How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kraze]

13 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

Dunno about that, but I think at this point you can actually kind of compare Russia to Nazi Germany.

Every society has its ideology, but I would say that there usually is a difference between its "creed", the kind of official, coherent ideology and its day to day ideology. As an example: In the western world we have a certain set of ideas that are based on various philosophies and precedents, but most people basically only know, understand and believe the essential basics of this. What is important to them is the parts of the ideology that make the society function, in the west mostly stuff like "work hard to be able to fulfill your consumption wishes."

The same was the case in Nazi Germany. I trully don't think that the majority of the German population was too concerned with the finer points of the Nazi crackpot racial theories that underpinned their ideology. However, I do believe that in this era there was a real sense in the German population of: "The world is a cruel place, the strongest get what they want, we have been screwed over in the past, but now we need to be strong, no matter the cost."

One of the biggest hits shortly before the Nazi takeover in Germany was the "Threepenny Opera", a leftwing musical that aims to show the inherent hypocrisy at the heart of capitalist society, basically portraying the "respectable" middle class as self-interested criminals dominated by purely economic interests. Hanna Arendt pointed out that maybe this musical was so successful not because the German people were waking up to leftism, but because it already mirrored the way they saw the world - basically: Let's drop all pretenses of civilisation and take what we want, this is how the world works.

I think this might be the Russian day to day ideology at this point as well, in part explaining the cruelty of even the basic soldiers.

It's not "at this point". They were always like that. Everybody is so focused on evils of Nazi Germany because they lost.

In the past century russians have murdered times and times more people than Germany. Ukraine alone went through three genocides.

And one of those was right after WW2 (in 1946) because Ukrainians dared to resist russian re-occupation. They couldn't care less that they will look no different from people they just fought - so they murdered 300000 Ukrainians in that year (among a total million of people incl. murdered in Belarus and Moldova, that were also resisting).

They never really stopped.

Edited April 6, 2022 by kraze

[G.I. Joe]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

There are some pretty big practical problems with this.  Drones require a lot of energy to keep up in the air and they need more to operate various systems.  EW and kinetic "hard kill" weapons also require energy.  The more energy that is needed the bigger the drone has to be.  Winged drones have an advantage as they are more energy efficient for loitering (and for travel for all I know), but winged drones aren't an option for this purpose.

Steve

Fixed-wing is definitely more efficient than rotary wing. I'd need to pull out my old ground school texts and check I've got things right before offering a technical explanation, but using the engine to spin around a rotary wing to generate lift is definitely more power-consuming than using it to generate enough thrust to make a fixed-wing aircraft go fast enough to let the wings do the work. The V-22 Osprey is a pretty good case in point: even with those stubby little wings and huge rotors acting as props, it can still fly faster and further than an equivalent helo, and by a wide enough margin that the cost and difficulty of all the engineering to make it happen was considered worthwhile. But if we compare it to a conventional twin turboprop transport, say the CC-295 Kingfisher or C-27J Spartan, its range, payload and speed are at a disadvantage compared to two larger aircraft with significantly less powerful engines...

Similar logic applies to V/STOL jets: just look at the numbers for the F-35B compared to the F-35A.

That being said, I can see how fixed-wing drones might work here, since there are plenty of models infantry can carry around. The big drawback I can see is that launching in full-remote operation with the tank buttoned down would probably only work with helicopter drones.

Edited April 6, 2022 by G.I. Joe

[Kinophile]

7 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

The big drawback I can see is that launching in full-remote operation with the tank buttoned down would probably only work with helicopter drones.

Exactly what I imagine. Militarized DJI Ronins w/ long range thermals, FTW! 

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, __Yossarian0815[jby] said:

Um, no. The KPD (communist party of Germany) was never very strong in Weimar Germany (10-16%). The NSDAP certainly didn´t grow at the expense of the KPD. In fact the KPD  was forbidden so that the Nazis could claim their takeover to be democratically legitimate (Ermächtigungsgesetz).

This is why I said "politically active" portion of the population.  And I should also have said Bavaria where the Nazi Party was strongest (I did a quick check and indeed the BVP had the most seats of any party for quite a while). 

It has been a long time since I dove into the numbers, so I could be mistaken about the details.  But my point is valid that the population that was initially swayed by Communist ideology didn't seem to mind switching to Nazi ideology.  Maybe not overnight, but eventually.

Steve

[Bil Hardenberger]

4 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

That being said, I can see how fixed-wing drones might work here, since there are plenty of models infantry can carry around. The big drawback I can see is that launching in full-remote operation with the tank buttoned down would probably only work with helicopter drones.

A launcher similar to how the Switchblade is launched mounted to a tank could provide OTH surveillance for a tank crew.  Those could be launched remotely with the crew buttoned.  

[dan/california]

8 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

Fixed-wing is definitely more efficient than rotary wing. I'd need to pull out my old ground school texts and check I've got things right before offering a technical explanation, but using the engine to spin around a rotary wing to generate lift is definitely more power-consuming than using it to generate enough thrust to make a fixed-wing aircraft go fast enough to let the wings do the work. The V-22 Osprey is a pretty good case in point: even with those stubby little wings and huge rotors acting as props, it can still fly faster and further than an equivalent helo, and by a wide enough margin that the cost and difficulty of all the engineering to make it happen was considered worthwhile. But if we compare it to a conventional twin turboprop transport, say the CC-295 Kingfisher or C-27J Spartan, its range, payload and speed are at a disadvantage compared to two larger aircraft with significantly less powerful engines...

Similar logic applies to V/STOL jets: just look at the numbers for the F-35B compared to the F-35A.

That being said, I can see how fixed-wing drones might work here, since there are plenty of models infantry can carry around. The big drawback I can see is that launching in full-remote operation with the tank buttoned down would probably only work with helicopter drones.

I think it is far more likely the drones will be a company level asset. There will be an entire platoon more or less tasked with nothing but drone operations and battle space ISR intergration. So drones will be launched and recovered by dedicated vehicles/operators at whatever schedule their technology requires. Lasers are already well long in development for shooting down drones, there have also been experiments with using lasers to POWER drones via solar cells. I  can envision the same vehicle doing both jobs. Feeding low powered lasers to the companies own drones when there aren't bad guy drones to shoot at. God help the corporal that crosses up the buttons.

[womble]

4 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

That being said, I can see how fixed-wing drones might work here, since there are plenty of models infantry can carry around. The big drawback I can see is that launching in full-remote operation with the tank buttoned down would probably only work with helicopter drones.

Catapults and capture nets. Cyberpunk "riggers" have had this finessed* since the early nineties...  

Seriously, though, that sort of problem should be amenable to resolution by military RnD budgets. And a fixed-wing drone or two loitering on a racetrack course over the formation would be just dandy for improving situational awareness. We come back to the concept of the hybrid command-track/MBT/UGV/drones formation that was discussed a hundred pages back  

You could solve the recovery problem by having the drones launch (VLS-style) from the pointy-end units, but return to rear echelon positions for recovery. Would give the launch platform a limited number of launches, but might enable more capable drone platforms. And there's no reason there couldn't be hover drones in the mix that could launch and recover from forward-deployed platforms to supplement the larger, higher energy-budget fixed-wing ones.

* in RPGs, obvs.

[sburke]

more Russian diplomats eligible for front line service

Greece, Norway order expulsion of Russian diplomats (msn.com)

[dan/california]

Good thread from Jomini today.

[akd]

RK-3 Korsar ambush by Ukrainian police:

 

[Ts4EVER]

10 minutes ago, akd said:

RK-3 Korsar ambush by Ukrainian police:

 

Don't let the American police see that, or they'll order rocket launchers for routine traffic controls.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Heck of a speed trap.

[danfrodo]

13 minutes ago, akd said:

RK-3 Korsar ambush by Ukrainian police:

 

Wow, that looked like 2000m?  And the shooters are totally calm, no fear at all, they laugh and displace in a leisurely manner.  That says a lot. 

[Saberwander]

4 hours ago, Kinophile said:

I'm thinking more small quadcopter type, unarmed tactical ISR stuff, - and by slaved I mean locked to the tank's position & movement, providing above tree/building level optical & thermal feeds to the TC & Gunner for immediate situational awareness.

@Chibot Mk IX I'd forgotten that!  they were great. But as Steve mentions, a weaponised rone requires support. The drones I'm thinking of would be organic to the tank itself, part & parcel of its situational awareness array.

Ideal would be having multiple drones that can rotate between being on "duty" and charging but I see a simple stopgap solution that would allow tanks to have much better situational awareness. 

Why doesn't no one develop a tethered drone that uses same kind of propulsion (quadcopter or similar) but has a small cable for charging. I know it's not ideal but it would remove the need to have secure comms to the drone and the drone would be able to stay up indefinitely (as long as tank has electrical power). 

It would mean that the drone can't really go very far from the tank, but imagine situational awareness a tank commander could get with a birds eye view from 100m. 

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

1 hour ago, kraze said:

It's not "at this point". They were always like that. Everybody is so focused on evils of Nazi Germany because they lost.

In the past century russians have murdered times and times more people than Germany. Ukraine alone went through three genocides.

And one of those was right after WW2 (in 1946) because Ukrainians dared to resist russian re-occupation. They couldn't care less that they will look no different from people they just fought - so they murdered 300000 Ukrainians in that year (among a total million of people incl. murdered in Belarus and Moldova, that were also resisting).

They never really stopped.

If the Germans had won, not a single ukranian would exist today. Most of the people in this thread would not exist. The nazis had an extermination plan for practically everybody.

[Kinophile]

4 minutes ago, Saberwander said:

It would mean that the drone can't really go very far from the tank, but imagine situational awareness a tank commander could get with a birds eye view from 100m. 

Exactly! 

The cable would be an issue - any movement by the tank would create wind drag, which could easily overwork the motors and outpace power supply. Plus issues with branches, o/ cables etc.

I can see a small dual docking station at the external rear of the tank, one quad charging/downloading while the other is up. Two gives redundancy and can be spared to another tank in the platoon if they lose theirs

[sburke]

13 minutes ago, __Yossarian0815[jby] said:

If the Germans had won, not a single ukranian would exist today. Most of the people in this thread would not exist. The nazis had an extermination plan for practically everybody.

I think we can quit with the biggest fascist awards.  Anybody even competing is on the other side.  Doesn't matter if they are the worst or runner up worst.

[Hapless]

RE: Drones

One of the issues with giving everyone a drone is that you get a kind of information overload/ information bog where soldiers have to (or feel like they have to) process all feeds of information before they make a decision or make a move (after all, self-preservation is a thing). A bit like turning the OO dial up to eleven and never DA-ing.

Case in point: the British Army has done some testing adding, amongst other things, GoPros to the end of Challenger main gun barrels- the cameras are mounted to point left and right so that a tank can roll up to a corner, edge the barrel out of cover and be able to get a good look without exposure. Sounds good until the tank crews (reputedly) lost all speed and momentum, stopping at every opportunity to look around corners with their new toy.

Now, if you can create a universal feed where the data from all your drones is synthethised in a cloud and then disseminated to all participants in near real time, via a Blue Force Tracker type thing (Red Force Tracker?) or some kind of augemented reality feed, thereby cutting the processing out and simply overlaying the info over soldier's basic tasks... then you'd be cooking.

(As a side note- giving that laser warning recievers are a thing I wonder why no one has decided to put a tank's laser rangefinder on a drone and do all the lasing from a different angle?)
 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Hapless

[Kinophile]

21 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Heck of a speed trap.

This should get a LOT more likes.

c'mon people!

[Commanderski]

4 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

This should get a LOT more likes.

c'mon people!

Most of us run out of likes early in the day. We need more likes...

[MikeyD]

I just thought, another problem with drones is bandwidth. If a mech inf company has (pick a random number) 40 drones in the air are there 40 separate channels to broadcast and receive signals? Or do you get the problem of your neighbor's remote garage door opener opening your garage door as well?

[Kinophile]

latest JITW:

Tbh, the official UKR losses seem a little iffy. 14:1 loss ratio? Really...?

Also, going by current weather forecast, it suggests Russia must surge forward quickly and gain important ground asap before that first rain band hits. In theory, the mud afterwards would impede UKR mechanized counter attacks, while using dispersed infantry would be vulnerable to heavy shelling.

I'm really curious how UKR will withdraw from the Luhansk AO. 

Edited April 6, 2022 by Kinophile

[Kinophile]

2 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I just thought, another problem with drones is bandwidth. If a mech inf company has (pick a random number) 40 drones in the air are there 40 separate channels to broadcast and receive signals? Or do you get the problem of your neighbor's remote garage door opener opening your garage door as well?

Good point. Also good points re too much info. I guess 1 drone per tank, or at worst just the Plt Leader, feeding to the other three.

Still, gimme eyes, I WANT EYES, dammit. 

[Panserjeger]

An interesting take on China`s relationship with Russia:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/east-asia/2022-04-05/next-sino-russian-split 

[OldSarge]

5 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I just thought, another problem with drones is bandwidth. If a mech inf company has (pick a random number) 40 drones in the air are there 40 separate channels to broadcast and receive signals? Or do you get the problem of your neighbor's remote garage door opener opening your garage door as well?

I suppose that you would be able to setup a mesh network where each drone has a uniquely assigned address. Commands could be sent either individually addressed or via broadcast for all of them.

Early in the Global Hawk testing phase a kill yourself shutdown command was sent to a unit under test, it succeeded and also caused a nearby Global Hawk to also shutdown. Oops!