11 ms·

Efficiency starts to matter in a near-peer conflict.

Retric 2y ago
Near-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 ago
  I 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 ago
    We 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 ago
      Your analysis assumes collateral damage is irrelevant.
      - immibis 2y ago
        It is, or it's an advantage.
      - littlestymaar 2y ago
        Collateral 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 ago
        Russia 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 ago
        Here'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 ago
        I 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)
      - phs318u 2y ago
        It’s not that collateral damage is irrelevant. It’s that the calculation as to whether collateral damage is “worth it” in the context of the specific goal/target is usually relative and calculated unemotionally. Some may say inhumanly.
        hnbad 2y ago
        Of course it's also worth pointing out that this question hinges on the perceived cost of collateral damage. For countries like the US which at least ostensibly claim to care about human life indiscriminately and to fight for "liberty and peace" and all that, there is a considerable cost to collateral damage, although of course that also depends on who the victims are and the cost can be higher for a Democrat leader than a Republican. Putin's Russia infamously responded to a hostage crisis in Moscow by killing not only all hostage takers but also more than three times as many hostages and injuring most of the survivors. That alone should make it easy to extrapolate what the cost of collateral damage in Ukraine might be in Russia's calculations. Israel similarly seems to use a much lower cost than the US although in Palestine this is also shaped by the perception that anyone who isn't a militant or supports the militant is eventually going to turn out that way anyway (e.g. the child who died would have grown up to become a threat anyway).
      - pclmulqdq 2y ago
        Russian military doctrine favors collateral damage. I think part of the US's love of precision weapons comes from the fact that they media will go nuts if the US kills non-targets. 20 civilians dying in Iraq to a helicopter that thought their camera was a gun was a national embarrassment. For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday.
        sgc 2y ago
        > For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday. More specifically, it is a success to them. They clearly use civilian casualty and the terror it brings as a tactic to dishearten their victims.
        bluGill 2y ago
        they use it to hearten the folks back home. Civillian deaths mostly make civillians want to support the war and so is not a good idea. In turn this is why the us doesn't
        jajko 2y ago
        Last week I've seen russian military coming from 'official' TG channels boasting how they dropped grenades on civilians, Donetsk IIRC. Literally civilians driving in their cars or walking on pedestrian crossing with shopping bags, having grenades dropped on them, killing many including women. Sarajevo tactics all over again, just not serbs anymore (although both societies share a lot in common). Also during beginning of the war there were videos of russian soldiers setting up machine gun posts next to bigger roads and literally gunning every single unsuspecting civilian car that came along... not much better behavior than hamas attack last year. Bucha, civilian mass graves with people having hands tied behind their back with wire and headshot found on territories won back from them. Shows how depraved that society is that this doesn't even cause any upheaval, instead is something to boast about back home and to whole world. Now do a simple projection for next decades. I know China is #1 topic for US right now, but China views US rather as a competitor. Russia views whole west and US specifically as existential threat to actively fight against (and it did in asymetric subversion warfare for past 2 decades). Not whole russian population, they don't give a fuck whether whole world burns as long as they can drink vodka into desperate oblivion, but all their rulers and that's all that matters there. Now how to tackle and survive that due to all the resources required from that land I don't know but future in that regard looks bleak.
    - rolandog 2y ago
      Another thing commonly left out of these napkin math scenarios is cyber security risk... it may make sense to cut down on human resources, but you better make sure your drone fleet won't be commandeered by an adversarial nation-state's script kiddies. Cheaper to make, but perhaps also cheaper to have them turn on you.
      - theelous3 2y ago
        Considering we're looking at an adversarial nation state (famously full of script kiddies) which is absolutely hell-bent and motivated to tackle their drone problem, and not once has that state or its script kiddies commandeered a single drone - nevermind a fleet of them - (nor are the script kiddies even remotely in range?) I don't see this being a problem now or in the near future.
        Eisenstein 2y ago
        It isn't a problem until it is one, and the it can be a huge problem. I don't know anyone who was ever made to look foolish saying 'it is improbable, but let's prepare for it anyway' whereas plenty of graves are filled with people who said 'that will never happen'.
        SJC_Hacker 2y ago
        Sadly generals, or at least the high command, tend to fight the last war, and tend to be fairly conservative. WW2 was a classic example. Every nation except the US still had bolt-action rifles as the standard infantry weapon, on the belief that giving every infantryman semi-auto was a waste of ammo/too expensive/too heavy on logistics. Also motorization was not appreciated until late in the war, even in the German army - which despite all the attention devoted to the panzer/panzergrenadier divisions, was maybe 20% motorized at its peak. Mostly their soldiers marched from place to place, or used rail. There is kinda a reason for this, that there are counter examples were new tech wasn't all it was hyped to be. And until something is battle tested, its hard to say how it would perform. Like early in the Vietnam war, US infantrymen may have been better off with the old M1 garand, because early models of the M16 tended to jam in combat conditions.
    - jandrewrogers 2y ago
      It is not just production cost, the average latency between target detection and target destruction has a large impact on battlefield dynamics. More precise weapons can destroy most of the capability of less precise weapons before they are ever used. Additionally, precision weapons typically have a much smaller logistical footprint, and logistics can make or break military campaigns. Much of the US focus on precision terminal guidance is derived from this calculus in a straightforward way. It may be more expensive in a unit cost sense but significantly cheaper in terms of net expected effect on the battlefield. This "precision versus quantity" argument played out to greatly favor precision in Ukraine.
      - nostrademons 2y ago
        The reason drones are kicking butt right now is because you get both precision and quantity. Advances in electronics, software, communication links, and sensor technology mean that you can make guidance systems as a hobbyist that would be a million dollar missile from a specialized defense contractor just 15 years ago. You lose range, but urbanized warfare of the 21st century seems to be a very different battlefield calculus from the strategic bombing campaigns of WW2. The vast majority of engagements these days seem to be within easy drone range, probably because they can be produced in quantities that negate the "just destroy everything within 200 miles" strategy of WW2 carrier battle groups.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        Also small drones, which is to say smart grenades, are a counter to trench warfare.
        nradov 2y ago
        The fact that recent engagements have been within easy drone range is an accident of geography. The same situation won't necessarily obtain in the Western Pacific. The quantity of drones you can produce won't matter if the launching platform can't survive long enough to get within range of the target.
        2y ago
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      > 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. Sanity check: 80% success is an 80% success rate; 3 shots at 30% success is a 66% rate, which is much, much worse. You need 5 cheap 30% drones to beat an 80% success rate, still a major savings at the prices you give, but 70% more than 3 drones.
      - szvsw 2y ago
        Obviously this is just a binomial distribution, but another thing to consider I suppose would be if all trials are performed sequentially or simultaneously. If performed sequentially, on the one hand, you have a non-zero chance of not needing to expend the subsequent trials; on the other hand, it seems reasonable to think there might be a degraded (or increased!) probability for each sequential trial. If conducted simultaneous, similarly, it seems reasonable to think that that the individual chance of success is higher due to saturation of one form or another, but you are also guaranteed to expend all resources. Point is just that it seems a little silly to try to reductively do these calculations - seems meaningless to try to compare without more information…
        thaumasiotes 2y ago
        > but another thing to consider I suppose would be if all trials are performed sequentially or simultaneously. Yes! That definitely came up while I was thinking about the problem. I concluded that, in cases where you desire to eliminate (1) a particular target (2) under time constraints, only simultaneous attempts make sense. (And that this combination of needs is common.) If instead your goal is to cause random deaths, you can ignore the simultaneous/sequential distinction, treat every drone as having a different target, and just say that 3 30% drones will get 0.9 kills for every 0.8 kills from 1 80% drone.
      - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
        Both 80% and 30% are imaginary numbers, nobody measured it, so all the math is pointless. I've read that it takes 10 to 15 FPV drones to finish off a "turtle tank".
    - sgc 2y ago
      Since they are ramping up to build switchblades in Ukraine [1], I would say they are a quiet success. They were just extremely overhyped before they got there. [1] https://kyivindependent.com/us-company-aerovironment-plans-to-start-producing-switchblade-loitering-munitions-in-ukraine/ https://kyivindependent.com/us-company-aerovironment-plans-t...
      - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
        The 600 is significantly better than the 300 (which was provided in higher numbers). Odds are there will be local adjustments made - different, more robust radio link and such to replace the fucking shit one that originally came with the switchblade.
      - pletnes 2y ago
        I’m guessing they just don’t have camera links so they don’t make the best videos, i.e quiet sucess
        sgc 2y ago
        They have camera links. I think it is US opsec requirements keeping the videos to a minimum.
    - JohnBooty 2y ago
      I would think there are other advantages to large numbers of cheap drones too. Trying to defend against 3x-10x as many enemies brings its own challenges, even if each one is less lethal.
    - closewith 2y ago
      The reality is that Ukraine is producing 300,000+ drones per month, so the ratio is closer to 10,000:1 cheap drones to Switchblades. No Western military is prepared for a ground war with hundreds of thousands of drone attacks per day, which is what near peer would mean now.
      - throwaway2037 2y ago
        I think you make some excellent points here. Small nitpick: According to the Ukrainian gov't, they can currently produce half that amount: 150k per month. That is still an incredible number. Ref: https://kyivindependent.com/deputy-minister-ukraine-can-produce-150-000-drones-per-month/ https://kyivindependent.com/deputy-minister-ukraine-can-prod... I do think this war must be making any sufficiently advanced military rethink their ground game to include a lot of cheap FPV drones with attached explosives.
        closewith 2y ago
        While 150,000 per month was true in March, now Ukraine claims 4 MM per year, or ~333,000 per month. https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/03/ukraine-produce-million-drones-2/amp/ https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/03/ukraine-produce-millio...
    - torginus 2y ago
      I just wonder how much does professional image comes into play. I can't imagine US troops using drones which are basically a bunch of PCBs screwed together and mounted to a sheet of laser cut carbon fiber, even if those things are technically the most cost effective way to build a drone.
    - jajko 2y ago
      Switchblade 300 definitely underperformed and disappointed, many many reports from Ukraine frontline, they preferred using normal Mavic 3 drones instead. Switchblade 600 is a bit better but still overpriced what civilian market can deliver at a fraction of a cost, in vast numbers, not blocked by various political negotiations etc.
      - onepointsixC 2y ago
        What civilian market drone has the 8.5kg explosive payload of a Javelin warhead? Because that’s what the Switchblade 600 has.
        throwaway2037 2y ago
        I just confirmed from the Switchblade 600 website: It can carry 15kg of "munition". Ref: https://avinc.com/lms/switchblade-600 https://avinc.com/lms/switchblade-600
    - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
      Switchblade cost closer to 50k$, its payload was around 100 grams of explosive, and its range and success rate in the electronic warfare heavy environment of Ukraine are lower than a 300$ FPV that can carry 1.5kg of explosive. Switchblade was designed for a different war entirely.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Lightly 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 ago
        Can 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 ago
        Those 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 ago
        The 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 ago
    Switchblade 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 ago
      There are drones with shaped charges.
      - onepointsixC 2y ago
        You need mass on target to reliably kill heavily armored targets. A drone dropping grenades doesn’t have that payload capacity.
      - throwaway2037 2y ago
        Can 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 ago
    FPV 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 ago
      There are fiber optic FPV drones now with up to 10km range.
  - m4rtink 2y ago
    While 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 ago
  Currently 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Tanks 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 ago
        Russian 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 ago
        There were no T-80s in Iraq or Kuwait.
        2y ago
titanomachy 2y ago
> near-peer I prefer the Culture term “equiv-tech”
- pavlov 2y ago
  There’s something icky about discussing killing real people like it was fan fiction of a sci-fi franchise.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    I guess you don't want to read anything by actual military people, then. Dehumanizing the enemy is a requirement for those folks.
    - kergonath 2y ago
      It is also something that must be resisted, because that’s how you get war crimes and genocides.
    - simonh 2y ago
      That’s not the case. It happens, for sure. I know some hair raising army jokes, but plenty of military people recognise their opponents as people just the same.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- SJC_Hacker 2y ago
  Its not just tech but capability. You can give some random country F35s, that doesn't mean they are useful.
sidewndr46 2y ago
I 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 ago
  Not 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 ago
    Then 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 ago
    How many steps would you guess are left between US and Russia?
    - hnbad 2y ago
      Given 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.

Near-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 ago
I 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 ago
  We 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 ago
    Your analysis assumes collateral damage is irrelevant.
    - immibis 2y ago
      It is, or it's an advantage.
    - littlestymaar 2y ago
      Collateral 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 ago
        Russia 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 ago
        Here'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 ago
        I 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)
    - phs318u 2y ago
      It’s not that collateral damage is irrelevant. It’s that the calculation as to whether collateral damage is “worth it” in the context of the specific goal/target is usually relative and calculated unemotionally. Some may say inhumanly.
      - hnbad 2y ago
        Of course it's also worth pointing out that this question hinges on the perceived cost of collateral damage. For countries like the US which at least ostensibly claim to care about human life indiscriminately and to fight for "liberty and peace" and all that, there is a considerable cost to collateral damage, although of course that also depends on who the victims are and the cost can be higher for a Democrat leader than a Republican. Putin's Russia infamously responded to a hostage crisis in Moscow by killing not only all hostage takers but also more than three times as many hostages and injuring most of the survivors. That alone should make it easy to extrapolate what the cost of collateral damage in Ukraine might be in Russia's calculations. Israel similarly seems to use a much lower cost than the US although in Palestine this is also shaped by the perception that anyone who isn't a militant or supports the militant is eventually going to turn out that way anyway (e.g. the child who died would have grown up to become a threat anyway).
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      Russian military doctrine favors collateral damage. I think part of the US's love of precision weapons comes from the fact that they media will go nuts if the US kills non-targets. 20 civilians dying in Iraq to a helicopter that thought their camera was a gun was a national embarrassment. For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday.
      - sgc 2y ago
        > For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday. More specifically, it is a success to them. They clearly use civilian casualty and the terror it brings as a tactic to dishearten their victims.
        bluGill 2y ago
        they use it to hearten the folks back home. Civillian deaths mostly make civillians want to support the war and so is not a good idea. In turn this is why the us doesn't
        jajko 2y ago
        Last week I've seen russian military coming from 'official' TG channels boasting how they dropped grenades on civilians, Donetsk IIRC. Literally civilians driving in their cars or walking on pedestrian crossing with shopping bags, having grenades dropped on them, killing many including women. Sarajevo tactics all over again, just not serbs anymore (although both societies share a lot in common). Also during beginning of the war there were videos of russian soldiers setting up machine gun posts next to bigger roads and literally gunning every single unsuspecting civilian car that came along... not much better behavior than hamas attack last year. Bucha, civilian mass graves with people having hands tied behind their back with wire and headshot found on territories won back from them. Shows how depraved that society is that this doesn't even cause any upheaval, instead is something to boast about back home and to whole world. Now do a simple projection for next decades. I know China is #1 topic for US right now, but China views US rather as a competitor. Russia views whole west and US specifically as existential threat to actively fight against (and it did in asymetric subversion warfare for past 2 decades). Not whole russian population, they don't give a fuck whether whole world burns as long as they can drink vodka into desperate oblivion, but all their rulers and that's all that matters there. Now how to tackle and survive that due to all the resources required from that land I don't know but future in that regard looks bleak.
  - rolandog 2y ago
    Another thing commonly left out of these napkin math scenarios is cyber security risk... it may make sense to cut down on human resources, but you better make sure your drone fleet won't be commandeered by an adversarial nation-state's script kiddies. Cheaper to make, but perhaps also cheaper to have them turn on you.
    - theelous3 2y ago
      Considering we're looking at an adversarial nation state (famously full of script kiddies) which is absolutely hell-bent and motivated to tackle their drone problem, and not once has that state or its script kiddies commandeered a single drone - nevermind a fleet of them - (nor are the script kiddies even remotely in range?) I don't see this being a problem now or in the near future.
      - Eisenstein 2y ago
        It isn't a problem until it is one, and the it can be a huge problem. I don't know anyone who was ever made to look foolish saying 'it is improbable, but let's prepare for it anyway' whereas plenty of graves are filled with people who said 'that will never happen'.
        SJC_Hacker 2y ago
        Sadly generals, or at least the high command, tend to fight the last war, and tend to be fairly conservative. WW2 was a classic example. Every nation except the US still had bolt-action rifles as the standard infantry weapon, on the belief that giving every infantryman semi-auto was a waste of ammo/too expensive/too heavy on logistics. Also motorization was not appreciated until late in the war, even in the German army - which despite all the attention devoted to the panzer/panzergrenadier divisions, was maybe 20% motorized at its peak. Mostly their soldiers marched from place to place, or used rail. There is kinda a reason for this, that there are counter examples were new tech wasn't all it was hyped to be. And until something is battle tested, its hard to say how it would perform. Like early in the Vietnam war, US infantrymen may have been better off with the old M1 garand, because early models of the M16 tended to jam in combat conditions.
  - jandrewrogers 2y ago
    It is not just production cost, the average latency between target detection and target destruction has a large impact on battlefield dynamics. More precise weapons can destroy most of the capability of less precise weapons before they are ever used. Additionally, precision weapons typically have a much smaller logistical footprint, and logistics can make or break military campaigns. Much of the US focus on precision terminal guidance is derived from this calculus in a straightforward way. It may be more expensive in a unit cost sense but significantly cheaper in terms of net expected effect on the battlefield. This "precision versus quantity" argument played out to greatly favor precision in Ukraine.
    - nostrademons 2y ago
      The reason drones are kicking butt right now is because you get both precision and quantity. Advances in electronics, software, communication links, and sensor technology mean that you can make guidance systems as a hobbyist that would be a million dollar missile from a specialized defense contractor just 15 years ago. You lose range, but urbanized warfare of the 21st century seems to be a very different battlefield calculus from the strategic bombing campaigns of WW2. The vast majority of engagements these days seem to be within easy drone range, probably because they can be produced in quantities that negate the "just destroy everything within 200 miles" strategy of WW2 carrier battle groups.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        Also small drones, which is to say smart grenades, are a counter to trench warfare.
      - nradov 2y ago
        The fact that recent engagements have been within easy drone range is an accident of geography. The same situation won't necessarily obtain in the Western Pacific. The quantity of drones you can produce won't matter if the launching platform can't survive long enough to get within range of the target.
        2y ago
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > 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. Sanity check: 80% success is an 80% success rate; 3 shots at 30% success is a 66% rate, which is much, much worse. You need 5 cheap 30% drones to beat an 80% success rate, still a major savings at the prices you give, but 70% more than 3 drones.
    - szvsw 2y ago
      Obviously this is just a binomial distribution, but another thing to consider I suppose would be if all trials are performed sequentially or simultaneously. If performed sequentially, on the one hand, you have a non-zero chance of not needing to expend the subsequent trials; on the other hand, it seems reasonable to think there might be a degraded (or increased!) probability for each sequential trial. If conducted simultaneous, similarly, it seems reasonable to think that that the individual chance of success is higher due to saturation of one form or another, but you are also guaranteed to expend all resources. Point is just that it seems a little silly to try to reductively do these calculations - seems meaningless to try to compare without more information…
      - thaumasiotes 2y ago
        > but another thing to consider I suppose would be if all trials are performed sequentially or simultaneously. Yes! That definitely came up while I was thinking about the problem. I concluded that, in cases where you desire to eliminate (1) a particular target (2) under time constraints, only simultaneous attempts make sense. (And that this combination of needs is common.) If instead your goal is to cause random deaths, you can ignore the simultaneous/sequential distinction, treat every drone as having a different target, and just say that 3 30% drones will get 0.9 kills for every 0.8 kills from 1 80% drone.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
      Both 80% and 30% are imaginary numbers, nobody measured it, so all the math is pointless. I've read that it takes 10 to 15 FPV drones to finish off a "turtle tank".
  - sgc 2y ago
    Since they are ramping up to build switchblades in Ukraine [1], I would say they are a quiet success. They were just extremely overhyped before they got there. [1] https://kyivindependent.com/us-company-aerovironment-plans-to-start-producing-switchblade-loitering-munitions-in-ukraine/ https://kyivindependent.com/us-company-aerovironment-plans-t...
    - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
      The 600 is significantly better than the 300 (which was provided in higher numbers). Odds are there will be local adjustments made - different, more robust radio link and such to replace the fucking shit one that originally came with the switchblade.
    - pletnes 2y ago
      I’m guessing they just don’t have camera links so they don’t make the best videos, i.e quiet sucess
      - sgc 2y ago
        They have camera links. I think it is US opsec requirements keeping the videos to a minimum.
  - JohnBooty 2y ago
    I would think there are other advantages to large numbers of cheap drones too. Trying to defend against 3x-10x as many enemies brings its own challenges, even if each one is less lethal.
  - closewith 2y ago
    The reality is that Ukraine is producing 300,000+ drones per month, so the ratio is closer to 10,000:1 cheap drones to Switchblades. No Western military is prepared for a ground war with hundreds of thousands of drone attacks per day, which is what near peer would mean now.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      I think you make some excellent points here. Small nitpick: According to the Ukrainian gov't, they can currently produce half that amount: 150k per month. That is still an incredible number. Ref: https://kyivindependent.com/deputy-minister-ukraine-can-produce-150-000-drones-per-month/ https://kyivindependent.com/deputy-minister-ukraine-can-prod... I do think this war must be making any sufficiently advanced military rethink their ground game to include a lot of cheap FPV drones with attached explosives.
      - closewith 2y ago
        While 150,000 per month was true in March, now Ukraine claims 4 MM per year, or ~333,000 per month. https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/03/ukraine-produce-million-drones-2/amp/ https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/03/ukraine-produce-millio...
  - torginus 2y ago
    I just wonder how much does professional image comes into play. I can't imagine US troops using drones which are basically a bunch of PCBs screwed together and mounted to a sheet of laser cut carbon fiber, even if those things are technically the most cost effective way to build a drone.
  - jajko 2y ago
    Switchblade 300 definitely underperformed and disappointed, many many reports from Ukraine frontline, they preferred using normal Mavic 3 drones instead. Switchblade 600 is a bit better but still overpriced what civilian market can deliver at a fraction of a cost, in vast numbers, not blocked by various political negotiations etc.
    - onepointsixC 2y ago
      What civilian market drone has the 8.5kg explosive payload of a Javelin warhead? Because that’s what the Switchblade 600 has.
      - throwaway2037 2y ago
        I just confirmed from the Switchblade 600 website: It can carry 15kg of "munition". Ref: https://avinc.com/lms/switchblade-600 https://avinc.com/lms/switchblade-600
  - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
    Switchblade cost closer to 50k$, its payload was around 100 grams of explosive, and its range and success rate in the electronic warfare heavy environment of Ukraine are lower than a 300$ FPV that can carry 1.5kg of explosive. Switchblade was designed for a different war entirely.
- Retric 2y ago
  Lightly 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 ago
      Can 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 ago
        Those 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 ago
        The 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 ago
  Switchblade 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 ago
    There are drones with shaped charges.
    - onepointsixC 2y ago
      You need mass on target to reliably kill heavily armored targets. A drone dropping grenades doesn’t have that payload capacity.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      Can 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 ago
  FPV 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 ago
    There are fiber optic FPV drones now with up to 10km range.
- m4rtink 2y ago
  While 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 ago
Currently 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Tanks 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 ago
      Russian 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 ago
        There were no T-80s in Iraq or Kuwait.
      - 2y ago

titanomachy 2y ago

> near-peer I prefer the Culture term “equiv-tech”

pavlov 2y ago
There’s something icky about discussing killing real people like it was fan fiction of a sci-fi franchise.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I guess you don't want to read anything by actual military people, then. Dehumanizing the enemy is a requirement for those folks.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    It is also something that must be resisted, because that’s how you get war crimes and genocides.
  - simonh 2y ago
    That’s not the case. It happens, for sure. I know some hair raising army jokes, but plenty of military people recognise their opponents as people just the same.
- deleted 2y ago
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SJC_Hacker 2y ago
Its not just tech but capability. You can give some random country F35s, that doesn't mean they are useful.

sidewndr46 2y ago

I 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 ago
Not 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 ago
  Then 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 ago
  How many steps would you guess are left between US and Russia?
  - hnbad 2y ago
    Given 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.