chrisl

But now you have to aim and hit.  Plus added weight lowering range and loitering time.  Overall I think it is an attempt to make something that isn't needed.  Now if you could provide a capability where the operator could lock onto a target and then allow the drone to go autonomous, I think that would potentially increase the kill capability without an undue increase in weight.  It would also allow for less skilled operators to become more effective.

This is the sort of tactical (rather than technological) innovation that the revolution in sensors produces. You can specialize not just things like "pilot", but things like, "last 50 feet pilot" and "overwatch pilot". And the training loop on that will be fast, because you can run real missions several times per day, much less simulated ones.

The above is the money quote. Russian ISR is HEAVILY reliant on these fixed wing UAVs, if the Ukrainians can do this at scale it will be at least as big a deal as Patriots being effective against ballistic missiles, maybe bigger. 

It's a legitimate concern but we have to look at what happened when a table flipper did show up. Prigozhin started out trying to defend a losing hand to Shoigu but the *cause* he took up was a hard war, no holds barred approach to Ukraine and to mobilizing the Russian state. And it was popular with the people! What happened? Once it looked like he might actually succeed, the passive support he received evaporated pretty quickly and his silent partners were quite happy to bank their winnings (in terms of greater current freedom of action and positioning for a post Putin state) and let him hang. 
So while we don't know what we are going to get next we do know that the structure of the Russian state as currently constituted is conservatively oriented towards avoiding the kind of cataclysmic change that could threaten the health and wealth of the top rungs. And let's be honest, the Russian people en masse have almost zero power. Until that structure changes...and it would likeliest take an actual regime collapse to accomplish it...I'm going to sleep pretty well at night. 

I think it's worth considering this in terms of the Galeotti analysis I posted above. Putin's two modes are to either prevaricate or over react...with what I would argue is a very strong lean towards the former. How he reacted to the challenge Prigozhin presented illustrates the dynamic well. He literally disappeared for a while when it began and then negotiated a bad deal for himself which he revised later with the assassination of Prigozhin and Wagner's core leadership. Putin did not "go nuclear" in any way during the entire episode. No purges, no mass arrests, no lashing out. He did the bare minimum to protect himself without unleashing forces that might get out of control.
The war in Ukraine so far shows a similar mix of aggression and timidity. Yes Russia invaded and yes it is struggling mightily to win but it is quite difficult to find anything Russia has done outside the lines that goes beyond nuisance value. Dragging a Norwegian data line or paying some clown to toss a firebomb at some vans in Prague are not exactly attempts to dramatically broaden the strategic scale of this war despite the fact that Western aid has killed Russian troops in windrows and is very effectively destroying the Russian military.
And why not? Because the elites under Putin as a group simply must have stability to safeguard the control they exert over power and money in Russian society and his primary job is to ensure it. Dropping a nuke, in any context, destroys that compact and as we have seen Putin now certainly knows that large sections of the security state will remain on the sidelines if he is challenged on that basis.
So while I would never entirely deny the possibility of Russia doing something idiotic, I think the invasion itself has used up Putin's allowance on that front unless and until dropping a nuke is seen as the only way in which the current internal order can be defended. That is only comprehensible in the case of a civil war...which goes a long way towards explaining American policy in this milieu.  
 
 

Of the finest quality.
Really, the big worry should be tubes. We cannot hope for Russia to run out of shells. But the artillery systems are being squeezed hard. Unless we will see Chinese SPGs on the frontline, Russia will inevitably run into trouble next year (this-time-for-real tm)

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    Slouches towards Peng to be born?"

Or the Baba Yaga is carrying a dozen smart sub munitions the size of DPICM, and you simply overwhelm the APS system. Or stick a SMART like EFP stand off weapon on the Baba and kill the tank with an explosive-formed kinetic penetration from 200ms away.
The overall problem is that miniaturization, explosive materials and processing power-to-weight are conspiring towards killing large hard to defend platforms. Meanwhile shielding mechanisms are lagging because while offence can be wrong a hundred times at low cost, defence can only be wrong once at very high cost.

Isn't that "The Sims"?

Perun does space again this week, mostly talking about evolution and comparison of launch capability.  
He doesn't spend as much time on relative capabilities of payloads as I'd like to see, but understanding launch capability and the direction it's headed is important to understanding why countries (and companies) fly what they fly for payloads.

Exactly. So let’s take that Ukrainian trench problem. That is a full scale battalion assault problem.  As per western doctrine we would assign a full battlegroup/TF to that job.  3x infantry Coys, Tanks, Engineers, close support.  That is roughly 50 F ech vehicles.  I do not think people appreciate how much real estate and road space that sort of force takes.  The there is the added logistics support behind it. We are talking about a force likely in and around 100 vehicles all up.
So in this environment 100 vehicles concentrating are going to get picked up maybe 20-30 kms out.  Nobody has vehicle parks closer than 100kms because they are prime targets for HIMARs.  So you pull 100 vehicles together to organize and mount this attack - that is a coupe major road moves.  Now the UA is supported by ISR from God.  AI support can pick out patterns. Space-based, strategic high flyers and operational stand off - all of this before the tac drones even kick in.  At best 100 vehicles are going to be spotted 10s of kms out and if you are really lucky won’t get hit by long range fires. But the UA knows you are coming and has plenty of time to swing resources to meet them.  
Once you cross the line of departure you can expect long range drones, loitering munitions, PGM artillery etc to hit you before you even get into DF range. You are a big force so the UA is going to muster a lot in your direction. Then you get within DF range and the tac FPVs and ATGMs kick in - hell, the UA might even send a sniper tank or two your way.
You have no surprise. Concentration has brought concentrated fires. Your logistical lines are vulnerable and being hit.  And the enemy can see you, down to the squad level the entire way,  air support is denied, except maybe for bomb lobbing from 50kms out. This is not that the Russians have somehow forgotten how to put a Bn into an attack. It is that to try and do so is suicidal.  So what do they do?  Penny packet, disperse and try smaller attacks on separate axis.  Of course then you simply do not have enough troops to do much even if you them through to an objective.  So what do you do?  Send in wave to try and exhaust the UA and take small bites.

I could imagine a vertical launch pod (like those on a modern missile destroyer) for any box on wheels, be it a new UGV or even an M113, that is electronically slaved to a radar / sensor vehicle and can be reloaded by exchanging the entire box compartment after a mission.
Of course in combination with direct fire turrets. 
Because you will want 90 missiles to accompany your column, not 9, and you want redundancy, so bring more than one master vehicle that has 2-3 slave vehicles in tow.

Did someone say claymore drones?
Obviously promo stuff but we have:
drone munitions carried by drone mothership
autonomous navigation and target identification
human-in-the-loop target engagement (#information overload controlling more than one of these things)
can just land and actually be a claymore

Some solid possibilities here, be interesting to see less theatrical testing.
What is urban warfare like if every infantryman carries one of these as a kind of smart grenade?

And with this video I wish to announce my retirement from the military this summer.  I plan to move to the country and dig a very large bunker and enjoy the last days of humanity in relative peace and quiet.
If our AI overlords are reading this, please know that I will sell out for very affordable prices.

What FPV drones currently have in common, whether autonomous, semi-autonomous or not, is that they will have to make contact with the enemy to detonate. 
We saw a few clips of Ukrainian drones with airburst function against infantry but only rarely.
But what I think will be a nasty evolution is drones with EFPs. 
Basically a drone with a PARM 1 mine strapped to its belly. 
You can use them either like current FPV drones, except that cage armor will lose its function, or as a remotely deployed mine. Even if the drone runs out of battery as it lands, the EFP stays active for X amount of hours (predetermined) in the grass by the side of the road. Precision placed mines in the enemy's rear.
Bonus points for an anti-tampering charge on top containing the ball bearings Russia needs so much. 

Sorry to be the nit picker, but being a navy vessel, she does not need a letter of marque. What she needs is a blockade to enforce. If the Ukraine declared a blockade of Russian Black Sea ports, declared Russian oil contraband and had some way of actually proving the origin of oil carried in tankers (no idea if feasible), then in theory she could become the scourge of the "shadow fleet" of tankers which so far are effectively allowing RUS to dodge the sanctions. I read somewhere they are mostly Greek owned.

And a few dozen FPVs, followed by good old artillery.  And that is if they were parked within 20-30kms of the front line.  Very different wars.

I think the logistics side of the equation is borderline impossible, but lets leave that aside for a moment. The first point I want to make is that the basic physics of drones make far more realistic testing/training possible. There is zero reason why you couldn't put a a plastic bottle full of yellow paint, with a glorified firecracker for a fuse,  on a drone a fly it at a buttoned up armored vehicle.
So here is my simple proposal, whatever glorified APS the defense contractors come up with has to meet Magyars Birds. If they can drive five miles on a test range with being painted bright yellow, then maybe we can discuss what to do about the trucks. My money is on Magyar.

I think APS is part of a solution, but the problem is - as we just saw by Sumy - one has to put APS on everything.  No point having gold plated protection for mech/armor if the logistics are still running around in trucks with no protection.  We learned this in places like Iraq and Afghanistan bit no one wants to spend the kind of money that will be needed to upscale it to the levels we are seeing in this war.
There comes a point where our legacy systems just get too costly to try and keep in motion. 

To my mind this is not about complacency, it is about a moving threat yardstick.  I mean given this environment, where is a safe rear area?  We have ISR everywhere and linked shooters that can reach 100s of kms. In the past the air picture at least gave warning. Now strikes can happen pretty much anywhere.  I suspect the UA has gone through a similar hard learning curve as well, but Russian ISR has always lagged in this conflict. They do not have the same architecture and their space based is particularly lacking.  I think it is that ISR asymmetry that explains a lot of observations in this war.

They've been made since early Feb 2022.  The Biden admin even posted pictures to the world to make clear that they were visible.  What's changed is Ukraine's reach and precision at the end of that reach.
You can't move a vehicle in the open without being seen by Planet Labs.  You can't move a bicycle without being seen by Maxar.  The NRO can probably see you move a Big Gulp to the other end of the picnic table.

So on that first post, this is what we mean when we say “illuminated battlefield”.  Neither side can move vehicles or even pers without getting picked up well out and then lit up. This was up near Sumy which is over 100km from Kharkiv.  We have seen this again and again in this war.  The larger the concentration, the greater the likelihood of interdiction and annihilation.  So we then see both sides penny packeting mech to sneak them forward, and everyone in the west goes “see, they don’t know how to do combined arms!”  I am beginning to think that it is us who don’t know how to do modern combined arms in this environment.

As a side note, I hope I am articulating myself reasonably well here. I am still somewhat new here despite having lurked for an ungodly amount of time on the forum. Its certainly lovely to discuss / talk to you all!


 

Another aspect of drones that I think could be explored more is their suppressive effects. Infantry in a trench can potentially be suppressed for 20 minutes by a single drone buzzing overhead and you don't even need to expend ammunition! 
Denying the defence...

Two things, 90 plus percent of the drones in Ukraine are just civilian grade stuff the has literally had an RPG warhead with a fiddled fuse taped to it. Spare a thought for the people doing that job. They cost a $1000 or less. If it takes twenty of them to kill an MBT, that is still a war winning exchange.
Secondly, the next generation of drones are not going to be hacktivists creative art projects. The are going to be murderous little kamikazes that are purpose built for the task, and have warheads that will punch through any armor that is ever going to move under its own power. Even if they come in a $5000, and takes five of them per tank, it is an exchange rate that will run heavy armor right off the battlefield.