hcrof

I am more interested in living in a free and prosperous community strong enough to resist external threats than a I am being part of a country of geriatrics moaning about the "good old days" before losing a war against an external autocrat. Russia and Ukraine have a demographic crisis bad enough to threaten their existence as a nation. I would prefer to change than to see my nation wiped out under a Chinese boot.

Richard "Coeur de Leon" would have considered himself French, not English But to answer your point, ask yourself who is telling you all this about Muslims in the UK? Have you talked to any of them yourself? Yes there is some social tension - that happens when social changes happen. But all countries change, and if we want to stay strong as a nation we have to accept that rather than dream of a past that never happened.

Hate to break it to you but I live in probably the most Muslim area of London, about 1km from the biggest mosque in the country and my neighbours are pretty chilled people. The area has a lot of bars and Muslim shopkeepers will happily sell me pork and beer. Violent islamic nutcases apparently exist but I am more worried about the far right "reaction" than Muslims just living a different lifestyle to me.

Guys, a little nuance please. When you GPS jam a himars the INS System Kicks in so it is not as accurate. The missile doesn't just fly into space but the CEP definitely increases. Russia has done this in some areas. Sometimes things got hit, sometimes the missiles missed.

talking of smart minefields: fpv drone ambushes where they sit on the ground under observation from another drone. When the enemy appears they pop up and kill them.

If Germany put out a tender tomorrow (for example) then companies from South Korea, Poland, Brazil, Pakistan, Bulgaria and more would be happy to give a price. If the order was big enough then that might persuade certain other Asian countries to tool up as well. If you are after 105mm HE or mortar rounds then you can expand that list considerably.

I am not proposing Outsourcing everything, I am trying to solve the scalability problem. Right now the Ukraine war demands maybe 5-10x the pre-war level of production but if we build that then we will have a lot of expensive unused capacity when the shooting stops. Instead we tool up for 2-3x prewar production (in expensive western countries) and buy the rest cheaply on the open market. The logic is that the west theoretically doesn't need all that ammo for itself because of the USAF so why tool up for capacity you won't need?

Why can't we do both? Build up a scalable national capacity but when we need to surge production to cover a crisis we outsource. We need shells in a hurry now, but hopefully won't in 10 years time.

Do you know what it's costs and capabilities are? Seems pretty big and high tech for a drone killer. Maybe good for ultra high value targets but not general use!

Is this what you have in mind? https://www.anduril.com/hardware/anvil/

Would you put the UKs recon-strike concept and urban phalanx experiments in that bucket? On the face of it there are some pretty radical changes afoot.

I'm no expert but if you pulse your laser you cause a tiny explosion that will do more damage than the pure heating effect. It's late here and it's a long article but here is more information than you ever wanted to know on laser guns: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sidearmenergy.php

I got it on Kindle I'm afraid so if you don't want to pay Amazon I can't help, sorry!

So Watling's book (which I have not finished yet) imagines the battlefield of the future to be extremely distributed with very low force densities due to the risk of concentration. EW emissions will be a constant low level "hum" of tiny encrypted data packets that make it hard to discern what emitter is important and what is just a decoy. In this environment, passive radar is used to pick up any movement and drones or dismounted recon troops are used to confirm genuine targets. A section of recon vehicles might occupy a frontage of 3-6km so there is a lot of empty space! This is obviously a bit different to Ukraine today, but that is what I have in mind when I say stuff will be hard to find. Even in Ukraine, you have a known trenchline (which may or may not be occupied) that is hardened, then a small number of fast supply runs at irregular intervals from depots far in the rear - deliberately not a target rich environment.

Interesting, but between that and the one The_Capt posted, that is still the entire weight of a FPV quadcopter. They are surprisingly cheap though - maybe they could be a larger class of winged drone, assuming they have the power to also carry a battery, sensor, processor and payload.

Genuine question: how small and cheap can you make a gas engine? And fixed wings are possibly a way forward, but they can't maneuver like a quadcopter. When you are relying on hitting the back of a tank turret or trying to stay very low through complex terrain that might be important, especially if your control system is a bit dumb and needs to make last-minute adjustments. I would not be surprised if both types are useful though. The Russian Lancet certainly seems useful, if much easier to shoot down with a RWS than a quadcopter.

I agree that they can be used en Masse but even the Russians don't shoot artillery at empty spots on the map just in case (at least deliberately). They need to be aimed at least vaguely in the area of a known or suspected target or even $500 drones will become uneconomic. Edit: to expand, either the drones need to fly from a launch site, likely 10-20km away from the target, in which case they will be at the limit of their endurance just getting there so they can't search for too long. Or they are fired by artillery, but then they get more expensive and probably still have low endurance when they arrive. Remember they will have a fairly crude sensor and processor on them, so they will likely have to get very close to their target to spot it unless the target is a moving vehicle. That will increase search times and eat into endurance. Edit 2: also, a drone searching for a target is much easier to shoot down than one attacking.

Autonomous drones can hunt stuff down within a defined "box" but the battlefield is still big and dispersed (even moreso when these capabilities exist) and batteries don't last forever. There will alway need to be a spotter system: acoustic and visual at short range and more active systems like drones and radar for longer range. Radar and drones can both be jammed or blown up but not 100% of the time, and in that window the attack drones are most dangerous.

To play devil's advocate, you don't need to hit the fpv drone (or it's autonomous successor) with a laser. It's probably good enough to hit the recon drone guiding it to the target, which will be by definition in line of sight. Having said that, if your enemy is willing to send autonomous drones to investigate radar returns then you are in big trouble because you can't hide a moving vehicle (or person really) from radar. Jack Watling in his new book talks about using spoofing aand decoys to create "ambiguity" but while the book is excellent I don't think it really grapples with the concept of a lot of cheap autonomous drones hunting down anything that moves.

Now that the latest russian offensive seems to be winding down, what do we know about the damage they did? They claim to have gained fire control over logistics routes and they have made some progress in the north. Is Avdiivka under threat at all?

so it seems something was attacked? A warship and a tug damaged? According to rybar it was possibly a fully submersible drone that was lurking outside the harbour waiting for ships to leave. That is a scary thought - a self deploying, fully guided naval minefield outside your harbour... Edit: how do you even defend against that? If Russia does regular sweeps for mines they are vulnerable to drone attacks, if they only sweep just before they want to leave harbour they telegraph their intentions and are also vulnerable to drone attacks. If they don't sweep they get hit by mines... Edit 2: and if the mines (submersible drones) can move then they can just move away from the minesweepers and then reposition later. Russia would need to run a full anti-submarine warfare operation against a few $50k drones that can just be easily replaced. All those ships and helicopters tied up chasing ghosts while more drone ships or Neptune missiles are waiting to strike... Edit 3: and think of the costs of anti-submarine warfare. Aviation fuel, sonar buoys, wear and tear etc. To try and find a $50-100k drone that might not even be there.

Fast jets have guidance aids to tell the pilot exactly when and where to drop to hit a target, which is corrected for air speed, direction etc. Similarly those fancy new rifle sights will pull the trigger when you are on your target and compensate for bullet drop, wind etc. I imagine it is not too hard to fix something similar to a slow moving drone so it autopilots the attack run for optimal accuracy. I am not saying the Ukrainians are actually using it, but it is possible.

I would not be surprised if RF logistics are being throttled enough near Tokmak that Russia cannot support more than X number of vehicles and guns, but overall they have supplies to spare. In that scenario they can be starved near Tokmak but also have enough for a reasonable push in the east. Having said that, it seems that the offensive in the east started with a bang but is rapidly running out of steam so my guess is that Putin wants results and politics is pushing the offensive more than military capacity. I am not sure Putin likes the idea of a forever war any more than the west does. Even with the incomplete information available to him he must be aware that the Russian army is getting weaker, not stronger, and he cannot sustain this level of conflict intensity forever. Especially against the whole collective west, which dwarfs Russia even if parts of it like the US decides to go all isolationist.

Ambulance, resupply, taxi just behind the front line etc. Plenty it can do without driving through minefields.

https://des.mod.uk/des-places-new-order-to-increase-155mm-shells-stockpile-for-british-army/#:~:text=The new ammunition orders have,Armed Forces up to 2037. My understanding is that they are working on it but it will take a few years to really ramp up. BAE systems have invented a new method of 155mm production which is cheaper and faster to produce than before too: https://www.edrmagazine.eu/bae-systems-ngaa-future-artillery-munitions-better-performances-maximum-flexibility-easy-to-produce-at-lower-costs