Letter from Prague

We had few discussions about cyber - here's an interesting article I stumbled upon today: Cyber Security: A Pre-War Reality Check https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cyber-security-pre-war-reality-check/

So how are the autonomous drones handling IFF?

Addendum: "breaking" modern encryption isn't really a thing. You would need quantum computers that don't really exist at the moment, or more time than until the end of the universe to do something like that - even the dumbest CPUs that cost $1 a piece have integrated modern encryption nowadays. What is usually attacked is when whoever built the device, hardware or software, made a mistake or cut some corners, like not implementing encryption at all or not generating encryption key properly or messing up some code or even left a backdoor. That's where you might see a difference between Raytheon and DJI drones.

Modern CPUs have dedicated hardware for encryption, so that is not really a concern unless in very very constrained environments. When you watch a youtube video on a phone on a tablet, that video is going through at least two layers of encryption - your device's connection to your wifi or to mobile network is encrypted, and all connections between web browser or app and Google's servers are encrypted as well. That doesn't mean there aren't vulnerabilities, especially if the protocol designer is kind of a dummy, like in my favorite talk here:

And that's even before you get to the overlap between EW and direct energy weapons. For non-autonomous drone, short and well targeted blast can destroy receivers and render it uncontrollable without needing to broadcast in all direction all the time. Lasers can destroy cameras at way lower power levels than that are needed for vaporizing something. None of this means drones are defeated - but I think "we haven't seen majority of the arms race yet" is pretty safe position. It also makes me somewhat frustrated that I don't see major Western militaries investing into this, but maybe it's just classified.

I think whoever is going to figure out long range cheap and precise weapons is going to rule the world, basically. Imagine Ukraine had few thousand Storm Shadows instead of like 50. The war would be probably over by now. Shaheds meanwhile deliver on the cheap and long range but not on the precise. Russia had a lot of missiles of various types, but they don't seem to deliver on the precise or cheap either. FPVs are cheap and precise but not long range. The only case where we have seen all three is with the Ukrainian naval drones - and the effect has been devastating. I don't know if the Ukrainian plane drones used for refinery hunting count as cheap and precise, but they seem to be having effect as well. But delivering on something cheap is kind of hard because the MIC wants its cut. So who knows where we'll end up.

Big part of suicide drone autonomy is cameras and image processing, and we can make cheap cameras (in visible spectrum) and cheap chips that are pretty good at image processing. Basic communication is also easy, motors, batteries, everything is COTS and already accessible. Once you go into things like "every drone can see in far infrared" or "every drone has satellite uplink" or "every drone has AESA radar or similarly complex electronics so it can become anti-radiation missile" or something, that is where I can imagine things might get expensive.

So the Starlink. Do we know if it was Russian EW or just Musk turning them off before the offensive on Putin's order?

So instead of one drone with tandem warhead you have tandem drones with single warheads. I guess that works.

I think this is evolving quite a bit as time goes on. I remember when Ukraine first got HIMARS, US specifically modified it so it won't fire ATACMS even if Ukraine got it from somewhere else, to "prevent escalation". Now they actually have ATACMS from US. I'm curious if Blinken meant the statement that Ukraine can target whatever it wants now. Although "they can target whatever they want but if they hit Russia we'll stop supporting them" is still technically "they can target whatever".

I thought Ukraine attacked with dismounted infantry as well - except then we call it "infiltration" and "fog eating snow". What is the difference in how Russia does it and how Ukraine does it? There's probably some nuance I'm missing. I think in that nuance we might see some answers?

I mean Slovakia was already on their way to Orban-style dictatorship (which technically has elections but due to media and justice control they are a sham), this will just speed things along.

This is rumint at this point, buuuuut seems there is a connection to our proper topic of discussion.

Yeah, I've noticed this as well. I also saw few previously pretty neutral channels starting with the narrative "now that Ukraine is obviously defeated and Russia will take over soon, let's talk about how Russia is going to attack NATO". If you look carefully, there's always some proof of this being Russian op - I've noticed obsession with warm water ports or claming that "Russian speaking Ukrainians are actually Russians or at least would be happy with Russia taking over".

There is no breaking of international law in not telling Ukraine "you can't use Western weapons to attack Russia". There is no breaking of international law in not telling Ukraine "stop attacking refineries". There is no breaking of international law in being asserting in protecting our airspace. You could see the difference when Iran launched missiles at Israel and US, UK, France and possibly others went to intercept. Is someone intercepting missiles Russia is launching at Ukraine?

This is a well known problem is politics, called "They go low, we go high." There's a youtube video that nicely explains it in US politics context: But long story short - if you have two sides fighting, and one is willing to do absolutely everything, legal or not, moral or not, monstrous or not, and the other limits itself to what is "proper", then if that "bad guy" side is able to manipulate various systems to its advantage, it will win.

I love how Czech president responded "let this be a warning what can deepening hatred and aggression in society lead to" which reads like "you did this to yourself, dude".

By the way anything happening in the Ukrainian over the river operations? I saw some claims that "Ukrainians are countering new Russian front by opening another front" in various places, but it feels kinds nonsensical.

The flipside of this is that the Russian are completely willing to collapse themselves by throwing more and more to its destruction. If the Ukrainians had enough ammo, drones and air defences they could turn this into a tower defence game and just wait until Russia runs out of meat and metal. But we can't seem to be able to supply them with enough ammo, drones and airdefenses.

That sounds like handing Russia a win for no reason.

Yeah. Maybe the technology just hasn't caught up yet. But anti-radiation munitions aren't exactly common. Ukraine used HARM and now mostly seems to use static targeting cruise missiles to target air defences. Same with Russia, most of the time we hear of destroyed Ukrainian AD it's Iskander or similar. I would totally expect Shaheds or equivalents that are programmed to go in the middle of Ukraine/Russia and target any stronger radar that's along the way, but I don't think we've seen it. In the end, I think it's a pretty advanced capability that hasn't been commodified yet.

We've seen this in Ukraine. Defensive primacy doesn't mean you get to keep all your territory if enemy is fast enough or overwhelms you in a specific place. And it also doesn't mean your enemy won't just lob missiles at your hospitals and kindergartens forever, because they can't and you can't stop them with only defensive weapons. edit: or you have allies that don't have your trench system and want to help them - but the enemy is already there. Or, speaking of Serbia, you want to stop ongoing genocide. You can't protect even yourself just by defending, much less others. (In a hilariously stretched connection I've had the same conversation with regards to "this is why I train muay thai and not aikido".)

I wonder if it even means anything, or it they are rearranging deck chairs on Titanic ...

Watched it and finally we have a word for those "barn on wheels" Russian vehicles - Perun calls them "Assault Shed"

New Perun that is for once very topical