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Part of a broader pattern in military technology right now. All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re
by sneed_chucker 2y ago
Part of a broader pattern in military technology right now.
All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now.
If you're fighting a highly asymmetric conflict where your enemies can barely touch your expensive toys then it's less of a concern.
If you're fighting near-peer it's a different story.
- HPsquared 2y agoEfficiency starts to matter in a near-peer conflict.
- Retric 2y agoNear-peer conflicts have more meaningful targets which favors these kinds of expensive weapons platforms. A drone that can do meaningful damage to a factory 500+ miles from a front line is either an easy target or it starts to look a lot like a missile with all the associated costs from that.
- torginus 2y agoI think it's more complex than that. The US made Switchblade drones which cost tens of thousands of dollars were outperformed with lightly modified FPVs with grenades, which came in under a thousand.
- SJC_Hacker 2y agoWe don't know if they underperfomed so much as weren't cost effective. If the switchblade costing $10k results in a kill 80% of the time, while the $1k drone is 30% of the time, you just get 3 times as many $1k drones, average about the same kill rate, and save 70% to boot. Or spend the same amount and get about 3x the kill rate.
- OrigamiPastrami 2y agoYour analysis assumes collateral damage is irrelevant.
- immibis 2y agoIt is, or it's an advantage.
- littlestymaar 2y agoCollateral damage is much less relevant in symmetric conflicts. Nobody is using either a Switchblade or an FPV in the middle of civilian areas in Ukraine right now.
- sgc 2y agoRussia is using FPVs to kill civilians on their bicycles or buying fruit, and posting the videos on telegram to laugh about it. This happens every day, it is not a few isolated incidents. It is not boredom, but a chosen tactic.
- kspacewalk2 2y agoHere's a great piece[0] about these Russian "human safari" tactics in Kherson, written by what seems to be the only Western journalist living in that city. [0] https://kyivindependent.com/human-safari-kherson-civilians-hunted-down-by-russian-drones/ https://kyivindependent.com/human-safari-kherson-civilians-h...
- littlestymaar 2y agoI hadn't heard of that before, but it really isn't a counter argument to what I'm saying: when you're targeting civilians themselves, you don't have “collateral damage”.
- usrusr 2y ago"Look at how much pain we can inflict, you want to be friends with us, that's the only logical conclusion". That seems to be the explicit strategy here, and I've come to believe that they genuinely think that this is how it should be, that there can't be a different world. Perhaps some linguistic quirk that makes the difference between friendship (that's not based on a power gradient) and allegiance (unite with the strongest, even when they're monsters, in particular when they're monsters) different to express and think about, perhaps it's a long term effect of socialist ideology having co-opted all concepts of friendship based on equality for a system that never was. But the pattern seems to go all the way through society, from the infamous prison hierarchies to imbalanced spousal relationships to the KGB state to the relationship between state power and its barons (who are commonly called oligarchs, but they are the exact opposite, powerless pawns on the political floor that are allowed to hold a fief until they aren't)
- Retric 2y agoLightly modified FPVs with grenades are a major concern for soldiers, but so are mortars and artillery shells etc. There’s a lot of low cost long range weapons vs infantry, but a drone with a grenade isn’t really effective vs tanks etc. A fleet of cheap drones just don’t do anything if bomber aircraft can simply fly higher than they can reach. Leave the realm of mass production and you can build drones that would be, but they quickly start looking like existing systems because militaries have been working with drones since WWII.
- bhickey 2y ago> but a drone with a grenade isn’t really effective vs tanks You may be thinking of AP grenades, but broadly speaking this isn't true. UA has been dropping RKG-3 anti-tank grenades since early in the invasion. Any drone with a 3 pound lift capacity can knock out armor. https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-cheap-grenades-expensive-tanks/31835434.html https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-cheap-grenades-expensive-tan...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Retric 2y agoCan a RKG-3 in the right situation knock out some armor, definitely. But they don’t seem to be that effective vs amor designed to deal with shaped charges such as you’d see with a peer adversary.
- scanny 2y agoThose shaped charges weren’t envisioned coming from directly above, especially precisely dropped on the engine or on hatches, hence the drones are hitting spots with little to no armour compared to the front and sides.
- Retric 2y agoThe Bofors RBS 56 BILL (1988), FGM-148 Javelin and similar missile systems exploited weak top armor long enough ago to result in changes to modern tank designs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-attack The KF51 Panther revealed 2022 should represent the current state of the art. comprising a hard-kill element of extending the coverage of the ADS to the roof of the vehicle for protection against ATGMs and unguided anti-tank rockets launched from higher elevations, as well as a soft-kill element for protection against threats such as loitering munitions.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_KF51 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_KF51 Obviously getting 100% accurate information on current tank armor isn’t realistic but at minimum these drones aren’t breaking new ground.
- onepointsixC 2y agoSwitchblade 600’s have the same warhead as the Javelin. With 8.5kg of explosives, it’s an entirely different category of weapon than the drones you’re thinking of which had closer to 200g of explosives.
- torginus 2y agoThere are drones with shaped charges.
- onepointsixC 2y agoYou need mass on target to reliably kill heavily armored targets. A drone dropping grenades doesn’t have that payload capacity.
- throwaway2037 2y agoCan I ask a stupid question about shaped charges? I assume they only work on a very fast projectile, like a tank shell. Would they work from a (relatively) slow drone?
- nradov 2y agoFPV drones can only work at short ranges (line of sight) or in permissive EW environments. So, not as relevant to a future conflict with China.
- 05 2y agoThere are fiber optic FPV drones now with up to 10km range.
- m4rtink 2y agoWhile the regular Switchblade is essentially a glorified flying granade, many FPVs use RPG7 warhwads and are regularly used to take out tanks (possibly using multiple hits, but still). Also there is a trend recently to see more and more AA FPVs taking down Russian recon drones, some flying up to 3 km high! This already had an interesting side effects of many such drones being covered by expletives or even fake Ukrainian markings - did not really help.
- wongarsu 2y agoCurrently most air-defense systems heavily depend on rockets, so you can just send more of those cheap easy targets than the enemy air defense has loaded rockets. Of course everyone sees this happening in Russia right now and is adapting their next generation, if they weren't already doing so. But that will only shift the sweet-spot for saturation attacks, not eliminating them
- nine_k 2y agoThe Israel's "Iron Dome" is supposed to include lasers, and they did use lasers to shoot down incoming rockets. In a stationary setting, like a factory or a bridge, lasers can be hard to overload, with their fast targeting, straight-line shooting, and the cost of a shot measured in single dollars. Small / cheap / slow drones with 1-2 kg payload would be an easy target. Tanks / APCs / IMVs / other armored devices that go close to the front line seem like having much more of an existential crisis.
- bluGill 2y agoTanks and the other things you list do much better when used by well trained troops in ways that the trainers tell you to. russia isn't doing that so they look bad but that is russia not the concept
- nine_k 2y agoRussian troops are definitely poorly prepared. Likely Saddam's troops were in a better shape in 1991, when the same tanks clashed in Kuwait: Abramses and Chieftains vs T-72s and T-80s. Then the Western tanks showed an overwhelming advantage. Now about a quarter of Abrams tanks in Ukraine were rendered inoperable, some of them plainly destroyed. Tanks did become more vulnerable to anti-tank weapons.
- vasac 2y agoThere were no T-80s in Iraq or Kuwait.
- 2y ago
- titanomachy 2y ago> near-peer I prefer the Culture term “equiv-tech”
- pavlov 2y agoThere’s something icky about discussing killing real people like it was fan fiction of a sci-fi franchise.
- AlbertCory 2y agoI guess you don't want to read anything by actual military people, then. Dehumanizing the enemy is a requirement for those folks.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SJC_Hacker 2y agoIts not just tech but capability. You can give some random country F35s, that doesn't mean they are useful.
- sidewndr46 2y agoI live in the US. A near-peer conflict involves a nuclear exchange. The world will change in ways forever that none of us can ever foresee at that point.
- gertlex 2y agoNot sure that counts, as we're not using nuclear weapons in practice for current conflicts/engagements. We have the whole other range of combat capabilities, and the distribution of those capabilities in our arsenal/armed forces seems guaranteed to change.
- sidewndr46 2y agoThen it is just another proxy war, like the last half of the 20th century between major powers.
- krisoft 2y ago> The world will change in ways forever that none of us can ever foresee at that point. Nukes are not magic. Of course we can foresee many of the changes a nuclear exchange would bring. Especially on the “planning for war” level.
- energy123 2y ago> A near-peer conflict involves a nuclear exchange. There are many steps on the escalation ladder before a nuclear exchange.
- Demiurge 2y agoHow many steps would you guess are left between US and Russia?
- hnbad 2y agoGiven that neither side has directly attacked the other yet? Almost all of them. Using nuclear weapons against an opponent who has enough nuclear weapons to retaliate is a "flip over the chess board and stomp on the pieces" move. Presently the US isn't even playing against Russia, at best it's sitting behind Russia's opponent and whispering chess moves into their ear.
- Barrin92 2y ago>Part of a broader pattern in military technology right now. It's not a new discussion, this comes up every decade or so when some new technology takes expensive kit out but just as with the tank nothing is going anywhere. Paraphrasing I can't remember who, "if you're getting out of the tank, what are you getting into?" Helicopters, tanks, mechanized and combined arms warfare and metal are still pretty much the only way you take territory, there's no alternative, even if drones start taking helicopters or expensive vehicles out it's the only thing that is mobile and packs a punch and protects your infantry.
- matusp 2y agoAttack helis were never that important compared to tanks of mechanized infantry. On top of that, it really seems that a significant part of their role can be fulfilled by drones.
- ikrenji 2y agowhen UAF was ramping up the counter offensive wherever they made any gains into the minefields a couple of ka-52s showed up and shut that down. UAF had no answer to them as their ATGMs simply outrange any SHORAD that UAF has...
- matusp 2y agoTrue, but I can easily see that the same role - short range airstrikes - could be played by drone teams in the future. They also have the capability to observe and strike targets over the treelines. And in top of that, they are cheaper, easier to scale and maintain, and do not require vulnerable airfields to operate. Of course Russians will use their helis, they already built them, but nobody will probably seriously think about developing and building new helis in the future.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y agothe biggest tick against helicopters is that they are much more expensive, and poorly armored than a tank, and their speed advantage for delivery matters a lot for special ops type jobs, but is pretty irrelevant for army type jobs.
- littlestymaar 2y ago> All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. Manned systems still have advantages though: no matter how much EW there is, you still have a man in the loop. But I expect the role of the human to be less and less mechanical, and more and more about bearing the responsibility. As such I expect manned systems to evolve into more like on mini command post supported by a squad of automated weapons. (Ideally you'd want the manned version to look exactly the same as the automated ones to prevent enemies from targeting it, like the IDF did with its fake tanks[1] a while ago). [1]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-disguises-missile-launcher-inside-a-tank/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-disguises-missile-launc...
- Teever 2y agoWhen we'll reach this inflection point with jet fighters? I remain skeptical that the F-35 will prove to be a prudent expenditure of resources both financial and in terms of R&D.
- CrimsonCape 2y agoIn retrospect the money would have been better spent on building a Berry-compliant drone making company that can build consumer and attack drones. Instead, the retrospective will likely be: "I guess we should now build drones in addition to our jet fighter." Double the effort, half the efficiency, half the result.
- Teever 2y agoYeah that's where I'm at with this topic too. If we use the Ukraine war as a template for the next major war that the US faces (possibly against China) -- does the United States have the industrial capability to produce the tens to hundreds of millions of drones necessary to win? Like can it produce the propellers, the frames, the motors, the batteries, the ICs to make a FPV drone that blows up in an enemy soldiers face? Can that supply chain be made in the US and how long can will it take to make? Is this a priority for the United States? Why or why not?
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago> Like can it produce the propellers, the frames, the motors, the batteries, the ICs to make a FPV drone that blows up in an enemy soldiers face? Yes > Can that supply chain be made in the US and how long can will it take to make? In a limited capacity yes but also in like 5 or so years the answer will be an unequivocal yes.
- Teever 2y agoI'm interested to know more about this. Can you provide more details?
- OliveMate 2y ago>All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. Worth mentioning that this already happened to an attack helicopter 20 years ago! The Comanche[0] was a revolutionary recon/attack helicopter with some mental stealth engineering behind it - everything from limiting sound profile via blade design & fenestron, a radar presence a fraction of an Apache, they even directed the exhaust down the tail boom so that the heat generated could easily be dissipated by the tail rotor! Unfortunately for helicopter nerds, UAVs were a fraction of the price, suitable for recon and attack, and pilots could survive it being shot down. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing%E2%80%93Sikorsky_RAH-66_Comanche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing%E2%80%93Sikorsky_RAH-66...
- navbaker 2y agoI spent tons of hours as a kid playing Comanche on our old 486!
- hyperbovine 2y agoThe voxel-based graphics and resulting frame rate were one of those distinct “wow” moments I had while gaming as a kid. Up there with playing Doom or Flight Simulator for the first time.
- vFunct 2y agoMy game of choice was Gunship on the Commodore 64, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter simulator from Microprose. Spent YEARS playing that. Best part was the instruction manual that came with it that was basically a guide of all the military equipment of the Soviet Union that you could target in the game.
- xbar 2y agoThank you for mentioning it. It was a revelation.
- the_af 2y agoGunship 2000 here! I loved that it had a dynamic campaign where the frontline moved according to how well you did. Before that, I also enjoyed LHX. > Best part was the instruction manual that came with it that was basically a guide of all the military equipment of the Soviet Union that you could target in the game. Do you remember what the copy protection was for MicroProse's F-19 Stealth Fighter? It was the silhouettes of US and Soviet fighters and bombers from the Cold War era: "identify this aircraft". Somehow they thought my teenage self, obsessed as I was with Cold War military tech, wouldn't learn the shapes. It's how I learned the shapes of most fighter jets. Yes, I had a pirated copy. We all did back then, legal games were unheard of.
- golemiprague 2y agoHardly any war is symmetric, even when it is in a large sense there are differences in various theaters and specific battle situations. Sometimes you just need both as we can see in Israel which have every technology possible and yet wants to buy more Apache helicopters and Vulcans for air defence, two technologies they thought they will not need anymore
- jojobas 2y agoIt seems like you also need to re-evaluate against pretty much suicide infantry.
- Daz1 2y agoNot related to the 'meat wave' myth I hope
- jojobas 2y agoI see you haven't watched much of how say Bakhmut was taken, or how entire battalion columns were destroyed business as usual. You have to account for the possibility that for your enemy losing a couple of regiments for a town of 10,000 is acceptable losses.
- kspacewalk2 2y agoMyth? It's a well-documented Russian tactic. They basically have a two-tier military at this point: competent professionals, and untrained expendable cannon fodder. Professionals are used to operate weaponry that's more sophisticated than your basic AK, machine gun and 70s-era armour. They are valuable because of their training and (at this point) a lot of experience. The second tier is used to conduct the kind of attritional warfare that requires far less training of individual soldiers or smaller-size units, and results in very high casualties. This type of offensive operation makes slow progress, the only real downside being the sky-high casualties, so recruitment and training adapted - take everyone regardless of health and age, and give them just enough training to accomplish something before dying. It's very effective if you don't care about the lives of these soldiers. The professional tier goes in to exploit a breach, mans the self-propelled artillery, flies the drones, etc.
- jojobas 2y agoThis dates back to WW2. The "special echelon" made up of penal units (i.e. former convicts and soldiers being punished), the only difference is that during WW2 you were excused from the penal units if you were wounded (and happened to survived). And of course it wouldn't work if the commanders didn't have informal authority to put their soldiers into pits or summarily execute them - also well documented.
- m463 2y agoI wonder if the end result will ubiquitous grey goo, excluding humans from living on contested territory.
- __loam 2y agoPeople have been saying tanks are dead for the last two years but: - Even conflicts where tanks were obviously useful, like WWII, there were high rates of loss. - Russian armored groups were poorly trained and not well supported by dismounted infantry early in the war, leading to high losses against fairly mobile Ukrainians armed with ATGMs. Now that the front has solidified, there's less room for maneuver where tanks are more crucial. - Russia is employing a lot of old equipment and Ukraine doesn't have enough western armored vehicles for it to matter. Cheap and prolific drones make tanks more vulnerable than before by making them easier to spot and delivering munitions directly, but there's still a need for armored direct fire, especially between two heavily fortified lines. You can't really break a trench line with waves of infantry anymore. I suspect there's still a niche for helicopters too.
- lefty2 2y agoTanks don't really make any sense. MBTs are designed to fight other MBTs. Out of the thousands of tanks that have been taken out in Ukraine, 99.999% has been by drones, artillary or ATMs. You can count the tank versus tank battles on the fingers of your hand. Wouldn't make more sense to evenly distribute the weight of the armour, so the back and top are reasonably armoured, rather than have foot thick armour in the front to stop rounds from other MBTs - a scenario which literally never happens.
- __loam 2y agoMBTs make plenty of sense even if tank on tank fighting is rare. Having a big cannon that can fire high explosive rounds with a laser rangefinder in an armored enclosure is pretty useful even if you're not fighting tanks. Many western tanks have also been retrofit with additional armor against chemical rounds and mines, or have active protection systems. Being in a T-72 with an armor configuration from the 80s and a carousel auto loader in the middle of the crew compartment in a war where your enemies have top attack atgms with tandem warheads would suck a lot though.
- efitz 2y ago> All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now. I don’t think that drones are necessarily the only answer to the “expensive weapons with expensive to train crews” problem. Expensive weapons lead to cost boondoggles and economic asymmetry, eg $10k in modified COTS drones can defeat $MM in conventional armored vehicles. We should be re-evaluating our weapons systems economically as well as doctrinally. For example, would our Navy be more effective with thousands of relatively inexpensive small platforms that could do commerce raiding, interdiction, air defense and so forth (destroyer type jobs) than with our expensive and rare large surface combatants?
- pas 2y agothe Navy already has a problem with command and control (training, corruption, scandals, collisions, accountability - from delivering ships on time to the starlink wifi situation) adding more things to control will cause more problems .... especially in peace time
- sofixa 2y ago> For example, would our Navy be more effective with thousands of relatively inexpensive small platforms that could do commerce raiding, interdiction, air defense and so forth (destroyer type jobs) than with our expensive and rare large surface combatants? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_%C3%89cole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_%C3%89cole was all about this... In the 19th century, when a couple of innovations (torpedoes, explosive shells) made it look like smaller ships could do enough damage that big ships were just a waste of money. In their case, they were wrong and their ideas were surpassed by further technological advancements (aircraft carriers). Small ships with missiles and drones and unmanned submarines could be a decently powerful combination. You can't project power with those though, and around half the idea behind the US' carrier fleet is power projection.
- onepointsixC 2y agoAnd then a cheaper APS round disables your $10K drone, while a direct energy weapon for dollars of electricity can destroy swarms in one go. The car and mouse nature of weapons technology has always existed. Even at the advent of tanks there were anti tank weapons. That didn’t mean they were useless.
- d1sxeyes 2y agoWhile this is inevitable, I wrote a blog post once upon a time about the trend this generates and why I'm worried about it. In principle, wars between armies are proxy wars between nations/governments/etc. A long time ago (Sumeria maybe), soldiers started to fight soldiers, and civilians could get on with civilian life while fighting continued (farming, production, etc.). Now obviously that doesn't mean that no war has ever had civilian casualties, or that armies have never targeted civilian populations, but it made warfare a fairly symmetric endeavour. Rather than having your farmers hacking at each other with hoes until there are no farmers left, you can pit some of your strongest and best trained men against your enemy's strongest and best trained men, and accept the results of that to avoid total annihilation of your whole populace. But that only works because both sides have skin in the game, and people are dying on both sides. If we move to a model where a stronger power can fight a war remotely with no risk to real people, then the only way to take the war to the enemy will be to target civilians. Terrorism, asymmetrical warfare, etc. will be the only way to respond to drone strikes and the like. I don't know what the answer is, but it worries me.
- pjc50 2y ago> If we move to a model where a stronger power can fight a war remotely with no risk to real people, then the only way to take the war to the enemy will be to target civilians. Terrorism, asymmetrical warfare, etc. will be the only way to respond to drone strikes and the like. This is hardly new, it's been the reason for the prevalence of suicide bombings in the Israel/Hamas war for decades.
- d1sxeyes 2y agoThat’s slightly different. The Israel/Palestine conflict is already bound to be asymmetric due to one being occupied by the other.