3 ms·

All the drone footage is actually pretty horrific to see.

by yonaguska 3mo ago

kilroy123 3mo ago
I agree. Nightmare fuel.
meindnoch 3mo ago
Depends on who's on the receiving end.
floatrock 3mo ago
It's always been pretty horrific. We just didn't have bodycam livestreams invented during trench warfare times.
LgWoodenBadger 3mo ago
Hopefully making the real horrors of war visible to the public/world will make war less frequent. Alas...
- disgruntledphd2 3mo ago
  People have been saying this since Vietnam (and actually now that I think about a little more, this may actually have happened).
  - randcraw 3mo ago
    In the late 1960s daily TV news coverage revealed the horrors of war to the American public as never before (just as Brady's photos had done in the Civil War). That palpable gruesomeness was instrumental in the rising tide of unpopularity enjoyed by the war (and Johnson) by the elections of 1968.
- scottyah 3mo ago
  Humans just adapt and normalize things too quickly, so long term seeing more violence will just desensitize people and make it more acceptable. Just look at the difference between protected kids in suburbs vs kids growing up in bad areas.
- foxglacier 3mo ago
  Has seeing the horrors of the Ukraine war made you want the west to stop it and force a surrender? More horrors don't make people want less war. If anything, it may be the opposite. People pretend to be anti-war right up until there's a war and then suddenly it turns out they're actually anti-losing-the-war.
  - toyg 3mo ago
    Surrendering to an aggressor will let the aggressor get what they want, hence making war more appealing. So it's coherent for anti-war people to resist and make it as hard as possible for an aggressor. Even Gandhi justified defensive war.
  - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
    I want less war. I'm against attacking other countries, but totally in favor of defending yourself if you get attacked. Those aren't contradictory statements.
    - brnt 3mo ago
      Never start a fight but always finish one.
    - foxglacier 3mo ago
      That sounds noble until it doesn't work in reality and people always find reasons to justify wars. If it was so simple, it would be easy for most people to get on board with and most wars would end. For example, do you agree that Britain's and France's appeasement of Germany before WWII was the right thing because an attack wouldn't have been self-defense? Or, what about attacking another country to help defend an ally who's being attacked by them? That's not defensive, so I guess it's wrong by your standard for any other country to defend Ukraine. What about defending them by supplying arms and soldiers? The line gets blurry fast. How about re-taking some recently lost territory? Is that wrong? For example would it be wrong for Ukraine to attack Russia to regain its eastern areas that Russia took at the beginning of the war? Or for Russia to retake any other parts of the soviet union? How about either North or South Korea attacking the other? If everybody opposed such non-defensive wars, they would be severely disadvantaged to a country that incrementally takes pieces of their territory in a ratchet effect. What about "liberating" the people of another country from a brutal dictator? I'm sure you'll oppose this because it's like Iraq or Syria, but is there really no case where it's justified? Not even Pol Pot's Cambodia where it might have saved a quarter of the population from death it somebody had intervened?
ndiddy 3mo ago
Yeah FPV drones have massively increased the cost of invading a country. It's basically a return to WWI style trench warfare, except no man's land is the size of the range of the drones (20+ KM).
- red-iron-pine 3mo ago
  the gray zone is ~200km so long as you have ISR drones able to see it artillery, missiles, and long range drones are in the mix too. AI enabled spotting makes ISR detection rapid and effective. some kubernetes container spots a random pixel that means hidden vehicles and a HIMARS strike is dispatched ASAP
- mrguyorama 3mo ago
  It's a million times worse than that. Drones have commoditization accuracy and precision and dramatically improved ISR, and that has produced a dramatic jump in lethality. You used to be able to take a hit and survive a war. Those days are gone. Now you die because 1kg of C4 blew up your entire ass, or you take a less dramatic hit but you will never be dragged back to a field hospital. Eventually the US or similar will have to get into this kind of war, and there will be a come to jesus moment for all the hoo rah americans who think your chances of surviving a war are based on anything other than sheer luck. This is Bad, man. Nukes already showed you can't make a weapon so crazily deadly and destructive that man would end war, so things will be bleak for the rest of humanity's reign.
ponector 3mo ago
A month ago Sternenko had a crowdfunding campaign for the secret drones. Recently he showed the fruits of that campaign: new drones have better connection and now you can watch kills in 4k! Also recent advances in battery tech brought increased energy density: the same drones which had range 20km now have 40km.
rayiner 3mo ago
[flagged]
CoastalCoder 3mo ago
Most of us who build weapons of war live with some awful dilemmas. One of them is: We want to perform our work skillfully, effectively, and professionally. But we never want our tools to actually be needed. (Another is that we can't effectively create a shield without the risk of it being used as a sword.)
- Jtsummers 3mo ago
  Or as my dad, a CSAR pilot, used to say, "I'd be happy to be out of a job."
- YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
  Well then don't make weapons of war. If you make a hammer, it can always be used to murder someone, but if you make an AK-47, there's only one way it can be used. So if you don't want what you make to be used for killing, don't make an AK-47. If you 're good at toolmaking, choose to make tools that are not weapons.
pjc50 3mo ago
Yes, but it's not necessarily more horrific than the unseen effect of the 155mm shells. It's just that those don't come with killcams. (The killcam is a WW2 invention, starting with linking cine cameras to the machine guns of fighter aircraft)
4a443da9 3mo ago
Actually nothing cheers me up more than seeing Russians being hunted down and killed by drones. Fuck them.
- SanjayMehta 3mo ago
  You must be British.

All the drone footage is actually pretty horrific to see.

kilroy123 3mo ago

I agree. Nightmare fuel.

meindnoch 3mo ago

Depends on who's on the receiving end.

floatrock 3mo ago

It's always been pretty horrific. We just didn't have bodycam livestreams invented during trench warfare times.

LgWoodenBadger 3mo ago

Hopefully making the real horrors of war visible to the public/world will make war less frequent. Alas...

disgruntledphd2 3mo ago
People have been saying this since Vietnam (and actually now that I think about a little more, this may actually have happened).
- randcraw 3mo ago
  In the late 1960s daily TV news coverage revealed the horrors of war to the American public as never before (just as Brady's photos had done in the Civil War). That palpable gruesomeness was instrumental in the rising tide of unpopularity enjoyed by the war (and Johnson) by the elections of 1968.
scottyah 3mo ago
Humans just adapt and normalize things too quickly, so long term seeing more violence will just desensitize people and make it more acceptable. Just look at the difference between protected kids in suburbs vs kids growing up in bad areas.
foxglacier 3mo ago
Has seeing the horrors of the Ukraine war made you want the west to stop it and force a surrender? More horrors don't make people want less war. If anything, it may be the opposite. People pretend to be anti-war right up until there's a war and then suddenly it turns out they're actually anti-losing-the-war.
- toyg 3mo ago
  Surrendering to an aggressor will let the aggressor get what they want, hence making war more appealing. So it's coherent for anti-war people to resist and make it as hard as possible for an aggressor. Even Gandhi justified defensive war.
- amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
  I want less war. I'm against attacking other countries, but totally in favor of defending yourself if you get attacked. Those aren't contradictory statements.
  - brnt 3mo ago
    Never start a fight but always finish one.
  - foxglacier 3mo ago
    That sounds noble until it doesn't work in reality and people always find reasons to justify wars. If it was so simple, it would be easy for most people to get on board with and most wars would end. For example, do you agree that Britain's and France's appeasement of Germany before WWII was the right thing because an attack wouldn't have been self-defense? Or, what about attacking another country to help defend an ally who's being attacked by them? That's not defensive, so I guess it's wrong by your standard for any other country to defend Ukraine. What about defending them by supplying arms and soldiers? The line gets blurry fast. How about re-taking some recently lost territory? Is that wrong? For example would it be wrong for Ukraine to attack Russia to regain its eastern areas that Russia took at the beginning of the war? Or for Russia to retake any other parts of the soviet union? How about either North or South Korea attacking the other? If everybody opposed such non-defensive wars, they would be severely disadvantaged to a country that incrementally takes pieces of their territory in a ratchet effect. What about "liberating" the people of another country from a brutal dictator? I'm sure you'll oppose this because it's like Iraq or Syria, but is there really no case where it's justified? Not even Pol Pot's Cambodia where it might have saved a quarter of the population from death it somebody had intervened?

ndiddy 3mo ago

Yeah FPV drones have massively increased the cost of invading a country. It's basically a return to WWI style trench warfare, except no man's land is the size of the range of the drones (20+ KM).

red-iron-pine 3mo ago
the gray zone is ~200km so long as you have ISR drones able to see it artillery, missiles, and long range drones are in the mix too. AI enabled spotting makes ISR detection rapid and effective. some kubernetes container spots a random pixel that means hidden vehicles and a HIMARS strike is dispatched ASAP
mrguyorama 3mo ago
It's a million times worse than that. Drones have commoditization accuracy and precision and dramatically improved ISR, and that has produced a dramatic jump in lethality. You used to be able to take a hit and survive a war. Those days are gone. Now you die because 1kg of C4 blew up your entire ass, or you take a less dramatic hit but you will never be dragged back to a field hospital. Eventually the US or similar will have to get into this kind of war, and there will be a come to jesus moment for all the hoo rah americans who think your chances of surviving a war are based on anything other than sheer luck. This is Bad, man. Nukes already showed you can't make a weapon so crazily deadly and destructive that man would end war, so things will be bleak for the rest of humanity's reign.

ponector 3mo ago

A month ago Sternenko had a crowdfunding campaign for the secret drones. Recently he showed the fruits of that campaign: new drones have better connection and now you can watch kills in 4k! Also recent advances in battery tech brought increased energy density: the same drones which had range 20km now have 40km.

rayiner 3mo ago

[flagged]

CoastalCoder 3mo ago

Most of us who build weapons of war live with some awful dilemmas. One of them is: We want to perform our work skillfully, effectively, and professionally. But we never want our tools to actually be needed. (Another is that we can't effectively create a shield without the risk of it being used as a sword.)

Jtsummers 3mo ago
Or as my dad, a CSAR pilot, used to say, "I'd be happy to be out of a job."
YeGoblynQueenne 3mo ago
Well then don't make weapons of war. If you make a hammer, it can always be used to murder someone, but if you make an AK-47, there's only one way it can be used. So if you don't want what you make to be used for killing, don't make an AK-47. If you 're good at toolmaking, choose to make tools that are not weapons.

pjc50 3mo ago

Yes, but it's not necessarily more horrific than the unseen effect of the 155mm shells. It's just that those don't come with killcams. (The killcam is a WW2 invention, starting with linking cine cameras to the machine guns of fighter aircraft)

4a443da9 3mo ago

Actually nothing cheers me up more than seeing Russians being hunted down and killed by drones. Fuck them.

SanjayMehta 3mo ago
You must be British.