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UK launches Project Octopus to deliver interceptor drones to Ukraine
- tim333 1y agoProbably a step forward to deal with the hundreds of shahed drones that Russia is sending to Ukraine and now it seems occasionally Poland. I'm curious what design they are going for. There is one possibility here https://youtu.be/Otyn_tXP0Uo https://youtu.be/Otyn_tXP0Uo
- PiraticSomate 1y ago[dead]
- fpoling 1y agoGiven that Russia produces around 100 heavy drones per day and plan to increase production multiple times NATO countries are essentially defenseless against that as NATO will quickly run out of missiles to shot those drones. Any country needs to stockpile interceptor drones and have production facilities to quickly ramp up production.
- poszlem 1y ago> "UK defence secretary John Healey has outlined new plans to send thousands of interceptor missiles to Ukraine every month, with the Ukrainian-developed UAV to be shared with the UK to help in the fight against Russia." The UK isn’t just being generous, it’s paying for access to Ukrainian drone know-how. Too many in the West still cling to the fantasy that Ukraine is some backward state, when in fact it’s become one of the world’s top drone powers.
- pmarreck 1y ago> when in fact it’s become one of the world’s top drone powers It's amazing what you can do when your choices are, in essence, "be destroyed" or "become an expert"
- potato3732842 1y ago> Too many in the West still cling to the fantasy that Ukraine is some backward state, when in fact it’s become one of the world’s top drone powers. Practice makes perfect. There's some guy in Damascus who knows more about the real world use of the TOW than the people who built it.
- varispeed 1y agoUkraine is seen as backwards because they are open about fighting corruption, which is taboo in the West.
- MangoToupe 1y ago> Too many in the West still cling to the fantasy that Ukraine is some backward state, when in fact it’s become one of the world’s top drone powers. These are not exclusive concepts. I've seen too many videos of men being literally kidnapped off the street ("busification") to have sweet thoughts about the state.
- poszlem 1y agoThis is something that has happened in so-called 'civilized' countries before, and it will happen again if they ever face a war of that scale.
- MangoToupe 1y agoSure. My point stands.
- spookie 1y agoHell, Poland asked Ukraine to provide some instructors to help them after the recent escalation of airspace violations they had.
- weego 1y agoSomeone elses war to upskill our own ability to wage war at a fraction of the cost? It's a weapons development dream for any Govt / R&D company
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoUkraine was one of the key technology hubs of the USSR - well capable of making their own missiles, etc.
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoquestion "NATO will quickly run out of missiles to shot those drones." Is there not cheaper auto-shotgun type devices around? To spray the sky. It doesn't take an entire missile or even bullet to damage a drone does it?
- MangoToupe 1y agoGeran-2's are far too large to be taken out with shotguns. Furthermore, you'd have to anticipate where they would want to strike. Drones, missiles, or lasers are likely the only way to stop them.
- dboreham 1y agoBullets have short range. So now you have to carpet the land with AA guns.
- lenerdenator 1y agoIt'd be interesting to see how short that range really is. A lot of assumptions about range were based on the idea of a soldier shooting at another soldier, more-or-less at a horizontal level. You had to design a bullet to accurately hit a target and disperse kinetic energy into biological tissue. Now, you're aiming at something made of non-biological materials of varying size, but they're usually lightweight and have little in the way of redundant flight systems. There's a real chance that if you send up enough small arms fire, you could hit a drone at up to a mile in the sky and cause it enough damage to be unable to complete its mission. Helicopters are known to be vulnerable to small arms fire. I don't see why an even smaller drone would be any different.
- tguvot 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMASH_Handheld#Mechanisms_and_functionality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMASH_Handheld#Mechanisms_and_...
- sgt101 1y agoOne approach is directed energy, there are laser guns like the UK's dragonfire (there are many others out there too) however these have problems in dusty or foggy conditions for obvious reasons. There are also microwave effectors which are used to fry the electronics on drones. These take advantage of the advances in Gallium Nitride based power electronics (and other even more exotic materials).
- lenerdenator 1y agoI'm not a tactician with any experience, just thinking this through at my keyboard, but I'm not even sure drone v. drone is the answer here. Depending on how low they are flying and how large they are, you could conceivably set up anti-drone defenses using service rifles or shotguns wired up to a detection and fire control system. I know that someone in Thailand did exactly that with a bunch of M16A1s. Of course, if they're larger and higher up, you could possibly use more traditional AAA artillery. Both of those routes use things that are already "cheap" and in the supply chain.
- pjc50 1y ago> Depending on how low they are flying and how large they are It's a real problem that "drone" gets used for things that can fit in your hand, all the way up to the same size as single-seater aircraft. These seem to be aimed at the latter. The Shahed is more of a slow cruise missile with wings, or the WW2 V1 pulsejet "flying bombs" (we've not seen the return of the pulsejet, have we? "V1 with modern guidance" seems like it might fit a niche)
- idiotsecant 1y agopulsejets would certainly be cheap, but they'd have terrible fuel efficiency, which is one of the most important attributes for a drone - how long can you loiter and how far can you go?
- idiotsecant 1y agoa bunch of shotguns or service rifles is not going to help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136 This is what people talk about when they say 'drones' in this context - basically a remote-guided 100 lb bomb flying in a 400lb chassis at 115 mph thousands of meters up.
- lenerdenator 1y agoIn that case, yeah, I could see aerial drones being a response. It's not an altogether different concept from the V1 Buzz Bomb. Those were easy enough to blow out of the sky if you were in a WWII prop fighter. I wonder how effective heavy machine guns would be against one. What's its service ceiling? It's running on a gasoline motor so it can't be that high.
- crinkly 1y agoBest to strike production capability than pay for missiles to shoot them down.
- pjc50 1y agoThere is still a taboo against a nuclear weapons state directly striking another nuclear weapons state, under its own flag.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoWhy would you need a nuke to take out a drone factory? There's lots of ways to disrupt production, starting with super low-tech things like drone attacks, assuming you have the intelligence to know where they are being produced.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago> Why would you need a nuke to take out a drone factory? They didn't suggest you would need to. > low-tech things like drone attack drones And which flag are they flying?
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago> And which flag are they flying? Sure, use tiny NATO flags if you like, but an "are you one of us" transponder might be better.
- KptMarchewa 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_82_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_82_bomb
- crinkly 1y agoMight want to check the French position there. But you don’t need nuclear weapons to take out munitions factories.
- mytailorisrich 1y agoNATO has many times the industrial capacity Russia has. Fater 3 years of war Russia has adapted to war production but if NATO decides to do the same Russia will be outclassed quickly. These are war game scenarios, though, as in reality it is highly improbable that Russia would start a conflict with NATO because they know they cannot compete. This doesn't mean NATO should not keep its game up, of course.
- tim333 1y agoRussia is already in a low level conflict with NATO even if it's just NATO countries supplying equipment to Ukraine and Russia trying to hack NATO politics.
- rightbyte 1y ago> NATO countries are essentially defenseless against that I think the plan is that the war is over in 10 minutes ... so why care.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoI heard it would take 24 hours...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- somenameforme 1y agoHe's referring to nukes. War between NATO and Russia is a non-starter because there's no viable way it doesn't almost immediately escalate to nukes, especially when all parties would be aware of this creating even more an incentive to be the first to try, and inevitably fail, at a preemptive nuclear strike to completely disable the opposing forces' nuclear options.
- rightbyte 1y agoYe there are so much romantic fantasies roaming around I don't recognize the 'Overton window' anymore.
- tim333 1y agoRussia may do low level stuff like drones into Poland that is not bad enough to launch a nuclear war over.
- ponector 1y agoBut why? We have many examples of war activities between states with nukes. If tomorrow russia will occupy three NATO countries: Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia - nobody is going to use nukes.
- somenameforme 1y ago
- diggan 1y ago> Given that Russia produces around 100 heavy drones per day and plan to increase production multiple times NATO countries are essentially defenseless But given that NATO is both increasing and planning to increase the defenses more, they're essentially equal then? I'm not sure what point there is of discussing potentially future actions of Russia without considering the potentially future actions of others, like NATO will be the same tomorrow as today?
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoAgreed - if we're pitting the manufacturing capabilities of NATO (maybe disregarding USA, given Trump's aversion to action) vs Russia then my money would be on NATO, assuming they are motivated to do it.
- tguvot 1y agolast estimation was around 170 per day https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/07/21/russia-seen-as-boosting-combat-drone-output-switching-attack-angles/ https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/07/21/russia-...
- mrguyorama 1y agoWhich is why the US pretty much immediately leaned into the laser guided rocket pods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon... About $22k before we even ramp up production. Any NATO aircraft can carry a large loadout of them, and they turn any long distance, slow moving drone into target practice.
- jl6 1y ago> cost less than 10% of the Russian systems destroyed One wonders how they have managed that, or how they know.
- sgt101 1y agoSize and range. Strike drones have to be able to carry a fairly large warhead (or are only good at hitting people and not things) and they have to fly quite a long way to get at things like reserve assets and logistics. So they are quite big, with quite a lot of fuel etc. Big things tend to cost more. In this case I can imagine that an interceptor that has a range of 10k and is 5% of the size of the strike drone would be able to knock it down and would be able to do so well away from its target. Dunno how anyone can "know" unless they "know" and then they are not talking. But, it seems plausible that something with 10% of the range and 5% of the mass would cost 10% or less.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoRight- I think Palantir make much smaller drones, and way faster and more maneuverable, that could take out these slow moving Russian ones very easily. The capability comes more from the software than the parts list - doesn't add to the per-unit cost.
- sgt101 1y agoI think Anduril not Palantir?
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoYes - thanks.
- tim333 1y agoThe Anduril kit is expensive. "Costing from $125,000 to $500,000 per unit" https://www.businessinsider.com/anduril-roadrunner-raytheon-coyote-drones-us-navy-carriers-2025-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/anduril-roadrunner-raytheon-...
- kragen 1y agoThis article doesn't provide enough information to be useful. Is "thousands" a lot? It depends on what kind of drones we're talking about. Ukraine produces on the order of ten thousand military drones per day, as does Russia. So the UK sending "thousands" one time might be insignificant. On the other hand, thousands of properly equipped Reapers would be enough to allow Ukraine to defeat and possibly conquer Russia—but nobody has or will ever have thousands of Reapers, which would cost on the order of 3% of the GDP of the UK. So the description in the article is so ambiguous that it covers the full range from "insignificantly small" to "implausibly large". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45223912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45223912 ballparks the program at US$10M.
- poszlem 1y agoOnly by taking annual production (4 million) and averaging it daily, but that's not daily actual production and includes all drones (many small FPVs).
- kragen 1y agoYou mean, because maybe most drone production stops on Sundays or something? Under these circumstances, if the UK is sending thousands of small FPVs it would be insignificant.
- tim333 1y agoI don't think they are your usual small FPVs. They should be designed to take out incoming Shaheds at high altitudes.
- kragen 1y agoDo Shaheds fly at high altitudes? Are we talking about Shahed-136 here? I thought flying low was one of their main advantages! I don't think Anvil can reach high altitudes. I mean it's a battery-powered quadcopter. We're speculating based on very little information here. At least you didn't spell it "Shaheed".
- chickenbig 1y agoThe original press release from HMG is https://www.gov.uk/government/news/groundbreaking-ukraine-tech-sharing-agreement-to-deliver-drones-and-support-jobs https://www.gov.uk/government/news/groundbreaking-ukraine-te... .
- kragen 1y agoThis has barely more information, but enough to establish an order of magnitude: > The drone developed under Project OCTOPUS was designed by Ukraine with support from UK scientists and technicians and has already proved successful on the battlefield, proving highly effective against the Shahed one-way attack drone variants used by Russia – despite costing less than 10% to produce than the drones they are designed to intercept. What does a Shahed cost? https://www.twz.com/news-features/what-does-a-shahed-136-really-cost https://www.twz.com/news-features/what-does-a-shahed-136-rea... says about US$50k, so they're saying that the Octopus drones cost on the order of US$5k, and "thousands" of them costs on the order of US$10M. So this is a single-digit percentage of Ukraine's yearly drone budget: not insignificant, but far from game-changing.
- tim333 1y agoThe main article has that the Ukrainians are investing US$271m in UK plants so presumably more than $10m worth.
- kragen 1y agoBut that would mean that the Octopus interceptor drones cost more than the Shaheds they're designed to shoot down. Is it possible that this paragraph isn't actually about Octopus? > The agreement followed investment from Ukraine’s largest drone manufacturer, UKRSPECSYSTEMS, which announced that it would invest £200 million (US$271.2 million) into two new UK facilities – the first major investment by a Ukrainian defence company in the UK, according to Healy.
- tim333 1y agoMy guess is that they will producing a lot of the interceptor drones and keeping the plant there for a long time even if the war ends.
- Oceoss 1y agoHaving more and better drones now matters more than having more soldiers
- somenameforme 1y agoI think something most people don't consider is that war is still about logistics. Every single soldier needs food, water, basic consumables, ammo, and more. And each group of soldier will need comms, fuel, and so on. With even a relatively small group of soldiers you rapidly enter into the domain of tons of supplies needed every single day. And in general the majority of an army isn't out there fighting, but participating in supply and logistics. It's called the tooth-to-tail ratio. [1] In WW1 it 2.6:1 logistics:combat, in the Vietnam War (with its lengthy logistics pipeline) it was 12.9:1! Operating, maintaining, and expanding these logistics pipelines is essentially what war is. Drones can play a major offensive (and defensive) role, but soldiers remain the most critical component in war, and probably will for the foreseeable future. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio
- ponector 1y agoYes and no. That's people what actually hold the ground. No drone will capture a city. But they can help assault team to survive/advance.
- kragen 1y agoClearly you need more than one drone to hold a city. But do you need more like one drone per thousand people, one drone per ten people, ten drones per person, or a thousand drones per person? Clearly at some point you cross the threshold. Drones are cheaper to replace than people.
- ponector 1y ago>> Drones are cheaper to replace than people. Only for western country.
- revx 1y ago""" Microscopic invaders were more of the threat nowadays. Just to name one example, there was Red Death, a.k.a. the Seven Minute Special, a tiny aerodynamic capsule that burst open after impact and released a thousand or so corpuscle-size bodies, known colloquially as cookie-cutters, into the victim's bloodstream. [...] Such inventions had spawned concern that people from Phyle A might surreptitiously introduce a few million lethal devices into the bodies of members of Phyle B, providing the technically sweetest possible twist on the trite, ancient dream of being able instantly to turn a whole society into gravy. [...] What worked in the body could work elsewhere, which is why phyles had their own immune systems now. The impregnable-shield paradigm didn't work at the nano level; one needed to hack the mean free path. A well-defended clave was surrounded by an aerial buffer zone infested with immunocules—microscopic aerostats designed to seek and destroy invaders. [...] It was always foggy in the Leased Territories, because all of the immunocules in the air served as nuclei for the condensation of water vapor. If you stared carefully into the fog and focused on a point inches in front of your nose, you could see it sparkling, like so many microscopic searchlights, as the immunocules swept space with lidar beams. [...] The sparkling of tiny lights was the evidence of microscopic dreadnoughts hunting each other implacably through the fog, like U-boats and destroyers in the black water of the North Atlantic. """ Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
- mrtksn 1y agoSome of the drones that entered Poland the other day were made from styrofoam. The cost to intercept probably need to go close to 100$ because the drones that attack are going super cheap. In Ukraine both sides don't even use anything exotic or high precision, the engines they use don't need to work for more than a few hours so the current ones are probably an overkill as they use hobbyist jet engines etc. I have a feeling that these things can be scaled to mind blowing proportions. Engines are just bent metal, electronics are printed. Sure, these require advanced machining but they don't look much more complicated than crazy cheap devices that are sold for the price of a burger on TEMU or Alibaba. If they optimize those things, it feels like they should be able to achieve continuous delivery like on strategy games where you pump units just as fast as they are destroyed. Thousands of drones just sounds wrong. It should be something like 1000s a day, maybe an hour.
- machiaweliczny 1y agoThey already do 1000s a day AFAIK but for long range they use iranian based design which costs more
- baybal2 1y ago[dead]
- aynyc 1y agoI'm slowly starting to think that NATO/EU is using Ukraine as a trench war test ground. Ukraine right now needs to invest in offensive capability, not defensive capability. If they don't bring the war to Russia in full scale, it'll never end. In simplest term, it's like your neighbor parks their car on your driveway, you get police to issue fines, or maybe even get it towed. But your neighbor has money, so they keep paying fines, etc.. Your whole neighborhood supports you, so they would call the cops for you, go to town hall and all of that. In the end, you'll never win and get your parking space back. The only way is to park your and all your supporters' cars in their driveway, give them a taste of their own medicine.
- tim333 1y agoAt the moment the Ukrainian strategy, as well as defending themselves seems to be largely to take out the Russian oil industry and other economic targets with the aim that their economy collapses or at least they can't afford to keep the war going. The Economist discussing that https://archive.ph/Rjuzy https://archive.ph/Rjuzy
- lossolo 1y agoThat will not happen. Even the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline is still carrying some Russian crude through Ukraine to Hungary and Slovakia. This is all mirage. Russian oil gets mixed in India and then gets back to EU. Only U.S., Canada, the EU, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and a few others sanctioned Russia. So over 140 countries did not sanction Russia and can buy oil from them without any mixing and outside the Western price cap system. Cutting Russia off completely from the global oil market would send prices through the roof, and most countries don’t want that. That’s why Ukraine has reportedly been reminded behind closed doors not to hit Russian oil exports too hard.
- slyall 1y agoUkraine is targeting refineries rather than Crude production/supply. This impact refined oil exports and domestic supply and is causing Russia pain. Oil refineries are also very soft target. They can't cut off the Druzhba pipeline because they need to keep Hungary and Slovakia happy.
- slater 1y ago[flagged]
- kragen 1y ago[flagged]
- slater 1y agowhat are you talking about? psychological abuse? banned from what space? sorry, but you've clearly got me mixed up with someone else.
- tomhow 1y agoWe detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45223113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45223113 and marked it off topic. Please don't do this on HN.