dan/california

Many thanks for the updates Haiduk. DPICM had a learning curve like everything else, it just seems to be an inevitable part of it. It still infuriates me that it took fifteen months to start sending them, and that he M26 Rockets for the HIMARS STILL are not there.

There was an addendum to the range safety lecture, "Packing everyone into this barn for a range safety lecture is going to get us all killed..."

As Russia has demonstrated beyond disastrously, for them, you cannot assume a three day war plan will work out. The enemy gets a vote. Furthermore it is worth actually planning to support possible proxies in a fight like the one in Ukraine, as opposed to relying on having enough last generation stuff lying around In National Guard depots to get your sides proxy force trough the crisis, barely. It isn't possible to just wish away the hard grinding business of a real fight.

So this post, and this excellent book... have made me put something together. The Pentagon and I believe the rest of the worlds defense establishments have spent decades and many billions of dollars trying to achieve something useful with "smart" aircraft dropping dumb bombs instead of more expensive PGMs. Drones are the first and only thing that has ever achieved a CEP that is not measured in football pitches. I realize the loss rates on the drones are so high they practically are PGMs, but I still think the concept has merit. And if a $50,000 octo-copter can deliver deliver six or eight 120mm mortar shells before it gets knocked out, it is still an unbelievable bargain in terms of most other PGMs cost.

The Bradley that was hit with a main gun round yesterday is still in the fight!

There is even some discussion about making a game, but it is all rumors so far.

In short DPICM might be the difference between an ugly draw, and an outright Ukrainian victory. Even found the whole thing for you Keep in mind the mine belt is literally kilometers deep in places. Either we get better at demining or vast swathes of Southern Ukraine will be a nature preserve with occasional fireworks for generations.

You are the one with the CIB, but let me chew on this just a little bit more. The Russian defensive system in southern Ukraine consists of Massive minefields, a lot trenches, and enough firepower, especially longer range firepower like ATGMs to make breaching those minefields extraordinarily slow and expensive, if it can be done at all. The actual density of soldiers holding the first layer or two of that system is not that high though, if I understand this at all well. Concentrating too many troops forward just gets them killed. If, and this is a near science fiction level if, something like the widget shown in the post that started this discussion existed. And if that widget had had a range of six kilometers, an speed of thirty kilometers per hour, the ability to fly by itself so the soldier was just a passenger, and it could also move cargo, and last and most importantly there were five thousand of the bleeping things available. It would really complicate the current Russian defensive concept, because it would raise the possibility of overwhelming the outer layers of the Russian defensive onion fast enough to break the whole scheme. I freely admit the casualties involved would extremely high. But the question is what those casualties buy you? An extremely high casualty German airborne assault got the Germans Crete, at essentially the cost of their entire Airborne Corps, they never tried again at any scale. I would be shocked if one average citizen in a thousand has ever heard of the battle. Montgomery got a several whole brigades killed breaking the line at El Alamein, but his follow in forces were ready and sufficient. I think it is fair to say it is considered a great success, even if Montgomery gets to much credit, and a bunch of very brave men who didn't make it back far to little.

The grenade cost what $10, and the drone maybe a couple of thousand, max?

APS is not remotely a cure all, but I really do think that tanks/IFVs without it are borderline unviable on the modern battlefield.

Is it worse than crawling thru a mine field, very slowly, with a metal detector, and a glorified stick to find the mines one at a time? Because that seems to be the other choice. I am under no illusions that this is a generally viable idea. But for a high reward surprise attack it could "work". By work I mean the same way the airborne forces at D-Day "worked". They threw a meaningful amount of sand into the German operational system at a the critical moment. Their casualties were whatever is above high, but I think they made a meaningful contribution. Is there a war college study about whether or not the airborne operations In Normandy were worth the cost? Edit: And of course there is a real risk tat the bad guys can throw mines into a breach faster than it is possible to remove them. That is happening now, today. Indeed I would argue it has become the signature tactical development of the second half of this war.

I remember something you wrote ten, maybe even twenty years ago about how the Israelis are the only country that uses an MBT chassis for a significant number of IFVs. They do it because they are only first line military where the tactical advantages outweigh the operational cost. The distances involved are small enough for the concept to be valid for them. For everyone else strategic, and operational mobility and costs make it an unviable concept. Of course the medium term question now is who is the first to field an "IFV" that is designed to deliver fifty very unpleasant little murder bots instead of ten infantrymen. My guess is not long...

The problem with Crete was that the Germans burned a very valuable strategic asset for a island that was less valuable than the asset. in question. One of the first and most important questions about an operation like the one I am proposing is whether or not a a very expensive victory is actually a victory. I keep coming back the battle of El Alamein. Montgomery's casualties during the assault phase were horrific. After days of brutally expensive grinding prep work, Monty told an armored brigade to get into the German gun line, or die trying. The brigade lost SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT of its vehicles in that attack. But Montgomery's evaluation of the risks, the costs, and the rewards were correct, that time. The British broke through and effectively wrecked the Africa Corps.

Is there any actual information about range and payload?

As Kinophile brilliantly laid a out a month or so ago, the basic idea of the Ukrainian counter offensive is to keep forcing the Russians to use up their reserves until they just run out of them. If a unit of naval infantry had to come forward and experience the joys of receiving DPICM, just to extract forces from a place they were losing? I would say the plan is working as designed. It all comes down to whether Ukraine has more artillery ammo than Russia has reserves?

As utterly crazy as this is it might be a viable option for assaulting over a minefield. The thing I thing it gets slightly wrong is that it is controlled by the person on it. The poor bloody infantry need to be thinking about what their jobs are if they live to dismount this little death trap. Also if the passenger doesn't have to control it, it implies it could be sent back for more passengers, and/or supplies. On the extremely optimistic assumptions that something like this had a couple of kilometers of range, and that you could produce a couple of battalions worth of them, you might be able to get enough people and firepower over the minefield to allow a breaching operation to succeed. My, no doubt deranged, vision would be this centuries version of an air assault. Of course it might be even more suicidal than last century's version. But there would be at least a chance of disrupting what seems to be the emerging era of defensive dominance. Like an air assault of course it will only work with the element of surprise, which may itself be close to extinct.

This is exactly the kind of question the next version of the game needs to explore. Steve could you finally throw us a bone or two on the hopefully not mythical, hopefully doesn't require a security clearance, next game? It might kick things out of the August doldrums around here. Of course you might be on vacation and want to put that off until after Sept 1.

Valve covers, oil pans, fuel tanks, batteries, and a lot of other bits really don't appreciate small holes being punched in them

Looked like a failed attempt at a barrel roll to me.

A long thread from ChrisO_wiki about disputes in the Russian propaganda apparatus. It is as good a view as we are likely to get of the current fault lines in the Russian regime.

The real thing this chart reveals is that proximity to Russia clarifies peoples thinking wonderfully.

It almost feels intentional at times, especially when you put the name in maps and it keeps sending you to another town with the same name, in another oblast.

But what we are seeing right now is enough drones with a 1000km range and an at least minimally meaningful warhead to impose massive air defense costs on the other side, and real damage when that air defense fails. This is one of the relatively few times that Russias sheer size is actually working against it. They have spread significant military production facilities, and oil infrastructure out as widely as possible, but now they have to try and provide air defense for all of it.

I suspect this is an overwrought term for command detonated claymores.

There are a LOT of sensors, a lot of processing power, and a three very good cameras in an iphone 15. Servos, and the other bits and bobs that aren't included in a phone, seem to be so cheap and ubiquitous that we can't keep the Russians from buying them. As kimosbread has just eloquently detailed , the rest of it is just software. GPS jamming was the inevitable counter to GPS guided weapons wrecking everything in sight, but it will only be a small interruption in the progression of small robots that want to kill whatever their makers are unhappy with.