6 ms·

>The last time the battlefield was insanely lethal people just dig trenches to even survive the day. This occurred during a time when trenches actually protect

by na85 5y ago

>The last time the battlefield was insanely lethal people just dig trenches to even survive the day. This occurred during a time when trenches actually protected those soldiers. Modern artillery with GPS-guided rounds can not only target a specific building (so far away that you need to account for the rotation of the earth as it spins underneath the round) but you can pick the window of the building you want the round to go through. For a fraction of the cost there's also the ol' hand-grenade-duct-taped-to-a-quadcopter. Hiding in a trench isn't really going to save anyone.

mc32 5y ago
Can’t do much about missiles but against quadcopters with grenades just add a storm fence dome over your trench. And unless the quadcopters get equipped with high strength wire cutters they’re not going to do much.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  first one blows up next to the fence, the rest go through the hole?
  - mc32 5y ago
    I don’t think grenades can successfully punch large holes into a storm fence. It’s flexible and very little surface to hit. They’re affective against people because we perforate easily.
- adventured 5y ago
  The answer to the trench storm fence with a (larger) quadcopter is a fuel shower, promptly ignited. A sort of flying molotov cocktail. The target trench area/s would need something like a small Phalanx CIWS to play defense.
ortusdux 5y ago
Air-burst rounds have definitely rendered trenches obsolete. https://imgur.com/c17lPxF https://imgur.com/c17lPxF
- pasabagi 5y ago
  Airburst rounds existed in WW1 too. The point is, you hide in a bunker until the shelling is over, then you come up and man positions before the enemy can reach your trenches, or failing that, counterattack while they are cut off from supplies and reinforcements.
  - jeffdn 5y ago
    Airburst rounds with timers set by calculation, not airburst rounds that can blow up when they reach a specific point determined by proximity, distance, GPS, etc. It's a completely different kind of airburst.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  That's not how modern warfare works. Air-burst rounds beat trenches. Armor piercing rounds beat tanks (and bunkers). So the solution: have tanks next to your trenches. If your opponent loads air-burst rounds into their weapon, charge at them with your tank. If your opponent loads armor-piercing rounds into their weapon, run into the trench. Armor-piercing (neither HEAT nor Sabot) can do much vs a trench. (I'm ignoring the AC-130, just assuming land-based combat for now cause AC-130 is beaten by a totally different strategy: air superiority) --------- "Combined arms". Your opponent has to load his weapon with the right bullet for the right circumstance. Mix up your strategies (both defensive and offensive strategies). * HEAT-armor piercing loses to reactive armor on a tank. * Reactive-armor loses to sabot-rounds. * Sabot rounds lose to long-distance battle (air-resistance slows down the round). HEAT is better at long-distance (HEAT always was kinda slow: most of the "power" comes from the explosion that occurs after-the-collision... which is beaten by reactive armor). You can't guard against everything. Instead, you rely upon mixing up the strategies enough so that enemies are kept "guessing" as to which weapon to load / unload.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    What if the enemy has… TWO tanks?
    - 5y ago
dragontamer 5y ago
> For a fraction of the cost there's also the ol' hand-grenade-duct-taped-to-a-quadcopter. Its like people don't know we have CIWS or something. Rockets flying at 500mph are shot down regularly by aimbot defensive weapons. But suddenly a drone flying at 20mph is too tough to handle? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d_h5uqnYOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d_h5uqnYOI -------- "Duct-taped grenade on drone" is just a crappy TOW missile. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW), which were around in the 70s. That's not a new strategy. We have CIWS today that provide mild-protection against weapons like this. Wire-guided missiles are older than the TOW system. But I assume most military buffs would know about the TOW. EDIT: Wow, I knew that there were wire-guided missiles before TOW. I didn't know that wire-guided missiles were in play in Nazi Germany during WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrstahl_X-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrstahl_X-4 In any case: the problem with pure wire-guided missiles is that when people are shooting guns at you, and you're hiding in a trench... fiddling around with a joystick trying to move your "drone" (or wire-guided missile) to hit them is a lot harder than it looks. Even if the enemy is the size of a tank (remember: the tank is moving surprisingly fast) TOW were optical-guided + wire-guided, meaning a computer calculates the positioning, and you "only" need to point the optical scanner towards your target, no joystick involved. 1940s style joysticks being used in modern combat would be a significant disadvantage compared to modern systems. -------- EDIT2: CIWS is the big version we put onto the Iron Dome or Cruisers / Supercarriers. Apparently the smaller version is called APS (active protection system), when its put onto a tank or IVF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JI0cYo6rag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JI0cYo6rag ------- For an actual anti-tank weapon (or really, anti-anything weapon), look up what TOW missiles can do today with their simple point-and-shoot interfaces: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a17654/watch-this-tow-2b-missile-pop-the-top-off-a-russian-tank-like-a-bottle-of-beer/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a17654/wat... That's two explosions: once "over" the target, the TOW 2B Missile (one of the many, many variants of TOW) explodes, sending an armor-piercing round over the top of a tank where the armor is weaker. The 2nd explosion is the actual explosion designed to kill the tank. TOW missiles fly at 300m/s (or ~650+ miles per hour).
- lm28469 5y ago
  There are plenty of videos on YouTube and other services showing isis &co destroying tanks with mortar rounds strapped to commercially available drones, all you need is a dumb remote release system
treeman79 5y ago
It will once the various factories have been blown up. Imagine they are in the short list.
swayvil 5y ago
They've got drones that can track you by BO. https://www.wired.com/story/this-drone-sniffs-out-odors-with-a-real-moth-antenna/ https://www.wired.com/story/this-drone-sniffs-out-odors-with...
nitwit005 5y ago
People have been bragging about the accuracy of weapons for the last half century or so, and they haven't been wrong. The weapons do hit what you aim them at. You may notice though, that war hasn't ended up being people lobbing a bunch of smart weapons at each other, and militaries still seem to be digging holes and building walls.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  So I came back to this after a while. I agree with you but was wondering why. And I think it is target selection. We can now and have had the ability for decades to drop a bomb in through a chosen window. The problem is always which window and what if the window is mobile? For this you need up to the minute intelligence and that is either insiders, or boots on the ground. If you have penetrated their networks well enough to have up to the minute intel, it's a totally different game anyway. And if you have active frontline soldiers there then it's close air support. I suspect this is the issue of asymmetric warfare (where one side massively out-tech and out-weapons the other but the terrain (mountains / cities) nullifies the effect or symmetric warfare (where frankly we seem to be preparing for now ) - and effectively we make close air support into artillery (or vice versa) lobbing smart bombs directed by frontline soldiers. The problem is of course the other side will too - so we just have the artillery of WWI - only even more accurate and responsive to front line needs.

by na85 5y ago

mc32 5y ago

Can’t do much about missiles but against quadcopters with grenades just add a storm fence dome over your trench. And unless the quadcopters get equipped with high strength wire cutters they’re not going to do much.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
first one blows up next to the fence, the rest go through the hole?
- mc32 5y ago
  I don’t think grenades can successfully punch large holes into a storm fence. It’s flexible and very little surface to hit. They’re affective against people because we perforate easily.
adventured 5y ago
The answer to the trench storm fence with a (larger) quadcopter is a fuel shower, promptly ignited. A sort of flying molotov cocktail. The target trench area/s would need something like a small Phalanx CIWS to play defense.

ortusdux 5y ago

Air-burst rounds have definitely rendered trenches obsolete. https://imgur.com/c17lPxF https://imgur.com/c17lPxF

pasabagi 5y ago
Airburst rounds existed in WW1 too. The point is, you hide in a bunker until the shelling is over, then you come up and man positions before the enemy can reach your trenches, or failing that, counterattack while they are cut off from supplies and reinforcements.
- jeffdn 5y ago
  Airburst rounds with timers set by calculation, not airburst rounds that can blow up when they reach a specific point determined by proximity, distance, GPS, etc. It's a completely different kind of airburst.
dragontamer 5y ago
That's not how modern warfare works. Air-burst rounds beat trenches. Armor piercing rounds beat tanks (and bunkers). So the solution: have tanks next to your trenches. If your opponent loads air-burst rounds into their weapon, charge at them with your tank. If your opponent loads armor-piercing rounds into their weapon, run into the trench. Armor-piercing (neither HEAT nor Sabot) can do much vs a trench. (I'm ignoring the AC-130, just assuming land-based combat for now cause AC-130 is beaten by a totally different strategy: air superiority) --------- "Combined arms". Your opponent has to load his weapon with the right bullet for the right circumstance. Mix up your strategies (both defensive and offensive strategies). * HEAT-armor piercing loses to reactive armor on a tank. * Reactive-armor loses to sabot-rounds. * Sabot rounds lose to long-distance battle (air-resistance slows down the round). HEAT is better at long-distance (HEAT always was kinda slow: most of the "power" comes from the explosion that occurs after-the-collision... which is beaten by reactive armor). You can't guard against everything. Instead, you rely upon mixing up the strategies enough so that enemies are kept "guessing" as to which weapon to load / unload.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  What if the enemy has… TWO tanks?
  - 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

> For a fraction of the cost there's also the ol' hand-grenade-duct-taped-to-a-quadcopter. Its like people don't know we have CIWS or something. Rockets flying at 500mph are shot down regularly by aimbot defensive weapons. But suddenly a drone flying at 20mph is too tough to handle? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d_h5uqnYOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d_h5uqnYOI -------- "Duct-taped grenade on drone" is just a crappy TOW missile. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW), which were around in the 70s. That's not a new strategy. We have CIWS today that provide mild-protection against weapons like this. Wire-guided missiles are older than the TOW system. But I assume most military buffs would know about the TOW. EDIT: Wow, I knew that there were wire-guided missiles before TOW. I didn't know that wire-guided missiles were in play in Nazi Germany during WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrstahl_X-4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhrstahl_X-4 In any case: the problem with pure wire-guided missiles is that when people are shooting guns at you, and you're hiding in a trench... fiddling around with a joystick trying to move your "drone" (or wire-guided missile) to hit them is a lot harder than it looks. Even if the enemy is the size of a tank (remember: the tank is moving surprisingly fast) TOW were optical-guided + wire-guided, meaning a computer calculates the positioning, and you "only" need to point the optical scanner towards your target, no joystick involved. 1940s style joysticks being used in modern combat would be a significant disadvantage compared to modern systems. -------- EDIT2: CIWS is the big version we put onto the Iron Dome or Cruisers / Supercarriers. Apparently the smaller version is called APS (active protection system), when its put onto a tank or IVF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JI0cYo6rag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JI0cYo6rag ------- For an actual anti-tank weapon (or really, anti-anything weapon), look up what TOW missiles can do today with their simple point-and-shoot interfaces: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a17654/watch-this-tow-2b-missile-pop-the-top-off-a-russian-tank-like-a-bottle-of-beer/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a17654/wat... That's two explosions: once "over" the target, the TOW 2B Missile (one of the many, many variants of TOW) explodes, sending an armor-piercing round over the top of a tank where the armor is weaker. The 2nd explosion is the actual explosion designed to kill the tank. TOW missiles fly at 300m/s (or ~650+ miles per hour).

lm28469 5y ago
There are plenty of videos on YouTube and other services showing isis &co destroying tanks with mortar rounds strapped to commercially available drones, all you need is a dumb remote release system

treeman79 5y ago

It will once the various factories have been blown up. Imagine they are in the short list.

swayvil 5y ago

They've got drones that can track you by BO. https://www.wired.com/story/this-drone-sniffs-out-odors-with-a-real-moth-antenna/ https://www.wired.com/story/this-drone-sniffs-out-odors-with...

nitwit005 5y ago

People have been bragging about the accuracy of weapons for the last half century or so, and they haven't been wrong. The weapons do hit what you aim them at. You may notice though, that war hasn't ended up being people lobbing a bunch of smart weapons at each other, and militaries still seem to be digging holes and building walls.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
So I came back to this after a while. I agree with you but was wondering why. And I think it is target selection. We can now and have had the ability for decades to drop a bomb in through a chosen window. The problem is always which window and what if the window is mobile? For this you need up to the minute intelligence and that is either insiders, or boots on the ground. If you have penetrated their networks well enough to have up to the minute intel, it's a totally different game anyway. And if you have active frontline soldiers there then it's close air support. I suspect this is the issue of asymmetric warfare (where one side massively out-tech and out-weapons the other but the terrain (mountains / cities) nullifies the effect or symmetric warfare (where frankly we seem to be preparing for now ) - and effectively we make close air support into artillery (or vice versa) lobbing smart bombs directed by frontline soldiers. The problem is of course the other side will too - so we just have the artillery of WWI - only even more accurate and responsive to front line needs.