The_Capt

Big microwave oven trying to bake the sky goes boom. Good for point defence against asymmetric attack. Suicide in a conventional war. A lot of this technology sprang up when ISIL started messing with UAS about 5 years ago. It was built for a very different environment.

Damn it is hard to tell what is doing the damage in these videos. I think I see arty, mines and maybe an ATGM strike.

I think the race to fully autonomous unmanned systems is a given. The only communication requirements will be for battlefield situational awareness and some pretty hands off direction. EW is like tracers, it cuts both ways. Pumping a bunch of energy into the environment is “loud” and draws fire, Russians learned this the hard way. In the West we are heading towards a legal crisis - do we retain full human control of weapon systems or do we want to win? It is more complicated and nuanced than this but at the core we are facing a thorny issue.

Full body armour might be a start but an exco-suit would need to be able to carry the weight and still allow for movement. Body armour will solve for frag but likely not HEAT or shock, let alone EFP. Next gen suits could mask thermal signature, or more accurately would have to. No point armouring up infantry if they look like glow sticks on thermal. Going to need a lot of investment in materials research along with energy storage. Of course you would likely have fewer humans forward. They would be teamed up with unmanned systems to create synthetic mass. A small four person team with platoons of unmanned ground and air systems could be the new company.

Aw, now I miss John Kettler...

I was thinking more of that SMArt strike we saw yesterday. But the point still stands. One cannot "fix" on threat without becoming highly vulnerable to another. It is a confluence of Illumination, Precision and Persistence - all at a much cheaper cost than anything that can be fielded to break that confluence.

The best ones really are. Sure we can get into force ratios, attrition vs force generation. Opportunity costs. Risk vs Reward. Systems versus platforms. But in the end you will end up right back to the dilemma. AirLand Battle was a simple dilemma as well...concentrate mass, get killed by the air. Distribute to avoid airpower, get killed in isolation by land power. The central dilemma facing modern warfare revolve around the same themes - concentration of mass, signature/profile, distribution and support. We cannot realistically clear the skies below 2000 feet. You cannot fire enough dumb or smart ammo into it and we do not have the technology (yet) to do C-UAS with other UAS. Even if you could fire enough bullets into the sky, the noise you would make would immediately draw Deep Fires on these AD platforms and systems. If we do not sweep the skies or establish air superiority below 2000 feet those system can see and hunt making concentration of mass impossible. The dilemma is in cost. Platforms that can fire a lot of accurate bullets or munitions into the sky are going to be expensive. We are talking about detecting, tracking and hitting something the size of a bird, with better maneuverability, kms out. Both what they are shooting at, and what is shooting at them are much cheaper. A PGM munition and/or drone is a fraction of the cost of a mobile AA or SAM platform able to do C-UAS (we just spent pages on this). In an attritional exchange the sky cleaner is going to lose, badly. So we are back to deadlock. Until someone can design and deliver a technology or process that breaks it. A cheap and effective way to do C-UAS and C-ISR.

Not if they are fully autonomous. This is why autonomy is a race to the bottom. And we are currently losing.

It isn’t the bullets. Drones are cheaper than the things firing all them bullets to sweep the sky clean. And firing all said bullets at the Face of God is going to leave an ISR signature that will ensure retribution. Same goes for lasers or EM. It is classic military dilemma. If I stay quiet my opponent will hunt and kill me with UAS. If I blaze away at them, my opponents artillery will target and kill me.

Except for the part where shooting down drone swarms is nearly impossible with todays technology. And while you are blazing away at every bird, bug and flying squirrel for kilometres you are going to be visible from 53 miles west of Venus. So you had also be able to shoot down every mortar, artillery shell and sub-munition that is going to be lobbed at the Serbian New Year’s Eve party your ground forces have become. Short of air burst nukes we do not possess an realistic ability to clear millions of cubic meters of sky.

Jon...are you coming onto me?

Gotta be honest. Kind of where my head goes. Big problem with energy density here. A battle suit that basically makes the individual soldier the platform would solve a lot of this. Combined with nano-tech it would mean that an individual soldier could carry more combat power further and faster while providing protection. It add the ability to distribute that mass very widely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton But how do you power the damn thing? An exo-suit with armor will have a lot of weight and the only thing with enough energy to power one is fossil fuels, which is really problematic for many reasons. So we would need something that can meet or exceed existing fuel energy density to power these things. This, or one starts looking at human augmentation and/or genetic engineering but if one thinks unmanned is a tempest, just try and dive into that snakepile.

I am not sure. All AFVs tend to be heavy and hot too. I don't think we are ready to shed some sort of heavy direct fire support. My bet is we will likely see unmanned AFVs, while infantry go distributed and light. They will need carriers but more battle wagons than assault vehicles. Top armor is a trade off because you either have to accept more weight or go lighter on other sides. EFP is not HEAT per se, it is a slug of hot metal fired at the vehicle at great speeds. Sort of if HEAT and AP had an angry murderous baby. We spent quite a few pages on why the UAS problem is so difficult. I do not believe APS will save us. Too many small cheap systems to cope with, backed up by good ol fashion flying steel from artillery. So how do we beat such a system? Well no one really knows right now. My best guess is through the better use of a similar system. C4ISR advantage is a must. Data Superiority, Cognitive Superiority, Learning Superiority. Using unmanned systems and PGM to destroy an opponents Denial abilities - collapse the Bubble. And then some sort of hybrid mass that can remain highly distributed but then concentrate rapidly to exploit opportunity. Lastly, someone has to crack the Riddle of Logistics - The Lies of Want vs Tyranny of Need. Forces will need to be a lot more self-sustaining. Zero Tail. Grande Armee of Energy, type of thinking. People are getting all excited about Unmanned and AI but Nanotech is around the corner. And I am not talking Grey Goo. I am talking manufacturing nano-additives to fuel and explosives. Not to mention energy storage. Complicated indeed.

I think yes but it is at the upper end of what current tac UAS can carry. Can’t find exact weight of sub-munition but likely 5-10 pounds. Right now though it looks like DPICM armed drones are doing just fine. EFP submunitions are wave of the future though. Can’t defeat it with APS or ERA

That was a standoff EFP. Maybe one of these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155 Ya, tanks are screwed...calling it. Edit: akd beat me to it.

Dude, good lord. As Steve has signalled we are getting way off track here but if you are going to take a position…how about some proof before we turn all the way into an INCEL echo chamber? Here are counter points that took about 10 seconds to find: https://www.cfr.org/womens-participation-in-global-economy/# https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/09/27/sp092722-ggopinath-kgef-gender-korea https://eige.europa.eu/newsroom/economic-benefits-gender-equality?language_content_entity=en As to demographic trend…yeesh been hearing this old song for forty years. People don’t have fewer children because women get jobs. They have fewer children because they can’t afford them. So we are at distribution of wealth. A living wage. Social program and a bunch of issues that basically hold a society together. Immigration (oh let’s light that fuse). And a bunch of other stuff that really drags this thread sideways. Move along now. Nothing to see here.

They do, but rarely for social causes. Social stress and failure is normally a symptom of failure, not a root cause. Really good series here: https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations And of course Jared Diamonds "Collapse" and others like him do the subject justice. Demographics are also normally a symptom, not a cause.

Sure they are. I have the entire 20th century to prove it. Separation of church and state was well on its way by the end of the 19th century. It is an incredible stretch to see religion paying a central political role in WW1 and WW2, let alone the Cold War. Was it employed to keep the masses fighting? Sure. So was alcohol and nationalism.

"What most people think they are fighting for" Urban 2 was trying to 1) push back Muslim/Arab encroachment and 2) solidify power in Europe. These are not high morale or righteous objectives. God did not will it, we did. And then used God as cover to get thousands to go die somewhere to try and achieve political -not ideological- aims. History is rife with this dynamic. The Church's use of religion to commit genocide is historical fact, but don't dress it up as anything but a political ploy. Same mechanism is happening in Russia right now. But instead of "God", insert whatever Putin is selling.

Right, knew someone was going to pitch those. So take a hard look at those wars and the role religion really played: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Protestantism/Events-under-Charles-I Religion while central, was employed as a wedge or leverage mechanism. Not the primary cause of the war itself, which was almost always about power balance between rulers. Religion was used to light fires under masses to convince them to support one side over the other, not a true objectives of war. There are exceptions, such as the Muslim expansions of the Caliphate era in the 7th century, but cynically these were also about power and resources. Religion tends to be flavoring and energized to make wars happen harder and not core reasons. Even the Crusades have been re-examined: " Crusaders did not only fight for control of the Holy Land; they also worked to secure the Church’s power in Europe. Like the wars against the Muslims, these conflicts were promoted by various popes in Christ’s name and led by crusaders who took vows and received special privileges and indulgences. The “enemies” of the Church in Europe included people who were not Christians. It also included Christians who were labeled heretics, that is, people who challenged the official teachings of the Church or who questioned the pope’s power and authority." https://dcc.newberry.org/?p=14390 So I call BS on most of this to be honest. Northern Ireland: "However, this Northern Irish conflict was not divided on theological lines but instead on those of class and politics, as those who had been so long oppressed were demanding change, equality and freedom. This paper explores the variety of factors which truly influenced the conflict in Northern Ireland and led to the Troubles, shaping what Northern Ireland is today." https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1241&context=younghistorians We can do this all day. Bin Laden wasn't doing it because God told him to. He was looking for some sort of weird Caliphate 2.0 that would put him in power so he could marry Whitney Houston: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS360594553620120214 In reality macro-social constructs have rarely (if ever) gone to war over a social issue such as religion. They have definitely used it and the impulse of faith is incredibly powerful, but do not believe for a second that secular power dynamics, along with good old fashion human failings such as jealousy, greed and fear, are far more prevalent in causes for war. A really interesting question is whether or not humanity would be better or worse off without religion. Now in micro-social context, especially pre-history, you might have a workable angle here. Smaller groups of people and far deeper spiritual integration into society.

I was going for a more mocking angle to be honest. Since the dawn of time people - usually old people - have somehow hooked whatever social ills they see onto a crisis. “Moral decline”, “Hippies”, “Homosexuality”, “Women who can vote”! Human social systems are naturally a mix of progressiveness and conservatism. And rarely, if ever, does a war start based solely on whatever social issue means most to you. We did not start wars because “the church” since the Crusades, possibly the Middle Ages - and even then there was a whole lotta money and power at play. We sure as hell have never started a war over any of the rest of “damn kids these days” stuff. The West is not going to fall over the obsolescence of religion or LGBTQ issues, or whatever you are worried about. Why? Because it didn’t last time with “women voting”, “civil rights” and “rock and/or roll”. In fact since those End Times, the West has continued it rise in power and wealth. If anything does destroy the West it will be power hungry egomaniacs that leverage all that social angst into something really dangerous. They aren’t doing it because they really care about our church/mosque/raccoon ratios - they are doing it to take more power. The dismantling of democracy, social divisions that turn cancerous, deep corruption and greed- this is how empires die. Not because we decide to stop going to freakin church and start this strange new thing called “meditation”.

And “raccoon stealing”…let’s not forget that. As if raccoons have no agency of their own! Emptying our raccoon churches and filling them with ambiguously self-identifying marmots…wake up sheeple!

I want to retire someplace quiet and dig a deep hole. Watch 80s movies on DVDs off grid. And maybe die in peace before our machine overlords enslave us all.