How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

20 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

There is a hatch in the bottom of the tank, but the driver might have been injured or disabled.

If he isn't exiting via the fighting compartment for some reason, the bottom is probably off the list of available options, too. And that's assuming the bottom hatch isn't welded shut. A notoriously bothersome bit of kit, I am told.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Elmar Bijlsma
I writes gud

[Kinophile]

7 hours ago, MSBoxer said:

Park one of these next to your artillery and drones won't survive long.

Now this is possibly overkill considering the speed of most current kamikaze drones, so I am sure it could be downsized a bit.

 

Hmmmm replacing one common target with an even bigger and more specialized target doesn't seem like a good trade off. 

The future is drone v. Drone, with every piece of heavy equipment having an organic autonomous armed & recon drone unit slaved to it. The howitzer emplaces,  DRONE 1 detaches from the tow truck cab and automatically goes into CAP.  It returns for recharge,  Drone 2 goes up. 

[Vet 0369]

1 hour ago, Fenris said:

Zuzuna loading and firing

 

LOL, loved the bobblehead imitation at the end!

[FancyCat]

Where was the 900 billion number from? Everything i see indicates its been less than that years past and the next year is about 750 billion? 

And of course we spend more on the military vs other countries, as we see, China and others have vastly differing economics, meaning they spend way different amounts on things like personnel or equipment costs. Rich country, rich costs for manufacturing and personnel. Can't really outsource production or personnel to China can we? 

[chuckdyke]

I think they just publish this to make us happy.

Vladimir Putin's Hands Are Turning 'Black' Following Reports The Russian Leader Is Suffering From Parkinson's Disease & Cancer (msn.com)

[Artkin]

12 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Where was the 900 billion number from? Everything i see indicates its been less than that years past and the next year is about 750 billion? 

And of course we spend more on the military vs other countries, as we see, China and others have vastly differing economics, meaning they spend way different amounts on things like personnel or equipment costs. Rich country, rich costs for manufacturing and personnel. Can't really outsource production or personnel to China can we? 

It was via memory, it appears I was off by 100 billion. Oops.

I just remember it jumping about 200 billion from where it was: ~650 billion. Reuters says it will be over 800 billion next year.

Most are saying 778 billion for 2022, but many websites are giving different values. This website gives 778 billion for 2020... so not sure. With inflation I would say the numbers are about right.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget

 

China's buying power is estimated to be much higher than it's value in USD indeed. I wonder how much of an impact their cramped geography has on their GDP.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Artkin

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Calamine Waffles said:

There is a hatch in the bottom of the tank, but the driver might have been injured or disabled.

I am picturing the call to the wife:

"your husband is seriously injured and is receiving medical care"

"will he die?"  -- no

"are you sure?  Maybe you should just let him die, put him out of his misery.  Show some mercy.  I'll even give you 10% of the KIA bonus."

 

[sross112]

5 hours ago, OldSarge said:

"This is unfair!" LOL! Someone needs to tell them that fairness doesn't enter the equation. The immediate goal is for one side to seek an advantage of the other side, fair or not.

Yep. I was always taught that if you found yourself in a fair fight it meant your tactics suck.

A=B,B=C,C=A, and somehow the circle just leads back to the RA sucks.  

[Battlefront.com]

8 hours ago, Haiduk said:

How Ukrainian soldiers cook on positions, when situation allows to do this )

 

Watching these videos makes me hungry!  That's high praise indeed

Funny enough, last night I made something very similar except I used a hammer instead of a grenade.  I learned a new technique.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Real situation from UKR side (according to Pavlivka settlers): in day 1 DPR pushed our troops from gardens SE from village and took two farms on S and SE. On day 2 they could seize several houses in SE part. Day 3 - clashes, no advance. Day 4 - UKR troops pushed enemy back from SE of village and likely from farms. Gardens, according to loclas, now is grey zone.  

The Russian bloggers fascinate me for many reasons, but their ability to be detached from reality is probably the most interesting thing about them.  I suspect some know full well that they are lying their asses off, just like radicals do all over the world.  Others, however, are mentally unable to decipher truth from fantasy and lack basic logic skills.  They THINK they are passing along reasonably accurate information, but despite being proven wrong time and time and time again they think that THIS time they have it right.  Again, one can see this all over the world.  What is different is influential and important propagandists and mentally defective bloggers in other countries are still in the minority.

Steve

[NamEndedAllen]

2 hours ago, Artkin said:

It was via memory, it appears I was off by 100 billion. Oops.

I just remember it jumping about 200 billion from where it was: ~650 billion. Reuters says it will be over 800 billion next year.

Most are saying 778 billion for 2022, but many websites are giving different values. This website gives 778 billion for 2020... so not sure. With inflation I would say the numbers are about right.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget

 

China's buying power is estimated to be much higher than it's value in USD indeed. I wonder how much of an impact their cramped geography has on their GDP.

Perun had an excellent in depth video, posted here not too time ago, with an in-depth analysis of China’s military spending and production…compared to the USA’s. Among many reasons why their budget is  “smaller” but is producing vast increases in modern platforms are, just a couple big ones are:

1. Their budget isn’t transparent! Much production and procurement occurs in other parts of their economy, government and industry. Which as you know are strongly intertwined.

2. Their force pay is far far lower. The USA military must compete with private industry for the high skill sets that the modern military incredibly requires. That is money not available for buying ships, subs,planes, and AFVs. 
 

[dan/california]

10 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Interesting that the Ukrainians appear to see or hear the drone in time to run away (EDIT: in the FH70 video)

 

 

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Hmmmm replacing one common target with an even bigger and more specialized target doesn't seem like a good trade off. 

The future is drone v. Drone, with every piece of heavy equipment having an organic autonomous armed & recon drone unit slaved to it. The howitzer emplaces,  DRONE 1 detaches from the tow truck cab and automatically goes into CAP.  It returns for recharge,  Drone 2 goes up. 

Everything Kinophile just wrote will be SOP, but it won't be enough. The overwhelming difference between this war and the next one will be that they will never send just one the next time around. Flights of five or ten or fifty are just going to be table stakes. I really don't see any wayway to kill them fast enough except with a laser system. Maybe lasers and then something like a Gephardt to kill the leakers. I realize that is a really expensive package. But the cost of these Shaheed 136/lancet drones is going to get down towards ten thousand dollars when countries start ordering enough of them for the real benefits of mass production to kick in. And those orders are at least being planned as we speak, by people who know they can't win a tank on tank engagement with Abrams, and don't particularly want to try.

This is a really nifty system, but the designated victims were not exactly flying a pattern designed by someone that wanted to win. And guns just have range limitations. If the drones are incoming in a spread out pattern at 180 kilometers per hour, they will cross a 3 km kill zone in a minute. That is not a lot of time to engage five or ten targets spread out over the best part of 180 degrees. I just keep coming back to build a laser system that WORKS, or don't show up for the next war with anything bigger than a really high tech ghillie suit. And you need one of those laser/gun combos for every single mech platoon, artillery battery, and supply company. Which is why i don't see the defense budget declining anytime soon.

[chrisl]

8 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

Everything Kinophile just wrote will be SOP, but it won't be enough. The overwhelming difference between this war and the next one will be that they will never send just one the next time around. Flights of five or ten or fifty are just going to be table stakes. I really don't see any wayway to kill them fast enough except with a laser system. Maybe lasers and then something like a Gephardt to kill the leakers. I realize that is a really expensive package. But the cost of these Shaheed 136/lancet drones is going to get down towards ten thousand dollars when countries start ordering enough of them for the real benefits of mass production to kick in. And those orders are at least being planned as we speak, by people who know they can't win a tank on tank engagement with Abrams, and don't particularly want to try.

This is a really nifty system, but the designated victims were not exactly flying a pattern designed by someone that wanted to win. And guns just have range limitations. If the drones are incoming in a spread out pattern at 180 kilometers per hour, they will cross a 3 km kill zone in a minute. That is not a lot of time to engage five or ten targets spread out over the best part of 180 degrees. I just keep coming back to build a laser system that WORKS, or don't show up for the next war with anything bigger than a really high tech ghillie suit. And you need one of those laser/gun combos for every single mech platoon, artillery battery, and supply company. Which is why i don't see the defense budget declining anytime soon.

Lasers are cool, but they have a lot of limitations, not the least of which are power consumption and the fact that they provide a very detectable return address.  Like a ginormous beacon.  And it may not be looking at 5 or 10 targets spread over 180 degrees (really more like pi steradian), but 50 or 100, some of which may be decoys just to distract it.  

The key word in autonomous defense will be "distributed", just like the attackers.  If you have a distributed defense system against them it's much harder to overwhelm and less susceptible to complete failure if just one gets through or you have a temporary malfunction.  And it can be distributed over a much larger kill zone before it gets to your capital equipment.

The first thing you need to be able to do is detect all the drones.  They're small, they can have few metallic parts, they may not emit much RF if they're truly autonomous, there will be a lot of them, and they'll be taking different routes.  You want a mesh network of sensors that all move around (on their own AVs), have a variety of complementary sensors, overlapping search space, and can communicate with each other.  If any single one (or ten) drop out it doesn't matter - you have a bunch of redundancy.  You have to have a variety of sensor types because  it will be easy to make a small drone invisible to any single particular sensor type, but difficult to make it invisible to many simultaneously and still keep it small and cheap.

As the mesh system detects them, the individual elements will communicate with each other to decide which one of them will kill any particular drone.  The sensor drones may or may not also be the killer drones, and there will be a variety of killer drones and mechanisms.  When they start shooting back at the attacking drones they'll take into account the risk that they'll give themselves away, and for a small number of apparent attackers might take turns so that one starts shooting at them until it gets identified and hit, then the next one, and so on.  A lot of the kill methods will be kinetic because it's cheap and you can store a lot of propulsion energy in a small space.  Some of them will be like dragonflys that just entangle the incoming drones.

If you do have a bigass laser or Phalanx type system, that will be the last resort and essentially located at your "AV carrier" to get the few the dribble through the mesh.  Ideally it will never fire, because as soon as it does it gives itself away and the next wave is headed straight for it.

 

[Battlefront.com]

ISW's report is saying the same thing about Kherson city as we discussed earlier:

Quote

Ukrainian and Russian sources also extensively discussed the reported closure of some Russian checkpoints in the vicinity of Kherson City, the theft of city’s monuments, and the removal of a Russian flag from the Kherson Oblast Administration building as indicators of an ongoing Russian withdrawal from the city.[5] A Russian outlet claimed that Russian officials removed the flag because the occupation administration moved to Henichesk by the Crimean border.[6] While the relocation of the Kherson Oblast occupation government may suggest that Russian forces are preparing to abandon Kherson City, it may equally indicate that they are setting conditions for urban combat within the city. Similar reports may arise in coming days given the ongoing forced evacuation of civilians from both right and left banks of the Dnipro River but may not indicate an immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson City. The disposition of Russian airborne forces remains the best indicator of Russian intentions.

Basically, the Russians are doing something for sure with the civilian occupation forces, but so far have not shown any signs of giving up the right (west) bank of the Dnepr.  If we start seeing reports of VDV, Marines, or Spetsnaz being withdrawn over the river then, and only then, can we conclude they are abandoning the fight for Kherson city.

And this about the suicidal charges in and around Bakhmut:

Quote

ISW offers no hypothesis to explain Russian forces’ impatience or their continued allocation of limited military assets to gaining operationally insignificant ground in Donetsk Oblast rather than defending against the Ukrainian counteroffensives in Luhansk and Kherson oblasts.

Oh snap

Steve

[dan/california]

23 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Lasers are cool, but they have a lot of limitations, not the least of which are power consumption and the fact that they provide a very detectable return address.  Like a ginormous beacon.  And it may not be looking at 5 or 10 targets spread over 180 degrees (really more like pi steradian), but 50 or 100, some of which may be decoys just to distract it.  

The key word in autonomous defense will be "distributed", just like the attackers.  If you have a distributed defense system against them it's much harder to overwhelm and less susceptible to complete failure if just one gets through or you have a temporary malfunction.  And it can be distributed over a much larger kill zone before it gets to your capital equipment.

The first thing you need to be able to do is detect all the drones.  They're small, they can have few metallic parts, they may not emit much RF if they're truly autonomous, there will be a lot of them, and they'll be taking different routes.  You want a mesh network of sensors that all move around (on their own AVs), have a variety of complementary sensors, overlapping search space, and can communicate with each other.  If any single one (or ten) drop out it doesn't matter - you have a bunch of redundancy.  You have to have a variety of sensor types because  it will be easy to make a small drone invisible to any single particular sensor type, but difficult to make it invisible to many simultaneously and still keep it small and cheap.

As the mesh system detects them, the individual elements will communicate with each other to decide which one of them will kill any particular drone.  The sensor drones may or may not also be the killer drones, and there will be a variety of killer drones and mechanisms.  When they start shooting back at the attacking drones they'll take into account the risk that they'll give themselves away, and for a small number of apparent attackers might take turns so that one starts shooting at them until it gets identified and hit, then the next one, and so on.  A lot of the kill methods will be kinetic because it's cheap and you can store a lot of propulsion energy in a small space.  Some of them will be like dragonflys that just entangle the incoming drones.

If you do have a bigass laser or Phalanx type system, that will be the last resort and essentially located at your "AV carrier" to get the few the dribble through the mesh.  Ideally it will never fire, because as soon as it does it gives itself away and the next wave is headed straight for it.

 

Alright, you have convinced me you need to be in charge of this project, not kidding, start a company.  I will apply. But my main point stands. The bleeping things are going to be popping over the tree line in unpleasant quantities, and we had better have a plan. The arms race this going to become will be COSTLY.

[sross112]

6 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Lasers are cool, but they have a lot of limitations, not the least of which are power consumption and the fact that they provide a very detectable return address.  Like a ginormous beacon.  And it may not be looking at 5 or 10 targets spread over 180 degrees (really more like pi steradian), but 50 or 100, some of which may be decoys just to distract it.  

The key word in autonomous defense will be "distributed", just like the attackers.  If you have a distributed defense system against them it's much harder to overwhelm and less susceptible to complete failure if just one gets through or you have a temporary malfunction.  And it can be distributed over a much larger kill zone before it gets to your capital equipment.

The first thing you need to be able to do is detect all the drones.  They're small, they can have few metallic parts, they may not emit much RF if they're truly autonomous, there will be a lot of them, and they'll be taking different routes.  You want a mesh network of sensors that all move around (on their own AVs), have a variety of complementary sensors, overlapping search space, and can communicate with each other.  If any single one (or ten) drop out it doesn't matter - you have a bunch of redundancy.  You have to have a variety of sensor types because  it will be easy to make a small drone invisible to any single particular sensor type, but difficult to make it invisible to many simultaneously and still keep it small and cheap.

As the mesh system detects them, the individual elements will communicate with each other to decide which one of them will kill any particular drone.  The sensor drones may or may not also be the killer drones, and there will be a variety of killer drones and mechanisms.  When they start shooting back at the attacking drones they'll take into account the risk that they'll give themselves away, and for a small number of apparent attackers might take turns so that one starts shooting at them until it gets identified and hit, then the next one, and so on.  A lot of the kill methods will be kinetic because it's cheap and you can store a lot of propulsion energy in a small space.  Some of them will be like dragonflys that just entangle the incoming drones.

If you do have a bigass laser or Phalanx type system, that will be the last resort and essentially located at your "AV carrier" to get the few the dribble through the mesh.  Ideally it will never fire, because as soon as it does it gives itself away and the next wave is headed straight for it.

 

I'm going to use the US military as a reference. I think that guns are the best bet because of a few factors, some of which you also mention. APS or a modified APS like system that can slave the existing guns is probably the most workable in the near future. The plethora of guns on automated turrets would most likely allow this with very little hardware and software additions and basically any gun now serving a remote turret is more than capable of destroying a drone albeit at differing ranges. The 25mm bushmaster is going to be able to kill drones further away than a 240. 

The vehicles are already networked and digitally connected so the big leap would be a sensor package that is looking for drone type targets and keeping everything on the same page. Your thought is great and would work well but it is probably a lot easier and faster to field sensor packages onto the existing forces than it is to generate an entire new mesh web. In the future that will probably be needed but I don't think we will see anything like that for awhile. In the meantime I'm betting it is back to guns.

If any new platform is added then there needs to be a choice made between reducing your combat power by removing existing vehicles and replacing them with the new laser/AA asset or adding additional vehicles to your TO&E and coming up with the extra personnel to man and support them. If you use what is currently available there shouldn't be much change to formations and just adding capability. 

The other problem with the with both the lasers and the sensor drone screen is that they need to be able to maneuver with your elements. So they need to be fast and have the endurance to keep up all day long. If they don't have those then you have deprived yourself of battlefield mobility and that is one less thing your enemy has to do. Then if you aren't mobile you need to be more worried about arty PGM's (as illustrated in this conflict) and I don't think lasers or drones will be knocking artillery rounds out of the sky any time soon. 

I do completely agree that we are going to see a new layer of conflict with both sides fighting for air superiority at the low level with drones. Kind of like a USAF mini-me. Air superiority drones will definitely be part of the near future and will play a very important role but I'm betting it will be more along the lines of gaining and maintaining control of that layer of the air war than it will be about defending individual units, if that makes sense. It will have the same net result of normal air superiority where it defends the units in the AO or theater or whatever space you maintain superiority over, but will be fought at more of the air campaign level and not by individual ground units deploying their own fleets. 

More than likely I am wrong and things won't work out exactly as I see them, but this is just my take and how it makes sense to me with where technology is and how we tend to fight. The squad, platoon, company and BN are going to have a bunch more recon drones available and probably combat support drones as well. The control of the airspace above the battlefield will be mostly done by others and will just be another box on the combined arms list that needs to be checked. The US Army Drone Corps will cover from the ground up to a few thousand, the USAF will take it from there to the top of the atmosphere and then the Space Force will secure "To Infinity and Beyond!!!!"......

 

[dan/california]

Did you steal that from the Hammers Slammers Sci Fi series, or reinvent it on the spot? That is exactly how that author did it. They were just much better guns. One small refinement is that every gun in the battalion could be slaved to the battalion air defense system at need. That might almost be possible now, and allows separation of sensor and shooter. The new Abrams computer controlled airburst round might actually be pretty good for AA work if the turret could be slaved to an off board radar. The possibilities go on forever. We are going to have to do some expensive experiments to see what can actually be made to work. Someone needs to explain to Congress in advance that not all the experiments will work.

[sross112]

Never heard of Hammers Slammers. Any good? Will need a new book in a couple days so if you recommend it I'll pick it up.

The other thing that I think might be something to watch for will be along the lines of what others have said with sensor networks and AI control will be gun networks for area denial. Something like a couple guys in a semi with a flatbed carrying a dozen remote turrets and a skid steer for easy emplacement. All the turrets battery operated and solar fed connected to the sensor network and spread out around a stationary target like a bridge or power plant or along a known approach vector. The guys put them in place, maintain them, feed them and move them as needed but otherwise controlled by AI or someone higher up the network. Something between a .50 and 30mm, maybe 20mm PIVADS style?

Then for sensor packages just use small drones. Have a couple dozen or more for each system that all launch and head out 3 or 5 or however many km's is reasonable and find a place to land. Tops of trees, buildings, wherever you want them to and then have them switch into a passive mode or motion/sound detectors. Could also probably stay active and charged with solar since they wouldn't take much juice once landed. 

This thread and all the wonderful ideas and insight into different areas really keeps me thinking a lot about the future of war fighting. The speed at which we are going to see things evolve in the next few years is probably going to be stunning. Crazy scary but stupid cool at the same time.

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, sross112 said:

I'm going to use the US military as a reference. I think that guns are the best bet because of a few factors, some of which you also mention. APS or a modified APS like system that can slave the existing guns is probably the most workable in the near future. The plethora of guns on automated turrets would most likely allow this with very little hardware and software additions and basically any gun now serving a remote turret is more than capable of destroying a drone albeit at differing ranges. The 25mm bushmaster is going to be able to kill drones further away than a 240. 

The vehicles are already networked and digitally connected so the big leap would be a sensor package that is looking for drone type targets and keeping everything on the same page. Your thought is great and would work well but it is probably a lot easier and faster to field sensor packages onto the existing forces than it is to generate an entire new mesh web. In the future that will probably be needed but I don't think we will see anything like that for awhile. In the meantime I'm betting it is back to guns.

If any new platform is added then there needs to be a choice made between reducing your combat power by removing existing vehicles and replacing them with the new laser/AA asset or adding additional vehicles to your TO&E and coming up with the extra personnel to man and support them. If you use what is currently available there shouldn't be much change to formations and just adding capability. 

The other problem with the with both the lasers and the sensor drone screen is that they need to be able to maneuver with your elements. So they need to be fast and have the endurance to keep up all day long. If they don't have those then you have deprived yourself of battlefield mobility and that is one less thing your enemy has to do. Then if you aren't mobile you need to be more worried about arty PGM's (as illustrated in this conflict) and I don't think lasers or drones will be knocking artillery rounds out of the sky any time soon. 

I do completely agree that we are going to see a new layer of conflict with both sides fighting for air superiority at the low level with drones. Kind of like a USAF mini-me. Air superiority drones will definitely be part of the near future and will play a very important role but I'm betting it will be more along the lines of gaining and maintaining control of that layer of the air war than it will be about defending individual units, if that makes sense. It will have the same net result of normal air superiority where it defends the units in the AO or theater or whatever space you maintain superiority over, but will be fought at more of the air campaign level and not by individual ground units deploying their own fleets. 

More than likely I am wrong and things won't work out exactly as I see them, but this is just my take and how it makes sense to me with where technology is and how we tend to fight. The squad, platoon, company and BN are going to have a bunch more recon drones available and probably combat support drones as well. The control of the airspace above the battlefield will be mostly done by others and will just be another box on the combined arms list that needs to be checked. The US Army Drone Corps will cover from the ground up to a few thousand, the USAF will take it from there to the top of the atmosphere and then the Space Force will secure "To Infinity and Beyond!!!!"......

 

I generally agree with all of the above.  Especially starting with just integrating the sensors to existing platforms and expanding from there (that I bolded).  It's not a whole lot different than how autonomous cars are coming about - they've been adding sensors for more than a decade and slowly increasing the amount of assist.  The crowded environment and liability situation for driving probably create a larger barrier to implementation of higher level autonomy than the technical details - it's probably easier to start slipping real autonomy into a military environment by offloading tasks from vehicle operators.

A big part of the autonomy has to be the drones moving along with the units and acting like overwatch in the process.  They need to be like your animal familiar that knows where to go in front of you, watch out behind you, and telepathically transmit what they see around the corner for you.  And it has to go to the master "borg spotting" model so that anybody else who wants to see the same place gets a view (maybe with transparency/fade to indicate the age of the information)

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

Did you steal that from the Hammers Slammers Sci Fi series, or reinvent it on the spot? That is exactly how that author did it. They were just much better guns. One small refinement is that every gun in the battalion could be slaved to the battalion air defense system at need. That might almost be possible now, and allows separation of sensor and shooter. The new Abrams computer controlled airburst round might actually be pretty good for AA work if the turret could be slaved to an off board radar. The possibilities go on forever. We are going to have to do some expensive experiments to see what can actually be made to work. Someone needs to explain to Congress in advance that not all the experiments will work.

Never heard of it, either.  I don't read much SciFi - my day job is too close to writing it .  The idea with the mesh essentially lets you match any gun to any controller.  Really not a lot different from how the UA is doing "Uber for artillery fire" but at a more local level for anti-drone gunfire.

 

19 minutes ago, sross112 said:

Never heard of Hammers Slammers. Any good? Will need a new book in a couple days so if you recommend it I'll pick it up.

The other thing that I think might be something to watch for will be along the lines of what others have said with sensor networks and AI control will be gun networks for area denial. Something like a couple guys in a semi with a flatbed carrying a dozen remote turrets and a skid steer for easy emplacement. All the turrets battery operated and solar fed connected to the sensor network and spread out around a stationary target like a bridge or power plant or along a known approach vector. The guys put them in place, maintain them, feed them and move them as needed but otherwise controlled by AI or someone higher up the network. Something between a .50 and 30mm, maybe 20mm PIVADS style?

Then for sensor packages just use small drones. Have a couple dozen or more for each system that all launch and head out 3 or 5 or however many km's is reasonable and find a place to land. Tops of trees, buildings, wherever you want them to and then have them switch into a passive mode or motion/sound detectors. Could also probably stay active and charged with solar since they wouldn't take much juice once landed. 

This thread and all the wonderful ideas and insight into different areas really keeps me thinking a lot about the future of war fighting. The speed at which we are going to see things evolve in the next few years is probably going to be stunning. Crazy scary but stupid cool at the same time.

The only thing I'd probably disagree with is using solar near the front lines.  It's dependent on too many things to be ideal and stable to get decent power:  daytime, sun out, not too cloudy, not hiding in the trees, hills and ridges not in the way etc.  You'd stick that a little ways back to charge the latest generation of high energy density batteries that you could just swap or fast charge when things come back to base briefly.  Solar for recharging the "wait and watch" drones is more reasonable - they'd be cheap, plentiful, and you wouldn't use them much so you can live with letting time make up for the very suboptimal conditions they'd spend much of their time in.  If they're stealthy you not only wouldn't care if they sometimes got stuck behind enemy lines, you'd be glad they were there spying for you.

[kraze]

6 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

I think they just publish this to make us happy.

Vladimir Putin's Hands Are Turning 'Black' Following Reports The Russian Leader Is Suffering From Parkinson's Disease & Cancer (msn.com)

No idea why western press cares so much if he has cancer or whatever else at this point. With modern medicine (and he gets the absolute best of it) he can easily live for another 10 or even 20 years. So no illusions there.

Granted yet another reason I want putin to die is to see how those same journos, who repost news about putin having cancer monthly, will explain why nothing has changed after his death.

[chuckdyke]

4 minutes ago, kraze said:

No idea why western press cares so much if he has cancer or whatever else at this point. With modern medicine (and he gets the absolute best of it) he can easily live for another 10 or even 20 years.

50% he last 5 years if it is true. 

[kevinkin]

Big if the the reports are true. However:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/pancreatic-cancer/pancreatic-cancer-prognosis#:~:text=Stage IV Prognosis,about 1 year after diagnosis.

"Stage IV Prognosis
Stage IV pancreatic cancer has a five-year survival rate of 1 percent. The average patient diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer will live for about 1 year after diagnosis."

And there is very little even a top notch place like John's Hopkins can do. Medicine has not made  the same strides with this variation like it has with other forms of cancer. As for the western media, many treat the news like a soap opera. "What bleeds; leads". Dropping the term pancreatic may be the disinformation here. We can't be all too surprised a man of Putin's age has some kind of cancer that is far more treatable. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by kevinkin

[Zeleban]

 

Mashovec says...

The command of the enemy troops continues its attempts to defuse the situation in the Svatovo region, which has already received a steady downward trend for them. In addition to trying to "counterattack" west and northwest of Kremennaya, over the past 2 days, the enemy launched attacks in the direction of Ploschanka - Makeevka, Ploschanka - Nevskoye.

Obviously, his immediate goal is to “remove the threat” of the forward units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine entering the R-66 road on the Chervonopopovka-Peschanoe-Zhilivka section. This would be “very unpleasant” for the group of enemy forces currently defending the Kremennaya area, and rather inconvenient for those who dug in in the Svatovo area (although these units already have enough trouble) ...

The enemy concentrated up to 2-2.5 "personnel" BTGr (at present, these are significant forces, mainly from the 3rd Motor Rifle Division of the 20th CAA), reinforced it with various kinds of "paramilitary" formations, like "rifle companies" - battalions of the mobilization reserve of the LPR ”(more precisely, their remnants), as well as“ assault detachments of the PMC Wagner ”and“ survivors ”from the BARS detachments, well, he tried to hit the Ukrainian tactical group, which is now conducting oncoming battles in the forests on the near approaches to this rocky road west of Zhilivka and Chervonopopovka ... to its left flank.

And although the fighting is still ongoing in this sector, it became obvious yesterday morning that the enemy failed to break through either into Makeevka or Nevskoye (yes, according to certain, but rather dubious information, individual Russian units - up to the infantry squad, assault group, managed to "infiltrate" the eastern outskirts of Makeevka and even occupy the village council located there, however, even if this is true, then even in this case, this does not fundamentally change anything).

In general, by and large, I do not think that this "unexpected" escapade of the enemy will bring any special inconvenience to the Ukrainian troops in this direction. Moreover, even simply because the Russian command, when planning and organizing the military operations of its troops, again did not take into account the peculiarities of the REAL, and not invented by themselves, situation in this area ...

 

After all, even a sophomore of any command military school understands that it is quite doubtful from the point of view of expediency to “climb” with a strike tactical group into a ledge surrounded on 3 sides by enemy positions and still try to “attack” from there in directions diverging in different directions.

In the Bakhmut direction, apparently, the enemy encountered "circumstances" that he had not previously "foreseen." To the north of the city (Soledar - Bakhmutskoye), the "shock tactical group" (mainly from the units of the "mobilization reserve" of the 2nd AK, reinforced by several "assault," platoons of Mr. Prigozhin's prisoners), having reached the gypsum quarry and the Knauf plant, was forced to stop and even partly move away.

In turn, on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut (direction Pokrovskoye - Patrice Lumumba Street), the enemy could not advance further than the M-03 - H-32 road junction. Although, some say that they crawled to the Bakhmut city dump and Maksimenko Street, and even in some places climbed into the private sector in the southeastern part of the city.

Here, in the main, subdivisions of the PMC "Wagner" operate (moreover, both "expendable material" from among the convicts, and "elite professionals" for a salary ...). They are reinforced in separate areas with tanks and other armored vehicles from the "Diesel" tank battalion of the 1st Army Corps and hodgepodge (somewhere up to 1.5-2 "battalions") from the 2nd Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 2nd Army Corps and the 31st Airborne Brigade of the Russian Federation (sometimes, in order to “build up efforts”, another batch of “mobiks” from the “mobilization reserve battalion” of the 2nd AK is also brought here).

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Zeleban

[Maciej Zwolinski]

9 hours ago, Kinophile said:

The future is drone v. Drone, with every piece of heavy equipment having an organic autonomous armed & recon drone unit slaved to it. 

Before we reach that stage, I think IFVs will specialise in anti-drone warfare. In a combined arms unit, the autocannons on IFV are not fundamental for the unit's attack power vs ground targets. They are nice-to-have kit, but both infantry and light AFVs can be engaged more effectively with tank guns. On the other hand, drone defence is becoming a life-or-death capabliity. So I think that we will see the next generation of IFVs with a bigger calibre autocannons (for altitude) and some kind of dumbed down radar or IR tracking equipment. 

[Zeleban]

 

But south of Bakhmut, those “surprises” just happened.

As far as I understand, the idea of the Russian command, which directs and coordinates the actions of its troops in this sector, was to break through to the Kleschievka-Andreevka line, and then break through to Ivanovske ... and thus block Bakhmut from the south very “tightly”, making his defense is very difficult...

At the same time, a breakthrough was planned through Ivangrad and Experienced to the city of Bakhmut from the south. It was not without reason that it deployed all of its most combat-ready units to these areas and sectors, including units of the PMC "league", "redoute", a couple of companies from the "consolidated" BTGr 336th arr of marines, reinforced for the "mass" by the remnants of 2 battalions of the mobilization reserve of the 2nd AK.

However, everything did not happen as it was thought ... The enemy did not break through to the line Kleschievka - Andreevka (not to mention Ivanovsk). Moreover, by a series of counterattacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he was generally thrown back to the T-0513 road towards Zaitsevo in the area between Opitne and Odradiyevka, which significantly complicated his actions “in the main direction” - on Opitne - Ivangrad ... Now, all this “enemy strike tactical group , rushing from the south to Bakhmut, is forced to deploy its left flank and try to "stop" a very likely breakthrough of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to its rear...

And in conclusion, a few words about the Lisichansk direction ...

Over the past few days, the enemy command, understanding the significance of this direction, which can significantly affect both the Bakhmut direction and directly the situation in the Kremennaya-Rubezhnoye area, and most importantly, the situation in the area of Lysichansk, sought to push the forward units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of Belogorovka towards Verkhnekamensky and near Spirne to the west as far as possible...

Among these three sections, only in one did they succeed (having advanced along the Seversky Donets, the enemy was able to occupy the northeastern part of the village of Belogorovka and gain a foothold there). This happened solely because the enemy managed to keep the dominant height northeast of the village, from which he could view the area close to Grigorovka ...

Enemy tactical groups from the 41st CAA (up to 1 BTGr of the 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade) operated here, at least up to 4 BARS "battalions" (approximately up to 1 battalion in total) and units from the 6th "Cossack" MRR and 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 2nd AK (no more than 2 companies). From time to time, “tattooed vagneryats” (prisoners) and small parties of Luhansk “mobiks” (mostly “platoons”) were thrown into the attack ...

I believe that in the near future the enemy will continue to actively build up efforts in the Seversky direction, trying "in any case" to secure two key areas for themselves - the bend of the Seversky Donets River (Shipilovka - Privolye - Novodruzhesk area), as well as the LNPZ area. and nearby villages...