7 ms·

For infantry it is now as indispensable as an automatic rifle, grenades, radios, and so on. Fighters in Ukraine without drone support are at significant disadva

by ipnon 1y ago

For infantry it is now as indispensable as an automatic rifle, grenades, radios, and so on. Fighters in Ukraine without drone support are at significant disadvantage.

galangalalgol 1y ago
Why doesn't duckshot make short work of these things?
- tra3 1y ago
  A lot of these fpv drones are capable of 30mph. That’s not a lot of time to spot em and react.
  - senectus1 1y ago
    also.. detonating an explosive drone at only a few meters away is still likely to take you out...
    - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
      Especially given they have anti-personnel shrapnel.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Some of them can go 90-120mph (off the shelf). Custom FPV drones can go even faster - some fancy ones 330+ kph (200+ mph)
    - bigiain 1y ago
      Back in 2014/2015 I was racing FPV drones. My most insane one could accelerate from stationary (on the ground) to doing 160kmh (100mph) straight up, in about 2 seconds. It wasn't much faster horizontally, but it'd top out at over 180kmh.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  Drone attacks in many ways. Some use suicide method that just ramming themself into you. Some just drop explosive from high above.
- rpcope1 1y ago
  Even bubba's pissin hot 3.5 magnum bird shot is probably not getting above 300 or 400 feet vertical for starters, and then you've either got to deal with hitting it dead on with a tight pattern wad or accepting that the shot is going spread enough to make it unlikely to hit it. So far as I have ever seen the energy in a shot shell wad dissipates much faster than a regular bullet, and I think you're better off trying to hit it with a regular old 556.
  - rpcope1 1y ago
    Following on to this, I would not be remotely surprised if drones continue to be a threat to see something like a man portable gepard hooked up to an EW system, as given the speed those things move and how hard even hitting regular old Canadian Geese or errant clays under non-combat situations, I don't know how you would economically fight drone swarms short of a mini Phalanx CIWS or something. Maybe ironically, I wonder if we won't see things like the Bofors 40mm guns continue to be prolific if they get successfully retasked to fighting drones (and they would end up like the M2, fighting long after it was initially conceived).
    - rstupek 1y ago
      The US Army has this under development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSETxYGrxVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSETxYGrxVw
    - wahern 1y ago
      For the larger drones, yes, Ukraine is seeing success with SPAAGs: https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/20/ukraine-drone-defense/ https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/20/ukraine-drone-defense... For the smaller drones it's an even more rapidly evolving, high-tech arms race. AFAIU, over the past year most of the battlefield drones have switched to kilometers-long fiber optic tethers to avoid electronic jamming. I dunno what all the defensive measures are, but one is using other drones to cut the cable. I think they may also be using directed energy weapons, now, though not sure how widespread that is.
      - 1y ago
- esseph 1y ago
  FPV drones can hit 80mph+ / 128kmph+ , other drones can fly much higher than a shotgun can reach. Also, swarms.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    Large scale swarms will probably never be a major issue for infantry. You have a finite number of drones, even at extremely high rates of production, spread across all things you want to target. Sending a swarm at individual infantry, or even platoons is just wasteful. At scale that's thousands of drones, per day, that you could have instead sent towards more valuable targets. This, btw, is also why claims that some side is targeting civilians in otherwise 'productive' warfare (e.g. actually achieving things instead of bombing for the sake of fear/terrorism/headlines/photo ops) is usually just lying propaganda. Civilians are a worse than 0 value target meaning you completely wasted your munitions.
    - maxdo 1y ago
      The drone cost in hundreds of dollars , low hundreds , even optic one cost $300-400 at manufacturing. Train a soldier is hundreds of thousands. Manufacturing , both Ukraine and Russia , generally speaking technological midgets, producing as of today millions a year. Ukraines projected output is around 4 millions in 2025 China can easily produce tens of millions. Even if 1 out 4 hit your target , that’s any army of any size in the world obliterated without new recruits.
      - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
        Reports (caveat: biased, pro-ukranian reports) are though that Russian soldiers barely get any training, I doubt they are worth that much. Even at the start of the war, there were stories that they had to buy their own shoes. At this point it's not even so much about scale, but about intelligence - finding viable or valuable targets. A million FPV drones won't do much good if your enemy is >100 kilometers away. The Ukranian front line is over 1000 kilometers long, but viable targets are easily a hundred kilometers from that either side. And that's just around the front lines, picking off individual soldiers or hardware won't stop this war, not when thousands are recruited and trained every month. Which is why Ukraine has done some deep strikes, taking out trains, infrastructure, refineries, air bases, etc. If they can take out the Shahed drone production facility too, that'd be a huge blow. But again, it wouldn't stop this war, just slow down attacks on civilians.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  It probably does. But you've seen how fast these drones are right? It's the speed of aliens in the alien movie or a velociraptor from Jurassic park and much more maneuverable, smaller and can come at you from all dimensions. Now imagine a swarm coming at you, each with explosives.
  - wombatpm 1y ago
    Or even smaller drones with a single shot bullet, autonomous with enough intelligence to seek and target faces for their shot. Covered in Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez
    - wahern 1y ago
      These exist and have been used by Israel in Gaza. At least for now a remote operator has to give the OK to shoot, but the drone does the targeting itself. It's very Terminator-esque, a quadcopter with an automatic rifle that can autonomously navigate streets, loiter, and identify and aim at human targets.
- prawn 1y ago
  My experience is only with consumer drones, but you could fly over a target area and release an explosive before anyone heard that it was there, especially in a noisy environment. Above 100m, unless you're at high speed/power, most people won't notice a drone at all. It's often a change in speed/direction that gives them away, otherwise it will be past you before you first notice the sound.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    plus, speaking from military experience, people don't look up. camp out at the top of a 5 story building and don't move or shoot and no one will even gaze at you. 300m straight up? might as well be in orbit.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  They do. There's a lot of videos of them being taken out with birdshot. I also saw one video about modding underbarrel grenade launchers to fire a shotgun cartridge.
  - esseph 1y ago
    A lot of US under barrel launchers have "factory" buckshot rounds. M79/M203/M320/etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M576_40_mm_grenade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M576_40_mm_grenade AK would be a different story, but Ukraine has a lot of 3d printers and those shells are one time use and not hard to make.
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    Those got lucky, lucky in that they detected them in the first place and that they were able to land a shot.
    - red-iron-pine 1y ago
      yeah the window for a lot of those FPV drones is small. I'd still rather have the shotgun, but luck is a factor. also doesn't help for the ones that are 300m straight up dropping bombs -- no buckshot will work that high up. maybe 50m at best, if you're very, very lucky with dispersion.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- energy123 1y ago
  This is a quality discussion about this question: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1b0u0k0/how_effective_are_shotguns_against_small_airborne/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1b0u0k0/how_eff...
- jojobas 1y ago
  Even Olympic trap shooters miss their targets sometimes, and they fly ballistic trajectories after they call "pull". Expecting a soldier with 2 months training (best case) to hit an unpredictably flying drone that appeared out of nowhere with no warning as he's trying to take cover from mortar shrapnel is quite optimistic.
- SilentTiger 1y ago
  Because they're incredibly fast, exceeding 40 meters per second. You can't fire a shotgun at 80 meters. A typical shotgun's effective range is only 40 meters, and once it's within range, you only have one second to fire. Furthermore, drones are generally difficult to detect at 400 meters unless you're using a synthetic detection system. By the time you spot them, it's too late.

by ipnon 1y ago

For infantry it is now as indispensable as an automatic rifle, grenades, radios, and so on. Fighters in Ukraine without drone support are at significant disadvantage.

galangalalgol 1y ago

Why doesn't duckshot make short work of these things?

tra3 1y ago
A lot of these fpv drones are capable of 30mph. That’s not a lot of time to spot em and react.
- senectus1 1y ago
  also.. detonating an explosive drone at only a few meters away is still likely to take you out...
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    Especially given they have anti-personnel shrapnel.
- lazide 1y ago
  Some of them can go 90-120mph (off the shelf). Custom FPV drones can go even faster - some fancy ones 330+ kph (200+ mph)
  - bigiain 1y ago
    Back in 2014/2015 I was racing FPV drones. My most insane one could accelerate from stationary (on the ground) to doing 160kmh (100mph) straight up, in about 2 seconds. It wasn't much faster horizontally, but it'd top out at over 180kmh.
mrheosuper 1y ago
Drone attacks in many ways. Some use suicide method that just ramming themself into you. Some just drop explosive from high above.
rpcope1 1y ago
Even bubba's pissin hot 3.5 magnum bird shot is probably not getting above 300 or 400 feet vertical for starters, and then you've either got to deal with hitting it dead on with a tight pattern wad or accepting that the shot is going spread enough to make it unlikely to hit it. So far as I have ever seen the energy in a shot shell wad dissipates much faster than a regular bullet, and I think you're better off trying to hit it with a regular old 556.
- rpcope1 1y ago
  Following on to this, I would not be remotely surprised if drones continue to be a threat to see something like a man portable gepard hooked up to an EW system, as given the speed those things move and how hard even hitting regular old Canadian Geese or errant clays under non-combat situations, I don't know how you would economically fight drone swarms short of a mini Phalanx CIWS or something. Maybe ironically, I wonder if we won't see things like the Bofors 40mm guns continue to be prolific if they get successfully retasked to fighting drones (and they would end up like the M2, fighting long after it was initially conceived).
  - rstupek 1y ago
    The US Army has this under development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSETxYGrxVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSETxYGrxVw
  - wahern 1y ago
    For the larger drones, yes, Ukraine is seeing success with SPAAGs: https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/20/ukraine-drone-defense/ https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/20/ukraine-drone-defense... For the smaller drones it's an even more rapidly evolving, high-tech arms race. AFAIU, over the past year most of the battlefield drones have switched to kilometers-long fiber optic tethers to avoid electronic jamming. I dunno what all the defensive measures are, but one is using other drones to cut the cable. I think they may also be using directed energy weapons, now, though not sure how widespread that is.
    - 1y ago
esseph 1y ago
FPV drones can hit 80mph+ / 128kmph+ , other drones can fly much higher than a shotgun can reach. Also, swarms.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Large scale swarms will probably never be a major issue for infantry. You have a finite number of drones, even at extremely high rates of production, spread across all things you want to target. Sending a swarm at individual infantry, or even platoons is just wasteful. At scale that's thousands of drones, per day, that you could have instead sent towards more valuable targets. This, btw, is also why claims that some side is targeting civilians in otherwise 'productive' warfare (e.g. actually achieving things instead of bombing for the sake of fear/terrorism/headlines/photo ops) is usually just lying propaganda. Civilians are a worse than 0 value target meaning you completely wasted your munitions.
  - maxdo 1y ago
    The drone cost in hundreds of dollars , low hundreds , even optic one cost $300-400 at manufacturing. Train a soldier is hundreds of thousands. Manufacturing , both Ukraine and Russia , generally speaking technological midgets, producing as of today millions a year. Ukraines projected output is around 4 millions in 2025 China can easily produce tens of millions. Even if 1 out 4 hit your target , that’s any army of any size in the world obliterated without new recruits.
    - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
      Reports (caveat: biased, pro-ukranian reports) are though that Russian soldiers barely get any training, I doubt they are worth that much. Even at the start of the war, there were stories that they had to buy their own shoes. At this point it's not even so much about scale, but about intelligence - finding viable or valuable targets. A million FPV drones won't do much good if your enemy is >100 kilometers away. The Ukranian front line is over 1000 kilometers long, but viable targets are easily a hundred kilometers from that either side. And that's just around the front lines, picking off individual soldiers or hardware won't stop this war, not when thousands are recruited and trained every month. Which is why Ukraine has done some deep strikes, taking out trains, infrastructure, refineries, air bases, etc. If they can take out the Shahed drone production facility too, that'd be a huge blow. But again, it wouldn't stop this war, just slow down attacks on civilians.
ninetyninenine 1y ago
It probably does. But you've seen how fast these drones are right? It's the speed of aliens in the alien movie or a velociraptor from Jurassic park and much more maneuverable, smaller and can come at you from all dimensions. Now imagine a swarm coming at you, each with explosives.
- wombatpm 1y ago
  Or even smaller drones with a single shot bullet, autonomous with enough intelligence to seek and target faces for their shot. Covered in Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez
  - wahern 1y ago
    These exist and have been used by Israel in Gaza. At least for now a remote operator has to give the OK to shoot, but the drone does the targeting itself. It's very Terminator-esque, a quadcopter with an automatic rifle that can autonomously navigate streets, loiter, and identify and aim at human targets.
prawn 1y ago
My experience is only with consumer drones, but you could fly over a target area and release an explosive before anyone heard that it was there, especially in a noisy environment. Above 100m, unless you're at high speed/power, most people won't notice a drone at all. It's often a change in speed/direction that gives them away, otherwise it will be past you before you first notice the sound.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  plus, speaking from military experience, people don't look up. camp out at the top of a 5 story building and don't move or shoot and no one will even gaze at you. 300m straight up? might as well be in orbit.
somenameforme 1y ago
They do. There's a lot of videos of them being taken out with birdshot. I also saw one video about modding underbarrel grenade launchers to fire a shotgun cartridge.
- esseph 1y ago
  A lot of US under barrel launchers have "factory" buckshot rounds. M79/M203/M320/etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M576_40_mm_grenade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M576_40_mm_grenade AK would be a different story, but Ukraine has a lot of 3d printers and those shells are one time use and not hard to make.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Those got lucky, lucky in that they detected them in the first place and that they were able to land a shot.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    yeah the window for a lot of those FPV drones is small. I'd still rather have the shotgun, but luck is a factor. also doesn't help for the ones that are 300m straight up dropping bombs -- no buckshot will work that high up. maybe 50m at best, if you're very, very lucky with dispersion.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
energy123 1y ago
This is a quality discussion about this question: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1b0u0k0/how_effective_are_shotguns_against_small_airborne/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1b0u0k0/how_eff...
jojobas 1y ago
Even Olympic trap shooters miss their targets sometimes, and they fly ballistic trajectories after they call "pull". Expecting a soldier with 2 months training (best case) to hit an unpredictably flying drone that appeared out of nowhere with no warning as he's trying to take cover from mortar shrapnel is quite optimistic.
SilentTiger 1y ago
Because they're incredibly fast, exceeding 40 meters per second. You can't fire a shotgun at 80 meters. A typical shotgun's effective range is only 40 meters, and once it's within range, you only have one second to fire. Furthermore, drones are generally difficult to detect at 400 meters unless you're using a synthetic detection system. By the time you spot them, it's too late.