Russia invades Ukraine. Volume 2

[motco]

Arnold Cunningham said:

blueg33 said:

Have we given the Ukrainians Archer?

Artillery than can fire 3 rounds and be gone before the first round has impacted.

https://youtu.be/d8x8ITwd4Vg

Wow. So it's on the move again before the first round even lands. Impressive.

"Stops, shoots, and leaves" (apologies to Lyn Truss).

[Digga]

Derek Smith said:

Every new weapon that changes the course of battle is soon out of date when counter-measures are introduced. The problem is super-sophistication. All this technology costs and one country just having a plethora of drones means that their potential enemies have to either buy expensive counter-measure or start being nice to one-another.

Escalation is always expensive.

There is that wonderful phrase; every army is ready and prepared to win the battle it last fought. Innovation, in military terms, is terrifically tricky.

[Sway]

Derek Smith said:

Every new weapon that changes the course of battle is soon out of date when counter-measures are introduced. The problem is super-sophistication. All this technology costs and one country just having a plethora of drones means that their potential enemies have to either buy expensive counter-measure or start being nice to one-another.

Escalation is always expensive.

The countermeasure to cheap drones can also be cheap...

No one is going to start 'being nice to each other' because the enemy can hurt them cheaply.

[mondeoman]

Sway said:

Derek Smith said:

Every new weapon that changes the course of battle is soon out of date when counter-measures are introduced. The problem is super-sophistication. All this technology costs and one country just having a plethora of drones means that their potential enemies have to either buy expensive counter-measure or start being nice to one-another.

Escalation is always expensive.

The countermeasure to cheap drones can also be cheap...

No one is going to start 'being nice to each other' because the enemy can hurt them cheaply.

Now every tank and piece of artillery has to have upward looking radar and automatic guns that can differentiate between seagulls, blackbirds and birds of prey and drones, at night.
Piece of piss.

[98elise]

mondeoman said:

Sway said:

Derek Smith said:

Every new weapon that changes the course of battle is soon out of date when counter-measures are introduced. The problem is super-sophistication. All this technology costs and one country just having a plethora of drones means that their potential enemies have to either buy expensive counter-measure or start being nice to one-another.

Escalation is always expensive.

The countermeasure to cheap drones can also be cheap...

No one is going to start 'being nice to each other' because the enemy can hurt them cheaply.

Now every tank and piece of artillery has to have upward looking radar and automatic guns that can differentiate between seagulls, blackbirds and birds of prey and drones, at night.
Piece of piss.

That's not being suggested at all. You don't need to defend individual tanks, just the area they are operating in.

Existing systems don't have problems with seagulls or night.

[TTmonkey]

98elise said:

You're imagining something that doesn exist, yet the fully automated gun systems to shoot them down has existed since the 80's.

If cheap means you can send 1000's, then the response is to fit a bigger magazine to your gun system. Fire rate for a Phalanx system is 4500 rounds per minute.

Other systems have programmable explosive rounds with lots of fragments to create clouds of projectiles.

Drones are great, but being unsophisticated and slow makes them vulnerable.

However, to counter this…. The Phalanx/CIWS type weapons only holds 1500 odd rounds in its drum. So a few bursts and it needs refilling. It will need to fire multiple rounds at each target to destroy it…. So would soon be swamped with a drone swarm. It also uses its own outgoing rounds to walk fire onto targets and correct aim…. So it expends hundreds of rounds to hit a fast flying target. Obviously static drones are simple but the small suicide drones are low and fast.

It also costs millions and needs a team to set up and maintain. And paints its own radar signature so needs protecting from anti radiation missile attack.

Any good for defending a few tanks in some woodland in Ukraine…. Not really. Not cost effective and not really suitable for mobile operations. Used to defend bases and ships, yes, very good, usually.

Also, useful at sea where the radar can see for miles but on land, terrain and woodland are going to hinder targeting. It would have to be very close to the tanks to protect from a small drone. So you would need hundreds of them in Ukraine because of the huge battle front, and they cost millions.

Not something you are going to deploy to protect some grunts in an old tank in the middle of nowhere.

And didn’t stop their flag ship being hit by two missiles either.

[BikeBikeBIke]

mondeoman said:

Now every tank and piece of artillery has to have upward looking radar and automatic guns that can differentiate between seagulls, blackbirds and birds of prey and drones, at night.
Piece of piss.

Or one infantryman with a shotgun and some (IR) binoculars.

I'm really not convinced we've seen anything in this conflict that changes the nature of warfare. NLAWS and drones are just subsets/progressions of existing problems.

[Sway]

mondeoman said:

Sway said:

Derek Smith said:

Every new weapon that changes the course of battle is soon out of date when counter-measures are introduced. The problem is super-sophistication. All this technology costs and one country just having a plethora of drones means that their potential enemies have to either buy expensive counter-measure or start being nice to one-another.

Escalation is always expensive.

The countermeasure to cheap drones can also be cheap...

No one is going to start 'being nice to each other' because the enemy can hurt them cheaply.

Now every tank and piece of artillery has to have upward looking radar and automatic guns that can differentiate between seagulls, blackbirds and birds of prey and drones, at night.
Piece of piss.

Why?

You're applying much stricter criteria than are necessary.

Birds don't emit EM.

[sisu]

It will be interesting to see if the Ukrainians are going to surge east from Kharkiv to cut off the supply route from Belgerod to Izyum. As this week it seems they are on a roll.
Its a high risk option. But this would starve this area of supplies and the Russians are already compromised in terms of ammo and tanks on the ground.

[speedchick]

McDonalds are giving up in Russia

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61463876

[CrutyRammers]

BikeBikeBIke said:

CrutyRammers said:

Presumably the issue here is that they're hard to see. If you've got proper AA set ups and radar and whathaveyou, they probably are easily countered. But if you daren't turn on your AA radar or jammer because you'll be spotted and attract a load of loitering munitions and/or artillery fire, maybe that all goes out of the window. Or maybe they're only using them where there is no defence, to pick off odd units here and there.

I think it'll prove the opposite. Swarms of cheap, semi autonomous drones could be very very hard to counter.

In daylight a few blokes with binos and a shotgun could do damage. So in daylight this is just another symptom of Russia's lack of infantry.

Stationary/slow + fragile + low aren't feeling like desirable qualities in aircraft.

Plus the damage is being done by artillery in this war - the only reason it feels like drones are significant is because the footage ends up online.

I could be wrong, I often am.

Well I'm guessing you've not done much shooting with a shotgun These are generally flying above effective shotgun range, which isn't really very far. You've also now taken a guy away from each squad to watch the sky all the time. It's the lack of air superiority as said above, which in turn means they can't use their own air defence radars. Slow and fragile they are, but if they are also unseen, then that doesn't really matter. As for artillery, well they appear to be using drones as spotters for it. We've also seen them directing infantry in urban environments to great advantage. I'd be surprised if we don't see more formalised versions for those tasks in future.

[pingu393]

BikeBikeBIke said:

From Telegram:


"I work at the bus station in Rostov. I see a lot of guys in uniform during the day, returning “from there”. Little optimism. All as one say, fked up utter."

The threat to all Germans was "You'll be sent to the Russian Front". It sounds like more and more Russians are finding out about the Ukrainian Front. Good.

[Digga]

sisu said:

It will be interesting to see if the Ukrainians are going to surge east from Kharkiv to cut off the supply route from Belgerod to Izyum. As this week it seems they are on a roll.
Its a high risk option. But this would starve this area of supplies and the Russians are already compromised in terms of ammo and tanks on the ground.

Someone will be along shortly accusing you of being an armchair general.

Might was well accuse me too, because looking at the fact the route supplys a good chunk of the RA's eastern Ukraine front, it seems to kill several birds with one stone. I would guess, they would only need to get long-range howitzers close enough to cause real trouble.

[speedy_thrills]

The next step on those small drones dropping anti-tank munitions should be to impart rotation along the central axis just before dropping them. The initial aerodynamic instability (wobbling) as they start to fall is likely costing them some vital accuracy.

[Arnold Cunningham]

I am fascinated by the possibilities presented by "commodity" drones - with cheap, mass produced hardware. All the clever stuff goes into the software or base station. Can see this war could change the nature of warfare quite substantially.

A trench - useless if you can fly a swarm of disposable drones over it on khamikaze missions. And I use the word swarm on purpose - small, cheap, lightweight. Flown as part of a single unit, not individually.

[andy43]

And without causing thread drift, it won't just be the armies of the world looking at Amazon drones that go bang.
Interesting comments above.
This is (sadly) a really good thread.

[TTmonkey]

BikeBikeBIke said:

mondeoman said:

Now every tank and piece of artillery has to have upward looking radar and automatic guns that can differentiate between seagulls, blackbirds and birds of prey and drones, at night.
Piece of piss.

Or one infantryman with a shotgun and some (IR) binoculars.

I'm really not convinced we've seen anything in this conflict that changes the nature of warfare. NLAWS and drones are just subsets/progressions of existing problems.

The drones are dropping their bombs at about 300 feet altitude. Not sure a shot gun would bring one down at that height.

[mondeoman]

98elise said:

mondeoman said:

Sway said:

Derek Smith said:

Every new weapon that changes the course of battle is soon out of date when counter-measures are introduced. The problem is super-sophistication. All this technology costs and one country just having a plethora of drones means that their potential enemies have to either buy expensive counter-measure or start being nice to one-another.

Escalation is always expensive.

The countermeasure to cheap drones can also be cheap...

No one is going to start 'being nice to each other' because the enemy can hurt them cheaply.

Now every tank and piece of artillery has to have upward looking radar and automatic guns that can differentiate between seagulls, blackbirds and birds of prey and drones, at night.
Piece of piss.

That's not being suggested at all. You don't need to defend individual tanks, just the area they are operating in.

Existing systems don't have problems with seagulls or night.

"tank regiment" defence is one thing, but what's going on in UKR is single number dispersed tanks and artillery being taken out by drones, at night. Hence each tank requiring its own close support defence system, be that a bloke with a shotgun and IR goggles that can scan 360, or a stand-alone automated system.
EIther way it adds substantially to the overhead for the aggressor.

[Arnold Cunningham]

No, but a directed EMP would. Which I why I said swarm - when it's cheap & cheerful hardware, it's disposable.

And, for example, the entire OS is in RAM. So when it powers on on the base station, the OS is loaded.
And when it powers off through being captured/damaged/lost whatever, there's no software left on it to reverse engineer.

Plus many many other ideas including mapping out the internals of underground buildings and bunkers.....

[eharding]

Arnold Cunningham said:

A trench - useless if you can fly a swarm of disposable drones over it on khamikaze missions. And I use the word swarm on purpose - small, cheap, lightweight. Flown as part of a single unit, not individually.

You need a Phalanx cannon at the end of every trench to be on the safe side (remember the scene in Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels with the Bren gun in the cage?). After the first engagement, when everyone in the trench has finished bleeding from their ears, they give the Phalanx operator a shotgun with a set of night-vision binos, and make him go and stand out in the open with a flashing IR beacon on top of his helmet.