dan/california

Mass, especially not very bright Russian mass, is inherently slow to assemble. So it is not just that more mass is an MLRS or..., or... worthy target. The process of puling that mass together in a way it can be militarily useful gives all those higher echelon systems time to find the whole deal. And if we have learned anything in this war it is that found and dead are closely correlated.

The Iranians already hand out pointy sticks, and even slightly more sophisticated flying pointy sticks, to anyone who will grunt "death to America" three times and do a funny dance. The limiting factor on the deal is the number people who want to worry that every buzzing sound they hear for the rest of there lives is a drone that would like to discuss the error of their ways.

The interesting bit is the the drone dropping an antitank mine right about the halfway point. The second half is VERY graphic, so skip that if you are sensitive This last one is more proof of Ukrainian FPV drones operating at much greater depth This Sub Reddit hs more drone footage than i have time to watch, it just goes on forever.

The off ramp that everyone wants the Russians to take is starting to look narrower and narrower. The entire current regime is bound ever more tightly to both Putin and the war. There is no organized succession mechanism to speak off. Where do things go from here without either breaking the Russian army completely? Or throwing the Ukrainians under the bus?

There is more than a little bit of historical irony that Ukraine had stand up AAMG units frantically to counter the Shaheed threat.

Maybe they can trade them for the WSJ reporter, and some of the other foreign nationals the Russians are holding on transparently trumped up charges.

This is a LENGTHY list of Russian soldiers committing suicide after drone attacks, ~approximately sixty vids. It drives home how nuts it is that the Russian army is still in the field.

I was unable to find a good geolocation, but the important thing about this video is that Ukrainian FPV drones are operating at whatever distance from the frontline that this very relaxed looking locomotive was parked. Some of the comments about this say it was partisans, But I don't think GUR would use up competent partisans for a target like this one. Not when there are S-400s, generals, and EW systems to go after. I think Ukraine has solved the problems with drone motherships and com relays at a large enough scale start attacking te entire Russian system at a depth of at least twenty or thirty kilometers. We have also seen FPV style drone killing SPGs, again that implies ten kilometers or more of reach.

There were a bunch of off ramps for Putin early that he didn't even deign to acknowledge much less consider. There are probably not any off ramps for Putin anymore. So that that leaves two ways this ends, either the people right under Putin decide that throwing him overboard and blaming him for everything is their best bet, or the Russian state/army simply cracks. I guess Ukraine giving up would be the third, but I don't like that one very much.

Not one step backwards, or else, can be extremely effective. It can also be very brittle, and very expensive. We have seen vast amounts of evidence for the expensive part. We have only seen real hints of the brittleness in the initial Kharkiv collapse, and Prig's rebellion. But the possibility of wider cracks hasn't gone away. Maybe the third time one breaks open we will be willing to stick a hydraulic chisel in it and actually try to break the whole Russian army. Or at least threaten to do so convincingly enough that Putin gets a very short flying lesson, and the new guy develops an urge to talk sense.

Unless every one of these cars has as epic suite of spyware, and a remote controlled bomb, this is inexcusable.

Anyone still in Russia that has a passport that would let the get out is bucking for an honorable mention by the Darwin Awards.

If that is what it takes to get a new modern game? Bring on the space lobsters!

Drone heavy forces have an even more severe case of this problem. In Iraq we wound up using artillerymen as MPs, i assume it would be at least as bad with drone jockeys.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/04/britain-to-send-1000-first-person-view-drones-ukraine/ Yeah, that is going to be a problem, and I am not sure trying to split the difference does anything except cause you lose at both.

Well, if they do we can start selling Ukraine late model cruise missiles for a dollar a piece. In a way it sign that Putin is feeling the pressure, though.

This is step one. the next trick will be that the no longer FPV drones can pick up the the targeting data straight form the recon drone. It could even home on the recon drone until it was close enough to see the target. This time next year jamming these things is going to be almost irrelevant, maybe even by the end of summer. The more progress they make down this road the less they will be limited by bandwidth and operator availability and training. Once this really works drones will stop showing up much closer together even if they are not truly swarming yet. Five of them coming in five seconds apart will still wreck someones day. This makes the Ukrainian program to take out mid altitude recon drones even more important. The Russians will eventually figure this out too.

I totally think some version of this is where things are headed. The big variable is how much do you trust your com links with the UGVs. If you assume they are truly reliable com link the only thing I would have the manned command uint do is stay as far back, and as invisible as possible, let the robots die for their country. If you think the manned command unit has to push forward for reliable coms I would go with something approximating a Bradley with half of what is currently the troop volume taken up by VLS cells, and half of it a one or two man command center for the UGVs. That way the vehicle crew can focus on their very important job of keeping the vehicle alive. Obviously it would need APS, and all the similar bells and whistles. I like back and invisible better.

I reposted something from previous some how, sorry

The Thing is Russia could have declared victory, and gotten a pretty good deal in March of 2022. Recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and bunch of small and medium sized stuff. Putin simply did not have the sense to settle for a small win, so he has ground the Russian military to rotting meat paste and rusting scrap metal instead.

Fully agree, one of the most important short to medium term questions in the war is if Ukraine can truly do this drone vs drone intercept thing at scale. Without Orlan/Zala class drones a LOT of the Russian C4SIR system breaks. And as The_Capt never tires of telling us C4SIR is the whole ballgame.

And a tank company parked like that in Ukraine would get an Iskander, or an entire six pack of GMLRS in ten minutes or less.

The Merkava probably cost at least triple what a T72-B3 does, you would literally be doubling the price of those. And it might effectively be more than that, since it would probably need a lot of components Russia can't make, and would have to pay hard currency for. The way for the Russians to win the war in March 2022 was to have planned on doing some actual fighting. They could even have done that with fully manned units, and supplies that didn't expire in 1985. They have been trying to dig out the hole they dug for themselves ever since.

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