The_Capt

I think that if RA C4 can be eroded the effects are a lot deeper than strategic strikes. If Russia cannot managed the C4 space, it cannot react to events in the field. Nor can it employ a competitive targeting enterprise. If the UA can achieve information superiority, and are backed up with resources to exploit that, we could see operational level corrosive warfare that can create RA collapse. A key question is at what point can the RA no longer effectively defend an 800 km front? At that point collapse becomes likely and the area will have to fall back onto a lower energy state and shrink that frontage. The result will be opportunities for the UA to retake significant ground and regain momentum. Information is a key component of all this is it really allows the RA to be able to react with low troop density along that very long frontage. Take that away and those troops essentially are pushed back in time. Go back far enough, like say WW2 level of C4, and 300 troops cannot hold a km as they are now. To my mind this dimension of the war is more important than tank production.

That is really just more academic "technically" speak. Russia can "run out" much in the same way Germany "ran out" at the end of WW1. Further there is a spectrum of running out, some lines they likely have already crossed (i.e. running out of an ability to conduct successful operational level offensives.) Will the raw materials in the ground "run out", no of course not. Can Russia run out of effective capability production to keep pace with this war...definitely. I mean sure, technically, if all they have are small arms and conscripts they have not "run out" but at that point they are pretty much ineffective in prosecuting the war. If Russia "reduces consumption" they run the risk of Ukraine gaining initiative - this is exactly what we have all been afraid of with respect to the UA and artillery ammunition - note how Ukraine can "run out" but not Russia. Russia can decide to use less, and the UA can decide to retake ground as a direct result. This all comes back to "when will Russia run out?" Run out of being able to create, generate, project and sustain effective capabilities that underpin strategic options. It is like having an electric car...technically you can never run out of gas; however, if you are down to recharging with 9v batteries you have effectively run out of gas. It is splitting hairs to say "talk of when the electric car will run out of gas is not useful" when effectively that is what happens. Russia can definitely run out of effective military production, compared to losses that creates an asymmetric advantage for the UA. At that point, when the UA start rolling forward...the RA has "run out". In a war based on attrition, it is the question no matter how it gets dressed up.

I can recall at the start of this war someone coming on the forum and boldly declaring that Russia would dominate this war because they had control of the Black Sea. So much for that theory.

Gawd, I am sorry but Kofman has built an entire career on being an academic contrarian - a conversation of "reconstitution rate, relative to observed attrition, and time required to generate additional formations..." Is really just all components for answering the fundamental question of "when will Russia run out?" So "when will Russia run out?" is the "wrong conversation." The right conversation is "when will Russia run out?"

Kinda weird that one. The thing looked beached.

Honestly don’t know guys. We have the system on the equipment list but BFC is not going to spend months of work on a single ATGM. My bet is that we can get it vehicle mounted but the static control unit thing might be a feature too far. But we will have to see.

Did you see that wicked turn it did on approach? Poor Russian guys. Just taking a nap on the back of a BMP (while participating in an illegal invasion)…and boom.

Swingfire is on the list. Now whether we can get it developed for in-game is another question. The good news is that its firing profile is not that different from a Javelin...but resources and time etc.

I think one could get away with a hybrid system - semi-autonomous until a certain range and then fully upon release. I think the difference is attack profile. So an anti-radiation FPV is going to want to come in at very low altitude, skulking in the treetops until the last few hundred meters (oddly tree cover could become more dangerous with unmanned systems, and conversely open fields remain dangerous for artillery strikes). A HARM missile is fired from high altitude and comes in at high speed. A HARM FPV will come in at low altitude and slower speed. My thinking is that the FPV will likely need a higher level of autonomy than the missile based on approach. If the target does short burst radar painting then either system is going to have to "remember" the target location and then be able to sweep/search - that might be better with human eyes on board, so in that case the FPV will need less autonomy. So maybe hybrid?

Don't worry we will have nano Grey Goo to clean all that up...and eat humanity while they are at it.

I don't think it is a question of effectiveness as much as it is one of sustainability. A large, hot and expensive platform needs to be able to sustain its effect over the long term. UAS have accomplished this through mass production, we are not going to be able to mas produce our current suite of EM weapons. If we could, great, we have a viable counter. But the large centralized system I am seeing will eventually be overwhelmed unless we can make them a lot cheaper and easier to build.

Probably a matter of time. It would require full autonomy but I think that capability is already on the table. My sense is that in order to survive one will need to get quieter on the battlefield, not louder. I think decoys, deception and obscuration are also going to see a major renaissance.

I see the rabble are getting roused. We all appreciate the enthusiasm, we really do. As to updates, well I can echo what Steve has already said - we are aiming to have this DLC out this year. As to progress, well data and research are largely complete (few things left but not biggies). Maps for the major campaigns are built (I showed off a few and one was used in that CM tourney). Campaigns are essentially designed and waiting for the kit. Equipment lists are done, we will likely be haggling these to the finish line. So over all scope, scale and background are all defined. What we are waiting for now is the second longest pole in any content creation tent - artwork/modelling. This is where stuff gets drawn and actually put into the game. Once we get enough of that we start rolling on really putting it all together, which in the case of BAOR should be pretty quick, but we still need to do testing and polishing. We still have a features debate - what is in or out features-wise but that will be sorted quickly. So the short answer is “sometime this year” and we are fairly far along. Now it is a matter of getting very few critical people’s time to deliver their end and we can then pull it al together. No Star Citizen, conspiracy or subterfuge, only limited resources available and waiting in line.

The largest drawback (and risk) in employing EM for c-UAS is signature. One has to pump a lot of energy into the sky with a large very expensive system to take down cheap drones. These EM systems are very vulnerable to detection because they are pumping out so much energy into space - you can literally see them from space. They immediately become targets for other fires. In many ways this is the major dilemma of UAS right now. Whether a bunch of soldiers open up with small arms, EM or even EW, missiles…they all have high signatures that give away position. So if you are firing away at 20 small, cheap UAS, you can get 90% of them but your position is given away and artillery can go to work on you. If you don’t fire and try to hide, the UAS will likely find you anyway and then FPV you to death. This is why I am a big fan of low energy dispersed systems (like other UAS) doing the c-UAS job. Fight flies with flies, not a hammer.

And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized. Acts 9:18 Let your sins of woeful ignorance be washed away!

Not stupid at all. Precision is reliant on processing power. So is speed. Those two factors relieve firepower requirement pressures which we used to deliver through massed fires. This explains why the UA is using far less artillery ammunition in this war yet is have greater effects than RA fires. Precision beats mass. But massed precision beat everything. Which of course will require greater processing power. It is why data and processing are to my mind more important than ammo and fuel right now. Yet when you ask a roomful of officers “what is our data advantage?” You are likely going to get blank stares.

We all know what this...and don't try to deny it. This is Sweden's inevitable march to global furniture dominance. NATO spending will be siphoned to a blooming Swedish military office furniture line and reinforce the home market. As we fight for the Global South, it is all just a cover for selling more "Bekväm" chairs. It all ends with Sweden ruling our bums - or at least where we put them - like emperors By 2125 the entire world will be living on Swedish smart furniture on three different planets.

JonS strikes me as a "retired gentleman of leisure". Sitting on his back veranda watching "the labour" work his plantation while he ponders the modern mysteries of humanity.

Can a Type I civilization (or one heading that way) still wage war without destroying itself? I think the answer is "yes" but likely not if they are all on a single planet. So future swarming AI becoming a WMD on par with nuclear of bio weapons is a possibility, and even may create a temporary Great Peace. However, as soon as humans spread out over the solar system we will lose the ability to fill it all with AI killbots - space being really, really big. Or we ignore the dangers and simply kill ourselves out before we get that far.

I am honestly amazed that anything I write causes anyone to think about anything “all day”, but that must be the pressure of Canadian culture. I think “unmanned” as a phenomenon is the continuing emergence of something larger within warfare. What you describe here would be big enough to drive significant re-thinking of how we wage war. Since the beginning of this war, I have noted how many really fundamental concepts are being impacted: Mass (density, concentration of force), Offensive, Surprise, Connections, Speed (space and time) and Friction, to name several. These definitely signal a shift in the character of warfare. A change to the fundamental capability of infantry is enormous - on par with shifts we have seen in the last 200 years. But I honestly think it may be bigger. Most military technology has been developed to better project or protect human energy in the use of violence to shape human will. Rocks, spears, bow/arrow, horses, armor, chariots, walls, siege weapons, guns, artillery, air power and seapower - all designed around the human being. However, as Clausewitz (and others) have argued, these are all shifts in the “character” of warfare, not its fundamental nature. A shift in the nature of warfare has occurred at least twice in human history. The first time was when we invented civilization and made warfare an extension of human politics. Before, in pre-civilization, warfare occurred for what could be considered micro-political reasons but was also occurring for many other reason as well, the largest being survival. By upscaling warfare..in fact as a direct result as a pre-condition to upscaling itself, warfare changed to become an “act of violence to force political will”. Political will changed with civilization and so did war. The second time the nature of warfare changed was in 1945. The creation and operationalization of nuclear weapons changed the nature of warfare forever. The nature of warfare became “an act of viable violence to force political will”. War became bounded by the nuclear equation. Unlimited violence meant mutual destruction, so we were forced to view all war through a different lens. This new nature of warfare exists to this day. Now we are staring down the barrel of something else. And what this is exactly, I am not sure. We are essentially seeing technology augmenting and replacing human cognitive processing power. This has been happening for centuries but “unmanned” by definition is about replacing human beings. The larger question with “unmanned” is how far down this road does that replacement go? At a very high expression, unmanned can become a WMD and create a new mutual destruction spin. Even further down that road we are looking at warfare becoming a blend of “viable violence to force hybrid political will”. What “unmanned” really is about is creating and weaponizing artificial-human capabilities. We can see things like “synthetic mass”, “virtual manoeuvre” and of course the autonomy debate. So, “how far?” Is quickly followed by “how fast?” And based on this war…damned fast. It took roughly 2 million years for the first shift in the nature of warfare. Another 10k to get to the second. And now it looks like we could be at a single century for the next one. This is not to say that humans will be left out of warfare completely, but how we wage war shapes (and is shaped by) why and what. I suspect we will see an evolution as you note, towards human effort focused on creating “unmanned superiority”, yet this will include more than explodey stuff. At its fullest expression we get into things like predictive analytics that actually work. This puts one at temporal advantage over an opponent. We see AI commanders, maybe? AI staff is already happening. I strongly suspect there will be a race to see who can get the most unmanned, the fastest. I honestly do not know where this ends, but one thing this war is teaching me is that this entire thing looks and feels real. What we have seen in the last two years alone has been stunning. The fact that the character of warfare is changing is really moving past a debate. What we do not know is whether there will be a shift in war’s nature. But I am getting a weird feeling about the whole damned business at this point.

I am thinking that these unmanned surface vessels are probably going to evolve into platforms as opposed to suicide drones. They are fast (relatively), low profile and have incredibly long range. I suspect they are already working on using them for UAS or missile launching platforms. And I would not rule out small fast torpedoes. In the end they don’t even have sink the ship, only damage it enough and the effect is the same. That way these small sea drones can stand off kms and simply launch other systems until enough get through. At these ranges this will effectively deny sea space within the littorals and possibly further out.

On the topic of the day: Unmanned. Do we have a follow up on this? "One more thing. A strategic issue. I have just signed a decree initiating the establishment of a separate branch of our Defense Forces – the Unmanned Systems Forces. This is not a matter of the future, but something that should yield a very concrete result shortly. This year should be pivotal in many ways. And, obviously, on the battlefield as well. Drones – unmanned systems – have proven their effectiveness in battles on land, in the sky and at sea. Ukraine has truly changed the security situation in the Black Sea with the help of drones. Repelling ground assaults is primarily the task of drones. The large-scale destruction of the occupiers and their equipment is also the domain of drones. The current list of tasks is clear: special staff positions for drone operations, special units, effective training, systematization of experience, constant scaling of production, and the involvement of the best ideas and top specialists in this field. This is a task for the army, the Ministry of Defense, and the government as a whole. And to ensure the necessary coordination in the Defense Forces, to ensure the proper level of planning and quality of logistics, the Unmanned Systems Forces will be established within the AFU. The relevant proposals will be submitted for consideration by the NSDC." https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/pidpisav-ukaz-yakij-rozpochinaye-stvorennya-okremogo-rodu-si-88817#:~:text=Ukraine has truly changed the,also the domain of drones.

Are these really practical for warships? I mean the drag and weight alone seem problematic. And how resistant would they be to tandem attacks?

In reality there is a larger ISR architecture picking up targets and handing them off to FPV crews. Drones are not sent out blindly hunting targets, the do need to fix them and engage, however you are putting too much stock in this “spotting” drone theory. The UA is putting up hundreds of tac UAS, all with cameras and onboard ISR. That is a LOT of SHORAD to “push back”. Further, FPVs are “first person” they already have targeting ISR on board. If the spotters do get pushed back do you really think they are going to call off the attack. No, we need a C-UAS system that can push back all UAS, not just select spotters. Really, do share. What COIN operation were you in where tanks were of any use? I challenge IFVs but we needed to be in some armor but they demonstrated 1) they could kill our IFVs and 2) they were not deterred by them. Use of heavy mech in COIN has been a classic western screw up and I have Afghanistan to prove it. You are completely missing the larger lesson here. It is not about the tactical problem of that single attack. Sure you have saved the Bn…right up until the next wave…and the one after it…and the one after that. We will run out of 30 million dollar systems firing million dollar missiles well before they are going to run out of FPVs that cost 10k. Buying “The Battalion” an extra morning of life is meaningless if we spent all our money on that system because they will still be dead by nightfall. I think Steve put is best - spending 90% of funding on a 10% solution is a sure fire track to losing. As to dilemma, I was being extremely generous in my example. None of these AD systems have proven sub-munitions and I would bet beer money right now that it is single missile to single target. An opponent flying 100 FPVs is going to target both AD and fighting vehicles. Further they are going to do it a longer ranges, over the horizon. What? So our enemies are complete idiots? They can’t possibly come up with c-UAS systems. Hey here is a crazy idea…how about an opponent that invests in cheap c-UAS out of other UAS? So while we are feeling good about our multi-billion dollar SHORAD program they are killing all our FPVs and blasting our SHORADs away too? Once the Bde reserve of our fancy SHORAD are dead we are naked while they still have a system. Why? Because they invested in lower cost technology they could mass produce. You are pulling numbers out of your @ss here. These features will drive per unit cost up but economies of scaling will drive them down. They already have. We won’t have economies of scale for that SHORAD system because it costed billions in development and to manufacture a limited manufacturing run and the political level is only going to give us so much money. Physics has nothing to say that any of these ideas are impossible in this universe. Energy density, weight and processing power are the limiting factors and they are all trending towards smaller lighter. My ideal c-UAS weapon is another UAS - not sure how physics are denying these as we are already seeing them. As to a small infantry point defence weapon I am pretty sure we can invest billions in that and come up with something better than what is being pitched. Hell 40 mm airburst rounds might have a better point defence chance. There are but bigger, heavier and more expensive is not the way to go. That video has a single Boxer blasting away at single (white) drones. On the battlefield in Ukraine there are hundreds. This is a much bigger issue than a few shotguns and a multi-million dollar SHORAD system. We are likely going to have review a lot more than “better AD”. FFS, that War on the Rocks article is citing that 50% of T90 losses have been due to FPVs. We had another report of an entire Russia tank company stopped cold by 5 FPV crews. The ISR alone these things are pumping out has been noted as making it impossible to manoeuvre. So we had better get with the program in the West. Air spotters, shotguns and MGs are not going to do this. Our opponents are watching this very carefully and do you not think they are going to be investing very heavily in this space? You want The_Capt’s prescription for the unmanned problem space: - Rethink c-unmanned. It is not a “problem” we need to manage, it is a major shift in how wars are going to be fought. Best way to find and kill a small unmanned vehicle will very likely be another small unmanned vehicle. Invest heavily into UAS and UGVs suited to detecting and killing other unmanned systems on the outer envelop of controlled battle space. - Re-think ISR. We need to learn how to live on a completely illuminated battlefield. This means that deception, silencing and blinding need to become major campaign themes and not sprinkled on operations. They need to become central and drive what is possible on operations. - Rethink conventional capability and organization. Lose the weight, lose the heat, lose the tail. We can bubble wrap our F echelon in multi-million dollar SHORAD but it won’t do squat for the B echelon. We have long vulnerable logistics tails that are carrying too much weight. We need to dump the weight and offset with precision and do it quickly. No sacred freakin cows here either. We need dispersion and speed. And we will need a C2 construct that supports this. - Re-think manoeuvre. We are very likely facing a major doctrinal shift in western warfare. This love affair with Manoeuvre Warfare as “the solution” is likely over. We need to face the realities of attritional warfare and the capacity implications that will have. This will drive us towards cheaper many because we cannot sustain attrition warfare with what we have right now. Manoeuvre is not going away but it will need to be earned. We will need to win attrition in order to manoeuvre. - Re-think Denial. This is not a transitory annoyance, it is a projected condition. It is proving decisive in this war and very likely will in the next. - Re-think C4. Data is a resource more important than gas. We need to see the modern battlefield as a competitive data, information and knowledge environment. We need to stop going to war to validate what we already know and accept that things are evolving very quickly. - Re-think fundamental principles of warfare - Mass, Surprise, Manoeuvre and Offensive are all up for grabs right now. We need to understand what these mean in a modern context and stop assuming we know what they mean. Mass alone is changing in definition which is going to break our current doctrinal frameworks. There that is a start. My point being that this is an about a lot more than SHORADs and shotguns. This is about sustaining and gaining military options in the face of a highly accelerating evolution on the battlefield. Or, you know, we could spend a few billion on another AD system and get back to business as usual.

Totally missed that. Of course every counter has weaknesses.