chrisl

the funny thing is that they refloated the fleet (because he destroyed it on the first day of a two week exercise) and he did it again. Then they just kept changing rules until they validated that they could defend themselves from conventional attacks that they were designed for and pretended attackers would do what they were asked.  Or something like that.
Fixed targets like the kerch bridge are somewhat easier to defend against drones. Basically a lot of nets.  Torpedo nets to several meters deep and up a few meters above the surface for the speedboat drones, birdblock/deer net for the aerial drones (probably so much plastic it will consume a month of russian oil) and radars/missiles for ships and planes. Like a huge aviary.  Ships basically have to be turned into minesweepers/fishing trawlers with nets hanging from bow mounted cranes to get the same kind of net coverage.  On the positive side, they can probably feed the crew from all the sea life they sweep up in the nets.

It's awfully close to what the US experienced in 2002 in the Millenium Challenge wargame, where the Red Team used an armada of small speedboats to get inside the pickets and first spot all the ships to hit them with cruise missiles, then later used more small speedboats on suicide attacks.  The Red Team sank 16 ships. If you don't have to find suicidal volunteers to drive the motorboats, it's easier to put more of them on the water to overwhelm the defenses.  The Navy's first response to the Red Team win was denial.  Not denial of the motorboats the ability to get through, but denial that it  was a valid and effective tactic.
As for the detection problem that he describes, I suspect the problem is worse than he describes.  It's not obvious that the US has really solved it with technology, particularly since there have been a few high profile major collisions at sea not all that long ago.  They depend a lot on the age old Mk I Eyeball all around the ship, and use further out ships and aircraft to extend the range of the eyeballs.  It's why big ships have historically traveled in fleets with smaller "sacrificial" ships spread out around them.  I've seen various systems for repelling the little motorboats (some of which depend on them having people in them) but not a lot of detail on detection systems, which I suspect are still hard for everybody.
I'm not a radar person, but a lot of the same things apply in the optical.  He doesn't go into technical details, but I suspect part of why the surface clutter problem is reduced at longer range is because the size of resolution elements gets bigger as you go farther (same angle per element, farther away), so it gets averaged over each whole element.  Plus the smaller reflected signals may be below a set detection threshold.  That all makes the screen look clearer at a some longer distance, but if the target you're looking for is down in the same size range and radar reflectivity as the clutter, it's also going to get averaged down and you're still not going to see it when it's far away.  The most effective way to see the little boats far out is going to be with a picket of helicopters (or now drones) that fly around and watch the sea far enough out to spot them from above at what is relatively short range for the pickets.  

There is at least some evidence that DARPA is working on an MHD drive. Apparently one of the biggest problem is that the electrodes wear out, that matters a lot less when it only has to work for ten kilometers, once. 

Even slow boats have fast screws - little propellors don't move much water per turn, so they need more turns, and you have to stay ahead of the currents and wind.  If they want slow drive noise they'd have to go with big paddlewheels, or robotic rowboats that have big flat surfaces that move a lot of water per stroke or per paddle board in the water and probably have a big reflective radar signature.  You can do steam or compressed gas powered for the final couple miles, but those will also have an acoustic signature.

Even slow boats have fast screws - little propellors don't move much water per turn, so they need more turns, and you have to stay ahead of the currents and wind.  If they want slow drive noise they'd have to go with big paddlewheels, or robotic rowboats that have big flat surfaces that move a lot of water per stroke or per paddle board in the water and probably have a big reflective radar signature.  You can do steam or compressed gas powered for the final couple miles, but those will also have an acoustic signature.

the funny thing is that they refloated the fleet (because he destroyed it on the first day of a two week exercise) and he did it again. Then they just kept changing rules until they validated that they could defend themselves from conventional attacks that they were designed for and pretended attackers would do what they were asked.  Or something like that.
Fixed targets like the kerch bridge are somewhat easier to defend against drones. Basically a lot of nets.  Torpedo nets to several meters deep and up a few meters above the surface for the speedboat drones, birdblock/deer net for the aerial drones (probably so much plastic it will consume a month of russian oil) and radars/missiles for ships and planes. Like a huge aviary.  Ships basically have to be turned into minesweepers/fishing trawlers with nets hanging from bow mounted cranes to get the same kind of net coverage.  On the positive side, they can probably feed the crew from all the sea life they sweep up in the nets.

The ground war may have hit defensive denial primacy or whatever @The_Capt is calling it, but the UA is definitely hitting Russia where it hurts.  If the RA doesn't figure out how to defend against this, there will be a few more "window incidents" in the near future. 😎

the funny thing is that they refloated the fleet (because he destroyed it on the first day of a two week exercise) and he did it again. Then they just kept changing rules until they validated that they could defend themselves from conventional attacks that they were designed for and pretended attackers would do what they were asked.  Or something like that.
Fixed targets like the kerch bridge are somewhat easier to defend against drones. Basically a lot of nets.  Torpedo nets to several meters deep and up a few meters above the surface for the speedboat drones, birdblock/deer net for the aerial drones (probably so much plastic it will consume a month of russian oil) and radars/missiles for ships and planes. Like a huge aviary.  Ships basically have to be turned into minesweepers/fishing trawlers with nets hanging from bow mounted cranes to get the same kind of net coverage.  On the positive side, they can probably feed the crew from all the sea life they sweep up in the nets.

It's awfully close to what the US experienced in 2002 in the Millenium Challenge wargame, where the Red Team used an armada of small speedboats to get inside the pickets and first spot all the ships to hit them with cruise missiles, then later used more small speedboats on suicide attacks.  The Red Team sank 16 ships. If you don't have to find suicidal volunteers to drive the motorboats, it's easier to put more of them on the water to overwhelm the defenses.  The Navy's first response to the Red Team win was denial.  Not denial of the motorboats the ability to get through, but denial that it  was a valid and effective tactic.
As for the detection problem that he describes, I suspect the problem is worse than he describes.  It's not obvious that the US has really solved it with technology, particularly since there have been a few high profile major collisions at sea not all that long ago.  They depend a lot on the age old Mk I Eyeball all around the ship, and use further out ships and aircraft to extend the range of the eyeballs.  It's why big ships have historically traveled in fleets with smaller "sacrificial" ships spread out around them.  I've seen various systems for repelling the little motorboats (some of which depend on them having people in them) but not a lot of detail on detection systems, which I suspect are still hard for everybody.
I'm not a radar person, but a lot of the same things apply in the optical.  He doesn't go into technical details, but I suspect part of why the surface clutter problem is reduced at longer range is because the size of resolution elements gets bigger as you go farther (same angle per element, farther away), so it gets averaged over each whole element.  Plus the smaller reflected signals may be below a set detection threshold.  That all makes the screen look clearer at a some longer distance, but if the target you're looking for is down in the same size range and radar reflectivity as the clutter, it's also going to get averaged down and you're still not going to see it when it's far away.  The most effective way to see the little boats far out is going to be with a picket of helicopters (or now drones) that fly around and watch the sea far enough out to spot them from above at what is relatively short range for the pickets.  

It's awfully close to what the US experienced in 2002 in the Millenium Challenge wargame, where the Red Team used an armada of small speedboats to get inside the pickets and first spot all the ships to hit them with cruise missiles, then later used more small speedboats on suicide attacks.  The Red Team sank 16 ships. If you don't have to find suicidal volunteers to drive the motorboats, it's easier to put more of them on the water to overwhelm the defenses.  The Navy's first response to the Red Team win was denial.  Not denial of the motorboats the ability to get through, but denial that it  was a valid and effective tactic.
As for the detection problem that he describes, I suspect the problem is worse than he describes.  It's not obvious that the US has really solved it with technology, particularly since there have been a few high profile major collisions at sea not all that long ago.  They depend a lot on the age old Mk I Eyeball all around the ship, and use further out ships and aircraft to extend the range of the eyeballs.  It's why big ships have historically traveled in fleets with smaller "sacrificial" ships spread out around them.  I've seen various systems for repelling the little motorboats (some of which depend on them having people in them) but not a lot of detail on detection systems, which I suspect are still hard for everybody.
I'm not a radar person, but a lot of the same things apply in the optical.  He doesn't go into technical details, but I suspect part of why the surface clutter problem is reduced at longer range is because the size of resolution elements gets bigger as you go farther (same angle per element, farther away), so it gets averaged over each whole element.  Plus the smaller reflected signals may be below a set detection threshold.  That all makes the screen look clearer at a some longer distance, but if the target you're looking for is down in the same size range and radar reflectivity as the clutter, it's also going to get averaged down and you're still not going to see it when it's far away.  The most effective way to see the little boats far out is going to be with a picket of helicopters (or now drones) that fly around and watch the sea far enough out to spot them from above at what is relatively short range for the pickets.  

I think you have just articulated why Russia cannot simply sit back on defence.  Add to this political considerations etc.  A defensive war against an opponent that can hammer really expensive stuff, like infrastructure - while the same opponents warfighting infrastructure is effectively inside NATO nations is a sure fire way to losing in the long run.
Putin needs to keep the pressure up until something gives because he really has no real other viable options.  If he can get the west to falter and start talking ceasefires, he can then reframe this fiasco as the greatest Russian victory since Bagration.

It's awfully close to what the US experienced in 2002 in the Millenium Challenge wargame, where the Red Team used an armada of small speedboats to get inside the pickets and first spot all the ships to hit them with cruise missiles, then later used more small speedboats on suicide attacks.  The Red Team sank 16 ships. If you don't have to find suicidal volunteers to drive the motorboats, it's easier to put more of them on the water to overwhelm the defenses.  The Navy's first response to the Red Team win was denial.  Not denial of the motorboats the ability to get through, but denial that it  was a valid and effective tactic.
As for the detection problem that he describes, I suspect the problem is worse than he describes.  It's not obvious that the US has really solved it with technology, particularly since there have been a few high profile major collisions at sea not all that long ago.  They depend a lot on the age old Mk I Eyeball all around the ship, and use further out ships and aircraft to extend the range of the eyeballs.  It's why big ships have historically traveled in fleets with smaller "sacrificial" ships spread out around them.  I've seen various systems for repelling the little motorboats (some of which depend on them having people in them) but not a lot of detail on detection systems, which I suspect are still hard for everybody.
I'm not a radar person, but a lot of the same things apply in the optical.  He doesn't go into technical details, but I suspect part of why the surface clutter problem is reduced at longer range is because the size of resolution elements gets bigger as you go farther (same angle per element, farther away), so it gets averaged over each whole element.  Plus the smaller reflected signals may be below a set detection threshold.  That all makes the screen look clearer at a some longer distance, but if the target you're looking for is down in the same size range and radar reflectivity as the clutter, it's also going to get averaged down and you're still not going to see it when it's far away.  The most effective way to see the little boats far out is going to be with a picket of helicopters (or now drones) that fly around and watch the sea far enough out to spot them from above at what is relatively short range for the pickets.  

I have a serious problem with this narrative that somehow Russia “did Adiivka” and has now fully recovered.  This entire position is based on some pretty sketchy vehicle production stats, most of the info coming out of Russia itself.  As far as we can tell the RA wrecked an entire MRD at Adiivka.  This is on top of loses elsewhere.  The idea that Russia simply stamped out an entire shiny new MRD to replace it is disinformation as far as I am concerned.  Russian force quality has been on a one way trajectory from the start of this war, except for a few notable areas: UAS and ISR - and we still are not sure if these are anomalies or trends.  In other capability areas it is exactly as you describe, more older equipment. (equipment less suitable for this environment) This is due to RA losses exceeding Russian industrial capacity to generate modern equipment.  It has been noted by more than one expert that Russia is draining its Soviet legacy force pool of equipment and ammunition.
So the idea that Russia is simply shrugging off all these losses - losses that Ukraine is barely able to sustain, while quaking under the giant footsteps of an unstoppable Russia, all the while the weak and puny west sits back and watches…well this borders on propaganda not worthy of this forum.  These sorts of gross oversimplifications without any real evidence, or skewing evidence need to stop as they play directly in Russian information operations.
I suspect the Ukrainian posters who have pitched these angles are a combination of war weary and/or are thinking that by continuing to promote a desperate Ukrainian situation that we will somehow become politically motivated.  However, they are missing the very real risk that some who read this forum may take this entire narrative as a sign that Ukraine is a lost cause, and we are all out of patience with lost causes.  By continually shouting “Ukraine is dooooomed” they might just convince enough people that they are right.  The answer won’t be to “double down and support Ukraine” it may wind up being “cut out losses and move on”.   That is what makes this angle such a powerful pro-Russian tool.  Russia must make this war appear “too hard, too complicated” because we in The West hate those situations.  Any and all skewed or heavily biased assessments like these simply play into Russian hands.

Yes. Images like that exist for both sides.  That’s datum, not data. It doesn’t tell me anything about how numerously or effectively Ru is using FPVs.  If it takes them 100 FPVs to inflict the same damage as Ukraine does with 10, then they’re using them 10x less effectively. (Edit- I see the link below went to plots on attacks. It didn’t display inline on my phone.  Thats number of attacks, but not effectiveness)

My point in the response is to the daily attrition, which has shifted in favor of russia. Ie a situation where neither side attacks
Attacking in the current environment successfully at scale is near impossible for anyone. 
That russia continues to do so evens the casulties out, whether the russian offensive capabilities outlast the defense and results in a crumbling of the front is known not even to the commanders. 

I've been trying to keep up with the thread the past couple weeks and haven't really had time to respond to things, but a few things went by without generating very many additional comments:
The first is the number of FPV drones that Ukraine is producing: 100K/month.  The second is the number of drones it takes to get a hit.  I've seen various numbers in the past 30 pages and also in some searching, and they're all consistently less than 10 drones per hit, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/7 all showing up.  That's a major step towards massed precision.
If you multiply it out and take the conservative 1/7, that's about 475 hits/day of something, and over 14,000 hits/month.  Those are all either damaged/destroyed vehicles of casualties, or some combination.  If each hit on average damages two people/things (not a big stretch, since most successful FPV attacks we see are on a vehicle or small group), that's 28K casualties or vehicles/month that have to be replaced, and 170K/year.  Just to break even.  And it doesn't depend on tubes that wear out or a heavy logistics tail moving a bunch of 152/155 HE around.
The third is the 350K artillery shells per month that RU is producing/procuring/refurbing.  If we assume that RU has fired 10K shells/day through the war to get 31,000 Ukrainian KIAs, and assume 3 WIA/KIA, those shells are producing about 170 Ukrainian casualties/day and it's taking ~275 shells to produce a single casualty. 
These are all approximate, and I'm not really comparing apples to apples (the drones are counting hits that can include both vehicles and troops, or one or the other, and I'm only counting troop casualties for impact of RU arty on Ukraine), but it's showing a picture of a transition - Ukraine is substituting drones for artillery and doing so very effectively.  And steadily improving. Russian artillery effectiveness is roughly constant, if not decreasing as quality of tubes and shells decreases, and not all that different from WWII era artillery effectiveness numbers I've seen.  If the Ukrainian FPV effectiveness is closer to 1/5 or 1/3, that starts to get into the "1 munition per opposing troop" kind of massed precision.  And many of the FPV drones don't cost much more than a single artillery shell.
The effectiveness could also drop as they have to have more troops with less training flying the FPVs, but it will also come back up as those "pilots" get practice.  And using FPVs instead of "meat in the seat" pilots means that the pilots just continue to gain experience, even if their missions fail, because they're not put directly into harms way during their sorties.
One of the biggest limitations of drones vs. artillery is range - drones are still mostly 10 km or less, and often limited to aerial LOS. They need bigger batteries or an artillery boost to get to longer range, and a relay drone (or multiple relays) to be controllable  farther out.
The other thing that's not making a lot of sense are the various claims that Russia can make or buy even more FPV drones than Ukraine.  We're not seeing the same kind of effectiveness - if they were just as numerous and effective as Ukr drones we'd be seeing 4 or 5x higher Ukr casualties than we are.  And I don't think we have reason to think that they are that effective and it's just good Ukr OpSec keeping us from hearing about it.
 

I've been trying to keep up with the thread the past couple weeks and haven't really had time to respond to things, but a few things went by without generating very many additional comments:
The first is the number of FPV drones that Ukraine is producing: 100K/month.  The second is the number of drones it takes to get a hit.  I've seen various numbers in the past 30 pages and also in some searching, and they're all consistently less than 10 drones per hit, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/7 all showing up.  That's a major step towards massed precision.
If you multiply it out and take the conservative 1/7, that's about 475 hits/day of something, and over 14,000 hits/month.  Those are all either damaged/destroyed vehicles of casualties, or some combination.  If each hit on average damages two people/things (not a big stretch, since most successful FPV attacks we see are on a vehicle or small group), that's 28K casualties or vehicles/month that have to be replaced, and 170K/year.  Just to break even.  And it doesn't depend on tubes that wear out or a heavy logistics tail moving a bunch of 152/155 HE around.
The third is the 350K artillery shells per month that RU is producing/procuring/refurbing.  If we assume that RU has fired 10K shells/day through the war to get 31,000 Ukrainian KIAs, and assume 3 WIA/KIA, those shells are producing about 170 Ukrainian casualties/day and it's taking ~275 shells to produce a single casualty. 
These are all approximate, and I'm not really comparing apples to apples (the drones are counting hits that can include both vehicles and troops, or one or the other, and I'm only counting troop casualties for impact of RU arty on Ukraine), but it's showing a picture of a transition - Ukraine is substituting drones for artillery and doing so very effectively.  And steadily improving. Russian artillery effectiveness is roughly constant, if not decreasing as quality of tubes and shells decreases, and not all that different from WWII era artillery effectiveness numbers I've seen.  If the Ukrainian FPV effectiveness is closer to 1/5 or 1/3, that starts to get into the "1 munition per opposing troop" kind of massed precision.  And many of the FPV drones don't cost much more than a single artillery shell.
The effectiveness could also drop as they have to have more troops with less training flying the FPVs, but it will also come back up as those "pilots" get practice.  And using FPVs instead of "meat in the seat" pilots means that the pilots just continue to gain experience, even if their missions fail, because they're not put directly into harms way during their sorties.
One of the biggest limitations of drones vs. artillery is range - drones are still mostly 10 km or less, and often limited to aerial LOS. They need bigger batteries or an artillery boost to get to longer range, and a relay drone (or multiple relays) to be controllable  farther out.
The other thing that's not making a lot of sense are the various claims that Russia can make or buy even more FPV drones than Ukraine.  We're not seeing the same kind of effectiveness - if they were just as numerous and effective as Ukr drones we'd be seeing 4 or 5x higher Ukr casualties than we are.  And I don't think we have reason to think that they are that effective and it's just good Ukr OpSec keeping us from hearing about it.
 

I've been trying to keep up with the thread the past couple weeks and haven't really had time to respond to things, but a few things went by without generating very many additional comments:
The first is the number of FPV drones that Ukraine is producing: 100K/month.  The second is the number of drones it takes to get a hit.  I've seen various numbers in the past 30 pages and also in some searching, and they're all consistently less than 10 drones per hit, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/7 all showing up.  That's a major step towards massed precision.
If you multiply it out and take the conservative 1/7, that's about 475 hits/day of something, and over 14,000 hits/month.  Those are all either damaged/destroyed vehicles of casualties, or some combination.  If each hit on average damages two people/things (not a big stretch, since most successful FPV attacks we see are on a vehicle or small group), that's 28K casualties or vehicles/month that have to be replaced, and 170K/year.  Just to break even.  And it doesn't depend on tubes that wear out or a heavy logistics tail moving a bunch of 152/155 HE around.
The third is the 350K artillery shells per month that RU is producing/procuring/refurbing.  If we assume that RU has fired 10K shells/day through the war to get 31,000 Ukrainian KIAs, and assume 3 WIA/KIA, those shells are producing about 170 Ukrainian casualties/day and it's taking ~275 shells to produce a single casualty. 
These are all approximate, and I'm not really comparing apples to apples (the drones are counting hits that can include both vehicles and troops, or one or the other, and I'm only counting troop casualties for impact of RU arty on Ukraine), but it's showing a picture of a transition - Ukraine is substituting drones for artillery and doing so very effectively.  And steadily improving. Russian artillery effectiveness is roughly constant, if not decreasing as quality of tubes and shells decreases, and not all that different from WWII era artillery effectiveness numbers I've seen.  If the Ukrainian FPV effectiveness is closer to 1/5 or 1/3, that starts to get into the "1 munition per opposing troop" kind of massed precision.  And many of the FPV drones don't cost much more than a single artillery shell.
The effectiveness could also drop as they have to have more troops with less training flying the FPVs, but it will also come back up as those "pilots" get practice.  And using FPVs instead of "meat in the seat" pilots means that the pilots just continue to gain experience, even if their missions fail, because they're not put directly into harms way during their sorties.
One of the biggest limitations of drones vs. artillery is range - drones are still mostly 10 km or less, and often limited to aerial LOS. They need bigger batteries or an artillery boost to get to longer range, and a relay drone (or multiple relays) to be controllable  farther out.
The other thing that's not making a lot of sense are the various claims that Russia can make or buy even more FPV drones than Ukraine.  We're not seeing the same kind of effectiveness - if they were just as numerous and effective as Ukr drones we'd be seeing 4 or 5x higher Ukr casualties than we are.  And I don't think we have reason to think that they are that effective and it's just good Ukr OpSec keeping us from hearing about it.
 

So, reading the last couple of pages, here's how I'm reading the argument about western and soviet legacies. To succeed tactically on the modern battlefield, an army needs to establish fires superiority and ISR superiority (which involves denying both to the enemy and securing both for friendly operations). The legacy Soviet and legacy Western took different paths to achieving those two superiorities, albeit with some overlap. Neither seems workable on the modern battlefield.
The legacy western system relied on ranged precision systems to deliver fires. So, Excalibur, Javelin, HIMARS, Tomahawk, HARM, and the like. The legacy western system relied on dismantling the enemy's fires complex. This is a sort of pre-emptive counter battery, where we identified fires systems and targeted them as a precursor to tactical engagement.
"Air Superiority" is a misnomer. It's really ISR and fires superiority delivered by primarily airborne systems. One thing on the table now is whether the western fires superiority system can dismantle an opposing fires complex. We built our fires complex to targeting large, hot, heavy systems, not now a fires complex is much more distributed and made of much less energetic bits. Targeting a Pantsir? Doable. Targeting two guys with a backpack full of drones? Harder.
The legacy soviet system relied on mass to deliver fires. TOS-1, Grad, the abundance of tube artillery. The legacy soviet system relied on overwhelming the enemy's counterbattery complex to secure fires in a competitive environment. 
The legacy western system relied on airborne ISR to establish superiority, and on airspace denial to inhibit enemy airborne ISR. The legacy soviet system relied on recon in force (?) to establish ISR superiority, and on airspace denial to inhibit enemy ISR. These have both been blown up by high speed battlefield networking (!) and plentiful drones. Nobody has any idea how to deny dronespace. Also, the Russians appear to be using waves of expendable soldiers as a form of reconnaissance, which is horrifying, but appears to be sort of effective?
More to ponder here, and whatever system ends up able to deliver fires and ISR won't look like either the legacy western or legacy Soviet system, because the physics and geometry of a modern battlefield are so different.

I've been trying to keep up with the thread the past couple weeks and haven't really had time to respond to things, but a few things went by without generating very many additional comments:
The first is the number of FPV drones that Ukraine is producing: 100K/month.  The second is the number of drones it takes to get a hit.  I've seen various numbers in the past 30 pages and also in some searching, and they're all consistently less than 10 drones per hit, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/7 all showing up.  That's a major step towards massed precision.
If you multiply it out and take the conservative 1/7, that's about 475 hits/day of something, and over 14,000 hits/month.  Those are all either damaged/destroyed vehicles of casualties, or some combination.  If each hit on average damages two people/things (not a big stretch, since most successful FPV attacks we see are on a vehicle or small group), that's 28K casualties or vehicles/month that have to be replaced, and 170K/year.  Just to break even.  And it doesn't depend on tubes that wear out or a heavy logistics tail moving a bunch of 152/155 HE around.
The third is the 350K artillery shells per month that RU is producing/procuring/refurbing.  If we assume that RU has fired 10K shells/day through the war to get 31,000 Ukrainian KIAs, and assume 3 WIA/KIA, those shells are producing about 170 Ukrainian casualties/day and it's taking ~275 shells to produce a single casualty. 
These are all approximate, and I'm not really comparing apples to apples (the drones are counting hits that can include both vehicles and troops, or one or the other, and I'm only counting troop casualties for impact of RU arty on Ukraine), but it's showing a picture of a transition - Ukraine is substituting drones for artillery and doing so very effectively.  And steadily improving. Russian artillery effectiveness is roughly constant, if not decreasing as quality of tubes and shells decreases, and not all that different from WWII era artillery effectiveness numbers I've seen.  If the Ukrainian FPV effectiveness is closer to 1/5 or 1/3, that starts to get into the "1 munition per opposing troop" kind of massed precision.  And many of the FPV drones don't cost much more than a single artillery shell.
The effectiveness could also drop as they have to have more troops with less training flying the FPVs, but it will also come back up as those "pilots" get practice.  And using FPVs instead of "meat in the seat" pilots means that the pilots just continue to gain experience, even if their missions fail, because they're not put directly into harms way during their sorties.
One of the biggest limitations of drones vs. artillery is range - drones are still mostly 10 km or less, and often limited to aerial LOS. They need bigger batteries or an artillery boost to get to longer range, and a relay drone (or multiple relays) to be controllable  farther out.
The other thing that's not making a lot of sense are the various claims that Russia can make or buy even more FPV drones than Ukraine.  We're not seeing the same kind of effectiveness - if they were just as numerous and effective as Ukr drones we'd be seeing 4 or 5x higher Ukr casualties than we are.  And I don't think we have reason to think that they are that effective and it's just good Ukr OpSec keeping us from hearing about it.
 

I've been trying to keep up with the thread the past couple weeks and haven't really had time to respond to things, but a few things went by without generating very many additional comments:
The first is the number of FPV drones that Ukraine is producing: 100K/month.  The second is the number of drones it takes to get a hit.  I've seen various numbers in the past 30 pages and also in some searching, and they're all consistently less than 10 drones per hit, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/7 all showing up.  That's a major step towards massed precision.
If you multiply it out and take the conservative 1/7, that's about 475 hits/day of something, and over 14,000 hits/month.  Those are all either damaged/destroyed vehicles of casualties, or some combination.  If each hit on average damages two people/things (not a big stretch, since most successful FPV attacks we see are on a vehicle or small group), that's 28K casualties or vehicles/month that have to be replaced, and 170K/year.  Just to break even.  And it doesn't depend on tubes that wear out or a heavy logistics tail moving a bunch of 152/155 HE around.
The third is the 350K artillery shells per month that RU is producing/procuring/refurbing.  If we assume that RU has fired 10K shells/day through the war to get 31,000 Ukrainian KIAs, and assume 3 WIA/KIA, those shells are producing about 170 Ukrainian casualties/day and it's taking ~275 shells to produce a single casualty. 
These are all approximate, and I'm not really comparing apples to apples (the drones are counting hits that can include both vehicles and troops, or one or the other, and I'm only counting troop casualties for impact of RU arty on Ukraine), but it's showing a picture of a transition - Ukraine is substituting drones for artillery and doing so very effectively.  And steadily improving. Russian artillery effectiveness is roughly constant, if not decreasing as quality of tubes and shells decreases, and not all that different from WWII era artillery effectiveness numbers I've seen.  If the Ukrainian FPV effectiveness is closer to 1/5 or 1/3, that starts to get into the "1 munition per opposing troop" kind of massed precision.  And many of the FPV drones don't cost much more than a single artillery shell.
The effectiveness could also drop as they have to have more troops with less training flying the FPVs, but it will also come back up as those "pilots" get practice.  And using FPVs instead of "meat in the seat" pilots means that the pilots just continue to gain experience, even if their missions fail, because they're not put directly into harms way during their sorties.
One of the biggest limitations of drones vs. artillery is range - drones are still mostly 10 km or less, and often limited to aerial LOS. They need bigger batteries or an artillery boost to get to longer range, and a relay drone (or multiple relays) to be controllable  farther out.
The other thing that's not making a lot of sense are the various claims that Russia can make or buy even more FPV drones than Ukraine.  We're not seeing the same kind of effectiveness - if they were just as numerous and effective as Ukr drones we'd be seeing 4 or 5x higher Ukr casualties than we are.  And I don't think we have reason to think that they are that effective and it's just good Ukr OpSec keeping us from hearing about it.
 

I've been trying to keep up with the thread the past couple weeks and haven't really had time to respond to things, but a few things went by without generating very many additional comments:
The first is the number of FPV drones that Ukraine is producing: 100K/month.  The second is the number of drones it takes to get a hit.  I've seen various numbers in the past 30 pages and also in some searching, and they're all consistently less than 10 drones per hit, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/7 all showing up.  That's a major step towards massed precision.
If you multiply it out and take the conservative 1/7, that's about 475 hits/day of something, and over 14,000 hits/month.  Those are all either damaged/destroyed vehicles of casualties, or some combination.  If each hit on average damages two people/things (not a big stretch, since most successful FPV attacks we see are on a vehicle or small group), that's 28K casualties or vehicles/month that have to be replaced, and 170K/year.  Just to break even.  And it doesn't depend on tubes that wear out or a heavy logistics tail moving a bunch of 152/155 HE around.
The third is the 350K artillery shells per month that RU is producing/procuring/refurbing.  If we assume that RU has fired 10K shells/day through the war to get 31,000 Ukrainian KIAs, and assume 3 WIA/KIA, those shells are producing about 170 Ukrainian casualties/day and it's taking ~275 shells to produce a single casualty. 
These are all approximate, and I'm not really comparing apples to apples (the drones are counting hits that can include both vehicles and troops, or one or the other, and I'm only counting troop casualties for impact of RU arty on Ukraine), but it's showing a picture of a transition - Ukraine is substituting drones for artillery and doing so very effectively.  And steadily improving. Russian artillery effectiveness is roughly constant, if not decreasing as quality of tubes and shells decreases, and not all that different from WWII era artillery effectiveness numbers I've seen.  If the Ukrainian FPV effectiveness is closer to 1/5 or 1/3, that starts to get into the "1 munition per opposing troop" kind of massed precision.  And many of the FPV drones don't cost much more than a single artillery shell.
The effectiveness could also drop as they have to have more troops with less training flying the FPVs, but it will also come back up as those "pilots" get practice.  And using FPVs instead of "meat in the seat" pilots means that the pilots just continue to gain experience, even if their missions fail, because they're not put directly into harms way during their sorties.
One of the biggest limitations of drones vs. artillery is range - drones are still mostly 10 km or less, and often limited to aerial LOS. They need bigger batteries or an artillery boost to get to longer range, and a relay drone (or multiple relays) to be controllable  farther out.
The other thing that's not making a lot of sense are the various claims that Russia can make or buy even more FPV drones than Ukraine.  We're not seeing the same kind of effectiveness - if they were just as numerous and effective as Ukr drones we'd be seeing 4 or 5x higher Ukr casualties than we are.  And I don't think we have reason to think that they are that effective and it's just good Ukr OpSec keeping us from hearing about it.
 

I've been trying to keep up with the thread the past couple weeks and haven't really had time to respond to things, but a few things went by without generating very many additional comments:
The first is the number of FPV drones that Ukraine is producing: 100K/month.  The second is the number of drones it takes to get a hit.  I've seen various numbers in the past 30 pages and also in some searching, and they're all consistently less than 10 drones per hit, 1/3, 1/5, and 1/7 all showing up.  That's a major step towards massed precision.
If you multiply it out and take the conservative 1/7, that's about 475 hits/day of something, and over 14,000 hits/month.  Those are all either damaged/destroyed vehicles of casualties, or some combination.  If each hit on average damages two people/things (not a big stretch, since most successful FPV attacks we see are on a vehicle or small group), that's 28K casualties or vehicles/month that have to be replaced, and 170K/year.  Just to break even.  And it doesn't depend on tubes that wear out or a heavy logistics tail moving a bunch of 152/155 HE around.
The third is the 350K artillery shells per month that RU is producing/procuring/refurbing.  If we assume that RU has fired 10K shells/day through the war to get 31,000 Ukrainian KIAs, and assume 3 WIA/KIA, those shells are producing about 170 Ukrainian casualties/day and it's taking ~275 shells to produce a single casualty. 
These are all approximate, and I'm not really comparing apples to apples (the drones are counting hits that can include both vehicles and troops, or one or the other, and I'm only counting troop casualties for impact of RU arty on Ukraine), but it's showing a picture of a transition - Ukraine is substituting drones for artillery and doing so very effectively.  And steadily improving. Russian artillery effectiveness is roughly constant, if not decreasing as quality of tubes and shells decreases, and not all that different from WWII era artillery effectiveness numbers I've seen.  If the Ukrainian FPV effectiveness is closer to 1/5 or 1/3, that starts to get into the "1 munition per opposing troop" kind of massed precision.  And many of the FPV drones don't cost much more than a single artillery shell.
The effectiveness could also drop as they have to have more troops with less training flying the FPVs, but it will also come back up as those "pilots" get practice.  And using FPVs instead of "meat in the seat" pilots means that the pilots just continue to gain experience, even if their missions fail, because they're not put directly into harms way during their sorties.
One of the biggest limitations of drones vs. artillery is range - drones are still mostly 10 km or less, and often limited to aerial LOS. They need bigger batteries or an artillery boost to get to longer range, and a relay drone (or multiple relays) to be controllable  farther out.
The other thing that's not making a lot of sense are the various claims that Russia can make or buy even more FPV drones than Ukraine.  We're not seeing the same kind of effectiveness - if they were just as numerous and effective as Ukr drones we'd be seeing 4 or 5x higher Ukr casualties than we are.  And I don't think we have reason to think that they are that effective and it's just good Ukr OpSec keeping us from hearing about it.
 

Lies, damn lies, statistics, and economic statistics. Reminds me of the old joke!
Two economists are walking in the park. As they're walking, they come across a pile of dog ****.
One economist says to the other, "If you eat that dog ****, I'll give you $50". The second economist thinks for a minute, then reaches down, picks up the ****, and eats it. The first economist gives him a $50 bill and they keep going on their walk.
A few minutes later, they come across another pile of dog ****. This time, the second economist says to the first, "Hey, if you eat that, I'll give you $50." So, of course, the first economist picks up the ****, eats it, and gets $50.  
Walking a little while farther, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $50 to eat dog ****, then you gave me back the same $50 to eat dog ****. I can't help but feel like we both just ate dog **** for nothing."
"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $100