6 ms·

Ukraine's drone commander has Russian oil, troops and morale in his sights

57 points by tkgally 5mo ago

MrCharismatist 5mo ago
https://archive.ph/dR234 https://archive.ph/dR234
mschuster91 5mo ago
> "1,500 to 2,000km (930-1,240 miles) inside Russian territory is no longer the 'peaceful rear'," Robert Brovdi warns. "The freedom-loving Ukrainian 'bird' flies there whenever and wherever it wants." For comparison for the Americans, it's New York to Kansas City. For the Europeans, Copenhagen to Rome. Crazy that the Ukrainians can keep up command-and-control for drones over such a distance. Probably most of it is via Starlink...
- stavros 5mo ago
  I don't know, ELRS/LoRa is pretty amazing. I don't know what kind of jamming happens there, but with a big (and tall) enough antenna, you should be able to get pretty far.
  - cyberge99 5mo ago
    This was my thought too. Couple with Starlink on a drone and you could go deep.
- icegreentea2 5mo ago
  Ukraine's "long range attack drones" are really just cost optimized cruise missiles. Long-range strike against strategic targets is something you can handle without man in loop control. For example, the original Tomahawks could do terrain radar matching (+inertial guidance) for navigation, and had a fully onboard camera based system for terminal guidance.
- cyberge99 5mo ago
  You could literally fly drone as a starlink antenna+rpi combo. Have that drone fly far in and then go radio silent until a prescribed time. Do this a few times and you could get CNC pretty far in relatively lightly.
- tim333 5mo ago
  There are other technologies. GPS is an obvious one though it can be blocked. I think HIMARs used GPS with inertial backup if it's lost. Also with modern image recognition you can give the thing a picture of what it's supposed to hit for the last bit. I'm not sure which actual techs are used. Ukraine has a market set up where fighters can order the tech they need from defence startups. It's a significant advantage over Russia which has comparable tech but is bureaucratic and corrupt as to how it's allocated. Some stuff from Google on FP-1 drones - the most popular long range one: >Technological Features: They emphasize modularity, resilience to electronic warfare, and are developing optical navigation systems to reduce reliance on GPS.
cl0ckt0wer 5mo ago
So is he exaggerating or understating their capabilities? I'm surprised they'd disclose their capabilities.
- damidekronik 5mo ago
  Given the stated goal, most likely exaggerating
- icegreentea2 5mo ago
  Ukraine has concretely demonstrated their ability to perform deep missile/drone strikes (on the order of ~1500km) onto Russian strategic and economic assets. Ukrainian drone capabilities in the near battlefield (up to ~20-30km deep) are also not contested. Russian milbloggers will openly talk about the difficulty of massing and movement in that area due to the saturation of drone coverage (and btw, this challenge is more or less symmetric). So the article is not likely exaggerating any of their capabilities. However, it is exaggerating via omission. In terms of deep strikes, the question is what the success rate of these missions are, what cadence can they sustain, what's the constellation of Russian lapses that have to line up for a successful strike, etc. Another known area of weakness (that the Ukrianians are working hard on) is the middle range. How to strike quickly at targets of opportunity in the 50-500km range field. This was/is a capability that things like GMLRS and ATACMS provided, but I imagine the Ukraine is forced to ration those munitions carefully.
- tim333 5mo ago
  From my understanding it seems fairly accurate. A lot of the stuff is pretty public - if drones blow up Russia's stuff they obviously know about it. Also drones get shot down so both sides can have a look at the tech. The reporting seems a bit misleading suggesting drones kill 30k Russians a month. I think that's total Russian casualties of which drones are a good chunk but not all.
outside1234 5mo ago
Ukraine is going to win this war if we can just keep funding them long enough
- lokar 5mo ago
  They may retain their territory, but they won’t win. No one is going to win.
- JohnnyLarue 5mo ago
  They should have surrendered years ago, now they're going to wind up with the same territory losses and a few hundred thousand dead on top of it.
  - tim333 5mo ago
    Have you seen how the Russians have treated conquered territories with torture chambers and having to submit to the dictatorship for life? And life is often only a few months as they round the males up and force them into the Russian army to get killed.
  - dwaltrip 5mo ago
    Long live the Russian empire… /s
  - rasz 5mo ago
    Dead killing russians or dead in unmarked mass graves or dead killing Estonians, Lithuanians and Poles. Choices choices. Mariupol had a mass grave for tens of thousand civilians russia liberated. Had because recently they started erasing it from existence https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/insight/russia-accused-of-erasing-mariupol-mass-grave-site/gm-GMC83E83C9?gemSnapshotKey=GMC83E83C9-snapshot-1 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/insight/russia-accused-of-era...
- drysine 5mo ago
  And to replenish their losses Ukrainian regime snatches men on the street. There are thousands of videos made by bystanders.[0] Come and see. P.S. I love the ad I see on that site: "Over 10 million Ukrainians suffer from anxiety due to the war. Free exercises with scientifically proven effectiveness." The most important exercise now is running - it saves your life. [0] https://busification.org https://busification.org
pengaru 5mo ago
I want to believe Brovdi, good for them.
thisislife2 5mo ago
Ah, the periodic "Ukraine is winning the war" propaganda by western media to keep their citizens in a "warmongering" panic mode so that they don't oppose the hike in defence budgets. And to make the Europeans feel less guilty about not suing for peace ( https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/why-unjust-peace-better-more-war-ukraine https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/why-unjust-peace-bett... ) and egging the Ukrainians to keep fighting even though Ukraine is losing and being systematically deindustrialised and demilitarised ( https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/4-years-later-what-russias-aggression-ukraine-has-cost-it-and-what-its-gained https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/4-years-later-what-russia... ). History is repeating itself with the re-militarisation of Europe and it looks like we'll experience another World War. For all the progress they have made, the big 3 of Europe - UK, France and Russia (and emerging power Germany) - all still have a shitty imperialist mindsets which leads to this kind of repeated confrontation that drags us all into their muck. I am really beginning to believe the American pitch that they were the one who kept them all in check, after WW2 with their military bases in EU.
- tim333 5mo ago
  I don't think it really works like that. The bbc doesn't sit around think - ah let's push some warmongering propaganda. That's more a Russian thing. Also re Europeans not suing for peace etc. - it isn't a war between Europe and Russia or NATO and Russia or the US and Russia. It's an invasion by Russia of Ukraine and the Ukrainians are fighting back. Again that's kind of Russian propaganda to say their invasion of Ukraine is actually a war with someone else not involved. The used to say the US but how many times has Trump effectively yelled surrender at the Ukrainians now? It's history repeating itself along the Russia invades country x with a bunch of bullshit about how it's not it's fault etc which has happened about thirty times, the worst being partnering with Hitler to start WW2. Russia isn't doing that well at the moment. The western media has always been pro Ukraine but even the Z propagandists are flipping from Russia is invincible to Russia is losing now. It's a bit of an Afghanistan like situation. Russia is stuck and its regime will hopefully collapse at some point as seems traditional when it loses wars. Putin was looking very nervous last time I saw him and there are talks of palace coups.
- Gud 5mo ago

57 points by tkgally 5mo ago

https://archive.ph/dR234 https://archive.ph/dR234

> "1,500 to 2,000km (930-1,240 miles) inside Russian territory is no longer the 'peaceful rear'," Robert Brovdi warns. "The freedom-loving Ukrainian 'bird' flies there whenever and wherever it wants." For comparison for the Americans, it's New York to Kansas City. For the Europeans, Copenhagen to Rome. Crazy that the Ukrainians can keep up command-and-control for drones over such a distance. Probably most of it is via Starlink...

stavros 5mo ago
I don't know, ELRS/LoRa is pretty amazing. I don't know what kind of jamming happens there, but with a big (and tall) enough antenna, you should be able to get pretty far.
- cyberge99 5mo ago
  This was my thought too. Couple with Starlink on a drone and you could go deep.
icegreentea2 5mo ago
Ukraine's "long range attack drones" are really just cost optimized cruise missiles. Long-range strike against strategic targets is something you can handle without man in loop control. For example, the original Tomahawks could do terrain radar matching (+inertial guidance) for navigation, and had a fully onboard camera based system for terminal guidance.
cyberge99 5mo ago
You could literally fly drone as a starlink antenna+rpi combo. Have that drone fly far in and then go radio silent until a prescribed time. Do this a few times and you could get CNC pretty far in relatively lightly.
tim333 5mo ago
There are other technologies. GPS is an obvious one though it can be blocked. I think HIMARs used GPS with inertial backup if it's lost. Also with modern image recognition you can give the thing a picture of what it's supposed to hit for the last bit. I'm not sure which actual techs are used. Ukraine has a market set up where fighters can order the tech they need from defence startups. It's a significant advantage over Russia which has comparable tech but is bureaucratic and corrupt as to how it's allocated. Some stuff from Google on FP-1 drones - the most popular long range one: >Technological Features: They emphasize modularity, resilience to electronic warfare, and are developing optical navigation systems to reduce reliance on GPS.

cl0ckt0wer 5mo ago

So is he exaggerating or understating their capabilities? I'm surprised they'd disclose their capabilities.

damidekronik 5mo ago
Given the stated goal, most likely exaggerating
icegreentea2 5mo ago
Ukraine has concretely demonstrated their ability to perform deep missile/drone strikes (on the order of ~1500km) onto Russian strategic and economic assets. Ukrainian drone capabilities in the near battlefield (up to ~20-30km deep) are also not contested. Russian milbloggers will openly talk about the difficulty of massing and movement in that area due to the saturation of drone coverage (and btw, this challenge is more or less symmetric). So the article is not likely exaggerating any of their capabilities. However, it is exaggerating via omission. In terms of deep strikes, the question is what the success rate of these missions are, what cadence can they sustain, what's the constellation of Russian lapses that have to line up for a successful strike, etc. Another known area of weakness (that the Ukrianians are working hard on) is the middle range. How to strike quickly at targets of opportunity in the 50-500km range field. This was/is a capability that things like GMLRS and ATACMS provided, but I imagine the Ukraine is forced to ration those munitions carefully.
tim333 5mo ago
From my understanding it seems fairly accurate. A lot of the stuff is pretty public - if drones blow up Russia's stuff they obviously know about it. Also drones get shot down so both sides can have a look at the tech. The reporting seems a bit misleading suggesting drones kill 30k Russians a month. I think that's total Russian casualties of which drones are a good chunk but not all.

outside1234 5mo ago

Ukraine is going to win this war if we can just keep funding them long enough

lokar 5mo ago
They may retain their territory, but they won’t win. No one is going to win.
JohnnyLarue 5mo ago
They should have surrendered years ago, now they're going to wind up with the same territory losses and a few hundred thousand dead on top of it.
- tim333 5mo ago
  Have you seen how the Russians have treated conquered territories with torture chambers and having to submit to the dictatorship for life? And life is often only a few months as they round the males up and force them into the Russian army to get killed.
- dwaltrip 5mo ago
  Long live the Russian empire… /s
- rasz 5mo ago
  Dead killing russians or dead in unmarked mass graves or dead killing Estonians, Lithuanians and Poles. Choices choices. Mariupol had a mass grave for tens of thousand civilians russia liberated. Had because recently they started erasing it from existence https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/insight/russia-accused-of-erasing-mariupol-mass-grave-site/gm-GMC83E83C9?gemSnapshotKey=GMC83E83C9-snapshot-1 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/insight/russia-accused-of-era...
drysine 5mo ago
And to replenish their losses Ukrainian regime snatches men on the street. There are thousands of videos made by bystanders.[0] Come and see. P.S. I love the ad I see on that site: "Over 10 million Ukrainians suffer from anxiety due to the war. Free exercises with scientifically proven effectiveness." The most important exercise now is running - it saves your life. [0] https://busification.org https://busification.org

pengaru 5mo ago

I want to believe Brovdi, good for them.

thisislife2 5mo ago

Ah, the periodic "Ukraine is winning the war" propaganda by western media to keep their citizens in a "warmongering" panic mode so that they don't oppose the hike in defence budgets. And to make the Europeans feel less guilty about not suing for peace ( https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/why-unjust-peace-better-more-war-ukraine https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/why-unjust-peace-bett... ) and egging the Ukrainians to keep fighting even though Ukraine is losing and being systematically deindustrialised and demilitarised ( https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/4-years-later-what-russias-aggression-ukraine-has-cost-it-and-what-its-gained https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/4-years-later-what-russia... ). History is repeating itself with the re-militarisation of Europe and it looks like we'll experience another World War. For all the progress they have made, the big 3 of Europe - UK, France and Russia (and emerging power Germany) - all still have a shitty imperialist mindsets which leads to this kind of repeated confrontation that drags us all into their muck. I am really beginning to believe the American pitch that they were the one who kept them all in check, after WW2 with their military bases in EU.

tim333 5mo ago
I don't think it really works like that. The bbc doesn't sit around think - ah let's push some warmongering propaganda. That's more a Russian thing. Also re Europeans not suing for peace etc. - it isn't a war between Europe and Russia or NATO and Russia or the US and Russia. It's an invasion by Russia of Ukraine and the Ukrainians are fighting back. Again that's kind of Russian propaganda to say their invasion of Ukraine is actually a war with someone else not involved. The used to say the US but how many times has Trump effectively yelled surrender at the Ukrainians now? It's history repeating itself along the Russia invades country x with a bunch of bullshit about how it's not it's fault etc which has happened about thirty times, the worst being partnering with Hitler to start WW2. Russia isn't doing that well at the moment. The western media has always been pro Ukraine but even the Z propagandists are flipping from Russia is invincible to Russia is losing now. It's a bit of an Afghanistan like situation. Russia is stuck and its regime will hopefully collapse at some point as seems traditional when it loses wars. Putin was looking very nervous last time I saw him and there are talks of palace coups.
Gud 5mo ago