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After watching 1000's of Ukrainian drone videos, it's absolutely terrifying for the foot soldier these days. You almost stand zero chance and as for vehicles, i

After watching 1000's of Ukrainian drone videos, it's absolutely terrifying for the foot soldier these days. You almost stand zero chance and as for vehicles, it can seriously impact their usefulness. APC's,Tanks become scrap metal from a $500 drone carrying a shaped charge. The US has always depended on air superiority to fight its wars, they are completely unprepared for what facing an enemy with superior air defense can turn war on the ground into (WW1 style trench warfare). Add to that an enemy that would sacrifice millions of soldiers without an care or remorse.

nerpderp82 3y ago
Which is why we should be halting the progression and use of the drones like we are seeing in Ukraine. No one wins a drone war.
- networkchad 3y ago
  [dead]
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  The same way we halted the use of chemical weapons, which have seen rampant use in the Syrian war ? Unfortunately these measures do not seem to work.. If even one actor is employing them, the rest need to also employ them in a lack of a better defence.
- kaibee 3y ago
  A drone is just some electric motors, batteries, RF control and a gyroscope/accelerometer. I'm not exactly sure how you could halt the progression at this point.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- sdenton4 3y ago
  Are you suggesting we should move on from drone wars to clone wars? https://youtu.be/enrUBmDgeOQ?si=F3nfNjO40_v04wCu&t=17 https://youtu.be/enrUBmDgeOQ?si=F3nfNjO40_v04wCu&t=17
- mckn1ght 3y ago
  > No one wins a drone war. A non sequitur with no justification. If you are being attacked with drones, and you don’t have any, you are definitely going to lose that war. This is like how people say nobody wins a nuclear war. Ask Ukraine how they feel about the decision to give up their nukes is going.
  - adventured 3y ago
    Ukraine couldn't use or maintain those nuclear weapons. They had no control over their actual use. So why would Ukraine feel bad about giving them up? It was a huge benefit to get rid of them given the risks and costs associated. They absolutely could not afford to maintain them circa 1991-2021. Not even remotely close. Giving them up was the only thing that made any sense given their extremely low real value. If Ukraine made a mistake, it was in what they got in return for those non-functional weapons. They didn't negotiate very well.
    - dist-epoch 3y ago
      Surely they could afford maintaining a dozen of them. > They had no control over their actual use Assuming they could not bypass the protection, they could still extract the radioactive material and create their own designs.
- adventured 3y ago
  The nation that can destroy (or otherwise severely impair) the drone manufacturing/supply/operation capabilities of the opponent, wins a war that heavily includes drones. That's assuming the drones matter that much, which hasn't been demonstrated yet. Drones have not shifted the balance of power in Ukraine v Russia for example. It's no different than blowing up any other kind of weapons supply. You stop the supply, that's how you end the mass drone threat in that kind of war. You don't just endlessly trade hits from drones. That'd be like never targeting your opponents artillery production, or tank production, or cruise missile production, or jet production, or repair facilities, et al. Of course one side or the other will win a drone war, just like most any other war.
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    > Drones have not shifted the balance of power in Ukraine v Russia for example. Because both sides use them. They made armored attacks impossible for both sides. A tank is detected in 1 minute and destroyed in 10.
    - nerpderp82 3y ago
      Drones will be the mustard gas of the mid 21st century. We haven't begun to see the massive casualties they will create. Think guided cluster munitions where every 100g payload finds a soft target and you launch 1-5k of them at a time. The Ukraine war is already causing blowback as seen in Gaza. We should make war itself illegal.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  >No one wins a drone war. Not with that attitude they won't.
- rnk 3y ago
  How do we get China to stop? It's impossible. It's completely to their advantage to have drones get better. They can mass produce them way better than us. The CPUs don't seem to be that advanced up to now, so they can probably make them. If not they can steal/buy them illegally. Russia is a slightly different case because they can't make many of the parts but they can cobble them together using other CPUs. So they are hurt, but possibly helped. We just have to work on defensive measures.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wharvle 3y ago
It's been that way basically since indirect fire took over as the big killer, IIRC around WWI, maybe somewhat earlier. Odds of seeing the thing or person that makes you a casualty plummeted some time around then. Less a series of deadly contests and more bunch of very one-sided slaughters, and you just hope you're not in the herd being slaughtered. Soldiering has mostly been wandering and/or sitting around and then suddenly something happens that you didn't even see coming, and it either gets you or not and there isn't much you can do about it, for some time. Pitched firefights with an enemy you can at least kinda see and face and actively resist or guard against do happen, but they're not what either side is trying to do most of the time. At least in wars between somewhat-modern militaries. I think militaries/governments like to downplay the degree to which that's true, probably because it'd hurt recruitment numbers, but now we get cell phone and drone videos straight from the front. Of course, before antibiotics and modern medicine, you were probably gonna be killed by disease before an enemy could hurt you (and if the enemy did hurt you... yeah, good chance it's still disease that strikes the killing blow). That was (one part of) the unromantic reality of war in prior centuries.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Yep. All the gun nuts with delusions of even the threat of a future armed rebellion are absolutely kidding themselves. You don't need an army or tanks or jets or helicopters to lay waste to an armed militia. You just need some bored kids with a few hours of flight sim training and enough drones to make it happen.
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  The main point gun nuts miss: Power corrupts.
surfingdino 3y ago
We are getting close to the kind of warfare described in Neuromacer (i.e. Corto's mission over Kirensk).
kiba 3y ago
The infantry man is basically vulnerable to everything on the battlefield and yet they remain indispensable as ever.
Adverblessly 3y ago
Israel has made some progress in shooting down drones with lasers (see Drone Dome) as well as mortar bombs and artillery shells (see Iron Beam) and IIUC both systems are mobile. Given that we don't hear about them being used right now in either Israel or Ukraine I assume they aren't actually ready for deployment, but maybe in a few years?
AlbertCory 3y ago
to anyone interested in on-the-ground reporting: get on Quora and follow Roland Bartetzko: https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-Bartetzko https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-Bartetzko who has actually been in combat (not in Ukraine) and is over in Ukraine right now helping with logistics.
greedo 3y ago
Thing is, the US isn't going to attack (with ground forces) until they've thoroughly destroy the enemy with a "superior air defense." Take a look at how the US handled Desert Storm. Over 100K sorties simply leveling anything slightly threatening. Now most militaries can't fight this way, they simply don't have the resources. But the US spends $800B annually on its military.
- ChumpGPT 3y ago
  Iraq was using an air defense system from 1970(it was already outdated). They had no modern air defense or air force during the gulf war. If they had modern air defense they would have brought down a lot of US Aircraft. The USA has never fought an adversary that possessed a modern Air Defense System. Even today the Israeli Military has to coordinate with Russia to not get shot down over Syria by Russian S300 and possibly S400 Missile Systems.
  - greedo 3y ago
    They had an integrated AD system with centralized control through command centers connected via fiber optical cables. The French had helped them design this system. Their AD was quite extensive with French supplied ROLAND, as well as contemporary Soviet equipment. Their air force had MiG-29, MiG-25, Mirage F-1, all in large numbers. This was not a pushover military by any means, but they were simply outclassed by a USAF operating at its peak. And when the US was fighting in Vietnam, the Vietnamese arguably had one of the best AD systems that was highly effective. The Soviets spared no expense in supplying (and often manning) their IAD.
iteratethis 3y ago
I saw footage from a drone's body heat cam approaching a Russian trench. One of these blurry red shapes put a gun to his head and beat the drone to what was inevitable. They hear it coming and know it's over. Another piece of footage was even worse. A kamikaze drone isolated a soldier and was intentionally taunting the soldier by flying at it, pulling back, flying at it again. Like a wasp. The ending is predictable. All of this supplemented by a cheerful "blooper" tune. And the replies show gamer-like excitement.
- PolygonSheep 3y ago
  Where do you find the really funny ones?

nerpderp82 3y ago

Which is why we should be halting the progression and use of the drones like we are seeing in Ukraine. No one wins a drone war.

networkchad 3y ago
[dead]
4gotunameagain 3y ago
The same way we halted the use of chemical weapons, which have seen rampant use in the Syrian war ? Unfortunately these measures do not seem to work.. If even one actor is employing them, the rest need to also employ them in a lack of a better defence.
kaibee 3y ago
A drone is just some electric motors, batteries, RF control and a gyroscope/accelerometer. I'm not exactly sure how you could halt the progression at this point.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
sdenton4 3y ago
Are you suggesting we should move on from drone wars to clone wars? https://youtu.be/enrUBmDgeOQ?si=F3nfNjO40_v04wCu&t=17 https://youtu.be/enrUBmDgeOQ?si=F3nfNjO40_v04wCu&t=17
mckn1ght 3y ago
> No one wins a drone war. A non sequitur with no justification. If you are being attacked with drones, and you don’t have any, you are definitely going to lose that war. This is like how people say nobody wins a nuclear war. Ask Ukraine how they feel about the decision to give up their nukes is going.
- adventured 3y ago
  Ukraine couldn't use or maintain those nuclear weapons. They had no control over their actual use. So why would Ukraine feel bad about giving them up? It was a huge benefit to get rid of them given the risks and costs associated. They absolutely could not afford to maintain them circa 1991-2021. Not even remotely close. Giving them up was the only thing that made any sense given their extremely low real value. If Ukraine made a mistake, it was in what they got in return for those non-functional weapons. They didn't negotiate very well.
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    Surely they could afford maintaining a dozen of them. > They had no control over their actual use Assuming they could not bypass the protection, they could still extract the radioactive material and create their own designs.
adventured 3y ago
The nation that can destroy (or otherwise severely impair) the drone manufacturing/supply/operation capabilities of the opponent, wins a war that heavily includes drones. That's assuming the drones matter that much, which hasn't been demonstrated yet. Drones have not shifted the balance of power in Ukraine v Russia for example. It's no different than blowing up any other kind of weapons supply. You stop the supply, that's how you end the mass drone threat in that kind of war. You don't just endlessly trade hits from drones. That'd be like never targeting your opponents artillery production, or tank production, or cruise missile production, or jet production, or repair facilities, et al. Of course one side or the other will win a drone war, just like most any other war.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  > Drones have not shifted the balance of power in Ukraine v Russia for example. Because both sides use them. They made armored attacks impossible for both sides. A tank is detected in 1 minute and destroyed in 10.
  - nerpderp82 3y ago
    Drones will be the mustard gas of the mid 21st century. We haven't begun to see the massive casualties they will create. Think guided cluster munitions where every 100g payload finds a soft target and you launch 1-5k of them at a time. The Ukraine war is already causing blowback as seen in Gaza. We should make war itself illegal.
ProjectArcturis 3y ago
>No one wins a drone war. Not with that attitude they won't.
rnk 3y ago
How do we get China to stop? It's impossible. It's completely to their advantage to have drones get better. They can mass produce them way better than us. The CPUs don't seem to be that advanced up to now, so they can probably make them. If not they can steal/buy them illegally. Russia is a slightly different case because they can't make many of the parts but they can cobble them together using other CPUs. So they are hurt, but possibly helped. We just have to work on defensive measures.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wharvle 3y ago

It's been that way basically since indirect fire took over as the big killer, IIRC around WWI, maybe somewhat earlier. Odds of seeing the thing or person that makes you a casualty plummeted some time around then. Less a series of deadly contests and more bunch of very one-sided slaughters, and you just hope you're not in the herd being slaughtered. Soldiering has mostly been wandering and/or sitting around and then suddenly something happens that you didn't even see coming, and it either gets you or not and there isn't much you can do about it, for some time. Pitched firefights with an enemy you can at least kinda see and face and actively resist or guard against do happen, but they're not what either side is trying to do most of the time. At least in wars between somewhat-modern militaries. I think militaries/governments like to downplay the degree to which that's true, probably because it'd hurt recruitment numbers, but now we get cell phone and drone videos straight from the front. Of course, before antibiotics and modern medicine, you were probably gonna be killed by disease before an enemy could hurt you (and if the enemy did hurt you... yeah, good chance it's still disease that strikes the killing blow). That was (one part of) the unromantic reality of war in prior centuries.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

Yep. All the gun nuts with delusions of even the threat of a future armed rebellion are absolutely kidding themselves. You don't need an army or tanks or jets or helicopters to lay waste to an armed militia. You just need some bored kids with a few hours of flight sim training and enough drones to make it happen.

throwawayqqq11 3y ago
The main point gun nuts miss: Power corrupts.

surfingdino 3y ago

We are getting close to the kind of warfare described in Neuromacer (i.e. Corto's mission over Kirensk).

kiba 3y ago

The infantry man is basically vulnerable to everything on the battlefield and yet they remain indispensable as ever.

Adverblessly 3y ago

Israel has made some progress in shooting down drones with lasers (see Drone Dome) as well as mortar bombs and artillery shells (see Iron Beam) and IIUC both systems are mobile. Given that we don't hear about them being used right now in either Israel or Ukraine I assume they aren't actually ready for deployment, but maybe in a few years?

AlbertCory 3y ago

to anyone interested in on-the-ground reporting: get on Quora and follow Roland Bartetzko: https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-Bartetzko https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-Bartetzko who has actually been in combat (not in Ukraine) and is over in Ukraine right now helping with logistics.

greedo 3y ago

Thing is, the US isn't going to attack (with ground forces) until they've thoroughly destroy the enemy with a "superior air defense." Take a look at how the US handled Desert Storm. Over 100K sorties simply leveling anything slightly threatening. Now most militaries can't fight this way, they simply don't have the resources. But the US spends $800B annually on its military.

ChumpGPT 3y ago
Iraq was using an air defense system from 1970(it was already outdated). They had no modern air defense or air force during the gulf war. If they had modern air defense they would have brought down a lot of US Aircraft. The USA has never fought an adversary that possessed a modern Air Defense System. Even today the Israeli Military has to coordinate with Russia to not get shot down over Syria by Russian S300 and possibly S400 Missile Systems.
- greedo 3y ago
  They had an integrated AD system with centralized control through command centers connected via fiber optical cables. The French had helped them design this system. Their AD was quite extensive with French supplied ROLAND, as well as contemporary Soviet equipment. Their air force had MiG-29, MiG-25, Mirage F-1, all in large numbers. This was not a pushover military by any means, but they were simply outclassed by a USAF operating at its peak. And when the US was fighting in Vietnam, the Vietnamese arguably had one of the best AD systems that was highly effective. The Soviets spared no expense in supplying (and often manning) their IAD.

iteratethis 3y ago

I saw footage from a drone's body heat cam approaching a Russian trench. One of these blurry red shapes put a gun to his head and beat the drone to what was inevitable. They hear it coming and know it's over. Another piece of footage was even worse. A kamikaze drone isolated a soldier and was intentionally taunting the soldier by flying at it, pulling back, flying at it again. Like a wasp. The ending is predictable. All of this supplemented by a cheerful "blooper" tune. And the replies show gamer-like excitement.

PolygonSheep 3y ago
Where do you find the really funny ones?