poesel

A few pages back we discussed anti-drone measures. This is a short video of some students (I think) from Nanjing university who build a rocket with a visual sensor. This is not military grade and misses some parts and functions. But if some students can build such a thing, the industry can, too. I think this will be the last war where small drones can roam as freely as they do here. In future wars, it will be much more dangerous for them.

Because neither France nor Austria are at war with Russia. Morale and business do not mix. As long as it's legal, they will sell it. If it's illegal, some will stop, and some will raise the price. That is not nation specific. But some nations have harsher measures which will disincline more businessmen to try to make a profit than others.

Another two of those drone chase video. I feel this makes the killing more personal, and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing:

Little story (and I know sample size 1 is not very representative): I have a Russian colleague who started working at our local branch when we closed our Moscow office. He got sick and spent the last three weeks at home in Moscow with his family. Now he's back, and I asked him what people in Moscow really think about the war. He told me it is of not much concern to anyone. It is just something that happens and does not affect the everyday live very much. He is not happy with the situation, but I guess he thinks about this like bad weather: you don't like it, but you can't do anything. My impression from this small interview is, that I better not set my hopes on a revolution from the masses.

Yeah, but those guys are in the send-more-guns camp (thanks Agnes!). At least one thing they do well. I don't think that this war is an existential threat to Europe - at least not as long as Ukraine is not going to lose. We (in Europe) are all in debt to Ukraine, and we know it. Unfortunately, this is not some unknown weirdo on Russia's payroll. He was (!) a respectable journalist who wrote books, made documentaries and often showed up on TV to 'explain' Putin. Really a shame that he could work undetected for so long.

We Germans just loooove recycling

One thing that China would really like to have is a harbor on the Arctic sea. That harbor will be ice-free for most of the year real soon and give China a short and mostly unobstructed route to Europe. I can imagine some kind of reverse Hong Kong where China lends some piece of land for 99 years from Russia. Maybe in the delta of the Lena river. The Lena is navigable to Yakutsk and Yakutsk already has a railway connection to China. That would be a massive infrastructure project, but probably still much cheaper than what they invest to get out of the South China Sea. Also, building infrastructure is something the Chinese are good at. I don't know if this is feasible, but I would bet that someone in China already has the numbers for this project.

Sorry, this is off-topic, but I'm too curious to not ask where the military application of this type of copper band is? I use it quite often at work whenever we have to transmit a few thousand amps over a moveable joint in a converter application. But military application? Maybe for the lasers, but I'd guessed they would use water cooled cables.

Re: shooting down drones: a proximity fuze for infantry use would be a nice solution. But I don't know if you can actually make a round small enough that can be handled by ordinary infantry. The Gepard ammo has such a fuze, but then it is rather impracticable for the average grunt to lug around a barrel that can shoot 35mm rounds. Or you have a missile as complicated as an AT-4, but smaller. Another item to carry around, of course. But maybe useful enough for this war.

IIRC it was protection of minorities, influence of oligarchs and more anti-corruption. This is only about the beginning of talks. Those can take a loooooong time - ask Turkey. Even if Ukraine is still at war, the EU is not a defense pact (although there is something somewhere deep in the contracts IIRC). OTOH, the EU is not going to finance a bridge for Russia to blow up. If Ukraine joins the EU before the war ends, we are talking about a very, very long war...

Ukraine achieved 90% of preconditions for the beginning of negotiations to join the EU. Talk are planned to start in January. Also, Moldova and Georgia now have candidate state.

China builds the first drone carrier (article in German). https://www.wiwo.de/technologie/wirtschaft-von-oben/wirtschaft-von-oben-235-chinesische-marine-china-will-den-ersten-drohnentraeger-der-welt-bauen/29465318.html Seems logical to have such a thing.

Thanks for the answers to the mine roller. I guess some obstacles mentioned could be overcome, but in total that design it is just not useful and reliable enough. I guess we will see specialized UGS which are not much more than a combo of tracks, motor, plow & a remote control (maybe some armor). Low profile and comparably inexpensive. Hmm, if you make the profile low enough and add a ramp, a following vehicle could just drive over it if the plow is disabled.

I have a question regarding mine clearing with rollers: why do mine clearing vehicles have to be tanks? The survivability of mine clearing tanks in this conflict seems to be abysmal. So why bother with armor, and instead use mass. Attach a barrel to a civilian vehicle (4WD or small truck), fill the barrel with water, relieve valve and make that vehicle remote controlled (nothing fancy, just forward, left, right) - you have your el-cheapo mine roller. Works only in light terrain, and doesn't survive any decent shelling. But you can have a lot of them as they are very cheap. This must be a stupid idea because nobody is doing it, but why?

A bit of statistics about this thread. First post 11.2.2022. Page 1000 on 7.7.2022, 2000 on 3.2.2023 and 3000 on 6.11.2023. It took 146 days for the first 1000. Then 211 for the next and another 276 for the last. So we are slowing down. With a bit of extrapolation, it will take 318 days for the next 1000 - that would be September 19, 2024. Let's hope we are discussion the end of the war by then.

Producing ammo is not labor-intensive. What you need is machines and material. That costs (roughly) the same everywhere. The main advantage (for the manufacturer) to produce 'somewhere else' is, that the export restrictions may be lower than in the west. Also, there is no open market for artillery shells. You cannot produce that without state influence. You cannot sell without state influence. You cannot buy without state influence. That makes things complicated in case of crisis. Case in point: Germany couldn't deliver Gepard ammo to Ukraine because it was produced in Switzerland.

Because that is not how it works. Suppliers want contracts before they set up a production line. It takes at least a year (if you rush it) and 50 mil (a guess) per line. No one is going to invest that if they are not sure if they can sell their product. Such a production line is not really dual use. No civilian use without mayor retooling. You could mothball it, but then you still have sunk the investment costs for a war that never came. Scalability costs money. If the crisis comes, and you want to outsource, you need to find someone with free capacities. Difficult and costly in a crisis. And if there is no free capacity, 'they' also need time to build that. Outsourcing is not a magic wand. Well, maybe a cursed one...

I agree with him on the need of standardization. I guess it is not the lack of standards, but that there are too many of them. Probably national lobbying at its best. Where I don't agree is the outsourcing part. Firstly, manufacturing simple artillery shells is a simple manufacturing task. Any industrialized country can do that AND do a million other things. It is not clogging up any unreplaceable resources. If you calculate opportunity costs, it may not best the best choice, but you are still making money. Secondly, if you strictly look for the market solution, our future shells will all come from south-east Asia. I don't need to spell it out why this will be an undesirable outcome. Standardize the stuff and build it locally.

It is much easier: you just park a trailer with a container which is filled with drones in a 20 km radius of your target. Unless you are in a desert, it won't be noticed until the rooftop opens.

Ukrainian drone pilot destroys a Russian tank from 22 km distance (18 from frontline). The tweet also states, that Russia has imposed a 10 km no-tank zone from the front.

I don't think that IFF for drones is a problem. A quick search gives this: https://www.unmannedsystemstechnology.com/expo/iff-transponders/ https://insideunmannedsystems.com/identify-friend-or-foe-iff-capability-for-small-tactical-attritable-defense-uavs/ There is a market and solutions. These examples seem to be a bit too big for small drones, but there is no reason why smaller IFF devices can't be made. Drone to drone combat is nearly hand-to-hand combat. Transmitters for shorter ranges need less power and are smaller.

I guess the confusion comes from the use of the term 'more powerful'. In a technical sense, it means 'more output power'. In a more common sense, it means 'more useful'. In the former, caps do not help, in the latter they do.

That is where math meets reality. P = W / t Double W and you double P - easy. Unfortunately not. The P on the left side represents a real machine (an engine, a laser, ...). It has a maximum power output which is limited by its construction (the CCs you have in a combustion engine or the heat dissipation in a laser to name some restraints). If you try to go beyond that power, you won't get it in the best case or destroy it in the worst. So P is fixed. What happens when you add to W is this: t = W / P t gets bigger. Meaning you can drive or shoot longer. Where caps help in the laser scenario is, that they can release a lot of energy in a short time. Much more than batteries or a diesel generator. If your laser can take that power - good! But just adding caps won't make the laser more powerful (in the sense of: more output power). This ends my basic physics' lesson to not further derail this thread. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(physics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy

There is no relation between having a lot of energy to having a lot of power - at least the useful sort of power. If you put a nail through your Cap, the energy is released very fast, but not very useful (unless you need an explosion). Adding large capacitors to your laser does not make them more powerful. The power output stays the same. But you can fire for a longer time. The analogy to a car works quite well. Adding a gas tank to your car adds stored energy. But it does not affect the power output of your motor. You can, however, drive for a longer time.

You are mixing up power and energy. Caps store energy. It is like buying a bigger gas tank for your car and then expect it to run faster.