3 ms·

It's going to be both, and it's because of physics. At this moment, the best way to put kinetic energy into an enemy is sticking some quantity of explosive on

It's going to be both, and it's because of physics. At this moment, the best way to put kinetic energy into an enemy is sticking some quantity of explosive on them. You have a few ways of going about this. Two we consider today: 1) a chemical charge launches a block of explosive ballistically at a closing range of mach 2-5, 2) a complex assembly of plastic/rare earths/silicon/PCBAs flies over to the enemy at somewhere around "fast bicycle" or "leisurely highway" speeds. By weight, 1 is cheaper, and all you lose is the explosive. 2 is more accurate, but that whole flying assembly is a loss. Now, when you do something cute like take one little chunk of electronics and stick it on your block of explosive, and then orbit your doodad at a nice safe distance so it beams a homing dot on the target - your ballistic explosive sees the dot and steers toward it. See what I'm getting at? Cheap as 1, accurate as 2. This is a really, really winning combo when you can pull it off, but lately, UAS ops has gotten a universe more difficult with the dirty dirty EW and now with all sorts of countermeasures. Even better reason for our little flying widgets to keep their frickin' distance. Even if they get swatted down, they can cue in shot after shot after shot, with much more bang.

magicalhippo 6mo ago
But artillery only has a short range, less than 50-60km. Ukraina is bombing trucks with FPV drones at that range now. So you'd need serious anti-drone capabilities to get the artillery close enough, and good luck if you have it sitting around deployed for any lenghth of time.
- jyounker 6mo ago
  Modern artillery doesn't sit in fixed emplacements. It fires a few shells, and then moves. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_artillery_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_artillery_system
  - magicalhippo 6mo ago
    Sure, but when they're moving they're not shooting, so those few shells better count. Both shooting and moving is very detrimental to staying hidden. And with FPV drones moving doesn't do you much good unless you move out of drone range, which as mentioned is or very nearly is 2x the effective range of such artillery systems. The attack drones don't have to be big, just big enough to score a mobility kill and the artillery is pretty much f'd in the a...
- lopsotronic 5mo ago
  I pushed a somewhat over lengthy reply above, but short version for this context is that GPS/FPV in current EW/EMI regime has unacceptable loss rates in UA (see also many many grounded / "spared" US origin "precision" weapons because GWOT era crap has totally vanilla gps), which means fiber, which means the range is back to within 20-40km. Unless the target is low risk/value, or on the move AND low value, or (most likely) you have truly bananas amount of drone magazine to burn through. Laser mesh networks I think are also being tried, but again, that's a bunch of drones. Another downside of fiber is the same downside as laser sighting - there is an arrow painted on the ground back to your position. The fiber is no viz to your eyeball, but not to dynamic filters on your drone's EOIR. That will get back to counterbatteries or enemy fiber drone - and if their first arty shot is a guided arty (tube or rocket) you don't get the warning of ranging "framing" shots. The WW2 experience mindset couldn't be a worse metaphor here.
tristanj 6mo ago
Traditionally artillery shells (155mm as discussed in the article) have a maximum effective range of 30km. That means that the artillery vehicle can only function within 30km of the front line. Drones have dramatically changed this equation. The current drone "kill zone", which used to be several km from the front line, is now 15-25km deep, and Ukraine is pushing this to 50-100km. That means artillery cannot operate without being targeted by FPV drones. It is also becoming logistically difficult to supply the large number of artillery shells needed without getting struck. Once the kill-zone reaches 30km, which it will by 2027, artillery will be completely useless.
- lopsotronic 6mo ago
  First off, disclaimer about the camera bias. Every FPV strike comes with a video. When a Ukrainian brigade drops a 152mm shell, nobody on Telegram sees it. When a $500 quadcopter lobs an RKG-3 that's a 30-second clip with a soundtrack, and the shooter can decide whether to show it, or not show it. The visibility asymmetry shapes both public perception and - increasingly - survey data getting cited. Combat armies work as interacting systems, not 1v1 contest. Artillery clears treelines to give FPVs clear LoS, FPVs take out FOs before they can call back grids. No one would fire their guns for a 1-2 man infil, and no one sends a single drone to a revetted hard target - but working together, each one is better than the sums of their parts. Tube artillery is not going to get mission-killed by a hand grenade's worth of munitions. That takes serious explosives. If you're spending 5-10 drones per hit (see disclaimer), now you're talking a big expenditure for effect, and unless you hit crew or magazines, you can't really disable the thing. Which all would be fine because drones have the range advantage . . mostly. Howayyyver . . . range advantage of UAS has gotten seriously bitten by the increasingly obnoxious EW and jamming situation. Sure, vision AI can do terminal guidance[1], but you have to be pretty close to something before you can see it. That means navigating in a combat zone where every satellite is jammed all to hell - and navigating is hard. Ask the RAF bomber force circa 1942. Hell, ask pretty much any UA soldier firing one of the many US GPS guided doohickeys. Fiber drones do fix this problem, but now the range is dialed back to 10-40km, and you're in the arty zone again. Ultimately "artillery vs. drones" is a category error - much like the constant US obsession with "fighters" or "bombers" or the increasingly meaningless ship classes. "Precision Fires" will take many forms. Tube artillery with bolt on laser guidance, rocket artillery popping gliding munitions riding either lasers or winding up close enough to use their onboard EOIR, alllll the way up to the lancets and the shaheds on the pure UAS side, with the high performance cruise missiles as the kings of that hill. There's a spectrum there, and the harder your fight is, the more of that spectrum you're going to absolutely need. If anything, the Ukraine experience has most definitely shown that, both in the developing Russian "reconnaissance-strike complex" and the increasing capabilities of both sides to shoot and scoot in 90 seconds like CAESAR units. If this forum did pics I would photoshop a cartoon of an artillery shell and a drone holding hands with BEST FRIENDS 4EVER t-shirts. [1] and no one feels really all that safe with a boxed tiny dumb vision model zooming around with its safeties off . . and no comms. Has it been done? Sure. Were they happy about it? Oh lord no. There's a reason these sorts of systems are still heavily in testland outside of horrible desperate straits like UA or the Gulf.

magicalhippo 6mo ago

But artillery only has a short range, less than 50-60km. Ukraina is bombing trucks with FPV drones at that range now. So you'd need serious anti-drone capabilities to get the artillery close enough, and good luck if you have it sitting around deployed for any lenghth of time.

jyounker 6mo ago
Modern artillery doesn't sit in fixed emplacements. It fires a few shells, and then moves. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_artillery_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_artillery_system
- magicalhippo 6mo ago
  Sure, but when they're moving they're not shooting, so those few shells better count. Both shooting and moving is very detrimental to staying hidden. And with FPV drones moving doesn't do you much good unless you move out of drone range, which as mentioned is or very nearly is 2x the effective range of such artillery systems. The attack drones don't have to be big, just big enough to score a mobility kill and the artillery is pretty much f'd in the a...
lopsotronic 5mo ago
I pushed a somewhat over lengthy reply above, but short version for this context is that GPS/FPV in current EW/EMI regime has unacceptable loss rates in UA (see also many many grounded / "spared" US origin "precision" weapons because GWOT era crap has totally vanilla gps), which means fiber, which means the range is back to within 20-40km. Unless the target is low risk/value, or on the move AND low value, or (most likely) you have truly bananas amount of drone magazine to burn through. Laser mesh networks I think are also being tried, but again, that's a bunch of drones. Another downside of fiber is the same downside as laser sighting - there is an arrow painted on the ground back to your position. The fiber is no viz to your eyeball, but not to dynamic filters on your drone's EOIR. That will get back to counterbatteries or enemy fiber drone - and if their first arty shot is a guided arty (tube or rocket) you don't get the warning of ranging "framing" shots. The WW2 experience mindset couldn't be a worse metaphor here.

tristanj 6mo ago

Traditionally artillery shells (155mm as discussed in the article) have a maximum effective range of 30km. That means that the artillery vehicle can only function within 30km of the front line. Drones have dramatically changed this equation. The current drone "kill zone", which used to be several km from the front line, is now 15-25km deep, and Ukraine is pushing this to 50-100km. That means artillery cannot operate without being targeted by FPV drones. It is also becoming logistically difficult to supply the large number of artillery shells needed without getting struck. Once the kill-zone reaches 30km, which it will by 2027, artillery will be completely useless.

lopsotronic 6mo ago
First off, disclaimer about the camera bias. Every FPV strike comes with a video. When a Ukrainian brigade drops a 152mm shell, nobody on Telegram sees it. When a $500 quadcopter lobs an RKG-3 that's a 30-second clip with a soundtrack, and the shooter can decide whether to show it, or not show it. The visibility asymmetry shapes both public perception and - increasingly - survey data getting cited. Combat armies work as interacting systems, not 1v1 contest. Artillery clears treelines to give FPVs clear LoS, FPVs take out FOs before they can call back grids. No one would fire their guns for a 1-2 man infil, and no one sends a single drone to a revetted hard target - but working together, each one is better than the sums of their parts. Tube artillery is not going to get mission-killed by a hand grenade's worth of munitions. That takes serious explosives. If you're spending 5-10 drones per hit (see disclaimer), now you're talking a big expenditure for effect, and unless you hit crew or magazines, you can't really disable the thing. Which all would be fine because drones have the range advantage . . mostly. Howayyyver . . . range advantage of UAS has gotten seriously bitten by the increasingly obnoxious EW and jamming situation. Sure, vision AI can do terminal guidance[1], but you have to be pretty close to something before you can see it. That means navigating in a combat zone where every satellite is jammed all to hell - and navigating is hard. Ask the RAF bomber force circa 1942. Hell, ask pretty much any UA soldier firing one of the many US GPS guided doohickeys. Fiber drones do fix this problem, but now the range is dialed back to 10-40km, and you're in the arty zone again. Ultimately "artillery vs. drones" is a category error - much like the constant US obsession with "fighters" or "bombers" or the increasingly meaningless ship classes. "Precision Fires" will take many forms. Tube artillery with bolt on laser guidance, rocket artillery popping gliding munitions riding either lasers or winding up close enough to use their onboard EOIR, alllll the way up to the lancets and the shaheds on the pure UAS side, with the high performance cruise missiles as the kings of that hill. There's a spectrum there, and the harder your fight is, the more of that spectrum you're going to absolutely need. If anything, the Ukraine experience has most definitely shown that, both in the developing Russian "reconnaissance-strike complex" and the increasing capabilities of both sides to shoot and scoot in 90 seconds like CAESAR units. If this forum did pics I would photoshop a cartoon of an artillery shell and a drone holding hands with BEST FRIENDS 4EVER t-shirts. [1] and no one feels really all that safe with a boxed tiny dumb vision model zooming around with its safeties off . . and no comms. Has it been done? Sure. Were they happy about it? Oh lord no. There's a reason these sorts of systems are still heavily in testland outside of horrible desperate straits like UA or the Gulf.