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Both Ukraine and Russia have more combat aircraft than the US, if you count drones. Of course the US has a far larger air force if you count by dollars rather

by kragen 1y ago

Both Ukraine and Russia have more combat aircraft than the US, if you count drones. Of course the US has a far larger air force if you count by dollars rather than by airframe count, but if that's because they're buying US$10k milspec chips when US$1 parking meter chips would work just as well, that and a fiver will get you a cup of coffee. An F-16 costs US$200 million and can be destroyed by a US$500 FPV drone with a grenade attached, as Operation Spiderweb demonstrated with Russia's strategic bomber force. Surely you are correct that commanders would happily trade one FPV drone for one properly equipped F-16, even without the mortars. But it isn't clear that they would trade 400,000 FPV drones for the F-16, and that's the trade actually on offer. The US Army has never fought drone swarms, because they have never been fielded in any war, probably because they don't work very well yet; that's why the Ukrainians are dinking around with FPV. The US Army has never faced even the kind of FPV drone war we're seeing in Ukraine. Their materiel has, though, since they shipped a lot of it to the Ukrainians, and it doesn't seem to be doing very well. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are trying to keep their tanks off the front lines when they can, and the vast majority of casualties on both sides are from drones.

gonzo41 1y ago
Think about mortars more. If you can be close enough for a drone 1-2km, then mortars should be what you're thinking about. Mix a targeting drone with a vehicle mounted mortar team and they can have faster rounds on target and get of the X quicker than drone teams. And nets don't stop mortars. 200M will by a lot of that and can be fielded in a very flexible way.
- kragen 1y ago
  Mortars miss; suicide drones don't. And even the crappiest combat FPVs outrange mortars at 10+ km. The second drone gets through the net. And I wouldn't be surprised if US mortar rounds cost more than Ukrainian drones. But certainly they are synergistic, and tanks and IFVs are also widely fielded on both sides of the war. The obvious thing to do is to guide your mortar rounds with canards mounted slightly forward of the center of gravity, but the distance between "obvious" and done has a lot of rotting corpses in it.
  - gonzo41 1y ago
    Mortars have a 30m kill radius and you can hang rounds very quickly. There are guidable versions (expensive) but the regular rounds a cheap as chips (in military terms)
    - kragen 1y ago
      Mortars do not have a 30m kill radius against tanks and trenches.
      - gonzo41 1y ago
        Yes, but you can suppress a trench with mortars and do a combined arms attack against it. As for Tanks, there's other munitions better suited, the only reason the UAF aren't use them is scarcity.
        kragen 1y ago
        Scarcity is not some kind of minor detail; it's damned near the whole story. Logistics win wars. Scarce weapons usually lose wars against abundant weapons. That doesn't always happen—the Zulus' abundant spears and arrows were no match for the Maxim gun's somewhat less abundant cartridges, and neither a pitchfork nor a handgun will do you much good against a tank—but it does usually happen. When scarce weapons can defeat abundant weapons, and it's not because of range, it's usually because of precision. Drones are great at precision. 3 mortar rounds falling within 30 meters of your target trench are still ten times less deadly than a single FPV drone you can pilot straight into it.
  - meheleventyone 1y ago
    > Mortars miss; suicide drones don't. TBF based on Ukraines own statistics drones miss a lot as well.
    - kragen 1y ago
      I guess getting shot down is just as good as missing.
mrguyorama 1y ago
>Both Ukraine and Russia have more combat aircraft than the US, if you count drones. That's just absurd. There is almost no mission a real aircraft can do with ease that a drone can replace. >and the vast majority of casualties on both sides are from drones. Who told you that? >Operation Spiderweb demonstrated with Russia's strategic bomber force. The one that took out max 10 planes from a year long endeavor that occupied significant special forces? Russia seems to continue sending cruise missiles. They are closer to running out of planes, and cannot replace a single loss, but that operation was far more of a propaganda victory than a tactical one. Maybe it caused Russia to have to be more careful about the border and tie up some troops in that? >The US Army has never fought drone swarms, because they have never been fielded in any war, The US military has fought skies filled with thousands of targets though. The UK did it before computers, and the US navy invented a brand new networked and automated battlespace management system for their fleet to handle hundreds of Russian cruise missiles launched at a surface group. In the 60s. The same Navy invented a mechanical gyro system for inertial navigation that modern ring laser gyros do not even come close to touching. People have this weird idea that the US military industrial complex is incompetent and it's just radically misinformed and silly. The F35 had teething problems, same as every craft. The Switchblade is overpriced and underpowered, because it was a tiny experiment for mostly "Special forces" and thus had a special forces price tag. It's also dramatically more electronically sophisticated. The military refuses to build a new self propelled artillery system for.... reasons? But the US military has a looooong history of fixing those teething problems and creating incredible equipment. Air to Air missiles started with a dud rate of like 60%. But the people who called them a fad were wrong. The people who said the US should invest into more cheap air power that had no bells and whistles (like ejection seats or radar warning systems) and that burning money on expensive SOTA aircraft using cutting edge electronics would be a boondoggle and would fail, and they were so fucking wrong. Literally those exact people were the ones crying about the F35 being crap and not living up to expectations, and they should ask Iran, who had plenty of Russian and homegrown anti-air weapon radars and SAM systems how well they fared against the F35, and the B2 which is an older Stealth system. Meanwhile the biggest issue with the B21 raider is that Lockhead might lose money on it due to inflation. The Navy definitely has trouble, but they've always been prima donnas when it comes to procurement, insisting on changing off the shelf stuff with custom requirements and asking for absurdities like the Zumwalt's original cannon, but the Aircraft Carriers are still insane and we can buy frigates from someone else. Like, you people know that "The Pentagon Wars" about the Bradley was an absolute fiction, right? And that the claims Colonel Burton made in that book are wrong? And if you ask the Ukrainians, the Bradley (an old version at that!) is not only very effective, but an outright lifesaver. Something like 80% and above survivability for crew and passengers when it is destroyed. BMPs have radically worse survivability. The US military has already adapted, with for example slapping a laser tracker on dirt cheap Hydra rockets as a way to reliably take down cheap munitions like Shaheds. That system has been a great success, and is super scalable. Beating that would require much faster munitions (at that point you are a pricier cruise missile) or being launched from so close you might as well use an artillery piece. The single most powerful thing that small, cheap drones provide is small group ISR, allowing individual soldiers to have the kind of battlefield awareness in trench fighting as your average CoD protagonist. Maybe we are close to emulating the "Enemy, front, 300 feet" from Arma.

by kragen 1y ago

gonzo41 1y ago

Think about mortars more. If you can be close enough for a drone 1-2km, then mortars should be what you're thinking about. Mix a targeting drone with a vehicle mounted mortar team and they can have faster rounds on target and get of the X quicker than drone teams. And nets don't stop mortars. 200M will by a lot of that and can be fielded in a very flexible way.

kragen 1y ago
Mortars miss; suicide drones don't. And even the crappiest combat FPVs outrange mortars at 10+ km. The second drone gets through the net. And I wouldn't be surprised if US mortar rounds cost more than Ukrainian drones. But certainly they are synergistic, and tanks and IFVs are also widely fielded on both sides of the war. The obvious thing to do is to guide your mortar rounds with canards mounted slightly forward of the center of gravity, but the distance between "obvious" and done has a lot of rotting corpses in it.
- gonzo41 1y ago
  Mortars have a 30m kill radius and you can hang rounds very quickly. There are guidable versions (expensive) but the regular rounds a cheap as chips (in military terms)
  - kragen 1y ago
    Mortars do not have a 30m kill radius against tanks and trenches.
    - gonzo41 1y ago
      Yes, but you can suppress a trench with mortars and do a combined arms attack against it. As for Tanks, there's other munitions better suited, the only reason the UAF aren't use them is scarcity.
      - kragen 1y ago
        Scarcity is not some kind of minor detail; it's damned near the whole story. Logistics win wars. Scarce weapons usually lose wars against abundant weapons. That doesn't always happen—the Zulus' abundant spears and arrows were no match for the Maxim gun's somewhat less abundant cartridges, and neither a pitchfork nor a handgun will do you much good against a tank—but it does usually happen. When scarce weapons can defeat abundant weapons, and it's not because of range, it's usually because of precision. Drones are great at precision. 3 mortar rounds falling within 30 meters of your target trench are still ten times less deadly than a single FPV drone you can pilot straight into it.
- meheleventyone 1y ago
  > Mortars miss; suicide drones don't. TBF based on Ukraines own statistics drones miss a lot as well.
  - kragen 1y ago
    I guess getting shot down is just as good as missing.

mrguyorama 1y ago

>Both Ukraine and Russia have more combat aircraft than the US, if you count drones. That's just absurd. There is almost no mission a real aircraft can do with ease that a drone can replace. >and the vast majority of casualties on both sides are from drones. Who told you that? >Operation Spiderweb demonstrated with Russia's strategic bomber force. The one that took out max 10 planes from a year long endeavor that occupied significant special forces? Russia seems to continue sending cruise missiles. They are closer to running out of planes, and cannot replace a single loss, but that operation was far more of a propaganda victory than a tactical one. Maybe it caused Russia to have to be more careful about the border and tie up some troops in that? >The US Army has never fought drone swarms, because they have never been fielded in any war, The US military has fought skies filled with thousands of targets though. The UK did it before computers, and the US navy invented a brand new networked and automated battlespace management system for their fleet to handle hundreds of Russian cruise missiles launched at a surface group. In the 60s. The same Navy invented a mechanical gyro system for inertial navigation that modern ring laser gyros do not even come close to touching. People have this weird idea that the US military industrial complex is incompetent and it's just radically misinformed and silly. The F35 had teething problems, same as every craft. The Switchblade is overpriced and underpowered, because it was a tiny experiment for mostly "Special forces" and thus had a special forces price tag. It's also dramatically more electronically sophisticated. The military refuses to build a new self propelled artillery system for.... reasons? But the US military has a looooong history of fixing those teething problems and creating incredible equipment. Air to Air missiles started with a dud rate of like 60%. But the people who called them a fad were wrong. The people who said the US should invest into more cheap air power that had no bells and whistles (like ejection seats or radar warning systems) and that burning money on expensive SOTA aircraft using cutting edge electronics would be a boondoggle and would fail, and they were so fucking wrong. Literally those exact people were the ones crying about the F35 being crap and not living up to expectations, and they should ask Iran, who had plenty of Russian and homegrown anti-air weapon radars and SAM systems how well they fared against the F35, and the B2 which is an older Stealth system. Meanwhile the biggest issue with the B21 raider is that Lockhead might lose money on it due to inflation. The Navy definitely has trouble, but they've always been prima donnas when it comes to procurement, insisting on changing off the shelf stuff with custom requirements and asking for absurdities like the Zumwalt's original cannon, but the Aircraft Carriers are still insane and we can buy frigates from someone else. Like, you people know that "The Pentagon Wars" about the Bradley was an absolute fiction, right? And that the claims Colonel Burton made in that book are wrong? And if you ask the Ukrainians, the Bradley (an old version at that!) is not only very effective, but an outright lifesaver. Something like 80% and above survivability for crew and passengers when it is destroyed. BMPs have radically worse survivability. The US military has already adapted, with for example slapping a laser tracker on dirt cheap Hydra rockets as a way to reliably take down cheap munitions like Shaheds. That system has been a great success, and is super scalable. Beating that would require much faster munitions (at that point you are a pricier cruise missile) or being launched from so close you might as well use an artillery piece. The single most powerful thing that small, cheap drones provide is small group ISR, allowing individual soldiers to have the kind of battlefield awareness in trench fighting as your average CoD protagonist. Maybe we are close to emulating the "Enemy, front, 300 feet" from Arma.