5 ms·

FPV drones can hit 80mph+ / 128kmph+ , other drones can fly much higher than a shotgun can reach. Also, swarms.

by esseph 1y ago

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.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    training the soldier is only part of it. you need at least ~16 years of food, water, and teaching to get something useful. ideally 18, sometimes as low as 12. and you can't refurbish ones that are missing parts or otherwise defective. the 20k to run them through Basic Training is a pittance.
    - esseph 1y ago
      Basic/AIT in the US Army is closer to 50k-85k but can be a little higher for certain specialties.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- esseph 1y ago
  This is not true. The amount of money spent on training high level US infantry goes into the hundreds of thousands, and millions upon millions for Special Forces, Ranger/Ranger Recon/Tier 1 units/CIA SAC/SOG, etc. A drone that can carry a payload can be built for under $200 USD. A swarm could be as few as say 10. Let's say 50, just for you example. 50x$200=$10,000. If you take out an SF Team for example, that's 12 people. Let's say they were very new and they were only $800,000 into training so far in their career. 12x$800,000= $9.6mil USD. Let's revise that calculation, with a 6 man infantry fire team young troops, $100,000 into training, each. $600,000/$10,000 = 60x more economically efficient even if all drones were lost in the operation, as long as the target was killed. You could still have 59 more tries with 50 drones per swarm to hit cost parity. Oh yeah and some of those drones have thermals and high quality glass optics now, so they can see you and your squad as white dots moving across the landscape from miles and miles away. People really don't understand the impact drones are having on the battlefield. It's nuts. Edit: I think this level of drone warfare will end up having a larger impact on warfare than both gunpowder and later the machine gun, but probably not as big as WWII large scale air campaigns.
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    As I understand it, currently all drones require a human operator who can only operate one at a time. And except for some special operations behind enemy lines, you must be fairly close to the target, as within a few km. The fiber optic ones, even closer So your 50 drone swarm is going to need 50 operators, fairly close to the front. Who are also vulnerable to enemy counter drones and glide bombs - the latter is a real problem for Ukraine I haven’t seen any evidence of a “swarm” on combat footage from Ukraine war, I have seen a few drones hitting a single target, especially armored vehicles in fairly quick succession, like a few seconds, It looked like independent operators all picking the obvious high value target, not some intentional “swarm” Tech may change this in the future but we’re not there quite yet
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      iPhones can run some AI models on device already. Expect this to change, rapidly.
- dralley 1y ago
  >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. Dude, Russians literally post this stuff on their own social media accounts. The "munitions" in question are no more expensive than a basic frag grenade. And what part of the Russian war effort has led you to the conclusion that they value productivity over terrorism and photo ops? The incentive structures of the Russian military are just oceans apart from anything a westerner would consider a proper functional military. I have some clips for you. Does this look like the operations of a productive military to you? You have no clue, absolutely none at all. They do this shit kind of to their own soldiers, and you think they're above trying to terrorize Ukrainians into compliance? https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/europe/russia-deserters-ukraine-war-intl https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/europe/russia-deserters-ukrai... https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1937075719428780250 https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1937075719428780250 https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1935714762664693993 https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1935714762664693993 https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1932061484030267809 https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1932061484030267809 Note: that last clip is very, very NSFL. For reference, naked and bound deserters were thrown into a dirt pit and fired upon with rifles (not killed, at least not in the video, but threatened essentially) I can understand how a westerner who has never seen, even by proxy, the dregs of the Russian internet could conceive of just how fucked up Russian military culture is. But, like, none of this stuff is hidden. The brutality of what happens to people who disobey them is genuinely part of the image they want to portray to the world (and to themselves). And in this way they feel the need to make an example of the Ukrainians - who by the way Russian state media isn't shy about portraying as basically subhumans. And there is far, far worse shit than this that never makes it out of Russian-language telegram channels.
  - holoduke 1y ago
    Man. You sound diluted. Go see one month of Gaza and see how a real civilian targeted war would look like. If Russia would want to see terror they could create more civilian casualties in one evening than the entire war. In Ukraine civilians are not the target. In Gaza they are. Sponsored by the west.
- wolpoli 1y ago
  Also, drones are currently being flown by soldiers in fpv goggles so swarm is not very practical. It will change once we have swarm software and there is a need for it.
  - disillusioned 1y ago
    Or just extend the logic to materiel instead of personnel, like Ukraine did with the airbase attacks earlier this year: for the price of a few dozen < $1k drones, you can eliminate $50M-$150M+ aircraft? The asymmetry is insane. There's also nothing that practically stops those same tactics from being aimed at other soft infrastructure targets: electrical substations, telco facilities, water treatment facilities... the nightmare scenario is taking down transmission lines and switching stations outside, say, a large nuclear power plant during a heat wave. The nuke itself is hardened, obviously, but who cares if it can't transmit the power it's generating to the people that need it?
    - freefrog334433 1y ago
      It also took 18 months to insert the people, set up the shell company, smuggle materials, manufacture, etc. It also had the advantage of surprise - the first such attack at such a distance from the front line. Is it unlikely such an attack will be replicated, just as a box-cutter hijack of 747s attack against buildings will not succeed again.
- maxglute 1y ago
  Some lives are worth more $$$ than others... CASEVAC for a single US soldier will tie up multiple individuals + follow up costs (full logistics + medical + compensation + benefits etc) = orders of magnitude more than few 1000 drones. Estimates for fully burden costs of severely wounded is 2-5m+ for lifetime.
- simion314 1y ago
  >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. The issue in your logic is assuming Ruzzia/Kremlin uses same natural logic as the rest of the world, I talked with many Zed patriots, that country uses a non natural logic, Zed Logic. Add on top of the unatural logic, the brainwashing and the fact that most of thye soldiers are murderers and rapists from prisons and you get a lot of civilians killed or abused by this asshols for fun or other reasons that make no sense in a natural logic. An example of Zed logic When Ruzzia attacks some civilian infrastructure in Ukraine (like grain storage) then Zeds claim it is legal, but when Ukraine strikes a military ship Zeds claim this is illegal, it is terrorism because... ... the ship was outside the SMO (special military operation) that Putin decided to be. I am not joking, the Zeds are full of this bullshit logic, something ie legal/correct is always dependent of who makes the crime, where the crime is happening, who is the victim. Second best Zed logic shit I heard is "USSR was the best democracy ever, in the entire human history"
- CorrectHorseBat 1y ago
  >Civilians are a worse than 0 value target meaning you completely wasted your munitions. It's not, it forces your enemy to waste valuable resources on defending those civilian targets.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    > assumes you care about the civilians

FPV drones can hit 80mph+ / 128kmph+ , other drones can fly much higher than a shotgun can reach. Also, swarms.

by esseph 1y ago

FPV drones can hit 80mph+ / 128kmph+ , other drones can fly much higher than a shotgun can reach. Also, swarms.

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.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  training the soldier is only part of it. you need at least ~16 years of food, water, and teaching to get something useful. ideally 18, sometimes as low as 12. and you can't refurbish ones that are missing parts or otherwise defective. the 20k to run them through Basic Training is a pittance.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Basic/AIT in the US Army is closer to 50k-85k but can be a little higher for certain specialties.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
esseph 1y ago
This is not true. The amount of money spent on training high level US infantry goes into the hundreds of thousands, and millions upon millions for Special Forces, Ranger/Ranger Recon/Tier 1 units/CIA SAC/SOG, etc. A drone that can carry a payload can be built for under $200 USD. A swarm could be as few as say 10. Let's say 50, just for you example. 50x$200=$10,000. If you take out an SF Team for example, that's 12 people. Let's say they were very new and they were only $800,000 into training so far in their career. 12x$800,000= $9.6mil USD. Let's revise that calculation, with a 6 man infantry fire team young troops, $100,000 into training, each. $600,000/$10,000 = 60x more economically efficient even if all drones were lost in the operation, as long as the target was killed. You could still have 59 more tries with 50 drones per swarm to hit cost parity. Oh yeah and some of those drones have thermals and high quality glass optics now, so they can see you and your squad as white dots moving across the landscape from miles and miles away. People really don't understand the impact drones are having on the battlefield. It's nuts. Edit: I think this level of drone warfare will end up having a larger impact on warfare than both gunpowder and later the machine gun, but probably not as big as WWII large scale air campaigns.
- SJC_Hacker 1y ago
  As I understand it, currently all drones require a human operator who can only operate one at a time. And except for some special operations behind enemy lines, you must be fairly close to the target, as within a few km. The fiber optic ones, even closer So your 50 drone swarm is going to need 50 operators, fairly close to the front. Who are also vulnerable to enemy counter drones and glide bombs - the latter is a real problem for Ukraine I haven’t seen any evidence of a “swarm” on combat footage from Ukraine war, I have seen a few drones hitting a single target, especially armored vehicles in fairly quick succession, like a few seconds, It looked like independent operators all picking the obvious high value target, not some intentional “swarm” Tech may change this in the future but we’re not there quite yet
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    iPhones can run some AI models on device already. Expect this to change, rapidly.
dralley 1y ago
>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. Dude, Russians literally post this stuff on their own social media accounts. The "munitions" in question are no more expensive than a basic frag grenade. And what part of the Russian war effort has led you to the conclusion that they value productivity over terrorism and photo ops? The incentive structures of the Russian military are just oceans apart from anything a westerner would consider a proper functional military. I have some clips for you. Does this look like the operations of a productive military to you? You have no clue, absolutely none at all. They do this shit kind of to their own soldiers, and you think they're above trying to terrorize Ukrainians into compliance? https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/europe/russia-deserters-ukraine-war-intl https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/europe/russia-deserters-ukrai... https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1937075719428780250 https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1937075719428780250 https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1935714762664693993 https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1935714762664693993 https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1932061484030267809 https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1932061484030267809 Note: that last clip is very, very NSFL. For reference, naked and bound deserters were thrown into a dirt pit and fired upon with rifles (not killed, at least not in the video, but threatened essentially) I can understand how a westerner who has never seen, even by proxy, the dregs of the Russian internet could conceive of just how fucked up Russian military culture is. But, like, none of this stuff is hidden. The brutality of what happens to people who disobey them is genuinely part of the image they want to portray to the world (and to themselves). And in this way they feel the need to make an example of the Ukrainians - who by the way Russian state media isn't shy about portraying as basically subhumans. And there is far, far worse shit than this that never makes it out of Russian-language telegram channels.
- holoduke 1y ago
  Man. You sound diluted. Go see one month of Gaza and see how a real civilian targeted war would look like. If Russia would want to see terror they could create more civilian casualties in one evening than the entire war. In Ukraine civilians are not the target. In Gaza they are. Sponsored by the west.
wolpoli 1y ago
Also, drones are currently being flown by soldiers in fpv goggles so swarm is not very practical. It will change once we have swarm software and there is a need for it.
- disillusioned 1y ago
  Or just extend the logic to materiel instead of personnel, like Ukraine did with the airbase attacks earlier this year: for the price of a few dozen < $1k drones, you can eliminate $50M-$150M+ aircraft? The asymmetry is insane. There's also nothing that practically stops those same tactics from being aimed at other soft infrastructure targets: electrical substations, telco facilities, water treatment facilities... the nightmare scenario is taking down transmission lines and switching stations outside, say, a large nuclear power plant during a heat wave. The nuke itself is hardened, obviously, but who cares if it can't transmit the power it's generating to the people that need it?
  - freefrog334433 1y ago
    It also took 18 months to insert the people, set up the shell company, smuggle materials, manufacture, etc. It also had the advantage of surprise - the first such attack at such a distance from the front line. Is it unlikely such an attack will be replicated, just as a box-cutter hijack of 747s attack against buildings will not succeed again.
maxglute 1y ago
Some lives are worth more $$$ than others... CASEVAC for a single US soldier will tie up multiple individuals + follow up costs (full logistics + medical + compensation + benefits etc) = orders of magnitude more than few 1000 drones. Estimates for fully burden costs of severely wounded is 2-5m+ for lifetime.
simion314 1y ago
>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. The issue in your logic is assuming Ruzzia/Kremlin uses same natural logic as the rest of the world, I talked with many Zed patriots, that country uses a non natural logic, Zed Logic. Add on top of the unatural logic, the brainwashing and the fact that most of thye soldiers are murderers and rapists from prisons and you get a lot of civilians killed or abused by this asshols for fun or other reasons that make no sense in a natural logic. An example of Zed logic When Ruzzia attacks some civilian infrastructure in Ukraine (like grain storage) then Zeds claim it is legal, but when Ukraine strikes a military ship Zeds claim this is illegal, it is terrorism because... ... the ship was outside the SMO (special military operation) that Putin decided to be. I am not joking, the Zeds are full of this bullshit logic, something ie legal/correct is always dependent of who makes the crime, where the crime is happening, who is the victim. Second best Zed logic shit I heard is "USSR was the best democracy ever, in the entire human history"
CorrectHorseBat 1y ago
>Civilians are a worse than 0 value target meaning you completely wasted your munitions. It's not, it forces your enemy to waste valuable resources on defending those civilian targets.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  > assumes you care about the civilians