7 ms·

The AI part in this piece seems a bit premature, as far as I can tell from the promotional videos of successful combat, all of the drones are piloted. The more

The AI part in this piece seems a bit premature, as far as I can tell from the promotional videos of successful combat, all of the drones are piloted. The more interesting thing is how each combat brigade for Ukraine (and one can only assume something similar for Russia) has drone operators in addition to the dedicated drone support units as detailed here: https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/DRONES/dwpkeyjwkpm/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/DRONES/dwpke... Does anyone know if any NATO countries are adapting to this or ideas to break the stalemate on the frontline where neither side can use armored vehicles very effectively due to their drone vulnerability besides the Russians throwing men and equipment into the grinder to soak up Ukrainian ammunition?

eru 2y ago
NATO countries rely on massive air superiority. Something neither side in that war has, hence their stalemate. NATO armed forces have comparatively small amounts of armoured ground vehicles and artillery. They need to and want to learn from the current war, but still keep in mind that their circumstances are different.
- riku_iki 2y ago
  US has air superiority. Other NATO air forces are likely weaker than Russians.
  - eru 2y ago
    Maybe weaker than Russia before the war? They have been bled dry since. But it doesn't really matter: collective defense is the whole point of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
    - riku_iki 2y ago
      > But it doesn't really matter: collective defense is the whole point of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I am not certain US will enter war with Russia in case of some escalation with European countries, especially if Trump will be elected.
  - unclebucknasty 2y ago
    >US has air superiority. Other NATO air forces are likely weaker than Russians. A superior air force and air superiority are different concepts. The latter refers to a conflict-time status in a particular theatre.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    This isn't what air superiority means. It occurs when one side is able to safely fly, and their opponent isn't. It's likely to be an obsolete concept in any sort of peer to peer war due to widespread anti-air weaponry, yet it's very near an assumption in NATO war doctrine, because that doctrine has been developed over decades of invading countries with no ability to defend themselves.
    - dilyevsky 2y ago
      NATOs doctrinal reliance on air is precisely the reason why russia has tremendous amount of aa systems deployed
    - cm2187 2y ago
      Doesn't it depend on how stealthy is the F35? That will soon be almost the only game in town in Europe (outside of France).
    - throwup238 2y ago
      > It's likely to be an obsolete concept in any sort of peer to peer war due to widespread anti-air weaponry, yet it's very near an assumption in NATO war doctrine, because that doctrine has been developed over decades of invading countries with no ability to defend themselves. That's too strong an assumption. The USAF 's bread and butter is supersonic stealth jets that can enter a territory, fire RF missiles to take out anti-aircraft radar, and leave faster than anything can catch it. Repeated hit and run attacks that wear down ground defenses until they can fly unchallenged. That's on top of the massive arsenal of precision guided missiles that will take out any static installation identified by constant global satellite surveillance. NATO doctrine has always been geared towards countering the Sovet Union/Russia, despite the counter-terrorism detour the US took.
      - pigpang 2y ago
        Supersonic missiles are very vulnerable to a debris in the sky. Instead of catching of a missile, a drone can be blown up in advance on predicted trajectory of the supersonic missile.
      - 2y ago
  - dilyevsky 2y ago
    That’s not what air superiority means - it’s not a relative measure of opposing air capabilities
    - riku_iki 2y ago
      You can deduct that NATO countries except US won't achieve air superiority against capable opponent(Russia, China), and their doctrine is not effective if new US president elect will decide so.
- delfinom 2y ago
  Air superiority means nothing when the opposing side has meat for the meat grinder and it's widely spread out. The West has gotten ridiculously invested in "smart bombs" which cost a fortune and as a result we have less of them. Meanwhile the enemy has no problem sending tens of thousands of waves of small squads to their death. In fact a study came out in 2022 that made the Pentagon panic because it's estimated in a war with China, the US will deplete its entire anti-ship missile stockpile in only a week.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    We didn't think that we were going to have to fight Russia, or to help our allies kill Russians by the hundreds of thousands. Generals are often criticized for wanting to "fight the last war," but it seems that contrary to all conventional wisdom, that is exactly where the West is headed. At least, if somebody doesn't take Putin out.
    - smegger001 2y ago
      unfortunately war with russia would very likely be the last war as we and they would be nuked back into the bronze age
      - pigpang 2y ago
        Global warming can be stopped by nuclear winter only.
      - lawn 2y ago
        This isn't that probable actually. Russia doesn't have nearly the amount of nukes they used to. Apart from the dismantling, all signs point to many of them being unusable due to lack of maintenance (due to corruption). What they have left are smaller bombs. The fear is overblown.
        somenameforme 2y ago
        Nuclear arsenals and capability are regularly assessed by the FAS. The latest numbers leave Russia with around 1,710 currently actively deployed strategic nuclear weapons. [1] And somewhere around 4,000 nuclear warheads beyond that. These figures are just estimates, but do account for dismantling, obsolescence of dated capabilities, and so on. The reason strategic weapons are generally tracked is largely because these are the massive weapons, both literally and in terms of capacity. For instance a modern strategic nuke on the smaller end would generally be around 500kt of yield. The largest bomb ever detonated, Czar Bomba, was 50,000kt of yield. For contrast, the nuke dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15kt. Even if our estimate is wrong by 90% in the happy direction, that's enough power to effectively destroy any country countless times over, including the US. Furthermore, those 4000 'rando' warheads are indeed going to be small relative to strategic nukes - but "small" in this case again means sizes of up to ~100kt, once again several times the power of Hiroshima. I find the propaganda gradually trending towards 'nuclear war wouldn't be so bad' to be quite disconcerting. Let's at least wait until we're a multiplanetary species before we decide to start offing ourselves on a massive scale. Or even better, never do it in the first place. The Fermi Paradox is a real thing, and could be easily explained by people's inability to escape their own self delusions. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_des...
- cm2187 2y ago
  NATO I believe isn't really setup for a long and wide ww1 style conflict like in Ukraine. I understand the plan in case of a russian invasion was always to use nukes at one point.
  - eru 2y ago
    I think the plans shifted as the cold war progressed.
  - kiba 2y ago
    Cold war era NATO is a different beast than today's, and we're talking about something like the timespan of 50 years.
- dilyevsky 2y ago
  > NATO countries rely on massive air superiority. Something neither side in that war has, hence their stalemate. Vks has superiority at least along the front line since this spring maybe winter. What they dont have is supremacy
- yencabulator 2y ago
  What happens when the drones are used to target airplanes? The drones are too small, cheap and numerous to use a modern fighter jet's weapons against.
rgbrenner 2y ago
Ukraine actually uses Russian fighting tactics.. that's the way they trained and were equipped. They're also very poor, with a gdp per capita (before the war) of 1/3rd of Russia's. So it looks exactly the way these countries are equipped and trained to fight: lots of artillery, loss of life, trench warfare. Ukraine has neither the training nor equipment to do combined arms warfare. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that a war with NATO will look like the war in Ukraine. As far as drone defense, we already have KuRFS/Ku-720(mobile version)[0,1] radar to track drones/etc that works with a phalanx, 50-caliber guns, 30mm cannon, and coyote drones. We're also deploying a 50kw palletized laser (w/ KuRFS) with the DE MSHORAD program[2]. All of these programs predate the 2022 Ukraine invasion. The Coyote (designed at the start to take out small drones) first took flight in 2007[3]. 0. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-missile-defense/kurfs https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m... 1. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/news/2021/10/11/rmd-proves-counter-uas-effectiveness https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/news/2021/10/11/rmd-proves-coun... 2. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-missile-defense/lasers https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote
- kiba 2y ago
  The Russian way of war isn't a bad way to go, but of course the units that know how to best fight like the Russians are actually(or used to be) the Americans. I don't think it's necessary true that the war devolves into a lot of loss of life and trench warfare. That's mostly the result of a stalemate. The Russians expected Ukraine to be a pushover. That didn't happen.
- kasperni 2y ago
  > They're also very poor, with a gdp per capita (before the war) of 1/3rd of Russia's. It is the other way around. Ukraine has a GDP per capita that is (prewar) 3 times that of Russia's.
  - fulafel 2y ago
    Ukraine: $5,663 vs Russia: $13,006 (From WP's Economy of {country} pages) Russia's oil does a lot. Using oil/gas fuels supports Russia's war economy by creating demand and raising their prices in the commodities markets, in addition to contributing to the climate disaster.
ChumpGPT 2y ago
From Warriors Ukrainian Telegram Channel A snip from the post The Analyst.... By this stage the Russians had lost most of their APC’s and tanks were standing well back acting more as artillery. The Russians then started the widespread use of what looks like golf carts and ATV’s to reinforce their infantry. Later they started using motorbikes. With their armor gone the infantry were sent in meatwaves. *This lead the Ukrainians to mount their Octocopter heavy lift drones (which the Russians are generally very afraid of), with light machine guns to bring down the infantry attacks. While experimental these drones proved very effective, their only problem being recoil issues firing the gun. It’s planned to solve the recoil quite quickly, but using machine learning and thermal optical sights shows huge promise. This makes the drones less susceptible to having their control link severed - even if they do they can operate alone and return themselves to base. The day of the gun armed autonomous AI drone it seems, is here.* The Russians continue infantry attacks but they have now stopped supporting them with any armor and have turned north instead, trying to find a weaker spot. An outstanding and imaginative Ukrainian defense with limited resources yet again, blunts the relentless hammer blows of meatwave attacks backed by dwindling armor.

eru 2y ago

NATO countries rely on massive air superiority. Something neither side in that war has, hence their stalemate. NATO armed forces have comparatively small amounts of armoured ground vehicles and artillery. They need to and want to learn from the current war, but still keep in mind that their circumstances are different.

riku_iki 2y ago
US has air superiority. Other NATO air forces are likely weaker than Russians.
- eru 2y ago
  Maybe weaker than Russia before the war? They have been bled dry since. But it doesn't really matter: collective defense is the whole point of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    > But it doesn't really matter: collective defense is the whole point of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I am not certain US will enter war with Russia in case of some escalation with European countries, especially if Trump will be elected.
- unclebucknasty 2y ago
  >US has air superiority. Other NATO air forces are likely weaker than Russians. A superior air force and air superiority are different concepts. The latter refers to a conflict-time status in a particular theatre.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  This isn't what air superiority means. It occurs when one side is able to safely fly, and their opponent isn't. It's likely to be an obsolete concept in any sort of peer to peer war due to widespread anti-air weaponry, yet it's very near an assumption in NATO war doctrine, because that doctrine has been developed over decades of invading countries with no ability to defend themselves.
  - dilyevsky 2y ago
    NATOs doctrinal reliance on air is precisely the reason why russia has tremendous amount of aa systems deployed
  - cm2187 2y ago
    Doesn't it depend on how stealthy is the F35? That will soon be almost the only game in town in Europe (outside of France).
  - throwup238 2y ago
    > It's likely to be an obsolete concept in any sort of peer to peer war due to widespread anti-air weaponry, yet it's very near an assumption in NATO war doctrine, because that doctrine has been developed over decades of invading countries with no ability to defend themselves. That's too strong an assumption. The USAF 's bread and butter is supersonic stealth jets that can enter a territory, fire RF missiles to take out anti-aircraft radar, and leave faster than anything can catch it. Repeated hit and run attacks that wear down ground defenses until they can fly unchallenged. That's on top of the massive arsenal of precision guided missiles that will take out any static installation identified by constant global satellite surveillance. NATO doctrine has always been geared towards countering the Sovet Union/Russia, despite the counter-terrorism detour the US took.
    - pigpang 2y ago
      Supersonic missiles are very vulnerable to a debris in the sky. Instead of catching of a missile, a drone can be blown up in advance on predicted trajectory of the supersonic missile.
    - 2y ago
- dilyevsky 2y ago
  That’s not what air superiority means - it’s not a relative measure of opposing air capabilities
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    You can deduct that NATO countries except US won't achieve air superiority against capable opponent(Russia, China), and their doctrine is not effective if new US president elect will decide so.
delfinom 2y ago
Air superiority means nothing when the opposing side has meat for the meat grinder and it's widely spread out. The West has gotten ridiculously invested in "smart bombs" which cost a fortune and as a result we have less of them. Meanwhile the enemy has no problem sending tens of thousands of waves of small squads to their death. In fact a study came out in 2022 that made the Pentagon panic because it's estimated in a war with China, the US will deplete its entire anti-ship missile stockpile in only a week.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  We didn't think that we were going to have to fight Russia, or to help our allies kill Russians by the hundreds of thousands. Generals are often criticized for wanting to "fight the last war," but it seems that contrary to all conventional wisdom, that is exactly where the West is headed. At least, if somebody doesn't take Putin out.
  - smegger001 2y ago
    unfortunately war with russia would very likely be the last war as we and they would be nuked back into the bronze age
    - pigpang 2y ago
      Global warming can be stopped by nuclear winter only.
    - lawn 2y ago
      This isn't that probable actually. Russia doesn't have nearly the amount of nukes they used to. Apart from the dismantling, all signs point to many of them being unusable due to lack of maintenance (due to corruption). What they have left are smaller bombs. The fear is overblown.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        Nuclear arsenals and capability are regularly assessed by the FAS. The latest numbers leave Russia with around 1,710 currently actively deployed strategic nuclear weapons. [1] And somewhere around 4,000 nuclear warheads beyond that. These figures are just estimates, but do account for dismantling, obsolescence of dated capabilities, and so on. The reason strategic weapons are generally tracked is largely because these are the massive weapons, both literally and in terms of capacity. For instance a modern strategic nuke on the smaller end would generally be around 500kt of yield. The largest bomb ever detonated, Czar Bomba, was 50,000kt of yield. For contrast, the nuke dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15kt. Even if our estimate is wrong by 90% in the happy direction, that's enough power to effectively destroy any country countless times over, including the US. Furthermore, those 4000 'rando' warheads are indeed going to be small relative to strategic nukes - but "small" in this case again means sizes of up to ~100kt, once again several times the power of Hiroshima. I find the propaganda gradually trending towards 'nuclear war wouldn't be so bad' to be quite disconcerting. Let's at least wait until we're a multiplanetary species before we decide to start offing ourselves on a massive scale. Or even better, never do it in the first place. The Fermi Paradox is a real thing, and could be easily explained by people's inability to escape their own self delusions. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_des...
cm2187 2y ago
NATO I believe isn't really setup for a long and wide ww1 style conflict like in Ukraine. I understand the plan in case of a russian invasion was always to use nukes at one point.
- eru 2y ago
  I think the plans shifted as the cold war progressed.
- kiba 2y ago
  Cold war era NATO is a different beast than today's, and we're talking about something like the timespan of 50 years.
dilyevsky 2y ago
> NATO countries rely on massive air superiority. Something neither side in that war has, hence their stalemate. Vks has superiority at least along the front line since this spring maybe winter. What they dont have is supremacy
yencabulator 2y ago
What happens when the drones are used to target airplanes? The drones are too small, cheap and numerous to use a modern fighter jet's weapons against.

rgbrenner 2y ago

Ukraine actually uses Russian fighting tactics.. that's the way they trained and were equipped. They're also very poor, with a gdp per capita (before the war) of 1/3rd of Russia's. So it looks exactly the way these countries are equipped and trained to fight: lots of artillery, loss of life, trench warfare. Ukraine has neither the training nor equipment to do combined arms warfare. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that a war with NATO will look like the war in Ukraine. As far as drone defense, we already have KuRFS/Ku-720(mobile version)[0,1] radar to track drones/etc that works with a phalanx, 50-caliber guns, 30mm cannon, and coyote drones. We're also deploying a 50kw palletized laser (w/ KuRFS) with the DE MSHORAD program[2]. All of these programs predate the 2022 Ukraine invasion. The Coyote (designed at the start to take out small drones) first took flight in 2007[3]. 0. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-missile-defense/kurfs https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m... 1. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/news/2021/10/11/rmd-proves-counter-uas-effectiveness https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/news/2021/10/11/rmd-proves-coun... 2. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-missile-defense/lasers https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote

kiba 2y ago
The Russian way of war isn't a bad way to go, but of course the units that know how to best fight like the Russians are actually(or used to be) the Americans. I don't think it's necessary true that the war devolves into a lot of loss of life and trench warfare. That's mostly the result of a stalemate. The Russians expected Ukraine to be a pushover. That didn't happen.
kasperni 2y ago
> They're also very poor, with a gdp per capita (before the war) of 1/3rd of Russia's. It is the other way around. Ukraine has a GDP per capita that is (prewar) 3 times that of Russia's.
- fulafel 2y ago
  Ukraine: $5,663 vs Russia: $13,006 (From WP's Economy of {country} pages) Russia's oil does a lot. Using oil/gas fuels supports Russia's war economy by creating demand and raising their prices in the commodities markets, in addition to contributing to the climate disaster.

ChumpGPT 2y ago

From Warriors Ukrainian Telegram Channel A snip from the post The Analyst.... By this stage the Russians had lost most of their APC’s and tanks were standing well back acting more as artillery. The Russians then started the widespread use of what looks like golf carts and ATV’s to reinforce their infantry. Later they started using motorbikes. With their armor gone the infantry were sent in meatwaves. *This lead the Ukrainians to mount their Octocopter heavy lift drones (which the Russians are generally very afraid of), with light machine guns to bring down the infantry attacks. While experimental these drones proved very effective, their only problem being recoil issues firing the gun. It’s planned to solve the recoil quite quickly, but using machine learning and thermal optical sights shows huge promise. This makes the drones less susceptible to having their control link severed - even if they do they can operate alone and return themselves to base. The day of the gun armed autonomous AI drone it seems, is here.* The Russians continue infantry attacks but they have now stopped supporting them with any armor and have turned north instead, trying to find a weaker spot. An outstanding and imaginative Ukrainian defense with limited resources yet again, blunts the relentless hammer blows of meatwave attacks backed by dwindling armor.