chrisl

And the ISR is going to get more bonkers, too.  Be glad you can retire to an island with a bunch of cheesy DVDs from the 80s.

I don't spend time with drones, but I do spend time using the "wrong" type of batteries in things.  It's possible that the drones are all on low battery, or it could be that they're using batteries that run at a little lower voltage than whatever the drone was designed for.  There are lots of batteries that are "direct substitutes" with slightly different chemistries that run at lower cell voltages.  Some devices care a lot and won't work, while other devices just say "low battery" from the time you put it in to the time it runs out.

Tactical drones have gone through a few generations of development in those two years and we're still seeing nothing to counter them.
It doesn't mean it's impossible, but it's not an easy problem and it has to be cheaper and more plentiful than drones.  

I don't spend time with drones, but I do spend time using the "wrong" type of batteries in things.  It's possible that the drones are all on low battery, or it could be that they're using batteries that run at a little lower voltage than whatever the drone was designed for.  There are lots of batteries that are "direct substitutes" with slightly different chemistries that run at lower cell voltages.  Some devices care a lot and won't work, while other devices just say "low battery" from the time you put it in to the time it runs out.

I don't spend time with drones, but I do spend time using the "wrong" type of batteries in things.  It's possible that the drones are all on low battery, or it could be that they're using batteries that run at a little lower voltage than whatever the drone was designed for.  There are lots of batteries that are "direct substitutes" with slightly different chemistries that run at lower cell voltages.  Some devices care a lot and won't work, while other devices just say "low battery" from the time you put it in to the time it runs out.

You can send more bang farther and faster than with drones.  Drones can make up for some of the reduced bang with precision - if you can always be sure you can target a weak spot you don't need nearly as big of an explosion.
Artillery sends stuff with a speed that you're not going to see in drones unless you start using the shell as a sabot for a smart submunition.  Laser guiding is a sort of in between thing - you can use a spotter drone (the one who's already calling in the artillery) to paint the targets with a laser.

I'm sure there are Russians who want to talk about doing that, but China has a substantial amount of stuff in space that would be just as thoroughly effed as the US stuff, if not more so.  Which would leave Iran as Putin's remaining friend, and maybe North Korea.
And separate from that, unless they're going to make it go "bang" right away, it's not *that* hard to render a satellite inoperable, push it into a higher orbit, or bring it into the Pacific without making a big mess of LEO.  What are they going to do?  Lodge a public complaint that someone moved their nuke from the orbit they parked it in?  

I'm sure there are Russians who want to talk about doing that, but China has a substantial amount of stuff in space that would be just as thoroughly effed as the US stuff, if not more so.  Which would leave Iran as Putin's remaining friend, and maybe North Korea.
And separate from that, unless they're going to make it go "bang" right away, it's not *that* hard to render a satellite inoperable, push it into a higher orbit, or bring it into the Pacific without making a big mess of LEO.  What are they going to do?  Lodge a public complaint that someone moved their nuke from the orbit they parked it in?  

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

I would suggest the Culture novels for a long exegesis on this topic. 

It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th
P

I'm not a big graphics nerd, but I'd love to see Bradley rounds hitting a T-90 looking like that in Combat Mission.  But it's the kind of thing big budget games have a team of programmers and artists working on for 6 months straight and still can't get it looking right. 

If you are already operating at the air field just hit them taxiing or hell parked even.

Many years ago I worked on a space mission concept that was doing super high precision astrometry, that is, measurement of precisely where all the stars in the sky are and where they're going (because they're moving and we can measure sensitively enough to care).  It was science driven, but the Navy was working on a competing concept and I had to think for a while about why.  But it was a little after Gulf War 1, with all the precision bombing, and when I did the math on mapping the precision back to a sphere the size of the earth, it amounted to being able to aim not at a door (as they did in GW1, mostly with laser target painting), but at the doorknob using mapping and nav without needing a SOF guy with a laser.  And that was decades ago.
ISR+massed precision == just don't even try it
 
All of this is within the capability of existing technology.  Aircraft systems have been doing essentially this for kind of a long time (see above) with less compact equipment.  You can put a little LIDAR rangefinder on a rifle or a drone and couple it to precision GPS and compass.  The thing that makes your phone big is the need for you to see it and manipulate things on it with your fat fingers.  The size limiter on your proposal is probably the GPS antenna (small) and the laser optics (small).  It probably all exists in prototype somewhere, maybe linked to a VR goggle set that's linked to a local server so a whole squad or platoon can spread out and have borg spotting that's delivered to each other and the rear echelon with the action-at-a-long-distance stuff.
(ETA: you're not just coupling the GPS+compass to other hardware, but also to a detailed GIS model of the area that's enabled by the massive ISR cloud watching the whole thing)

Many years ago I worked on a space mission concept that was doing super high precision astrometry, that is, measurement of precisely where all the stars in the sky are and where they're going (because they're moving and we can measure sensitively enough to care).  It was science driven, but the Navy was working on a competing concept and I had to think for a while about why.  But it was a little after Gulf War 1, with all the precision bombing, and when I did the math on mapping the precision back to a sphere the size of the earth, it amounted to being able to aim not at a door (as they did in GW1, mostly with laser target painting), but at the doorknob using mapping and nav without needing a SOF guy with a laser.  And that was decades ago.
ISR+massed precision == just don't even try it
 
All of this is within the capability of existing technology.  Aircraft systems have been doing essentially this for kind of a long time (see above) with less compact equipment.  You can put a little LIDAR rangefinder on a rifle or a drone and couple it to precision GPS and compass.  The thing that makes your phone big is the need for you to see it and manipulate things on it with your fat fingers.  The size limiter on your proposal is probably the GPS antenna (small) and the laser optics (small).  It probably all exists in prototype somewhere, maybe linked to a VR goggle set that's linked to a local server so a whole squad or platoon can spread out and have borg spotting that's delivered to each other and the rear echelon with the action-at-a-long-distance stuff.
(ETA: you're not just coupling the GPS+compass to other hardware, but also to a detailed GIS model of the area that's enabled by the massive ISR cloud watching the whole thing)

Many years ago I worked on a space mission concept that was doing super high precision astrometry, that is, measurement of precisely where all the stars in the sky are and where they're going (because they're moving and we can measure sensitively enough to care).  It was science driven, but the Navy was working on a competing concept and I had to think for a while about why.  But it was a little after Gulf War 1, with all the precision bombing, and when I did the math on mapping the precision back to a sphere the size of the earth, it amounted to being able to aim not at a door (as they did in GW1, mostly with laser target painting), but at the doorknob using mapping and nav without needing a SOF guy with a laser.  And that was decades ago.
ISR+massed precision == just don't even try it
 
All of this is within the capability of existing technology.  Aircraft systems have been doing essentially this for kind of a long time (see above) with less compact equipment.  You can put a little LIDAR rangefinder on a rifle or a drone and couple it to precision GPS and compass.  The thing that makes your phone big is the need for you to see it and manipulate things on it with your fat fingers.  The size limiter on your proposal is probably the GPS antenna (small) and the laser optics (small).  It probably all exists in prototype somewhere, maybe linked to a VR goggle set that's linked to a local server so a whole squad or platoon can spread out and have borg spotting that's delivered to each other and the rear echelon with the action-at-a-long-distance stuff.
(ETA: you're not just coupling the GPS+compass to other hardware, but also to a detailed GIS model of the area that's enabled by the massive ISR cloud watching the whole thing)

You probably want them along the sides somewhere around the 2/3 point where jets start to get off the ground.  
But yes.  And they wouldn't consume much power while they're waiting for a victim aircraft.

Or dive underneath with the shaped charge pointing up.

x,y,z,t and time derivatives of position you get for free from GPS.  I think all you need from there is compass (needs to be calibrated periodically like when you use your phone for a compass) and level (needs to be calibrated periodically like using your phone as a level).  Tie that to a GIS model (and maybe have people set zeros at known physical locations on the map) and I think you have everything you need.  If you're networked and have some base stations with known precise locations you can use MLAT to improve your calibration dynamically.

As far as I know, neither of those space missions ever flew, but the same capability exists now by other means.
And for the second, I suspect kids in a college robotics class could do a demo using cheap hardware and open source software.  It's sort of a basic surveying thing.  Electronics have gotten small, cheap, and available.

Shaped charges and thin top armor?
(eta: randomly googled site says hull roof armor is 20-30 mm on a T-80 BVM.  Small shaped charge will do fine)
 

Many years ago I worked on a space mission concept that was doing super high precision astrometry, that is, measurement of precisely where all the stars in the sky are and where they're going (because they're moving and we can measure sensitively enough to care).  It was science driven, but the Navy was working on a competing concept and I had to think for a while about why.  But it was a little after Gulf War 1, with all the precision bombing, and when I did the math on mapping the precision back to a sphere the size of the earth, it amounted to being able to aim not at a door (as they did in GW1, mostly with laser target painting), but at the doorknob using mapping and nav without needing a SOF guy with a laser.  And that was decades ago.
ISR+massed precision == just don't even try it
 
All of this is within the capability of existing technology.  Aircraft systems have been doing essentially this for kind of a long time (see above) with less compact equipment.  You can put a little LIDAR rangefinder on a rifle or a drone and couple it to precision GPS and compass.  The thing that makes your phone big is the need for you to see it and manipulate things on it with your fat fingers.  The size limiter on your proposal is probably the GPS antenna (small) and the laser optics (small).  It probably all exists in prototype somewhere, maybe linked to a VR goggle set that's linked to a local server so a whole squad or platoon can spread out and have borg spotting that's delivered to each other and the rear echelon with the action-at-a-long-distance stuff.
(ETA: you're not just coupling the GPS+compass to other hardware, but also to a detailed GIS model of the area that's enabled by the massive ISR cloud watching the whole thing)

Many years ago I worked on a space mission concept that was doing super high precision astrometry, that is, measurement of precisely where all the stars in the sky are and where they're going (because they're moving and we can measure sensitively enough to care).  It was science driven, but the Navy was working on a competing concept and I had to think for a while about why.  But it was a little after Gulf War 1, with all the precision bombing, and when I did the math on mapping the precision back to a sphere the size of the earth, it amounted to being able to aim not at a door (as they did in GW1, mostly with laser target painting), but at the doorknob using mapping and nav without needing a SOF guy with a laser.  And that was decades ago.
ISR+massed precision == just don't even try it
 
All of this is within the capability of existing technology.  Aircraft systems have been doing essentially this for kind of a long time (see above) with less compact equipment.  You can put a little LIDAR rangefinder on a rifle or a drone and couple it to precision GPS and compass.  The thing that makes your phone big is the need for you to see it and manipulate things on it with your fat fingers.  The size limiter on your proposal is probably the GPS antenna (small) and the laser optics (small).  It probably all exists in prototype somewhere, maybe linked to a VR goggle set that's linked to a local server so a whole squad or platoon can spread out and have borg spotting that's delivered to each other and the rear echelon with the action-at-a-long-distance stuff.
(ETA: you're not just coupling the GPS+compass to other hardware, but also to a detailed GIS model of the area that's enabled by the massive ISR cloud watching the whole thing)

Many years ago I worked on a space mission concept that was doing super high precision astrometry, that is, measurement of precisely where all the stars in the sky are and where they're going (because they're moving and we can measure sensitively enough to care).  It was science driven, but the Navy was working on a competing concept and I had to think for a while about why.  But it was a little after Gulf War 1, with all the precision bombing, and when I did the math on mapping the precision back to a sphere the size of the earth, it amounted to being able to aim not at a door (as they did in GW1, mostly with laser target painting), but at the doorknob using mapping and nav without needing a SOF guy with a laser.  And that was decades ago.
ISR+massed precision == just don't even try it
 
All of this is within the capability of existing technology.  Aircraft systems have been doing essentially this for kind of a long time (see above) with less compact equipment.  You can put a little LIDAR rangefinder on a rifle or a drone and couple it to precision GPS and compass.  The thing that makes your phone big is the need for you to see it and manipulate things on it with your fat fingers.  The size limiter on your proposal is probably the GPS antenna (small) and the laser optics (small).  It probably all exists in prototype somewhere, maybe linked to a VR goggle set that's linked to a local server so a whole squad or platoon can spread out and have borg spotting that's delivered to each other and the rear echelon with the action-at-a-long-distance stuff.
(ETA: you're not just coupling the GPS+compass to other hardware, but also to a detailed GIS model of the area that's enabled by the massive ISR cloud watching the whole thing)

They are targeting T-80BVM's Ammo rack, 
This trick probably doesn't work on T-72s