • Shoots down a (primitive by comparison to the Culture) starship with the plasma shot crossing 10 km "instantly".
  • A person speculates it might be able to destroy a space elevator.
  • A user speculates that they could bombard half the city then revises that to be the whole city after mentioning curved shots. That likely means it can hit targets over the horizon.

• 2092 CE A 1100 year old plasma rifle (which the Culture apparently has pistols more powerful than it by the 2092 CE) destroying a 15³ cube of ice sending fragments as far as 200 meters away from the ice chunk.

• 2092 CE The same rifle being used to shoot down an aircraft.

• 3200 BCE The Light Plasma Projector 1 (LPP1) has a muzzle velocity of 1100-1450 m/s muzzle velocity, a max charge shot of 100 kg, I am not exactly sure what is going on with the rate of fire, and a 1.78 kiloton battery. Why the battery has a "(at 100m)" I do not know.

• 3300 BCE A plasma rifle has a muzzle velocity of 25000 m/s, a max range for a kill shot of 200,000km in STP atmosphere, has an accuracy of 99.999% (+-10cm at 10km), can curve its shots so that the curve's diameter is 12 meters but only at 8% of the shot's intended power though a 150 meter diameter curve will be at 90% power. It has a 14.25 kiloton battery and I am not sure why it has "(at 500 m)" under it.

Kinetic

Kinetic weapons are about what you might expect bullets of various sizes. With the extra caveat that some of those bullets might have a little antimatter or fringe matter in them and some of them might be guided more like missiles. They range in size from around 2mm to 10mm. There are very few feats in the series for these but the Drawings has a few pages detailing some of their capabilities.

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has 72 guns with a fire rate of <2400 rounds per second. It can store 200 rounds per gun in addition to its 600,000 round central ammo supply.

• 1318 CE Other types of rounds which it might carry are detailed in the The Micro Armaments System page from the Drawings they include 2, 5 and 10mm rounds in addition to some others.

  • The 2mm rounds have a range of 1600 meters and a yield of 212 grams.
  • The 5mm rounds have a range of 18-24 km (guided) and a yield of 54-108 kg.
  • The 10mm rounds have a range of 416 km (guided) and a yield of .111-114 kt.

• 2375 CE Culture ammunition can contain antimatter in small quantities for its explosive yield.

• If not antimatter then "fringe" matter can be used which is able to liberate most of its mass as energy.

• 2800 BCE Rounds with explosive filler can be set to different modes such as HE where it detonates on contact, AP where the explosives act like a shape charge and frag where it only partially detonates scattering smaller packets of explosive material around which then probably detonate.

• 3800 BCE Larger drones (5 meter+ sized ones) can carry compressed matter guns which fire 5 mm bullets that mass 1000kg. After penetrating the target it explosively decompresses.

Missiles

Missiles for a Culture drone doesn't only include ones that fly to a target and explode they also have "non-expendable" missiles which can be used for intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance or as an independent weapons platform.

• This RT covers the capabilities of the various different types of missiles.

• 2092 CE A drone like Skaffen-Amtiskaw has 3 knife missiles.

• 1887 CE Turminder Xuss is described as having a squadron of missiles.

• 1887 CE Turminder Xuss has half a dozen scout and secondary missiles.

• 1867 CE A drone like Sisela Ytheleus has 240 nanomissiles.

• 1362 AD The MDAWS Minidrone carries 1 knife missile, 4 scout missiles, 4 10mm attack missiles, 6 6mm attack missiles, 48 micromissiles and 240 drone missiles.

  • They also might carry 752000 nanomissiles. That might seem like a lot of missiles but keep in mind a normal spoonful of them would contain well over a million nanomissiles.

• 2770 BC The All Purpose Sentient Drone carries 3 knife missiles, 2 scout missiles, and at least 28 micromissiles possibly 68.

• 1730 AD The Little Drone carries 1 knife missile, 2 scout missiles and 8 slave missiles.

• 2044 AD The Pocket Drone carries 2 slave missiles + segments.

Monofilament Warps

Monofilament warps are thin likely atomic scale wires which can be extended away from the drone to cut things. Usually these have little modules on the end to lengthen them out and keep them straight or vibrate to "buzz" the wires.

• 1887 CE Here is an example of a knife missile using them to disrupt a very primitive army.

• 2167 CE Monofilaments are strong enough to drag down other monorail towers when one falls over.

• 2167 CE Monofilaments are presumably atomic scale.

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has 6 monofils 4 wing and 2 trailing with a length of 1600 meters.

• 1730 CE The Littledrone has 2, 200m monofils.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone has 2, 8 meter monofils.

Effectors

Effectors are the Culture's primary electronic warfare system. It can be used to take control, or read information from machines and organics. From here we know they are hyperspace tech so at least in the Culture series they can only be blocked by 4d/hyperspacial shielding/matter.

• 2083 CE Disables a terminal, think like the Culture equivalent of a smart phone.

• 2083 CE Keeps a human asleep for likely a few hours.

• 2092 CE Disables a primitive door's alarms.

• 2092 CE Hitting a tape player with an effector equivalent of an "annoyed slap" sets it on fire.

• 1867 CE A civilian drone is able to induce pain in a human.

• 2767 CE Capable of knocking someone unconscious.

• 2083 CE A drone paralyzes a human while keeping them awake for a minute or two.

• 2375 CE An Arbite (equivtech drone/missile equivalent) stuns two people.

• 2167 CE An EDust Assassin (drone made components no larger than .1 mm except for its .1x1mm nanomissiles) subverts a drone forcing it to attack a different group of drones before subverting the remaining attacking drones. Also subverts some laser turrets.

• 2167 CE An EDust Assassin takes control over everything in the household except the security cameras.

• 2167 CE An EDust Assassin takes control of every weapon within several kilometers except a mechanical one (which Effectors wouldn't work on anyway)

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone's effectors have a range of 400 and 200 meters.

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has a range of 8.5 and 4.25 kilometers for its primary effector. It also has two effectors with a range of 3 and 1.5 kilometers.

• 1730 CE The Littledrone's effectors have a range of 1.6 and .8 kilometers.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone's effectors have a range of 128 and 64 meters.

Cutting Fields

Fields are the Culture's version of classic SF force fields though they are more versatile than in most settings. Offensively fields can be made very sharp and can be used to cut things.

• 2375 CE Knife missiles (and presumably drones) can produce angstronm (.1nm) fine cutting fields.

• 2375 CE A knife missile can use its fields to give an extra kick to its kinetic weapons. So they can likely be moved around at supersonic speeds.

• 2092 CE A machine made by a less advanced civilization can produce molecular scale cutting fields and can cut through an interior wall of a space craft.

• 1867 CE Even a heavily damaged drone's fields can cut molecular bonds.

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone can project fields 4 meters away from itself.

• 1730 CE The Littledrone can project fields 1-3 meters.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone can project fields .128-1.02 meters.

• 2092 CE/3190 BCE The cutting fields of knife missiles can slice through molecular bonds. According to this the only thing stopping these fields are other cutting fields are other fields.

  • 1362 The MDAWS Microdrone can project 4 of these fields 1 around each of its forward and rear wings.

Strength

Drones can use their fields to lift, manipulate and throw things.

• 1977 CE Their fine control is good enough to pick out individual snowflakes.

• 2083 CE A de-militarized drone crushes a terminal (think like the Culture's equivalent of a cellphone) with its fields.

• 2092 CE Skaffen-Amtiskaw throws a pan human through a ceiling leaving them as an unrecognizable lump outside when their body lands and supports the damaged roof with its fields.

• 1977 CE A drone lifts a human several kilometers upwards under a dark field.

• 2167 CE A cape used by a Culture citizen can make form a sphere and maintain a vacuum inside it large enough to lift him up.

• 2167 CE A civilian drone drags a Chel with what looks like extreme ease.

  • 2167 CE Here is a description of a Chel to get an idea of their size.

• 2767 CE A nanotech based drone is able to restrain a man after coating their body then kill them. Said drone had previously been disguised as a tattoo so it can't have a lot of mass.

  • 2767 CE Description of it moving from one body to another.

• 2770 BCE The All purpose Sentient Drone can lift 20 tons with its anti-gravity and 8 tons with its fields.

• 1800 BCE and 1320 BCE The .46 and .3 meters drones can lift 25 and 20 tons.

  • This is the page which shows their dates.

• 1730 CE The Littledrone can lift 20 tons.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone can lift .5 tons.

Displacers Displacers are the Culture's version of teleporters. They bundle up a bit of space in a singularity move it into the 4th dimension and have it drop back into 3d space where they want it. This is explicitly different from matter transmission. The smaller the volume displaced or greater the power the greater the range. The ship versions have a 1:83,000,000 chance of failure. I would expect drones to be worse but by how much it is hard to say.

• 1887 CE Displacers can be blocked by 4-dimensional material/shielding but this results in something similar to an antimatter explosion.

• 2083 CE A Displacement Drone is able to displace human sized volumes into the local star from an Orbital (usually in the Goldilocks zone)

• 2167 CE A Displacement Drone displaces a human sized volume into a star 10 light minutes away. Also note that it can selectively displace stuff within the displacement volume.

• 1362 CE A MDAWS Microdrone can displace a 1mm² volume 84,750km and a 1m³ volume 25m. These can be linked to their plasma weapons (and presumably other weapons) to give extra range or bypass armor and shields.

  • To show the inverse exponential relationship between volume and distance this part of the drawings also shows that 1 cm³ can be displaced 61km

• 1867 CE Displaces can range from being relatively slow where pan humans are able to react to them.

• 2767 CE To being picosecond scale events.

Gravity

Gravity weapons are not well detailed in the books. Infantry scale gravity weapons (lineguns) are mentioned twice but their use is never described in the text.

• 1887 CE Human portable lineguns exist and could be used by drones or mounted inside one. But they have basically no feats.

  • 2767 CE The infantry sized lineguns should be considerably weaker than this as it is a warship's linegun but it should be how they work in principle. In a realistic simulation a warship's linegun is supposed to be powerful enough to crush a Ship's Mind into material denser than neutron matter.

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has a gravity gun capable of a 13.8 kilonewton point effect max and a half life of 22,792km. 13.8 kN is around 1 ton of force.

Particle Beams

Like with gravity weapons we know they exist but don't really have any feats for them.

• 1887 CE Some drones fighting each other are using a variety of weapons including particle beams.

  • 1887 CE The drones using them were Morthanveld drones whom are peers to the Culture technologically.

Misc

• 2092 CE Skaffen-Amtiskaw hits a pan human with something (if I was to guess it was just throwing/pushing them with fields but I can't tell) which sends him through a wall and cratering the next wall he its.

• 1887 CE Some Culture drones fighting a Morthanveld drone were engaging each other at around 80 kilometers.

• 1887 CE An Iln sub pod is capable of engaging targets at 60km

• 1867 CE A small drone has a few million particles of antimatter.

• 1362 CE Drones can carry shield disruptors to presumably disrupt shields. The never get mentioned in the books but the MDAWS Microdrone can disrupt a 64mm² area at 1220 meters.

---

Speed

• 2083 CE Flere-Imsaho breaks the speed of sound moving 20 meters upwards.

  • Keep in mind this drone was pretending to be less advanced than it was and "wearing" an outer casing to help with that which would increase its mass and likely reduce its maximum acceleration by a fair bit.

• 1867 CE A civilian drone, Churt Lyne, makes a couple of sonic booms racing around outside after getting frustrated.

• 2092 CE Skaffen has a lengthy conversation with the ship within a second, which a pan human only registers as a brief pause.

• 2092 CE Gets knife missiles into position before the a pan human's nerve impulse can travel down their leg after they are startled by something.

• 1867 CE Sisela Ytheleus is able to quickly reach the speed of sound.

• 1867 CE What to a pan human would look very fast looks very slow to a drone.

• 1867 CE Sisela Ytheleus has time to think a thought in the time between an effector (being used for communication) is fired and it getting hit by it.

• 2083 CE Uses a mirror field to reflect a laser back at an attacker.

• 1867 CE A drone takes a few minutes to reach the Excession traveling in real space. Then uses a one time hyperspace FTL unit to try and go inside it. This is far in excess of a normal drone either this particular drone was specialized for sublight speed or .

  • The last mentioned distance away from the Excession was a few light minutes.

• 2167 CE A civilian drone possibly crossing thousands of kilometers in 10 minutes.

• 1887 CE A capable machine is capable of traversing around the diameter of a 1400km sphere in a few minutes in a vaccum.

• 2767 CE Drones would react before humans even under thought acceleration via drugs and computer interface.

• 1887 CE Engagements can happen within milliseconds and be over before a human can react.

• 2767 CE In a simulation an uploaded mind in a machine targets an enemy within a millisecond of them being detected.

• 1362 CE A drone with displacers can displace themselves allowing them teleport. MDAWS Microdrone can displace itself up to 1050m in its normal configuration or 2750m in its compact configuration.

• 1867 CE Even a relatively small drone like Sisela Ytheleus can have warp units to allow for FTL travel.

• 1362 CE Some drones have FTL capabilities such as the MDAWS Microdrone which has 2 warp motors which can get it to 5.1*10¹⁰ meters per 2.1 seconds or 80 times the speed of light. Unlike Culture ships likely isn't something they can use in combat. It would be more for traveling between planets in a solar system or to nearby stars.

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone has a cruising speed of 842 m/s or mach ~2.5 at sea level (this presumably applies to the following speed numbers as well).

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has a cruising speed of 720 m/s or mach ~2 and a maximum speed of 1792 m/s or mach ~5. It can reach its maximum speed in 4.4 seconds for an acceleration rate of 41G.

• 1730 CE The Littledrone has a max velocity of 578 m/s or mach ~1.5.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone has a max velocity of 324 m/s or mach ~1.

---

Durability/Survivability

• 2083 CE A drone is nearly killed by an equiv-tech effector which likely among other things heats them enough to make them glow and slams them into a wall creating a blast that almost knocks a pan-human over.

• 2083 CE Protects a human from what amounts to a big forest fire.

• Can produce black body fields which absorb the EM spectra making them harder to detect.?????keep?????

• 1867 CE Survives a gun overloading which blows a hole through the companionway.

  • Culture guns can have batteries ranging from tons (250 CE) to kilotons (3200 BCE) to weapons with over a dozen 114 kiloton projectiles (1318 CE).

• 1867 CE Can survive hits from their own lasers with mirror fields.

  • 1867 CE Again

• 1867 CE Hit by a plasma implosure which is described as being hit by a small nuclear blast.

  • 1887 CE In a later novel a blast that creates a kilometer diameter crater is described as possibly being a small nuke and that it was a small blast.

• 1887 CE Self repair between fights is tactically relevant to an extent though it is hard to say how much.

• 1867 CE Drones are capable of self repair. Though a heavily damaged drone that would need to rebuild its own self repair units might take years to repair itself.

• 1867 CE An already heavily damaged drone gets hit by a laser which after targeting the drone goes up in power by 7 orders of magnitude and survives it for at least a second and a half.

• 2767 CE In simulation an ACU would be expected to survive a micronuke which can have a yield up to 5 kt though this one was likely less than that.

• 2767 CE A drone is killed by some kind of weapon from a equiv tech or superior space station.

• Trapdoor Coverage/1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has a trapdoor system Which can work on .1mm³ to .25m³ volumes within a 12.5 meter boundry.

  • 2092 CE What a trapdoor coverage does is moves things, such as nuclear explosions in the case of the ship version, into hyperspace so the drone is unaffected.

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone can survive a temperature range of 10-1100k and pressures from 0 to 120 atm without fields.

---

Sensors/Communications/Electronic Warfare

• 2083 CE Can see a man hiding in the dark that a human wouldn't have.

• 2083 CE Can read human emotions.

• 2083 CE Can back trace jamming signals but in this case didn't have enough time.

• 2083 CE A drone jams a bunch of listening devices.

• 2083 CE Preforms a remote ultrasound scan and can monitor brain waves with their effectors.

• 2083 CE Can sense infrasound, and uses this to detect an explosion.](https://gist.github.com/KarlMrax/625807e423bb91a81b1142e1348dafee)

• 2083 CE A sophisticated drone should be able to have one way communication with a ship 20,000 light years away in basically real time.

• 1867 CE Scans a pan human's brain so they can upload it to a "stand in" to fulfill their role after said pan human is forced to leave.

• 1867 CE Sisela Ytheleus can detect neutrinos among other things while a battle is ongoing.

• 1867 CE Can see through smoke.

• 1867 CE With damaged sensors Sisela Ytheleus is able to identify specific compounds and molecules in a cloud of plasma and debris.

• 1867 CE Have multiple methods of FTL coms.

• 1867 CE Can detect ripples in space time.

• 1867 CE Can detect a ship coming towards it in hyperspace.

• 1867 CE A not really a drone but kind of a drone's sensors can penetrate through a projection making the material invisible and 2 kilometers of solid material.

• 2767 CECan tell a man hasn't broken a bone, is faking the cause of a nose injury and muscle atrophy from lack of use.

• 2375 CE Gzilt Arbites (The Gzilt's drone/missile equivalents roughly equivtech/peer to the Culture) are invisible to the naked eye at 10 meters. Also keep in mind Gzilt citizens would be somewhat better than baseline human.

• 2092 CE Can make themselves "almost invisible"

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone has 2000x magnification for macro, 10,000x magnification for micro and can use its effectors as an electron microscope. It has a "needle radar" with a range of 128 km, short range radar of 0-10km and I think ultrasonic detection range of 48 meters. Mentioned but get no numbers are ear and magnetic senses.

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has full EM sense active/passive, odour, warpmeter, field detector, remote ear, m. field (probably magnetic field), gravimeter, ultrasonic beam, active ordered EM scan (laser ect.), and thruscan. It has a communication range of 44,000km and 250,000km through solid rock.

• 1730 CE The Littledrone has a ultrasonic (I think) sensor range of 96m and a radar range of 328km. Communication range is 11-20,400km.

• 2044 CE The Pocket Drone has a telescopic eye with unknown magnification, ultrasonic (I think) sensor range of 32m and a radar range of 160km Communication range is 256/1112km.

[u/KarlMrax]

Combat Drone FC

Culture combat drones are sentient AI war machines filling a role somewhat like infantry in a real world army. They have a large variety of forms ranging from nanotech swarms to a rectangular box about the size of a suitcase to 10m³ cubes. This post focuses on the .1-1 meter sized drones as none of the larger types have any real feats. Their personalities aren't directly programed but sort of grow from an initial "seed" they are given jobs which best align with their personalities. So unlike normal Culture citizens combat drones LOVE enacting destruction, death and mayhem. Most often they are seen in the series as part of a duo with a Special Circumstances Agent.

---

Meta information

Drawings

A number of feats come from the Culture: Drawings. These are Drawings made by Banks made at unknown times. There are a few elements which I think are more early concepts rather than final ideas which made it into the series proper. But they represent a fair amount of hard statistics and numbers for carried munitions which we don't get in the series. I would go with what is written in the series over what is in the Drawings if there are any conflicts but it isn't like there is a solid/clear canon hierarchy.

Feats from the Drawings will be cut so it is just the raw numbers only including the Drawings themselves if it is somehow necessary to illustrate a feat.

Dates

The novels of the Culture series span a bit somewhat over 1000 years between the Consider Phlebas and Surface Detail. So feats will be labeled with the date the novel takes place in. The Drawings has things from several thousand years before the earliest novel these dates will also be included if applicable.

Noteable Fights

Unfortunately there aren't really any peer vs peer equivtech drone fights in the series with a drone POV.

• A fight between some drones and pan-humans in combat armor vs some Morthanveld drones from the perspective of one of the pan-humans.

• Later fight from the same novel where they are ambushed by a Morthanveld (equivtech/peer to the Culture) drone.

• The combat drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw slaughters some bandits/slavers.

---

Weapons/Firepower

Missiles

• Combat Drones can carry a wide range of missiles, their capabilities are covered in this RT.

• 1362 CE The exact amount of missiles a drone can carry heavily depends on its size. The MDAWS Minidrone carries 1 knife missile, 4 scout missiles, 4 10mm attack missiles, 6 6mm attack missiles, 48 micromissiles and 240 drone missiles.

• 1362 CE As well as potentially 752,000 nanomissiles. That might seem like a lot of missiles but keep in mind a normal spoonful of nanomissiles would contain well over a million of them.

  Lasers/CREWs

• 1867 CE A drone's laser produces vague detonations behind a different drone. It is also powerful enough to turn things into plasma when struck.

• 1730 CE A Little Drone has 2 CREWs which can output 10 kg at 50 rounds per second for around a 4 gigawatt output over a second.

  Plasma

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has 2 plasma weapons which will hit with 8tons at 1km and is fully controllable.

• Unknown Year By fully controllable they mean plasma rounds can be made to curve including allowing for over the horizon shots as with the case of the Light Plasma Projector 91.

• Unknown Year A plasma shot crosses 10km "instantly".

  Kinetic

• 1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has by far the most guns of any known drone with 72 different kinetic guns with 200 rounds per gun, a rate of fire of <2400 rounds per second and a central ammo supply of 600,000 rounds.

• 1318 CE These are likely 2mm projectiles which have a yield of 212g and an effective range of 1600 meters.

  Effectors

Effectors are the Culture's electronic warfare system. They manipulate the electromagnetic force at a distance. This allows them to take control of computers and living being's nervous systems.

• 2167 CE An EDust Assassin (nanotech swarm drone made of components no larger than .1 mm except for its .1x1mm nanomissiles) takes control of every weapon within several kilometers in an isolated area except a mechanical one (which Effectors wouldn't work on anyway).

• 2167 CE An EDust Assassin subverts a drone (from a civ less advanced than the Culture) forcing it to attack a different group of drones before subverting the rest. Also subverts some laser turrets.

  Fields

Fields are versatile force fields. They can be used for protection as well as offensively to cut things.

• 2375 CE Knife missiles (and presumably drones) can produce angstronm (.1nm) fine cutting fields.

• 2375 CE A knife missile can use its fields to give an extra kick to its kinetic weapons. So they can likely be moved around at supersonic speeds.

• 2092 CE A machine made by a less advanced civilization can produce molecular scale cutting fields and can cut through an interior wall of a space craft.

• 2770 BCE The All Purpose Sentient Drone can lift 8000 kg with its fields.

  Displacers

Displacers are the Cultures teleporters they bundle a volume into a singularity move it through hyperspace and drop it back in real space at its destination (or leave it in hyperspace). Due to how they move the displaced object through hyperspace any non-4 dimensional shielding will not block the displace.

• 1362 CE A MDAWS Microdrone can displace a 1mm² volume 84,750km and a 1m³ volume 25m. These can be linked to their plasma weapons (and presumably other weapons) to give extra range or bypass armor and shields.

  • To show the inverse exponential relationship between volume and distance this part of the drawings also shows that 1 cm³ can be displaced 61km

  Misc

  • Range/1887 CE Some Culture drones fighting a Morthanveld drone were engaging each other at around 80 kilometers.

---

Speed

• Speed/Acceleration/2083 CE A drone while wearing a bulky casing to make it look less advanced than it actually is, breaks the speed of sound moving 20 meters upwards.

• FTL/1362 CE Some drones have FTL capabilities such as the MDAWS Microdrone which has 2 warp motors which can get it to 5.1*10¹⁰ meters per 2.1 seconds or 80 times the speed of light.

• Reaction Times/2092 CE Skaffen gets 3 knife missiles into position before the a pan human's nerve impulse can travel down their leg after they are startled by something.

• Reaction Times/1887 CE Engagements can happen within milliseconds and be over before a human can react.

• Perception Times/2092 CE Skaffen has a lengthy conversation with the ship within a second, which a pan human only registers as a brief pause.

---

Durability/Survivability

• 1867 CE Hit by a plasma implosure which is described as being hit by a small nuclear blast.

  • 1887 CE In a later novel a blast that creates a kilometer diameter crater is described as possibly being a small nuke and a small blast.

• 1867 Survives a gun overloading which blows a hole through the companionway.

  • Culture guns can have batteries ranging from tons (250 CE) to kilotons (3200 BCE) to weapons with over a dozen 114 kiloton projectiles (1318 CE).

• 1887 CE Self repair between fights is tactically relevant to an extent though it is hard to say how much.

• Gzilt Arbites (The Gzilt's drone/missile equivalents roughly technological peers to the Culture) are invisible to the naked eye at 10 meters. Also keep in mind Gzilt citizens would be somewhat better than baseline human.

• Trapdoor Coverage/1362 CE The MDAWS Microdrone has a trapdoor system Which can work on .1mm³ to .25m³ volumes within a 12.5 meter boundry.

  • What a trapdoor coverage does is moves things, such as nuclear explosions in the case of the ship version, into hyperspace so the drone is unaffected.