7 ms·

> And can still take on fixed wing aircraft,” including fourth, fifth, and even sixth-generation fighters, at least to some degree, is important, he continued.

> And can still take on fixed wing aircraft,” including fourth, fifth, and even sixth-generation fighters, at least to some degree, is important, he continued. Crewed helicopters are still part of the threat picture, as well. You can see how the Anglos are still way out of the loop when it comes to the latest developments in land-warfare not-involving Middle-Eastern goat-herders, as in this guy should have known that the Russian Ka-52s were pretty decisive in stopping the 2023 Ukrainian summer counter-offensive (that, and the Russian mine-fields), so that adding helicopters at the very end, with "btw, yeah, helis are still a thing" is quite disingenuous, if not stupid. Also, dismissing "unmanned systems" (I think he means cheap drones): > “They’re not particularly expensive. Their impact is probably way outsized.” is also pretty damn stupid, as both the Russians and the Ukrainians could confirm.

lazide 1y ago
He’s literally just downplaying their weaknesses/competition, as any salesman is going to do. Expensive (or even relatively cheap!) manpads make no sense vs drones economically, and manpads vs low flying/nap of the earth helicopters, especially in forested terrain have always been of limited effectiveness. If you have the budget, still worth buying to have in the quiver, but they’re playing to the older more conservative players not selling the new hotness and they know it.
- sgt101 1y ago
  If you send your troops or vehicles forward without defense they will all get killed. You are not going forward in order to exercise your vehicles and you are not defending your vehicles and troops for the sake of simply preserving them. You are doing it in order to be able to go forward and win. Armies that can't conduct an offense are unable to win wars. At best they are able to wait for wars to finish. Remember the nightmare of the columns in the north of ukraine in 2022 - TB2s (remember them?) ranging up and down blowing up operationally relevant assets without being hindered. If those troops had had a way of protecting themselves it's possible that they could have been resupplied and evacuated. If that had happened, or if they had been able to refuel and push south Russia might have won, it was pretty close anyway. Imagine the value of avoiding 3 years of this conflict.
  - lazide 1y ago
    What are you talking about exactly?
    - sgt101 1y ago
      >"Expensive (or even relatively cheap!) manpads make no sense vs drones economically, and manpads vs low flying/nap of the earth helicopters, especially in forested terrain have always been of limited effectiveness." My point is that this isn't just an competition of economic exchange. The capability that a viable organic air defence option gives to a military unit shouldn't be understood in terms of "we spent $50m while they spent $500k". This is because if the $50m spend enables your units to successfully prosecute an offensive the value is potentially 1000x, or more.
      - lazide 1y ago
        Making your enemy spend $50m to defend against something you spent $500k on is a viable strategy for crushing your enemies economy. It works even better when you turn around and do it 100 times. If the enemy still can’t actually prosecute the offensive successfully to actually get out of the mess. The US never wanted Russia to ‘lose’ the Ukraine war. They wanted them stuck in a never ending Vietnam, grinding their economy and a generation of young men (young men they were already in short supply on!) into paste for nothing. And it’s been working.
        sgt101 1y ago
        if the enemy can't actually prosecute the offensive successfully. If they can, you find yourself kneeling in front of a hastily dug trench. You are right about the US and Russia though. It has suited everyone apart from the Russians and Ukrainians for the Russians to pick up this tar baby. I don't know if the rest of the world sees it, but a big part of the mess is courtesy of the British as a part of an extended and excruciating revenge play for the Russians messing about in Salisbury. Vashe zdorov'ye you bastards.
        1y ago
gherkinnn 1y ago
The arguably Anglo publication War on the Rocks is adamant that drones as employed in Ukraine today change everything and have been saying so for a long time. They also point out that western armies haven't caught up to that reality.
- varjag 1y ago
  WoR is entirely irrelevant given how they dismissed the coming invasion in February 2022.
  - sgt101 1y ago
    Ummm I don't remember that - can you give some more details? I do remember them running articles like "what should NATO do if Russia invades". Which isn't a dismissal. Of course, it would have been a really bad thing to dismiss & deride a Russian invasion that took Kiev in 4 days and ended with the partition and neutering of Ukraine with less than 1000 Russian dead. But I don't live in that reality, I live in the reality in which the Russians managed to pull of an even bigger foreign policy mistake than Iraq 2003. It's not got to the all time high of June 1941, but it's getting closer with every week that goes by.
  - neuronexmachina 1y ago
    Do you have a source on that? Their article from a month before the invasion seems like the opposite of dismissal: https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/putins-wager-in-russias-standoff-with-the-west/ https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/putins-wager-in-russias-st... > A large war in Europe is likely in the coming weeks. The current security architecture of the continent, the future of NATO, and America’s role in shaping security outcomes there are all at stake. Beyond Europe, this conflict would have profound implications for U.S. defense strategy, and may upset America’s best-laid plans to focus on the eroding military balance with China. Ukraine, whose fate hangs in the balance, may be at the center of the crisis, but Moscow has a greater goal in mind: the revision of Europe’s security order. The Russian armed forces have conducted a substantial buildup around Ukraine, with Moscow threatening unilateral military measures if it is not able to achieve its goals at the negotiating table.
  - 1y ago
jollyllama 1y ago
Isn't hitting a heli just always going to be easier than hitting the faster fixed wing aircraft? Given that it is relatively low-hanging fruit from a technical perspective, it's sensible that they're not prioritized by engineers.
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  Most def. You can use a MANPADS for a helo, a fighter, a heavy, but the helo will be much higher probably of intercept.
  - holowoodman 1y ago
    Yes. But afaik some helicopters do have better armor than other aircraft, so while they are easier to hit, they might be harder to damage or take down.
    - dsr_ 1y ago
      Helicopters all have a big unarmored target on top -- the rotor disk. Get a nice chunk of metal in there and they become falling armed rocks. You can't substantially armor a rotor; they are designed to survive approximately one hit by a 23mm round.
      - holowoodman 1y ago
        A 23mm round is the size of a banana. An AA missile such as a Stinger is intended to explode near the target, not necessarily making contact, and to produce shrapnel to create a large enough "kill zone" such that precision and contact are unneccesary. But that shrapnel will be smaller and slower than the 23mm round, so I'm not sure that a non-direct hit would suffice.
RS-232 1y ago
> The challenge that you have with unmanned systems today is you’re going to have to do something that is a little bit out of the ordinary to address all of them,” he said. “They’re not particularly expensive. Their impact is probably way outsized.” This isn’t a dismissal of drones at all. It’s an acknowledgement of how diverse and inexpensive drones are. A stinger missile is ~150k USD. A grenade duct taped to a drone is ~150 USD. That’s three orders of magnitude, so you can see why a manpad isn’t an economically viable countermeasure to most drones. Electronic warfare/directed energy usually fits the bill for the smaller drone threat profile.
- paganel 1y ago
  > Their impact is probably way outsized. This is pretty dismissive in my book, as in not acknowledging that for the last 6 to 12 months (at least) most of the casualties in Eastern Ukraine have been caused by cheap drones. The same cheap drones that have also been a game-changer when it comes to using armoured vehicles, as they're not being used all that much anymore because they're death-traps, the two armies have switched to using cheap motorbikes (the Russians) and ATVs (the Ukrainians).
  - riehwvfbk 1y ago
    "Outsized" doesn't mean "small", it means "much more than you would expect out of something so small and cheap".
  - electroly 1y ago
    Maybe there is a language barrier involved here, but "outsized" in this context means drones have more of an effect per dollar than conventional techniques. It's talking about how big their impact is--that they can do a huge amount of damage with very little cost. This is congratulatory language, not dismissive. It's acknowledging the serious defense problem that drones pose. You can't rely on an expensive defense against an inexpensive offense.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  And, conversely, the Stinger's target is the $150M aircraft. It's crazy how there are so many orders of magnitude.
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
How would the war look if one side had total air dominance as the "Anglos" fight? I don't think that drones would play as large of a role. They're only playing such a large role because the air is contested.
- sgt101 1y ago
  I think that they give adversaries another card to play. Drones mean that you can do a bunch of tasks that previously needed air dominance without that dominance, or even when you are dominated - like the Houthis are showing. With drones you can surveil and strike even while your enemy kills everything that goes 20m above the ground. If you can contest the air at the same time I would say that their role becomes greater - as the Ukrainians have showed. But drones do make air dominance less decisive, even as it remains very desirable.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    It's all shades of gray. TAD doesn't make drones useless and drones don't make fighter jets useless. They all provide options. I just think their role is inflated because of the lack of TAD.
    - sgt101 1y ago
      yes - agree, people look at a picture and don't look at what's not in the frame or what other pictures can look at.
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    One thing which the U.S. Air Force EDIT: Used to brag on was that no U.S. soldier had been killed by enemy munitions from the air in an active conflict zone since Vietnam --- drones definitely change the calculus in which this statement is made. EDIT: and as pointed out below, were able to break this record, depending on how one defines airspace and conflict zone.
    - sgt101 1y ago
ranger207 1y ago
Existing MANPADS focus mostly on the helicopter threat; fast movers are realistically a little out of their reach. That statement isn't saying it's designed for targeting jets first and helicopters also, it's saying it's adding the capability to target jets on top of what Stingers could do to helicopters
not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago
Assessing capabilities and priority by syntax of sales pitch lol
- paganel 1y ago
  No lol about it, because even the concept of a "sales pitch" in the context of a potential existential war (against China or Russia, or against both at the same time, I'm talking from the US's pov) is kind of a lunacy, so, in that respect, of course that I'm taking the sales pitch-like discourse seriously, because many military procurement decisions are taken based on those sales pitches.

lazide 1y ago

He’s literally just downplaying their weaknesses/competition, as any salesman is going to do. Expensive (or even relatively cheap!) manpads make no sense vs drones economically, and manpads vs low flying/nap of the earth helicopters, especially in forested terrain have always been of limited effectiveness. If you have the budget, still worth buying to have in the quiver, but they’re playing to the older more conservative players not selling the new hotness and they know it.

sgt101 1y ago
If you send your troops or vehicles forward without defense they will all get killed. You are not going forward in order to exercise your vehicles and you are not defending your vehicles and troops for the sake of simply preserving them. You are doing it in order to be able to go forward and win. Armies that can't conduct an offense are unable to win wars. At best they are able to wait for wars to finish. Remember the nightmare of the columns in the north of ukraine in 2022 - TB2s (remember them?) ranging up and down blowing up operationally relevant assets without being hindered. If those troops had had a way of protecting themselves it's possible that they could have been resupplied and evacuated. If that had happened, or if they had been able to refuel and push south Russia might have won, it was pretty close anyway. Imagine the value of avoiding 3 years of this conflict.
- lazide 1y ago
  What are you talking about exactly?
  - sgt101 1y ago
    >"Expensive (or even relatively cheap!) manpads make no sense vs drones economically, and manpads vs low flying/nap of the earth helicopters, especially in forested terrain have always been of limited effectiveness." My point is that this isn't just an competition of economic exchange. The capability that a viable organic air defence option gives to a military unit shouldn't be understood in terms of "we spent $50m while they spent $500k". This is because if the $50m spend enables your units to successfully prosecute an offensive the value is potentially 1000x, or more.
    - lazide 1y ago
      Making your enemy spend $50m to defend against something you spent $500k on is a viable strategy for crushing your enemies economy. It works even better when you turn around and do it 100 times. If the enemy still can’t actually prosecute the offensive successfully to actually get out of the mess. The US never wanted Russia to ‘lose’ the Ukraine war. They wanted them stuck in a never ending Vietnam, grinding their economy and a generation of young men (young men they were already in short supply on!) into paste for nothing. And it’s been working.
      - sgt101 1y ago
        if the enemy can't actually prosecute the offensive successfully. If they can, you find yourself kneeling in front of a hastily dug trench. You are right about the US and Russia though. It has suited everyone apart from the Russians and Ukrainians for the Russians to pick up this tar baby. I don't know if the rest of the world sees it, but a big part of the mess is courtesy of the British as a part of an extended and excruciating revenge play for the Russians messing about in Salisbury. Vashe zdorov'ye you bastards.
        1y ago

gherkinnn 1y ago

The arguably Anglo publication War on the Rocks is adamant that drones as employed in Ukraine today change everything and have been saying so for a long time. They also point out that western armies haven't caught up to that reality.

varjag 1y ago
WoR is entirely irrelevant given how they dismissed the coming invasion in February 2022.
- sgt101 1y ago
  Ummm I don't remember that - can you give some more details? I do remember them running articles like "what should NATO do if Russia invades". Which isn't a dismissal. Of course, it would have been a really bad thing to dismiss & deride a Russian invasion that took Kiev in 4 days and ended with the partition and neutering of Ukraine with less than 1000 Russian dead. But I don't live in that reality, I live in the reality in which the Russians managed to pull of an even bigger foreign policy mistake than Iraq 2003. It's not got to the all time high of June 1941, but it's getting closer with every week that goes by.
- neuronexmachina 1y ago
  Do you have a source on that? Their article from a month before the invasion seems like the opposite of dismissal: https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/putins-wager-in-russias-standoff-with-the-west/ https://warontherocks.com/2022/01/putins-wager-in-russias-st... > A large war in Europe is likely in the coming weeks. The current security architecture of the continent, the future of NATO, and America’s role in shaping security outcomes there are all at stake. Beyond Europe, this conflict would have profound implications for U.S. defense strategy, and may upset America’s best-laid plans to focus on the eroding military balance with China. Ukraine, whose fate hangs in the balance, may be at the center of the crisis, but Moscow has a greater goal in mind: the revision of Europe’s security order. The Russian armed forces have conducted a substantial buildup around Ukraine, with Moscow threatening unilateral military measures if it is not able to achieve its goals at the negotiating table.
- 1y ago

jollyllama 1y ago

Isn't hitting a heli just always going to be easier than hitting the faster fixed wing aircraft? Given that it is relatively low-hanging fruit from a technical perspective, it's sensible that they're not prioritized by engineers.

the__alchemist 1y ago
Most def. You can use a MANPADS for a helo, a fighter, a heavy, but the helo will be much higher probably of intercept.
- holowoodman 1y ago
  Yes. But afaik some helicopters do have better armor than other aircraft, so while they are easier to hit, they might be harder to damage or take down.
  - dsr_ 1y ago
    Helicopters all have a big unarmored target on top -- the rotor disk. Get a nice chunk of metal in there and they become falling armed rocks. You can't substantially armor a rotor; they are designed to survive approximately one hit by a 23mm round.
    - holowoodman 1y ago
      A 23mm round is the size of a banana. An AA missile such as a Stinger is intended to explode near the target, not necessarily making contact, and to produce shrapnel to create a large enough "kill zone" such that precision and contact are unneccesary. But that shrapnel will be smaller and slower than the 23mm round, so I'm not sure that a non-direct hit would suffice.

RS-232 1y ago

> The challenge that you have with unmanned systems today is you’re going to have to do something that is a little bit out of the ordinary to address all of them,” he said. “They’re not particularly expensive. Their impact is probably way outsized.” This isn’t a dismissal of drones at all. It’s an acknowledgement of how diverse and inexpensive drones are. A stinger missile is ~150k USD. A grenade duct taped to a drone is ~150 USD. That’s three orders of magnitude, so you can see why a manpad isn’t an economically viable countermeasure to most drones. Electronic warfare/directed energy usually fits the bill for the smaller drone threat profile.

paganel 1y ago
> Their impact is probably way outsized. This is pretty dismissive in my book, as in not acknowledging that for the last 6 to 12 months (at least) most of the casualties in Eastern Ukraine have been caused by cheap drones. The same cheap drones that have also been a game-changer when it comes to using armoured vehicles, as they're not being used all that much anymore because they're death-traps, the two armies have switched to using cheap motorbikes (the Russians) and ATVs (the Ukrainians).
- riehwvfbk 1y ago
  "Outsized" doesn't mean "small", it means "much more than you would expect out of something so small and cheap".
- electroly 1y ago
  Maybe there is a language barrier involved here, but "outsized" in this context means drones have more of an effect per dollar than conventional techniques. It's talking about how big their impact is--that they can do a huge amount of damage with very little cost. This is congratulatory language, not dismissive. It's acknowledging the serious defense problem that drones pose. You can't rely on an expensive defense against an inexpensive offense.
HPsquared 1y ago
And, conversely, the Stinger's target is the $150M aircraft. It's crazy how there are so many orders of magnitude.

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

How would the war look if one side had total air dominance as the "Anglos" fight? I don't think that drones would play as large of a role. They're only playing such a large role because the air is contested.

sgt101 1y ago
I think that they give adversaries another card to play. Drones mean that you can do a bunch of tasks that previously needed air dominance without that dominance, or even when you are dominated - like the Houthis are showing. With drones you can surveil and strike even while your enemy kills everything that goes 20m above the ground. If you can contest the air at the same time I would say that their role becomes greater - as the Ukrainians have showed. But drones do make air dominance less decisive, even as it remains very desirable.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  It's all shades of gray. TAD doesn't make drones useless and drones don't make fighter jets useless. They all provide options. I just think their role is inflated because of the lack of TAD.
  - sgt101 1y ago
    yes - agree, people look at a picture and don't look at what's not in the frame or what other pictures can look at.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  One thing which the U.S. Air Force EDIT: Used to brag on was that no U.S. soldier had been killed by enemy munitions from the air in an active conflict zone since Vietnam --- drones definitely change the calculus in which this statement is made. EDIT: and as pointed out below, were able to break this record, depending on how one defines airspace and conflict zone.
  - sgt101 1y ago

ranger207 1y ago

Existing MANPADS focus mostly on the helicopter threat; fast movers are realistically a little out of their reach. That statement isn't saying it's designed for targeting jets first and helicopters also, it's saying it's adding the capability to target jets on top of what Stingers could do to helicopters

not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago

Assessing capabilities and priority by syntax of sales pitch lol

paganel 1y ago
No lol about it, because even the concept of a "sales pitch" in the context of a potential existential war (against China or Russia, or against both at the same time, I'm talking from the US's pov) is kind of a lunacy, so, in that respect, of course that I'm taking the sales pitch-like discourse seriously, because many military procurement decisions are taken based on those sales pitches.