46 ms·

A lot of people are asking whether tanks are survivable anymore, but nobody is asking whether unarmored infantry are any more survivable in the era of small-dro

A lot of people are asking whether tanks are survivable anymore, but nobody is asking whether unarmored infantry are any more survivable in the era of small-drone warfare. It's all relative.

metabagel 4y ago
Infantry can more effectively hide, disperse, and bring down aerial drones.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  This is very terrain-dependent. It worked around Kyiv because it's forested and hilly, it works in cities with large soviet apartment blocks, but isn't working well at all in flat Donbas farmland. It's also a 100% defensive strategy. Unsupported infantry have almost no ability to retake dug-in positions.
1123581321 4y ago
A lot of money is being invested in anti-drone tech.
dragontamer 4y ago
Small drone warfare? The Ukraine / Russian conflict has degenerated into trench warfare with thousands of 155mm / 152mm artillery being shot into each other's positions per day. These are the kinds of conditions where tanks excel. Humans who try to walk at 3km/hr get blown up by shrapnel, even 100m away is "close enough" to cause a significant injury and take a human out of a fight. Tanks? They pretty much ignore everything except a direct hit (within 2m) of the target. All that shrapnel just bounces off the tank. We've gone full circle back to WW1 trench/artillery warfare, where tanks were invented to break through the stalemate. Other vehicles (even armored cars) don't have thick enough armor to survive the shrapnel reliably. APCs, IFVs, Humvees still get shredded by artillery and air-burst munitions. ------- How do you beat artillery? You travel at 50km/hr, so you're hard to aim (a 20km shot takes 1.5 minutes to land. Easy to kill a human who can only travel a hundred meters in that timeframe, especially since its +/- 100m target size since the shrapnel blast is so huge). Tanks / vehicles on the other hand, move too fast to be targeted by dumb artillery. Smart artillery still kills you, but its relatively rare on the battlefield (due to the high costs of computer parts needed to make a smart shell). The vast majority of these holes are dumb artillery. --------- https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2022/06/15/e17c824a-4d23-46cb-b1bd-37f5d0caebf4_dc435f47.jpg https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/... This isn't the landscape of "drone warfare". This is WW1 style dumb-artillery wars.
- the_af 4y ago
  In support of your statement, I'm impressed that Russian doctrine seems to rely so much on good ol' trusty massive artillery, of the dumb kind. I guess, if it works...
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Puts the whole Seoul situation in a new light - there's something about just massive amounts of shells being thrown that's hard to deal with. And dumb is cheap. Cheap can be king, especially if you can keep making them. The US had the same thing in WWII, the Panzer tanks were better than the Shermans in nearly every way - except cost and repairability.
    - the_af 4y ago
      Yes. This is also a lesson the Red Army learned in WWII, and why not continue with it? Simple systems that can be mass produced are better than complex, harder to repair ones.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        The complex, hard to repair ones are great if: 1. You're selling them. 2. You have absolute complete superiority and are trying to minimize your casualties There's a country that fits those parameters very well.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Both Russian and Ukrainian, also grad rockets. They're pretty much fighting each other with the same weapons.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Whenever people talked about "suicide drones", I felt like they haven't studied the history of warfare. A surprising number of conflicts: WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, degenerated into artillery slugfests. You can't get much cheaper, faster, or more effective than guns shooting dumb explosives 20km away. Only when the opponents were stupidly overmatched by US Air Superiority (Afghanistan / Iraq) did things change. But even with Air Superiority over say, Vietnam, USA still degenerated into an artillery slugfest. ------- Its hard to beat 100lb shrapnel bombs delivered 20km away. Logistics wise, trucks carrying shells is just far cheaper than any other delivery mechanism. This fact has been true since WW1, and no technology has ever really changed the calculus. (Adding li-ion batteries, cameras, remote-control and other features so that you can turn the delivery mechanism into a drone is just unnecessary chips in most cases)
dilyevsky 4y ago
The truth is they never were. I think i heard somewhere that avg battlefield lifetime of a tank in ww2 was less than 20 minutes

A lot of people are asking whether tanks are survivable anymore, but nobody is asking whether unarmored infantry are any more survivable in the era of small-drone warfare. It's all relative.

metabagel 4y ago

Infantry can more effectively hide, disperse, and bring down aerial drones.

bpodgursky 4y ago
This is very terrain-dependent. It worked around Kyiv because it's forested and hilly, it works in cities with large soviet apartment blocks, but isn't working well at all in flat Donbas farmland. It's also a 100% defensive strategy. Unsupported infantry have almost no ability to retake dug-in positions.

1123581321 4y ago

A lot of money is being invested in anti-drone tech.

dragontamer 4y ago

Small drone warfare? The Ukraine / Russian conflict has degenerated into trench warfare with thousands of 155mm / 152mm artillery being shot into each other's positions per day. These are the kinds of conditions where tanks excel. Humans who try to walk at 3km/hr get blown up by shrapnel, even 100m away is "close enough" to cause a significant injury and take a human out of a fight. Tanks? They pretty much ignore everything except a direct hit (within 2m) of the target. All that shrapnel just bounces off the tank. We've gone full circle back to WW1 trench/artillery warfare, where tanks were invented to break through the stalemate. Other vehicles (even armored cars) don't have thick enough armor to survive the shrapnel reliably. APCs, IFVs, Humvees still get shredded by artillery and air-burst munitions. ------- How do you beat artillery? You travel at 50km/hr, so you're hard to aim (a 20km shot takes 1.5 minutes to land. Easy to kill a human who can only travel a hundred meters in that timeframe, especially since its +/- 100m target size since the shrapnel blast is so huge). Tanks / vehicles on the other hand, move too fast to be targeted by dumb artillery. Smart artillery still kills you, but its relatively rare on the battlefield (due to the high costs of computer parts needed to make a smart shell). The vast majority of these holes are dumb artillery. --------- https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2022/06/15/e17c824a-4d23-46cb-b1bd-37f5d0caebf4_dc435f47.jpg https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/... This isn't the landscape of "drone warfare". This is WW1 style dumb-artillery wars.

the_af 4y ago
In support of your statement, I'm impressed that Russian doctrine seems to rely so much on good ol' trusty massive artillery, of the dumb kind. I guess, if it works...
- bombcar 4y ago
  Puts the whole Seoul situation in a new light - there's something about just massive amounts of shells being thrown that's hard to deal with. And dumb is cheap. Cheap can be king, especially if you can keep making them. The US had the same thing in WWII, the Panzer tanks were better than the Shermans in nearly every way - except cost and repairability.
  - the_af 4y ago
    Yes. This is also a lesson the Red Army learned in WWII, and why not continue with it? Simple systems that can be mass produced are better than complex, harder to repair ones.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The complex, hard to repair ones are great if: 1. You're selling them. 2. You have absolute complete superiority and are trying to minimize your casualties There's a country that fits those parameters very well.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Both Russian and Ukrainian, also grad rockets. They're pretty much fighting each other with the same weapons.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Whenever people talked about "suicide drones", I felt like they haven't studied the history of warfare. A surprising number of conflicts: WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, degenerated into artillery slugfests. You can't get much cheaper, faster, or more effective than guns shooting dumb explosives 20km away. Only when the opponents were stupidly overmatched by US Air Superiority (Afghanistan / Iraq) did things change. But even with Air Superiority over say, Vietnam, USA still degenerated into an artillery slugfest. ------- Its hard to beat 100lb shrapnel bombs delivered 20km away. Logistics wise, trucks carrying shells is just far cheaper than any other delivery mechanism. This fact has been true since WW1, and no technology has ever really changed the calculus. (Adding li-ion batteries, cameras, remote-control and other features so that you can turn the delivery mechanism into a drone is just unnecessary chips in most cases)

dilyevsky 4y ago

The truth is they never were. I think i heard somewhere that avg battlefield lifetime of a tank in ww2 was less than 20 minutes