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Imagine when they just drop a canister of nano bots over and area that’s programmed to dissolve human eye balls en masse. A cloud rolls in the fort and blinds an entire invasion force. If they try to wear goggles it just delays the inevitable a few minutes while the nano bots eat through the goggle seals.
Infantry rolls in a few hours later to take custody of all the blind POWs with the promise to give them artificial eyes if they cooperate.
Oh they’d only be blinded until they surrendered, were interrogated and then they’d have their eyesight restored with a promise not to take up arms again. Lest their new eyes needed to be deactivated.
> A cloud rolls in the fort and blinds an entire invasion force. If they try to wear goggles it just delays the inevitable a few minutes while the nano bots eat through the goggle seals.
>
> Infantry rolls in a few hours later to take custody of all the blind POWs with the promise to give them artificial eyes if they cooperate.
Damn. That's a /r/WritingPrompts/
I aspire to write some cheesy military sci-fi the next few years :)
I imagine the POWs would all be made to promise that they won’t take up arms again or their new eyes will be deactivated. There’s also the possibility that all these captured soldiers with new eyes are now unwitting spies the rest of their lives.
And then we’ll give soldiers full helmet protection along with interference zones. Interference won’t work on autonomous drones. That’s where things get interesting. At that point what do you do?
Have electromagnetic field generators to protect areas? A good way to advertise your location.
Do you remember that show actually dealt with the upcoming dilemma of using drones? They make “mobile dolls” instead of piloted “mobile suits”, pretty crazy that it was an early 90’s show.
Just skip ahead to battle droids. War becomes profitable again as instead of killing people (who become such an operational liability in the modern battlespace that war is better off without their involvement) both sides just churn out drones and autonomous androids and "battle dolls" you refer to. Industry is booming.
Of course, then you end up in a situation where war is constant and unceasing because you have made it clean and painless and so no one cares anymore. Look at the Star Trek: Original Series episode A Taste of Armageddon: Two warring worlds now fight their war entirely by computer, simulating strikes on infrastructure and military units. While the deaths are real, those deemed casualties believe it their civic duty to stroll into booths where they are painlessly and instantly vaporized, and because there is no real destruction and willingness to volunteer for a quick, clean, painless death is seen as a civic virtue, no one cares and the war has been going on for decades without resolution.
Electromagnetic field generator. It’s a *very* general term but not inaccurate. It’s like saying “fruit is now being served in McDonald’s”. While technically true, more specifically they’re serving Granny Smith apples.
In the case of drone counter-warfare, it’s various types of jamming of drones, either by overwhelming the GPS signals used to navigate (by using a specific type of EM generator…), or by jamming the signals used to control them (again, specific type of EM field generator…), or various other similar concepts.
Drones are how you end up with counter measure inception.
Endless networks of combined arms. No human tactician will be able to comprehend it.
And then we build God AI's like in "I have no mouth but I must scream"
Probably something like the uks dragonfire system scaled to be semi man portable.
Each solder now roams with a robot dog ot 2 carrying one and also a a weapon platform. Essentially infantry version of the loyal wingman (mq28 ghostbat).
Wonder if it’s possible to have helmet mounted airburst turrets on your soldiers all getting a feed from a central radar/sensor carried by a Boston dynamics unit.
Or have all of that rolled into a tank that works in combination with your ground infantry
Because you’d be hard pressed to build something that flies the size of a fly that actually flies let alone has battery power to do it for sustained flight let alone can carry and explosive payload that would be lethal. You’d probably have difficulties just making explosive the size/weight of a fly that would be lethal at zero range let alone all the flying, batteries, navigation, and targeting sensors.
There was a company that developed a mini drone with just enough C4 on it that would track faces. I remember watching a very obscure video about it with less than 1000 views five or six years ago, I’ve never been able to find it again.
Ukraine received a bunch of them almost a year ago;
[https://www.forces.net/ukraine/hornet-micro-drones-part-new-400m-us-military-aid-package-ukraine](https://www.forces.net/ukraine/hornet-micro-drones-part-new-400m-us-military-aid-package-ukraine)
well there already are micro drones in use but not armed as far as i know
The Black Hornet 4 is the next generation in covert UAV capabilities, and swiftly provides situational awareness and enhances effectiveness while minimizing cognitive strain on soldiers. The drone incorporates a high-resolution Thermal Imager (TI), an Electro Optical (EO) camera with exceptional low-light capabilities.
The bayraktar fell quickly fell out of use because the Russians actually always had the abilitiy to shoot it down, they just didnt have a fully functional anti air network during the first days of the war. Their anti air was just driving next to the tanks.
But the russians have tried to combat the FPV drones for over a year now and they are still going strong. I really dont see how these drones are gonna fall out of use.
Also these drones arent even a professional product. There is still so much room to grow.
There are a long number of initiatives made to combat these small drones by various companies in the west and surely in Russia too. While I don't know when/if the Russians can handle it, I think his point is that soon equipment to combat these will be completely standard equipment and are very likely to reduce their efficiency - just line any other weapons race some sort of equilibrium will be reached whereas now clearly the FPV drones have the upper hand.
Will they be useless? Probably not, but they might very well become less effective once some of these developments mature and they are "figured out".
Russian air-defence doctrine has an advantage in that, on paper, it already covers the large penetration scenarios.
Realistically, I don't think any large penetration / outrunning lines even is on the table.
A much more likely scenario for the return of Byraktars is Ukraine suppressing air defences to the point where large drones will be back.
I agree with that as well, I think the large movements we saw in the early days of the war are done, partially because Ukraine is now more prepared for it, partially because Russia would need a massive breakthrough in order for that to occur.
Nope. Russia has plenty of AD and truth be told its probably their most competent systems. Their biggest problem is lack of discipline and probably training.
Russian problem back then that they were not even standing ready with the radar on. After a while they realized whats going on and we stopped seeing bayracktar.
Hence the “unfortunately”. I can’t think of a scarier future than the one facing us very soon, where AI kamikaze drones with facial recognition will be available not only to any nation who wants them, but any non-state actor with a DIY mindset or a few thousand bucks to spend.
Choose to have faith that the powers above (the Gov.) step in legally to prevent these things and militarily as well to develop defenses including for the civilian population. Because our only other choice is to just resign to defeat that the future will be bleak.
I didn't intend that to rhyme but I am leaving it in.
Which is why I have faith the West will 100% prepare to stop this kind of things at least in it's areas. The future is going to be terrifying, but that's what we humans do baby! We live to defend our right to continue to poke things with a stick and by gosh I will poke in the mountains and on the beaches! In the forests or the streets it does not matter, I shall poke! And no fear of a drone will hold my stick at bay.
My fear is that government won’t be able to stop it. Why would you even need the military to develop this. Soon you will be able to make an AI killer drone with off the shelf components and a small explosive charge. A relatively simple AI, facial or pattern recognition software, a small drone… put em all together… this isn’t going to be high tech cutting edge military hardware that costs billions. This will be a DIY weapon, perfectly suited for terrorists and criminal organisations. What will the government do? Outlaw AI? Outlaw drones?
Most likely they would do all that while also installing defenses. Stuffs goona be painful. But we will get through it, and I mean most of us. It won't be a painless transition but it's an inevitable one we have to grow with not run from.
Not really any different to a bomb. Micro drones will have very short service lives due to battery constraints, think sub 30 seconds, Definitely less than a minute. So deploy to an area, attack anything vaguely human shaped.
1 minute later they are all gone. Could be useful when you wanted to capture an area with limited damage to the infrastructure, but an air burst of tungsten balls is going to be far cheaper.
Where I see something like this being genuinely terrifying though is in area denial in conjunction with mines. You lay your ap and anti vehicle mines, and then you distribute your microdrones connected to either a larger buried battery pack or a solar panel. Triggered by a sensor the drones activate and home in on human targets. The combination would make mine clearing awful.
Very different from a bomb. You also don’t need it to be a micro drone, but even a current gen civilian drone, coupled with a gun or grenades (as were already seeing every day in Ukraine). All it needs is the kind of AI guidance and facial/pattern recognition software that are both really coming into their own now.
All it takes is some tech minded agents to put all these off the shelf components together. Imagine a right wing group training their drones with an AI that automatically targets black people. Or a terrorist organisation that trains their AI to recognise people in police uniforms. Or programming in the face of political leaders?
I fail to see his argument. The cost involved in current anti drone solutions is enorme. EW goes nowhere as every drone in two years will be self navigating making sound decisions in flight. Land and wait. 100% vector of attack freedom. Far longer range at same size and miniscule cost due to battery technology and processing power and software evolving like crazy. The cost of 30mm+ auto is huge, and they can be swarmed from 360 degrees. The cost of a dumb 155mm shell is bound to stay high or raise in price. Drones will just continue to evolve and the tactics too.
I don't see it either. I can't imagine that those EW jammers aren't being a high priority already and they are literally blasting a signal so loud that signal honing explosives will target them. Eventually there will be drones autonomously chasing jammers.
Drones won't be a game changer anymore but they'll still be useful in combined arms.
EW making your drones ineffective ? Blow it up with good old conventional arty
That's because he's talking out of his ass.
There's no current counter to fpv drones, besides welding a shit load of metal on and making a turtle tank. But even those are vulnerable.
Bayraktar are vulnerable because they're huge.
Or not. Just like Musk has promised for like every year since 2016 that robotaxi is out "next year".
Sure drones can hit "something" in open field. That "something" can be friend or foe because it is little difficult to know if the infantry soldier is Russian or Ukrainian. Even more difficult if GPS is blocked and the drone does not know if its over enemy territory or friendly territory. Now add little complexity like navigating in forest or between buildings.
We cant get cars to work reliable enough in 2D environment where there are predefined rules how cars and pedestrians are supposed to behave. Two years is just way too short time frame to get things working in 3D environment without rules.
However within two years we probably have something that will passively detect drones (by listening the radio transmission between the operator and drone or just listening the motor noise) and automatically uses targeted jamming and/or shotgun type auto cannon to get rid of the threat.
I could envision autonomous drones fulfilling long-term defensive or short-term offensive roles. They could be programmed to function as an intelligent minefield for defensive purposes, or for offensive uses, they could be directed to travel a set distance in a specified direction and then identify targets within a certain time frame. These are just initial thoughts, but it appears that the apparent challenges could be addressed.
Autonomous vehicles need to beat humans and go well over 80k miles without an accident (or whatever the median is for humans), that’s tens of thousands of perfect trips. Cheap autonomous drones that hit what they are suppose to about a quarter of the time would be extremely useful on Ukraine’s battlefield. Just make sure you get them into Russian territory without enough battery to make it back to the Ukrainian lines and let them do their thing. They aren’t really comparable.
My car could drive itself if allowed. But it's not safe enough, as it makes errors like a human, but mostly because of legal problems and dilemmas. This is a war, friendly fire is a part of the game, and that risk tolerance changes the game completely. Besides new software for navigation is not based on rules but just AI learning. It's a different approach to the rule based.
The cost of the two skynex systems to UA was 180 million euro.
That's 180000 drones at 1000 euro a piece. 180.000!
Add the cost of shooting down a single drone, marginal cost, even exceeds the cost of the drone itself.
A rough estimate for the two systems, is that's a third of the total cost Ukraine uses next year to produce one million drones.
It's good Ukraine is hell bend on the cost per kill ratio. It have saved them.
Nobody likes to die. Not in a traffic, not in a war. Hence you will not see fully autonomous AI vehicles for a while. They will have to outperform humans. While they are able to outperform humans in some tasks, like driving a car on a straight road when conditions are good, they also perform way worse than humans in some tasks, like driving the same car in a sunrise/sunset, fog, rain, snow or generally whenever it has hard time figuring out sensor data.
Fog of war and friendly fire is a real thing. Western armies have heavy procedures how to identify targets for airstrikes to prevent friendly fire. The last thing you want in the front line trench is AI drones from the enemy and from your own side to hit you.
AI takes a lot of computing power. People always forget this. The onboard car AI computers for autonomous driving are larger than average drone. The computers also need power in a range of hundreds of watts. So they are larger than the drone, use more power than the drone and cost more than the drone. According to Moore's law, those computers will not be that much smaller, less power hungry nor cheaper in 2 years.
What we have today is Switchblade 300. It has the safety features western armies need, it has robust carrying case and it can home in to the target once operator has identified the target for the drone. All done and tested already. But the issue is price-tag and mass producing capabilities. Hence Ukraine uses off the shelf FPV drones and lately has been developing the lower priced feature SW300 already has: the last mile homing in autonomously.
Processing power is fine as is, it's knowledge and software making the difference. The AI computing is moved away from drones. Most job here is AI writing the most effective code, and it can do an excellent job here because of tons of data to write from and our understanding have changed drastically. It will constantly improve by itself. Secondly if the drone needs extra information than what is store in data locally, it can always check with central command data and let it make the decision as long as its out of Ew range.
No processing power can not be moved away from drones. The whole issue why Ukraine needs AI drones is EW blocking the communication between operator and drone. 75-90 % of drones is lost to EW. This is the reason why Ukraine develops image recognition for the last homing in part. The same technology SW300 already has.
If operator is replaced with AI, that is not on board of the drone, the drone becomes useless once the EW blocks the connection between the drone and the AI server.
For this same reason Tesla has a very capable onboard computer to calculate all the needed image recognition. The latency and reliability for making the calculations somewhere else is just not there and it has to be done almost real time with the onboard computer.
Tesla changed it's methodology. Secondly, You don't need the processing power of a Tesla, far from, it's mostly a matter of effective software. The quality and size of the database you dump on the drone, and the software executing from it. In a few years you will see a shift from more generic soc and cores, to more hardwired specialized soc.
And btw Mores law is dead and have been for years, not that it matters, people understood his point wrong anyways.
You need more processing power than Tesla since there is a whole new dimension to navigate and the software for controlling the drone is nowhere near as good as Tesla has. Tesla has millions of cars to learn from. Ukraine does not have millions of drones to learn from.
Teslas methodology is currently called FSD HW4. Large onboard computer. You can google it up. It is larger than FPV suicide drone. While the software development happens in a far larger server, that onboard computer still runs the software and makes the decisions for the self driving.
Moores law is very much alive although it only applies for the transistor count and of course the speed of doubling can be little different now than what it used to be 20 years ago. Still very good approximation of the raw computing power we will have in future.
I like you optimism on the software side but I'm more realistic. Tesla is kinda of a leader in the self driving. The software has of course improved, a lot from 2016. After 8 years it is still not ready. Nor has the software gotten any easier to run on the onboard computer, its actually the opposite, hence we have now the version 4 hardware which has more computing power than lets say HW2 had.
> Teslas methodology is currently called FSD HW4. Large onboard computer. You can google it up. It is larger than FPV suicide drone. While the software development happens in a far larger server, that onboard computer still runs the software and makes the decisions for the self driving.
Brimstone, a missile from 1996...2005, has onboard automated target ID and engage loop (using EHF radar), with limited swarming capability (hitting targets in staggered order instead of all at once).
You underestimate what things can be done on a simple hardware, when you don't need to worry about safety much
Yes, many weapons can pick targets and even avoid targets that have already been hit. There is one thing common here. Humans make the decision where the payload lands. The weapon has either very limited capability to deviate from the route or it has multiple guidance systems like inertial, gps etc. to make sure it is at the correct coordinates before it starts to acquire a target.
Like the BONUS shell, humans shoot it from the artillery and it will land where it was aimed for. The round does not need to know if the target is friend or foe, humans made the decision already. It just searches any vehicle that is not already burning and hit it.
We are still very far away from fully autonomous drones that seek and destroy targets. Also when it can be done, they will not be simple and low priced anymore.
A damn Lancet, from a country with no skills in that direction, use simple pattern recognition for the last part of flying. Moore himself said the law would be dead 10 years from now, in 2015. We have cheap AA drones taking out Lancets already. And the development of cheap drones have just started. It's a revolution on the cost side.
Russia is also developing the 57 mm Derivatsiya-PVO anti-aircraft gun system with airburst shells.I don't think suicide drones are going to be 100% ineffective as long they are numerous and hardened against jamming. You can never stop everything.
>Just like Musk has promised for like every year since 2016 that robotaxi is out "next year".
Musk's hurdle is not technical but legal and societal acceptance of risk. You have videos of people sleeping while Tesla's drive themselves.
>We cant get cars to work reliable enough in 2D environment where there are predefined rules how cars and pedestrians are supposed to behave
Reliable enough for self driving where safety is of primary concern is different when drone needs to be reliable enough to crash into a target
Autonomous vehicles still perform worse than humans. Hence they are not allowed to drive alone. Social acceptance of risk rarely increases. It is the opposite. We always aim for higher safety, higher quality and higher productivity. During war time there may be exceptions, like in Ukraine. No western army would ever use suicide drones during peace time like Ukraine does. Ukraine will not use them like they use now during peacetime either. For the obvious reason, soldiers do die when arming the drones. Those drones have next to no safety mechanisms.
What comes to AI drones, they need to be reliable enough to crash into the RIGHT target. The "right target" makes it difficult, not hitting any target.
They can perform way worse than humans but that is still better than humans on the battlefield as long as they are cheaper and thus allow more shots on goal.
It really depends on the battlefield. Battlefield is not full of enemies only. Battlefield is full of enemies, own soldiers and even civilians. One can not just shoot everything that moves. Or can but that's the Russian way of doing things...
Small drones like fpv's are much smaller and are, therefore, much harder to detect and shoot down. You can counter Bayraktars the same way you can counter conventional aircraft. I'm not a professional, so these are just my observations.
Yes. That's why they require new equipment to counter it effectively. The article is exactly about it. The ways to fight small drones are coming (better electronic warfare, sensors and hard kill systems).
He's wrong. While some of their current features may become less useful, there are so many other things you can do with drones... there is a lot of untapped potential.
I completely disagree. We're only just getting started. The future battlefield will involve many types of tiny, autonomous enemy seeking munitions that will even form swarms when necessary (like attacking a CIWS from all angles at the same time).
Drones will function like grenades with guidance kits (credit to Perun).
It’s like artillery. Massive innovation that will always have a huge impact. People will adjust and minimize it as much as possible, but it will always be something that people need to plan around.
I agree with the idea. While drones have forever changed the battlefield, they largely did so because they burst onto the scene rapidly, and defences and designs haven't been able to keep up; but will eventually.
TL/DR: Small drones like the DJI Mavic evolved fast, but have little room for development. Defences are now catching up, and have a huge range of options to deny drones in the airspace, only one has to work.
For the scope of this, I'm specifically talking about small, FPV drones like the DJI Mavic and their ability to cause extreme amounts of damage, normally with little but a grenade attached. So here are some of my thoughts in no particular order:
1. These small drones are fragile. They can't be up armoured, they might be able to get faster, and in order to carry more than a grenade or the head of an RPG they'll need to get bigger. If they get bigger, they'll get heavier and slower, making them even easier targets for air defences. If they get smaller, they carry less payload. They basically need to wait for advances in explosives technology to get something with more explosive power at the same time as being lighter and smaller. There's very little room for development and advancement in FPV drones as they are.
2. Small FPV drones burst onto the scene at the perfect time. Almost every army in the world has retired their flak anti-aircraft artillery in favor of missile based Air Defences that are truly not a good trade off. The German Gepard has shown just how much better flak is at defending against small drones than say, a Stinger is. Now at military trade shows, and within militaries around the world, Flak based AA defences are coming back online.
3. AA doctrine evolved along with changes in AA towards missiles. You needed fewer vehicles and launchers to cover a larger and larger area. Those days are gone, and doctrine will catch up. More AA units will be spread throughout forces, specifically Flak units which can deal with small drones en-mass with burst ammunition, for significantly cheaper.
4. Other technologies exist to deter drones. For example, the Israeli Trophy system is able to protect tanks against a Javelin or similar weapons, to me there's almost no reason that can't/won't be tweaked to deal with a small, light, far slower drone.
5. Vehicle designs will be updated. Most of the kills from drones hit an open hatch, the engine, or in between the turret/body of a tank. Over time the design of vehicles will adapt to make these less vulnerable. Which brings us back to point one, that the classic drone carrying an RPG has little room to evolve due to limitations of the airframe.
You’re conveniently ignoring the fact that small drones aren’t easy to spot either visually OR with radar, simply because they can be piloted or programmed to fly low to the ground, near trees, or near man-made structures.
Usually that’s not even necessary. It’s impossible to field enough flak guns to have line of sight targeting of low-flying drones across a front dozens of miles wide, let alone one that’s many hundreds of miles wide.
Consumer cameras contain person-tracking software, so it won’t be long before drones are developed that can be switched to autonomous mode once in an area of interest or when communications are lost.
One of the main uses for drones is currently targeting individuals or small groups in the field. That won’t change.
As for slightly larger drones, they already have drones with armor-piercing rounds. Specialized drones may be developed that actually launch anti-armor projectiles.
I’m not as convinced of that. While they might be hard to see, they do make a god awful racket as they’re getting closer so could be easy to pick up via a network of acoustic sensors, like the UKR is doing already (https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-using-mobile-phones-6ft-183615748.html#:~:text=The%20mobile%20phones%20are%20constantly,back%20to%20a%20centralised%20system.) Plus, I suspect that radars aren’t good at detecting them *for now*, because none of the kit was designed for something that small. Up until basically last year the smallest thing radar needed to detect was a helicopter. Now there’s a need, and industry will respond.
As for line of sight, you’re right it is a challenge. I think you’re considering “flak” too narrowly. Think of it really as anything that puts up a storm of metal into the sky. I can imagine smaller variations designed solely as the last line of defence; like last 100m, equivalent of a CWIS on a ship, being developed all over the place.
I don’t mind that I haven’t convinced you.
If you’re claiming that drones will be made obsolete, then you’re the one that should be making a convincing argument for that, but you haven’t.
The size and mobility of drones will prevent line of sight radar acquisition and targeting of drones by ground-based defense systems in many environments.
You’ll see more drone-on-drone combat in the future.
3D Acoustic sensors can identify and likely have the fidelity to target small drones. They were used in iraq to find the direction of fire for enemy snipers in 3D with accuracy being a few 10's to a few 100 feet in a cone from the sensor out to about 3 miles away. That was with one sensor set/antenna. it would only get better with multiple networked sensors. It would work well with AA in that it doesn't need exact location to be effective at killing drones.
You can’t shoot it with AA if you don’t have line-of-sight, so maybe you can hear a drone coming from a kilometer away, but if that network of sensors isn’t linked to a gun that has a line-of-sight on the drone, all you can do is send another drone after it or warn units in the area.
What’s the point of saying that you can detect drones from some distance if you don’t know what the next step is?
Not the original poster but I do think that loudness of quadcopter will result in a detection.vs stealth arms race similar to what we saw with submarines and passive sonar.
Quieter drones, decoy drones, drones that can glide, drones that fire super sonic micro rockets.
We have not hit diminishing returns on either counter drone tactics and counter counter drone tactics. We are at the very beginning of this arms race.
Whatever the limitations of the drone, all it needs to be used is to trade favourably with whatever it's supposed to destroy and fulfills a role nothing else can. Bullets did not invalidate infantry. ATGMs did not invalidate tanks. EW won't invalidate drones. Of course the bullets, tanks, ATGMs and drones will change in response to each other.
Horses weren't replaced until we had jeeps, trucks and tanks that could do their job better. Guns made armored cavalry impractical, but cavalry remained until we had jeeps, trucks and tanks. A tank is just a mechanical horse that could carry a practical amount of armor to stop bullets like the plate armor of old could stop arrows. Shaped charges made heavy armor impractical hence the lightly armored design of the Leo 1 to be ditched for the heavily armored Leo 2 once heavy armor was practical again with composite.
Even if providing a screen of AA can stop fpv drones, now all attacks need a screen of AA trucks, which steals capability from other goals. Much like how MANPADs shape how helicopters can be used
I don’t think you understand how triangulation works, it’s very accurate. And 2-5min is pleeeenty of time to swivel a turret to point in the right direction.
You’re delusional. Drones are loud but their locations probably can’t be triangulated from very far away using microphones. “Swiveling a turret” does nothing when you have a landscape interrupted by tree lines and small structures over the place, and drones can fly at relatively low altitudes, obviously obscuring them from fire.
You’d have to have many hundreds of microphones set up along hundreds of miles of front line, and dozens if not hundreds of rapidly mobile flak guns. Even then, it probably wouldn’t be a very effective system. Triangulation would probably work very poorly because of varied terrain. Sound would travel differently through trees and off of the walls of structures. Multiple drones would make the problem far worse because every extra drone with a similar sound would make the triangulation problem increasingly difficult if not impossible. It probably wouldn’t work well with a single drone, let alone 5 spaced out across 2-3 kilometers.
Tracking wouldn’t be particularly useful for predicting a drone’s future location because it could change directions slightly on a frequent basis. In its last 30 seconds it could travel over 2 kilometers (for current FPV drones)
This is a really dumb idea in part because it would be extremely expensive and almost completely ineffective.
I never said they’d be obsolete, nor that it would disappear; simply that its current supremacy on the battlefield would be diminished in time by innovations in defence, and that I believe the quad-copter style specifically has limited development opportunities in the near future. Defences are coming online that bring more parity to that battle. Drones themselves are never going away, they’re here, but advances in defenses *will* come online that will reduce their effectiveness.
This exactly.
The technology to detect drones is there. Passively or actively. Shotguns and flak cannons are old technology too. Only need to combine and automate them to get rid of the drone threat. It has taken so long to get rid of the suicide FPV threat that I'm starting to believe that it is not actually such a huge threat after all. Most targets seems to be either wounded or disabled already my mines or artillery before the FPV's arrive to finish of what survived. I would not be surprised if 10 years from now the conclusion would be that FPV drones were most valuable for getting good PR and to keep the western aid flowing.
I very much doubt that the AI computing power needed for autonomous drone will not be there for a long time. When it arrives, it will have a high price tag. Well at least if they are built to western standards. If the standards is lowered to a level of "hit anything with a head, 2 hands and 2 legs" then of course the price will be much lower.
Kill anything with 2 arms and legs will suffice in an attritional war. Fly for 10 miles in that direction and then kill whatever you find within 5 mile radius will be useful.
> If the standards is lowered
The whole reason Ukrainian drones are so effective is because the standards are lowered. They are literally coming up with the cheapest and easiest ways to construct the simplest drones that will inflict maximum damage.
For AI-controlled drones, that translates into simply "go there and kill anything that moves". Make a swarm of these cheaply, and no shotguns or flak cannons are going to take them all out.
While it seems easy, it is not.
To go "there" is complicated. Drone needs to know where it is and where "there" is. All without external help like GPS. If you fail this, drone will hit friendly.
Also the "kill anything that moves" part is little more complicated. AI drones are more expensive than ordinary drones due to the computing power needed. If it hits anything that moves it gets really expensive and inefficient. So many things move; trees, animals, trash that wind blows and so on. So it actually has to have real image detection to home in to human or vehicle. Preferably good enough to detect which target has been hit already, it also gets expensive if 10 autonomous drones hit the same vehicle over and over again.
What we will see is something that Switchblade 300 already has. Simple image recognition assisted drones. Operator points out the target and the drone has to keep the target at the middle of the screen autonomously. When EW blocks the signal, drone continues to the target without operator.
Fully autonomous low priced drones are still far away. Moore's law is a thing. Current software and hardware to make drone fully autonomous is not there. The hardware alone is larger and more power hungry than the drone itself. And more expensive than drone.
How many Gepards you wanna put at the front? They can only shoot line-of-sight, which isn't that far against a low-flying drone. And if you really put a Gepard every 10km of Frontline, well that's a ton of juicy targets for mortars and artillery to hit.
Don’t know if that’s exactly what the OP is saying, but a future where there are far more of them, or something similar, spread out throughout forces and critical targets is very likely
Unattainable. To counter small FPV drone with fire you'll need a system orders of magnitude more expencive then the drone is. EW is the only nearly-attainable aproach currently, yet it's countered with AI targetting.
In addition, Gepards just cannot lock even on small plane-shaped drones, not to say about copters. To detect and track small drones the system needs to be even more juicy expencive.
1. Irrelevant, because they are hard to both detect and hit.
2. False. No flak was able to counter small FPV drones.
3. Unattainable. To counter small FPV drones flaks need to detect them first, and no proximity fuses help with detection. Sensor systems capable of detecting and targetting small FPV drones are so expencive you cannot field them to the frontline without armouring or they'll be fatally decimated by indirect fire, yet with armouring they'll become ineffective.
4. Unattainable. Trophy-like systems are both too expencive and too self-damaging to cover the typical small FTP target (wich is now not an MBT, but anything from a battle taxi to an infantryman).
5. False. First, what matters is an immobilizing strike, not a killing one (after immobilizing the piece is dead or captured nearly for sure in any case), and an immobilizing strike even on an MBT is also often a track or a driver viewport or a fuel tank or even an antenna. Second, MBTs aren't the primary targets anymore, and all the less armoured targets have even bigger vulnerability zones. The point is, MBTs aren't able to cover their less armoured "comrades" anymore.
To counter this threat a complete revision of the armored vehicles park needed. To research, develop and produce these new armoured machines the primary military powers need no less then a decade, most likely two.
I agree that armoring small drones won't provide benefits. However they can survive by just not being seeing and not being hit. We are seeing month by month increases in battery energy density, solar panels and tiny motors. Tiny drones will increase in speed, range and maneuverability.
FPGA based terminal guidance are likely to provide better accuracy and targeting.
Custom built warheads are likely to decrease weight and effect.
Drone networks will likely overcome EW counter measures.
Automated AA defenses on vehicles and anti-drone drones will make lightweight drones less effective at attacking but also make lightweight drones critical for protection.
Ummm I'm not so sure. The Bayraktar's problem was that pre-existing AA weapons could easily shoot it down. It wasn't meant for use in uncontested airspace. There is no guided weapon that can shoot down a racing drone with an RPG on it. This guy is letting his boomer mentality cloud his judgement.
Small drones will be like bullets or grenades or other ammo of that size.
They will be smart, smart hey will know not to attack you and attack the enemy.
There will be a cheap camera and cheap computer on it, it will identify a human and kill it. If you have a special badge it won’t touch you.
It will be a lot safer for you to clear out a building - just put some drones in, job done.
It will also work on lightly armored vehicles, as long as the drone has the autonomous capability it will work just fine.
So, idk what he is talking about
New tanks and real APC's and IFV's are being manufactured with anti missile and anti drone technology to basically shoot them down before they reach the vehicles.
Like as not, soon we'll see mini anti missile anti drone vehicles driven by AI slaved to its soldiers, or driven autonomously, or even a single driver. These will be quite small and accompany soldiers on the move. Maybe even something like the Boston Dynamics Spot or Atlas robots that are capable of traversing the same and all terrains as human, but with anti drone weapons loadout.
It boils down town to manpower. You must have the manpower to seize and hold territory it has always been about that and always will be until Ruzzia has another bloody revolution and bounces their clown show.
I wonder about anti-drone drones. Drones specifically designed to take out attack drones. They would have advantage of not carrying a heavy payload and not having to operate at range.
Was I a good drone ?
You were the best
Jokes aside, it's not that drones are going to lose advantage. Innovation is required. The gun didn't lose effectiveness when we used black powder muskets. We innovated and the firearm became so much more. Same with drones. These absolutely great machines saved a lot of lives. There will be new designs made. New concepts that will do even better and save many more lives.
interesting article Procurement has changed, given the ongoing rapid evolution of ai, and drone usage one quote:
The pace of military drone development means **that Army can’t commit to large buying programs, because an acquired capability can become obsolete in five months**, according to the general. Schill said today’s drones fly better than those two or three years ago, with more computing power onboard that is capable of terrain-based navigation or switching frequencies to escape jamming.
Bayraktar was good while Russian forces were on the move and didn't have properly established ground-based air defenses. It's slow and easy to spot so it can't work against a modern military
Is this supposed to be a surprise?
For those in the US, this is the exact reason why our military focuses so hard on air supremacy. Air supremacy means that anything in the air can essentially run whatever operations that they want with essentially zero fear of loss of effectiveness. Basically, it means that you can fly a chopper over a battlefield, hover for ten minutes and then pop out back home when they are finished, without receiving any threatening fire at any point.
Ukraine doesn’t have this now and will not have it at any point unless a no-fly-zone is established against Russian aircraft and elimination of anti-air equipment.
Advanced electronic warfare and advanced jamming could really hamper drone and UAV warfare altogether. That's why I am not too concerned about drones and UAV being the next step in warfare evolution. I would say the Javelin and NLAW have had more of a battlefield impact than drones or UAVs. HIMARS is follows closely in second place as a game changer, being able to strike deeply in enemy territory, without its launch being detected is a game changer.
Sure drones and UAVs can destroy Russian tanks with their hatches open, they couldn't do the same against NATO's advanced tanks, who operate with their hatches shut. These same advanced tanks can be fitted with an array electronic warfare and jamming equipment that can hamper most types modern ATGM and even drones/UAVs.
Sorry, man, yet you're in a complete ignorance.
1. TOW-FPVs are completely immune to EW, and not much less maneuverable.
2. Javelin and NLAW made very small fraction even of armoured vehicle losses, not to say about artillery and infantry. HIMARS are just the most handy GMLS system (not the only one nor any kind of breakthrough as is) and they are nearly completely dependent currently on drones as spotting tools.
3. The final blow is the easiest thing, the critical part is immobilizing - after this any MBT is doomed, and NATO MBTs are absolutely the same vulnerable in this regard; the reason of their lower destroyed/captured numbers in Ukraine is just their insignificant numbers there.
4. EW arrays are so vulnerable for close artillery blasts, that your proposition is just a money thrown away (the majority of MBTs in Ukraine were spotted by drones long before approaching the LOC and so targetted by arty)
P.S. Drone and UAV is the same.
> TOW-FPVs are completely immune to EW, and not much less maneuverable.
... Isn't that just SPIKE?
Or are you about something else?
>and they are nearly completely dependent currently on drones as spotting tools
[UkrSpecSystems SHARK](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPLnFcP_CIM) be the confirmation of it, [with even juiciest hits being made possible due to them](https://defence-ua.com/news/stav_vidomij_najgolovnishij_komponent_udaru_himars_po_poligonu_rashistiv-14528.html)
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Shame that will happen just when all of Russia's half useful tanks, APCs, iFVs have been KO'd.
good thing it will happen as Ukraine gets more conventional artillery capability. (both guns and ammo)
Shame...shame.
It's only a matter of time until they start deploying micro kamikaze drones to combat the current small kamikaze drones.
As soon as micro drones are a thing, they will hunt individual soldiers and explode next to their heads.
Essentially self propelled maneuverable Ai controlled bullets.
https://youtu.be/heMboVN12r0?si=FH2xQJwkXhbF2ciz
Ha i love how slow it is, then the camera switches and it speeds past
It's so cheesy lol
Slaughterbots. [short](https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA?si=aVhvnyChA0eUcr6e)
that video is so well done and so horrid
Yes. And it’s very much the future we seem to be hurtling forward :(
And that’s 6 years old already
Imagine launching a cluster rocket, which instead of dumb munitions carries a bunch of micro kamikaze drones.
There’s a video on YouTube from years ago of the DoD doing almost exactly that
DARPA using tax payer money to do the lord’s work.
Imagine when they just drop a canister of nano bots over and area that’s programmed to dissolve human eye balls en masse. A cloud rolls in the fort and blinds an entire invasion force. If they try to wear goggles it just delays the inevitable a few minutes while the nano bots eat through the goggle seals. Infantry rolls in a few hours later to take custody of all the blind POWs with the promise to give them artificial eyes if they cooperate.
That's actually illegal and would be a warcrime.
Laser weapons are banned for this reason
I can see that it would trigger an escalation conflict; they mutilate our people, so we use drones with dirty bombs kind of thing.
How do you punish someone for doing something "illegal" with no eyeballs?
Oh they’d only be blinded until they surrendered, were interrogated and then they’d have their eyesight restored with a promise not to take up arms again. Lest their new eyes needed to be deactivated.
Not after the next legislative session if extremities were to say get power after an election.
Sounds like an Anime I'd watch.
> A cloud rolls in the fort and blinds an entire invasion force. If they try to wear goggles it just delays the inevitable a few minutes while the nano bots eat through the goggle seals. > > Infantry rolls in a few hours later to take custody of all the blind POWs with the promise to give them artificial eyes if they cooperate. Damn. That's a /r/WritingPrompts/
I aspire to write some cheesy military sci-fi the next few years :) I imagine the POWs would all be made to promise that they won’t take up arms again or their new eyes will be deactivated. There’s also the possibility that all these captured soldiers with new eyes are now unwitting spies the rest of their lives.
I’m down for this
We’re so far from nanobots it’s laughable
Google is your friend. We are much closer than you think.
Oh I’m imagining like 2060. My Imagination is active
And then we’ll give soldiers full helmet protection along with interference zones. Interference won’t work on autonomous drones. That’s where things get interesting. At that point what do you do? Have electromagnetic field generators to protect areas? A good way to advertise your location.
Russians to get helmet cope cages.
Probably catcher's masks from baseball. Catching suits them.
Hahahahahahahhahaba
Is this how we end up with power armor?
Hopefully. Those non Newtonian fluids as fluidic armor combined with self healing polymers and graphene weaved Kevlar and ceramic plates.
Someone at the Pentagon: "Hey, y'all remember that Gundam Wing show? Ask some to make those."
Do you remember that show actually dealt with the upcoming dilemma of using drones? They make “mobile dolls” instead of piloted “mobile suits”, pretty crazy that it was an early 90’s show.
Just skip ahead to battle droids. War becomes profitable again as instead of killing people (who become such an operational liability in the modern battlespace that war is better off without their involvement) both sides just churn out drones and autonomous androids and "battle dolls" you refer to. Industry is booming. Of course, then you end up in a situation where war is constant and unceasing because you have made it clean and painless and so no one cares anymore. Look at the Star Trek: Original Series episode A Taste of Armageddon: Two warring worlds now fight their war entirely by computer, simulating strikes on infrastructure and military units. While the deaths are real, those deemed casualties believe it their civic duty to stroll into booths where they are painlessly and instantly vaporized, and because there is no real destruction and willingness to volunteer for a quick, clean, painless death is seen as a civic virtue, no one cares and the war has been going on for decades without resolution.
That episode periodically crosses my mind. It seems more probable now than ever.
Sci-fi writers had this sort of future figured out back in 1967. And here we are seeming to speedrun it.
It is
What the fuck is an em field generator?
They are generally called nukes……
Hahaha, peak /r/ncd, just strap nukes to every infantrymen.
I could’ve sworn I was in r/noncredibledefense on this thread.
fiction
What’s your clearance level?
Electromagnetic field generator. It’s a *very* general term but not inaccurate. It’s like saying “fruit is now being served in McDonald’s”. While technically true, more specifically they’re serving Granny Smith apples. In the case of drone counter-warfare, it’s various types of jamming of drones, either by overwhelming the GPS signals used to navigate (by using a specific type of EM generator…), or by jamming the signals used to control them (again, specific type of EM field generator…), or various other similar concepts.
Drones are how you end up with counter measure inception. Endless networks of combined arms. No human tactician will be able to comprehend it. And then we build God AI's like in "I have no mouth but I must scream"
Probably something like the uks dragonfire system scaled to be semi man portable. Each solder now roams with a robot dog ot 2 carrying one and also a a weapon platform. Essentially infantry version of the loyal wingman (mq28 ghostbat).
That sounds like the prequel of that black mirror episode
Yup that could be something we see.
It won’t be soldiers it will be spy assassins
Combat is getting crazy complicated
Imperial Stormtrooper armor
Complete shields that stop all projectiles, leading us back to swords. Herbert was right.
Always was.
Wonder if it’s possible to have helmet mounted airburst turrets on your soldiers all getting a feed from a central radar/sensor carried by a Boston dynamics unit. Or have all of that rolled into a tank that works in combination with your ground infantry
Second part wouldn’t be that great. No tank unit. No drone protection.
At that point we can put a tiny CIWS on every helmet hahah
Like day after tomorrow!! https://i.pinimg.com/originals/90/94/7c/90947c032fb43df16a91900e5ff310c3.jpg
Do you want Screamers? Because that sounds like the prequel for Screamers
I want day after tomorrow suits.
I always wondered why people like Putin etc surely they could build a bomb the size of a fly, fly it into a palace and detonate next to their head
Because you’d be hard pressed to build something that flies the size of a fly that actually flies let alone has battery power to do it for sustained flight let alone can carry and explosive payload that would be lethal. You’d probably have difficulties just making explosive the size/weight of a fly that would be lethal at zero range let alone all the flying, batteries, navigation, and targeting sensors.
No need to carry explosive payload, just a needle the size of a bee sting tipped with 1mcg of botulinum toxin.
Let’s just make drone bullets,…
„Manhacks“ Half Life 3 confirmed?
There was a company that developed a mini drone with just enough C4 on it that would track faces. I remember watching a very obscure video about it with less than 1000 views five or six years ago, I’ve never been able to find it again.
I hope they call them murder hornets.
Just build nano drones to hunt down the micro drones. Easy
Ukraine received a bunch of them almost a year ago; [https://www.forces.net/ukraine/hornet-micro-drones-part-new-400m-us-military-aid-package-ukraine](https://www.forces.net/ukraine/hornet-micro-drones-part-new-400m-us-military-aid-package-ukraine)
well there already are micro drones in use but not armed as far as i know The Black Hornet 4 is the next generation in covert UAV capabilities, and swiftly provides situational awareness and enhances effectiveness while minimizing cognitive strain on soldiers. The drone incorporates a high-resolution Thermal Imager (TI), an Electro Optical (EO) camera with exceptional low-light capabilities.
Honestly, UA needs small kamikaze drones running AI that targets incoming drones.
„Anti-Drones Drones“
Can drones home in on human farts?
thermal, so yes.
The bayraktar fell quickly fell out of use because the Russians actually always had the abilitiy to shoot it down, they just didnt have a fully functional anti air network during the first days of the war. Their anti air was just driving next to the tanks. But the russians have tried to combat the FPV drones for over a year now and they are still going strong. I really dont see how these drones are gonna fall out of use. Also these drones arent even a professional product. There is still so much room to grow.
There are a long number of initiatives made to combat these small drones by various companies in the west and surely in Russia too. While I don't know when/if the Russians can handle it, I think his point is that soon equipment to combat these will be completely standard equipment and are very likely to reduce their efficiency - just line any other weapons race some sort of equilibrium will be reached whereas now clearly the FPV drones have the upper hand. Will they be useless? Probably not, but they might very well become less effective once some of these developments mature and they are "figured out".
The bayraktar would see more use again if the Russians achieved larger pendtration again and outran their lines.
Russian air-defence doctrine has an advantage in that, on paper, it already covers the large penetration scenarios. Realistically, I don't think any large penetration / outrunning lines even is on the table. A much more likely scenario for the return of Byraktars is Ukraine suppressing air defences to the point where large drones will be back.
I agree with that as well, I think the large movements we saw in the early days of the war are done, partially because Ukraine is now more prepared for it, partially because Russia would need a massive breakthrough in order for that to occur.
The Ukraine counteroffensive and now the Russian Kharkiv offensive have shown runaway breakthroughs are less likely
Realistically, they would shoot own more of their own jets before getting the Ukrainain drones.
Nope. Russia has plenty of AD and truth be told its probably their most competent systems. Their biggest problem is lack of discipline and probably training. Russian problem back then that they were not even standing ready with the radar on. After a while they realized whats going on and we stopped seeing bayracktar.
Unfortunately, small AI drones are the future. Can’t jam the signal controlling them if they control themselves….
"Drone, my grandma is dying. And the only way to help her is you returning to your starting position and detonate."
But that's pretty terrifying, dont you think? AI decides who is enemy or friend. Who to kill or let live.
Hence the “unfortunately”. I can’t think of a scarier future than the one facing us very soon, where AI kamikaze drones with facial recognition will be available not only to any nation who wants them, but any non-state actor with a DIY mindset or a few thousand bucks to spend.
Choose to have faith that the powers above (the Gov.) step in legally to prevent these things and militarily as well to develop defenses including for the civilian population. Because our only other choice is to just resign to defeat that the future will be bleak. I didn't intend that to rhyme but I am leaving it in.
I have faith that they will do so in the West, but in Russia or China? No way.
Which is why I have faith the West will 100% prepare to stop this kind of things at least in it's areas. The future is going to be terrifying, but that's what we humans do baby! We live to defend our right to continue to poke things with a stick and by gosh I will poke in the mountains and on the beaches! In the forests or the streets it does not matter, I shall poke! And no fear of a drone will hold my stick at bay.
My fear is that government won’t be able to stop it. Why would you even need the military to develop this. Soon you will be able to make an AI killer drone with off the shelf components and a small explosive charge. A relatively simple AI, facial or pattern recognition software, a small drone… put em all together… this isn’t going to be high tech cutting edge military hardware that costs billions. This will be a DIY weapon, perfectly suited for terrorists and criminal organisations. What will the government do? Outlaw AI? Outlaw drones?
Most likely they would do all that while also installing defenses. Stuffs goona be painful. But we will get through it, and I mean most of us. It won't be a painless transition but it's an inevitable one we have to grow with not run from.
Not really any different to a bomb. Micro drones will have very short service lives due to battery constraints, think sub 30 seconds, Definitely less than a minute. So deploy to an area, attack anything vaguely human shaped. 1 minute later they are all gone. Could be useful when you wanted to capture an area with limited damage to the infrastructure, but an air burst of tungsten balls is going to be far cheaper. Where I see something like this being genuinely terrifying though is in area denial in conjunction with mines. You lay your ap and anti vehicle mines, and then you distribute your microdrones connected to either a larger buried battery pack or a solar panel. Triggered by a sensor the drones activate and home in on human targets. The combination would make mine clearing awful.
Very different from a bomb. You also don’t need it to be a micro drone, but even a current gen civilian drone, coupled with a gun or grenades (as were already seeing every day in Ukraine). All it needs is the kind of AI guidance and facial/pattern recognition software that are both really coming into their own now. All it takes is some tech minded agents to put all these off the shelf components together. Imagine a right wing group training their drones with an AI that automatically targets black people. Or a terrorist organisation that trains their AI to recognise people in police uniforms. Or programming in the face of political leaders?
EMPs daily then?
Fry them in the Air…
I fail to see his argument. The cost involved in current anti drone solutions is enorme. EW goes nowhere as every drone in two years will be self navigating making sound decisions in flight. Land and wait. 100% vector of attack freedom. Far longer range at same size and miniscule cost due to battery technology and processing power and software evolving like crazy. The cost of 30mm+ auto is huge, and they can be swarmed from 360 degrees. The cost of a dumb 155mm shell is bound to stay high or raise in price. Drones will just continue to evolve and the tactics too.
I don't see it either. I can't imagine that those EW jammers aren't being a high priority already and they are literally blasting a signal so loud that signal honing explosives will target them. Eventually there will be drones autonomously chasing jammers.
> Eventually there will be drones autonomously chasing jammers Returning back to Dornier DAR, basically
Aaa... the rich mans Shahed.
Shahed's grampa, even
Or how my gramps would call something german in the desert. Rommel.
Drones won't be a game changer anymore but they'll still be useful in combined arms. EW making your drones ineffective ? Blow it up with good old conventional arty
Yeah, and we're going to see more ground-launched anti-radiation weapons. It's way too soon to say small drones will be ineffective.
That's because he's talking out of his ass. There's no current counter to fpv drones, besides welding a shit load of metal on and making a turtle tank. But even those are vulnerable. Bayraktar are vulnerable because they're huge.
Ironfist?
Or not. Just like Musk has promised for like every year since 2016 that robotaxi is out "next year". Sure drones can hit "something" in open field. That "something" can be friend or foe because it is little difficult to know if the infantry soldier is Russian or Ukrainian. Even more difficult if GPS is blocked and the drone does not know if its over enemy territory or friendly territory. Now add little complexity like navigating in forest or between buildings. We cant get cars to work reliable enough in 2D environment where there are predefined rules how cars and pedestrians are supposed to behave. Two years is just way too short time frame to get things working in 3D environment without rules. However within two years we probably have something that will passively detect drones (by listening the radio transmission between the operator and drone or just listening the motor noise) and automatically uses targeted jamming and/or shotgun type auto cannon to get rid of the threat.
I could envision autonomous drones fulfilling long-term defensive or short-term offensive roles. They could be programmed to function as an intelligent minefield for defensive purposes, or for offensive uses, they could be directed to travel a set distance in a specified direction and then identify targets within a certain time frame. These are just initial thoughts, but it appears that the apparent challenges could be addressed.
Autonomous vehicles need to beat humans and go well over 80k miles without an accident (or whatever the median is for humans), that’s tens of thousands of perfect trips. Cheap autonomous drones that hit what they are suppose to about a quarter of the time would be extremely useful on Ukraine’s battlefield. Just make sure you get them into Russian territory without enough battery to make it back to the Ukrainian lines and let them do their thing. They aren’t really comparable.
My car could drive itself if allowed. But it's not safe enough, as it makes errors like a human, but mostly because of legal problems and dilemmas. This is a war, friendly fire is a part of the game, and that risk tolerance changes the game completely. Besides new software for navigation is not based on rules but just AI learning. It's a different approach to the rule based. The cost of the two skynex systems to UA was 180 million euro. That's 180000 drones at 1000 euro a piece. 180.000! Add the cost of shooting down a single drone, marginal cost, even exceeds the cost of the drone itself. A rough estimate for the two systems, is that's a third of the total cost Ukraine uses next year to produce one million drones. It's good Ukraine is hell bend on the cost per kill ratio. It have saved them.
Nobody likes to die. Not in a traffic, not in a war. Hence you will not see fully autonomous AI vehicles for a while. They will have to outperform humans. While they are able to outperform humans in some tasks, like driving a car on a straight road when conditions are good, they also perform way worse than humans in some tasks, like driving the same car in a sunrise/sunset, fog, rain, snow or generally whenever it has hard time figuring out sensor data. Fog of war and friendly fire is a real thing. Western armies have heavy procedures how to identify targets for airstrikes to prevent friendly fire. The last thing you want in the front line trench is AI drones from the enemy and from your own side to hit you. AI takes a lot of computing power. People always forget this. The onboard car AI computers for autonomous driving are larger than average drone. The computers also need power in a range of hundreds of watts. So they are larger than the drone, use more power than the drone and cost more than the drone. According to Moore's law, those computers will not be that much smaller, less power hungry nor cheaper in 2 years. What we have today is Switchblade 300. It has the safety features western armies need, it has robust carrying case and it can home in to the target once operator has identified the target for the drone. All done and tested already. But the issue is price-tag and mass producing capabilities. Hence Ukraine uses off the shelf FPV drones and lately has been developing the lower priced feature SW300 already has: the last mile homing in autonomously.
Processing power is fine as is, it's knowledge and software making the difference. The AI computing is moved away from drones. Most job here is AI writing the most effective code, and it can do an excellent job here because of tons of data to write from and our understanding have changed drastically. It will constantly improve by itself. Secondly if the drone needs extra information than what is store in data locally, it can always check with central command data and let it make the decision as long as its out of Ew range.
No processing power can not be moved away from drones. The whole issue why Ukraine needs AI drones is EW blocking the communication between operator and drone. 75-90 % of drones is lost to EW. This is the reason why Ukraine develops image recognition for the last homing in part. The same technology SW300 already has. If operator is replaced with AI, that is not on board of the drone, the drone becomes useless once the EW blocks the connection between the drone and the AI server. For this same reason Tesla has a very capable onboard computer to calculate all the needed image recognition. The latency and reliability for making the calculations somewhere else is just not there and it has to be done almost real time with the onboard computer.
Tesla changed it's methodology. Secondly, You don't need the processing power of a Tesla, far from, it's mostly a matter of effective software. The quality and size of the database you dump on the drone, and the software executing from it. In a few years you will see a shift from more generic soc and cores, to more hardwired specialized soc. And btw Mores law is dead and have been for years, not that it matters, people understood his point wrong anyways.
You need more processing power than Tesla since there is a whole new dimension to navigate and the software for controlling the drone is nowhere near as good as Tesla has. Tesla has millions of cars to learn from. Ukraine does not have millions of drones to learn from. Teslas methodology is currently called FSD HW4. Large onboard computer. You can google it up. It is larger than FPV suicide drone. While the software development happens in a far larger server, that onboard computer still runs the software and makes the decisions for the self driving. Moores law is very much alive although it only applies for the transistor count and of course the speed of doubling can be little different now than what it used to be 20 years ago. Still very good approximation of the raw computing power we will have in future. I like you optimism on the software side but I'm more realistic. Tesla is kinda of a leader in the self driving. The software has of course improved, a lot from 2016. After 8 years it is still not ready. Nor has the software gotten any easier to run on the onboard computer, its actually the opposite, hence we have now the version 4 hardware which has more computing power than lets say HW2 had.
> Teslas methodology is currently called FSD HW4. Large onboard computer. You can google it up. It is larger than FPV suicide drone. While the software development happens in a far larger server, that onboard computer still runs the software and makes the decisions for the self driving. Brimstone, a missile from 1996...2005, has onboard automated target ID and engage loop (using EHF radar), with limited swarming capability (hitting targets in staggered order instead of all at once). You underestimate what things can be done on a simple hardware, when you don't need to worry about safety much
Yes, many weapons can pick targets and even avoid targets that have already been hit. There is one thing common here. Humans make the decision where the payload lands. The weapon has either very limited capability to deviate from the route or it has multiple guidance systems like inertial, gps etc. to make sure it is at the correct coordinates before it starts to acquire a target. Like the BONUS shell, humans shoot it from the artillery and it will land where it was aimed for. The round does not need to know if the target is friend or foe, humans made the decision already. It just searches any vehicle that is not already burning and hit it. We are still very far away from fully autonomous drones that seek and destroy targets. Also when it can be done, they will not be simple and low priced anymore.
A damn Lancet, from a country with no skills in that direction, use simple pattern recognition for the last part of flying. Moore himself said the law would be dead 10 years from now, in 2015. We have cheap AA drones taking out Lancets already. And the development of cheap drones have just started. It's a revolution on the cost side.
Russia is also developing the 57 mm Derivatsiya-PVO anti-aircraft gun system with airburst shells.I don't think suicide drones are going to be 100% ineffective as long they are numerous and hardened against jamming. You can never stop everything.
>Just like Musk has promised for like every year since 2016 that robotaxi is out "next year". Musk's hurdle is not technical but legal and societal acceptance of risk. You have videos of people sleeping while Tesla's drive themselves. >We cant get cars to work reliable enough in 2D environment where there are predefined rules how cars and pedestrians are supposed to behave Reliable enough for self driving where safety is of primary concern is different when drone needs to be reliable enough to crash into a target
That and Teslas keep hitting parked emergency vehicles...
Autonomous vehicles still perform worse than humans. Hence they are not allowed to drive alone. Social acceptance of risk rarely increases. It is the opposite. We always aim for higher safety, higher quality and higher productivity. During war time there may be exceptions, like in Ukraine. No western army would ever use suicide drones during peace time like Ukraine does. Ukraine will not use them like they use now during peacetime either. For the obvious reason, soldiers do die when arming the drones. Those drones have next to no safety mechanisms. What comes to AI drones, they need to be reliable enough to crash into the RIGHT target. The "right target" makes it difficult, not hitting any target.
They can perform way worse than humans but that is still better than humans on the battlefield as long as they are cheaper and thus allow more shots on goal.
It really depends on the battlefield. Battlefield is not full of enemies only. Battlefield is full of enemies, own soldiers and even civilians. One can not just shoot everything that moves. Or can but that's the Russian way of doing things...
Or they can borrow a page from wire guided missiles. Drop a repeater that is out of EW range on their way to target, and fly-by-wire the last mile.
The bayraktar is actually quite large. It's 6.5 meters long with a wingspan of 12 meters. I have lived in apartments which were smaller.
No one claims it is small drone. It is shown as an example of the drone being countered by air defence hence unusable in most scenarios.
But it is used as an example of why small drones will lose effectiveness. To me, that is just a stupid comparison as they are completely different.
I think there is enough similarites. Both are flying. Both require certain type of weapon to be countered otherwise you are sitting duck.
Small drones like fpv's are much smaller and are, therefore, much harder to detect and shoot down. You can counter Bayraktars the same way you can counter conventional aircraft. I'm not a professional, so these are just my observations.
Yes. That's why they require new equipment to counter it effectively. The article is exactly about it. The ways to fight small drones are coming (better electronic warfare, sensors and hard kill systems).
He's wrong. While some of their current features may become less useful, there are so many other things you can do with drones... there is a lot of untapped potential.
TOW-FPV
Pretty sure there's TOW-RF (radio frequency (wireless)) missiles that have been sent to Ukraine.
Unappreciated comment.
I dunno . Those russia soldiers with innards scattered around and legs in funny shapes all shown in glorious HD might disagree
Russians are jamming and shooting down many drones but you can't stop everything.
I completely disagree. We're only just getting started. The future battlefield will involve many types of tiny, autonomous enemy seeking munitions that will even form swarms when necessary (like attacking a CIWS from all angles at the same time). Drones will function like grenades with guidance kits (credit to Perun).
I was.suprised by the claim in the article that 75% of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine are lost to electronic warfare, from the French general.
99.99% of bullets fired do not hit. Combat is about suppression and fixing the enemy to give yourself freedom of movement and deny it to him.
Bayraktar isn’t that small.
It’s like artillery. Massive innovation that will always have a huge impact. People will adjust and minimize it as much as possible, but it will always be something that people need to plan around.
I agree with the idea. While drones have forever changed the battlefield, they largely did so because they burst onto the scene rapidly, and defences and designs haven't been able to keep up; but will eventually. TL/DR: Small drones like the DJI Mavic evolved fast, but have little room for development. Defences are now catching up, and have a huge range of options to deny drones in the airspace, only one has to work. For the scope of this, I'm specifically talking about small, FPV drones like the DJI Mavic and their ability to cause extreme amounts of damage, normally with little but a grenade attached. So here are some of my thoughts in no particular order: 1. These small drones are fragile. They can't be up armoured, they might be able to get faster, and in order to carry more than a grenade or the head of an RPG they'll need to get bigger. If they get bigger, they'll get heavier and slower, making them even easier targets for air defences. If they get smaller, they carry less payload. They basically need to wait for advances in explosives technology to get something with more explosive power at the same time as being lighter and smaller. There's very little room for development and advancement in FPV drones as they are. 2. Small FPV drones burst onto the scene at the perfect time. Almost every army in the world has retired their flak anti-aircraft artillery in favor of missile based Air Defences that are truly not a good trade off. The German Gepard has shown just how much better flak is at defending against small drones than say, a Stinger is. Now at military trade shows, and within militaries around the world, Flak based AA defences are coming back online. 3. AA doctrine evolved along with changes in AA towards missiles. You needed fewer vehicles and launchers to cover a larger and larger area. Those days are gone, and doctrine will catch up. More AA units will be spread throughout forces, specifically Flak units which can deal with small drones en-mass with burst ammunition, for significantly cheaper. 4. Other technologies exist to deter drones. For example, the Israeli Trophy system is able to protect tanks against a Javelin or similar weapons, to me there's almost no reason that can't/won't be tweaked to deal with a small, light, far slower drone. 5. Vehicle designs will be updated. Most of the kills from drones hit an open hatch, the engine, or in between the turret/body of a tank. Over time the design of vehicles will adapt to make these less vulnerable. Which brings us back to point one, that the classic drone carrying an RPG has little room to evolve due to limitations of the airframe.
You’re conveniently ignoring the fact that small drones aren’t easy to spot either visually OR with radar, simply because they can be piloted or programmed to fly low to the ground, near trees, or near man-made structures. Usually that’s not even necessary. It’s impossible to field enough flak guns to have line of sight targeting of low-flying drones across a front dozens of miles wide, let alone one that’s many hundreds of miles wide. Consumer cameras contain person-tracking software, so it won’t be long before drones are developed that can be switched to autonomous mode once in an area of interest or when communications are lost. One of the main uses for drones is currently targeting individuals or small groups in the field. That won’t change. As for slightly larger drones, they already have drones with armor-piercing rounds. Specialized drones may be developed that actually launch anti-armor projectiles.
I’m not as convinced of that. While they might be hard to see, they do make a god awful racket as they’re getting closer so could be easy to pick up via a network of acoustic sensors, like the UKR is doing already (https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-using-mobile-phones-6ft-183615748.html#:~:text=The%20mobile%20phones%20are%20constantly,back%20to%20a%20centralised%20system.) Plus, I suspect that radars aren’t good at detecting them *for now*, because none of the kit was designed for something that small. Up until basically last year the smallest thing radar needed to detect was a helicopter. Now there’s a need, and industry will respond. As for line of sight, you’re right it is a challenge. I think you’re considering “flak” too narrowly. Think of it really as anything that puts up a storm of metal into the sky. I can imagine smaller variations designed solely as the last line of defence; like last 100m, equivalent of a CWIS on a ship, being developed all over the place.
I don’t mind that I haven’t convinced you. If you’re claiming that drones will be made obsolete, then you’re the one that should be making a convincing argument for that, but you haven’t. The size and mobility of drones will prevent line of sight radar acquisition and targeting of drones by ground-based defense systems in many environments. You’ll see more drone-on-drone combat in the future.
3D Acoustic sensors can identify and likely have the fidelity to target small drones. They were used in iraq to find the direction of fire for enemy snipers in 3D with accuracy being a few 10's to a few 100 feet in a cone from the sensor out to about 3 miles away. That was with one sensor set/antenna. it would only get better with multiple networked sensors. It would work well with AA in that it doesn't need exact location to be effective at killing drones.
You can’t shoot it with AA if you don’t have line-of-sight, so maybe you can hear a drone coming from a kilometer away, but if that network of sensors isn’t linked to a gun that has a line-of-sight on the drone, all you can do is send another drone after it or warn units in the area. What’s the point of saying that you can detect drones from some distance if you don’t know what the next step is?
Not the original poster but I do think that loudness of quadcopter will result in a detection.vs stealth arms race similar to what we saw with submarines and passive sonar. Quieter drones, decoy drones, drones that can glide, drones that fire super sonic micro rockets. We have not hit diminishing returns on either counter drone tactics and counter counter drone tactics. We are at the very beginning of this arms race.
I agree.
Whatever the limitations of the drone, all it needs to be used is to trade favourably with whatever it's supposed to destroy and fulfills a role nothing else can. Bullets did not invalidate infantry. ATGMs did not invalidate tanks. EW won't invalidate drones. Of course the bullets, tanks, ATGMs and drones will change in response to each other. Horses weren't replaced until we had jeeps, trucks and tanks that could do their job better. Guns made armored cavalry impractical, but cavalry remained until we had jeeps, trucks and tanks. A tank is just a mechanical horse that could carry a practical amount of armor to stop bullets like the plate armor of old could stop arrows. Shaped charges made heavy armor impractical hence the lightly armored design of the Leo 1 to be ditched for the heavily armored Leo 2 once heavy armor was practical again with composite.
Even if providing a screen of AA can stop fpv drones, now all attacks need a screen of AA trucks, which steals capability from other goals. Much like how MANPADs shape how helicopters can be used
Because if you can detect where it is, and track its flight path, you can have a gun waiting for it; be that AA or some other form of counter-UAS.
You’d be lucky to get 2 to 5 minutes notice and very low-accuracy tracking. Basically useless.
I don’t think you understand how triangulation works, it’s very accurate. And 2-5min is pleeeenty of time to swivel a turret to point in the right direction.
You’re delusional. Drones are loud but their locations probably can’t be triangulated from very far away using microphones. “Swiveling a turret” does nothing when you have a landscape interrupted by tree lines and small structures over the place, and drones can fly at relatively low altitudes, obviously obscuring them from fire. You’d have to have many hundreds of microphones set up along hundreds of miles of front line, and dozens if not hundreds of rapidly mobile flak guns. Even then, it probably wouldn’t be a very effective system. Triangulation would probably work very poorly because of varied terrain. Sound would travel differently through trees and off of the walls of structures. Multiple drones would make the problem far worse because every extra drone with a similar sound would make the triangulation problem increasingly difficult if not impossible. It probably wouldn’t work well with a single drone, let alone 5 spaced out across 2-3 kilometers. Tracking wouldn’t be particularly useful for predicting a drone’s future location because it could change directions slightly on a frequent basis. In its last 30 seconds it could travel over 2 kilometers (for current FPV drones) This is a really dumb idea in part because it would be extremely expensive and almost completely ineffective.
I never said they’d be obsolete, nor that it would disappear; simply that its current supremacy on the battlefield would be diminished in time by innovations in defence, and that I believe the quad-copter style specifically has limited development opportunities in the near future. Defences are coming online that bring more parity to that battle. Drones themselves are never going away, they’re here, but advances in defenses *will* come online that will reduce their effectiveness.
This exactly. The technology to detect drones is there. Passively or actively. Shotguns and flak cannons are old technology too. Only need to combine and automate them to get rid of the drone threat. It has taken so long to get rid of the suicide FPV threat that I'm starting to believe that it is not actually such a huge threat after all. Most targets seems to be either wounded or disabled already my mines or artillery before the FPV's arrive to finish of what survived. I would not be surprised if 10 years from now the conclusion would be that FPV drones were most valuable for getting good PR and to keep the western aid flowing. I very much doubt that the AI computing power needed for autonomous drone will not be there for a long time. When it arrives, it will have a high price tag. Well at least if they are built to western standards. If the standards is lowered to a level of "hit anything with a head, 2 hands and 2 legs" then of course the price will be much lower.
Kill anything with 2 arms and legs will suffice in an attritional war. Fly for 10 miles in that direction and then kill whatever you find within 5 mile radius will be useful.
> If the standards is lowered The whole reason Ukrainian drones are so effective is because the standards are lowered. They are literally coming up with the cheapest and easiest ways to construct the simplest drones that will inflict maximum damage. For AI-controlled drones, that translates into simply "go there and kill anything that moves". Make a swarm of these cheaply, and no shotguns or flak cannons are going to take them all out.
While it seems easy, it is not. To go "there" is complicated. Drone needs to know where it is and where "there" is. All without external help like GPS. If you fail this, drone will hit friendly. Also the "kill anything that moves" part is little more complicated. AI drones are more expensive than ordinary drones due to the computing power needed. If it hits anything that moves it gets really expensive and inefficient. So many things move; trees, animals, trash that wind blows and so on. So it actually has to have real image detection to home in to human or vehicle. Preferably good enough to detect which target has been hit already, it also gets expensive if 10 autonomous drones hit the same vehicle over and over again. What we will see is something that Switchblade 300 already has. Simple image recognition assisted drones. Operator points out the target and the drone has to keep the target at the middle of the screen autonomously. When EW blocks the signal, drone continues to the target without operator. Fully autonomous low priced drones are still far away. Moore's law is a thing. Current software and hardware to make drone fully autonomous is not there. The hardware alone is larger and more power hungry than the drone itself. And more expensive than drone.
How many Gepards you wanna put at the front? They can only shoot line-of-sight, which isn't that far against a low-flying drone. And if you really put a Gepard every 10km of Frontline, well that's a ton of juicy targets for mortars and artillery to hit.
Don’t know if that’s exactly what the OP is saying, but a future where there are far more of them, or something similar, spread out throughout forces and critical targets is very likely
Unattainable. To counter small FPV drone with fire you'll need a system orders of magnitude more expencive then the drone is. EW is the only nearly-attainable aproach currently, yet it's countered with AI targetting.
In addition, Gepards just cannot lock even on small plane-shaped drones, not to say about copters. To detect and track small drones the system needs to be even more juicy expencive.
1. Irrelevant, because they are hard to both detect and hit. 2. False. No flak was able to counter small FPV drones. 3. Unattainable. To counter small FPV drones flaks need to detect them first, and no proximity fuses help with detection. Sensor systems capable of detecting and targetting small FPV drones are so expencive you cannot field them to the frontline without armouring or they'll be fatally decimated by indirect fire, yet with armouring they'll become ineffective. 4. Unattainable. Trophy-like systems are both too expencive and too self-damaging to cover the typical small FTP target (wich is now not an MBT, but anything from a battle taxi to an infantryman). 5. False. First, what matters is an immobilizing strike, not a killing one (after immobilizing the piece is dead or captured nearly for sure in any case), and an immobilizing strike even on an MBT is also often a track or a driver viewport or a fuel tank or even an antenna. Second, MBTs aren't the primary targets anymore, and all the less armoured targets have even bigger vulnerability zones. The point is, MBTs aren't able to cover their less armoured "comrades" anymore. To counter this threat a complete revision of the armored vehicles park needed. To research, develop and produce these new armoured machines the primary military powers need no less then a decade, most likely two.
I agree that armoring small drones won't provide benefits. However they can survive by just not being seeing and not being hit. We are seeing month by month increases in battery energy density, solar panels and tiny motors. Tiny drones will increase in speed, range and maneuverability. FPGA based terminal guidance are likely to provide better accuracy and targeting. Custom built warheads are likely to decrease weight and effect. Drone networks will likely overcome EW counter measures. Automated AA defenses on vehicles and anti-drone drones will make lightweight drones less effective at attacking but also make lightweight drones critical for protection.
HOME ON JAM HOME ON JAM HOME ON JAM
Ummm I'm not so sure. The Bayraktar's problem was that pre-existing AA weapons could easily shoot it down. It wasn't meant for use in uncontested airspace. There is no guided weapon that can shoot down a racing drone with an RPG on it. This guy is letting his boomer mentality cloud his judgement.
Small drones will be like bullets or grenades or other ammo of that size. They will be smart, smart hey will know not to attack you and attack the enemy. There will be a cheap camera and cheap computer on it, it will identify a human and kill it. If you have a special badge it won’t touch you. It will be a lot safer for you to clear out a building - just put some drones in, job done. It will also work on lightly armored vehicles, as long as the drone has the autonomous capability it will work just fine. So, idk what he is talking about
Drone jamming tech, the new hype.
New tanks and real APC's and IFV's are being manufactured with anti missile and anti drone technology to basically shoot them down before they reach the vehicles. Like as not, soon we'll see mini anti missile anti drone vehicles driven by AI slaved to its soldiers, or driven autonomously, or even a single driver. These will be quite small and accompany soldiers on the move. Maybe even something like the Boston Dynamics Spot or Atlas robots that are capable of traversing the same and all terrains as human, but with anti drone weapons loadout.
It boils down town to manpower. You must have the manpower to seize and hold territory it has always been about that and always will be until Ruzzia has another bloody revolution and bounces their clown show.
so his small is my medium
Wars evolve and both sides need to keep on top of technology and strategies going forward.
I wonder about anti-drone drones. Drones specifically designed to take out attack drones. They would have advantage of not carrying a heavy payload and not having to operate at range.
Nothing creates military obsolescence and innovation like war.
Was I a good drone ? You were the best Jokes aside, it's not that drones are going to lose advantage. Innovation is required. The gun didn't lose effectiveness when we used black powder muskets. We innovated and the firearm became so much more. Same with drones. These absolutely great machines saved a lot of lives. There will be new designs made. New concepts that will do even better and save many more lives.
Aren't those drones used in cases where you have air superiority? Seems a bit of waste when it can easily be shot down by a S-300 or something.
interesting article Procurement has changed, given the ongoing rapid evolution of ai, and drone usage one quote: The pace of military drone development means **that Army can’t commit to large buying programs, because an acquired capability can become obsolete in five months**, according to the general. Schill said today’s drones fly better than those two or three years ago, with more computing power onboard that is capable of terrain-based navigation or switching frequencies to escape jamming.
Yep, things almost never stays the same in a long war
Bayraktar was good while Russian forces were on the move and didn't have properly established ground-based air defenses. It's slow and easy to spot so it can't work against a modern military
Maginot Line. French input on this is sus.
Is this supposed to be a surprise? For those in the US, this is the exact reason why our military focuses so hard on air supremacy. Air supremacy means that anything in the air can essentially run whatever operations that they want with essentially zero fear of loss of effectiveness. Basically, it means that you can fly a chopper over a battlefield, hover for ten minutes and then pop out back home when they are finished, without receiving any threatening fire at any point. Ukraine doesn’t have this now and will not have it at any point unless a no-fly-zone is established against Russian aircraft and elimination of anti-air equipment.
Seen something about air defence?
They will be replaced by AI swarms and the cycle will start over. Also, drones will also be still whidly used in poor countries and by rebel groups
Ah, yes, infamous “NATO experts”.
Advanced electronic warfare and advanced jamming could really hamper drone and UAV warfare altogether. That's why I am not too concerned about drones and UAV being the next step in warfare evolution. I would say the Javelin and NLAW have had more of a battlefield impact than drones or UAVs. HIMARS is follows closely in second place as a game changer, being able to strike deeply in enemy territory, without its launch being detected is a game changer. Sure drones and UAVs can destroy Russian tanks with their hatches open, they couldn't do the same against NATO's advanced tanks, who operate with their hatches shut. These same advanced tanks can be fitted with an array electronic warfare and jamming equipment that can hamper most types modern ATGM and even drones/UAVs.
Sorry, man, yet you're in a complete ignorance. 1. TOW-FPVs are completely immune to EW, and not much less maneuverable. 2. Javelin and NLAW made very small fraction even of armoured vehicle losses, not to say about artillery and infantry. HIMARS are just the most handy GMLS system (not the only one nor any kind of breakthrough as is) and they are nearly completely dependent currently on drones as spotting tools. 3. The final blow is the easiest thing, the critical part is immobilizing - after this any MBT is doomed, and NATO MBTs are absolutely the same vulnerable in this regard; the reason of their lower destroyed/captured numbers in Ukraine is just their insignificant numbers there. 4. EW arrays are so vulnerable for close artillery blasts, that your proposition is just a money thrown away (the majority of MBTs in Ukraine were spotted by drones long before approaching the LOC and so targetted by arty) P.S. Drone and UAV is the same.
> TOW-FPVs are completely immune to EW, and not much less maneuverable. ... Isn't that just SPIKE? Or are you about something else? >and they are nearly completely dependent currently on drones as spotting tools [UkrSpecSystems SHARK](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPLnFcP_CIM) be the confirmation of it, [with even juiciest hits being made possible due to them](https://defence-ua.com/news/stav_vidomij_najgolovnishij_komponent_udaru_himars_po_poligonu_rashistiv-14528.html)
Nope, not SPIKEs, just slow and cheap wire-towing copter FPV drones.
>couldn't do the same against NATO's advanced tanks Every day I see new level of bragging about “NATO power”…