How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Tux said:

Secondly, while solving the IFF issue will clearly confer an advantage, I’m not sure it’s necessary for early-generation drone fleets.  Instead I imagine a world where a fleet of Anti-Drone Drones (ADDs) is released to ‘purge’ the sky over a battlefield at a set time on a set date, designed to catch as many enemy drones in action as possible.

I can definitely see this working for small attacks with limited objectives, especially in a terrorism scenario, but I don't think it is economically viable for a large scale conventional war unit we get to nano.

And since nobody has doom spoke about the future of the future... someone can create the ultimate anti-drone strategy for all of the close future systems that exist and have it all not matter one iota when tech moves to nano.  On the other hand, I think we'll be back to living in caves before that happens so all "good" there?

Steve

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Some caveat I think are in order here!

First, swarms are inherently more of an advantage for a defender as they excel at disrupting something active (e.g. an armored attack) than something inactive (e.g. dismounted infantry sitting in trenches).  Therefore, an attacker with swarms and the ability to defeat them has an advantage, but not necessarily a decisive one.  Similar to how ISR + PGMs greatly favors the defender in this war.  On the other hand, if the defender has swarms and the attacker doesn't have a way to defeat them, then it is probably decisive.

Which gets us to the second caveat; swarms only work if you have enough of them to achieve your goals.  If you have 10,000 drones on hand and it takes 200 to get a tactical job done, then that's 500 attacks.  That might sound like a lot, but if this is what it takes to knock out a couple of vehicles, then no it isn't a lot at all.

Add these together and a defender with a large amount of swarms is likely to beat any attacker that lacks adequate counter measures.  "The war is over before it starts".  However, if the attacker has swarms and the defender lacks counter measures, the end result is less clear.  Current example... IDF with 1,000,000 drones for swarms may not make it significantly easier to take Gaza than if they had 0.  On the other hand, Hamas with 10,000 drones for swarms might be enough to stop IDF in its tracks if it can't stop them.

Steve

IDF and Hamas are not symmetrical conventional warfare, which is good news for hybrid warfare and insurgents.  Urban hybrid warfare is still unknown with respect to impacts….I guess we will see.  If the IDF had 1 million next gen UAS capable of autonomous targeting, backed up by some nightmare Boston Dynamics thing out of Black Mirror I suspect it would be a lot easier to take Gaza.

Having swarms and the C4ISR backbone behind them is not necessarily decisive…however, it is undecidable.  UAS currently cannot take and hold ground.  They have limited range but that is changing.  As such they are purpose built for denial.  We are seeing massive mutual denial in Ukraine right now and in 10 years this war will look like WW1 era AirPower with respect to technologies such as UAS and PGM…way too much at stake to not chase those.

What we have not see is the full potential of swarms on offence.  Here they will likely be part of an arms team - lighter infantry and deep fires seem to be the most likely suspects.  Corrosive warfare is a theory, and it has limits.  Manoeuvre warfare is nearly impossible if one’s opponent has working swarms you cannot counter and a C4ISR backbone behind it.  We have seen more than enough examples of why this is.  One could go for good ol Attrition warfare, seems to be Russias game.  But these new systems are just so damned cheap.  Short of Total War and crippling an opposing nations entire industry, it looks like one can swat UAS all day and never run out of targets.  PGM are also getting cheaper, as is data.

So we basically have a Big Undeciding in warfare.  Air Superiority, Maritime Superiority - both metrics of Control vs Denial.  Ground warfare was supposed to be the Domain of Decision, but it has become undecidable…until one can break an opponents C4ISR/PGM/Unmanned system while sustaining your own.

An Undecision is a powerful thing.

[Haiduk]

Meanwhile in some Muslim Caucausians Russian republics splashed a wave of antisemitsm on background of Gaza crisis. In Dagestan Republic in Khasaviurt city locals surrounded hotel "Flamingo", where by rumors were citizens of Israel. Several locals searched the hotel (police was present too, but participated in this), but not found Jews. Dissappointed crowd didn't want to disperse

 

 

On the doors of hotel was hanged this paper:

Strictly no entry to foreign citizens of Israel (Jews) !!!

Jews are not living here!!!! 

 

In Dagestanian main city Makhachkala crowds on the streets stop cars near airport and search them to find Jews.

Next step - crowd bursted to airport and looking for Jews, who could arrive by regular route from Tel-Aviv.

The crowd aggressively encircled the plane of Red Wings company "to check passports" of passengers. No counter-action from police and airport security

Along with Dagestan gatherings of people in Karachayevo-Cherkesiya Republuc demand from local authorities to expel all Jews beyond trrritory of Republic 

Edited October 29, 2023 by Haiduk

[sburke]

not surprising, but still...

Major Russian losses in recent offensive around Avdiivka likely to be among the worst of 2023, UK intel says (yahoo.com)

Quote

 

The Russian political establishment continues to push for more territory to be occupied, but Russia's military is struggling to carry out successful assaults, the department noted.

It indicates that Russia's "core military-political challenge remains the same as it has throughout most of the war," the department said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed this week that Russia had lost at least a brigade in its attempts to take Avdiivka.

The think tank the Institute for the Study of War previously observed that it is unclear why Russia has spent so much effort and resources on trying to take Avdiivka, as it will not open new routes of advance to the rest of Donetsk.

The Russian military's continued attempts to take it, despite of heavy losses, suggests either that Russian forces believe they can take the city, or that military command is poorly prioritizing offensive operations regardless of their cost, the think tank said.

 

 

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

FPV drone of 11th public security brigade of National Guard has destroyed T-90M on left bank of Dnipro in Kherson oblast. This is the second T-90M destroyed there for 3-4 days. First one was destroyed near Pidstepne village, when it along with T-72B3 tried to attack UKR bridghead

 

Well, at least we know that Dnipro crossing have led to a couple RU tank losses, if nothing else.  I always have high hopes for these crossings but they always turn out to be minor operations.  Meanwhile, UKR seems stuck on the entire front, while RU is burning resources like there's not tomorrow.  

What does it all mean?  Is UKR planning on continued attrition then a fall/winter push to finally break the deadlock?  Or is UKR simply stuck?  RU seems to be able to stuff the rat holes w rats as fast as needed and wherever needed to stop UKR advances.  Tree lines parallel to advance that must be eradicated rat by rat and hole by hole.  

The rasputitsa is starting, hurting vehicle movement.  But the leaves are falling leaving it harder to hide for the rats.  And long nights favor the side w more & better night vision (UKR).  

I just have no idea where things are headed now.

[Seedorf81]

"Ukraine will block any gas-transport from Russia to EU from 2025 on."

Olexij Tsjerniskov, head of Naftogaz, Ukrainian State Energy Company

According to Dutch National news site.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Seedorf81

[Haiduk]

7 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

"Ukraine will block any gas-transport from Russia to EU from 2025 on."

Olexij Tsjerniskov, head of Naftogaz, Ukrainian State Energy Company

According to Dutch National news site.

Just a term of contract of gas transporting through Ukraine will expire in 2024 and Ukriane will not prolong it

Edited October 29, 2023 by Haiduk

[Tux]

40 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I can definitely see this working for small attacks with limited objectives, especially in a terrorism scenario, but I don't think it is economically viable for a large scale conventional war unit we get to nano.

And since nobody has doom spoke about the future of the future... someone can create the ultimate anti-drone strategy for all of the close future systems that exist and have it all not matter one iota when tech moves to nano.  On the other hand, I think we'll be back to living in caves before that happens so all "good" there?

Steve

I can see your point, economically-speaking.  However I think that strengthens an argument for pressing the vast majority of whatever economic capacity you do have for producing drones into the production of effective drone killers.

We are clearly at the beginning of the drone revolution that we all regularly discuss but we have only just got past duct-taping hand grenades to Mavic 3 Pros.  There is a hell of a long way to go before this domain resolves properly and we are able to clearly see what we need and how to use it.  There will almost certainly be a catalogue of false-start designs and dead-ends which sap countries production resources to little benefit (think multi-turreted tanks, turreted fighter aircraft, etc.).

My argument is that, while the above situation is ongoing, a smart country will absolutely engage in the general melee of drone and doctrine development (especially China, the US and anyone else for whom economic capacity isn’t such an issue) but will meanwhile maintain laser focus on a dirt-cheap design to hunt down and kill any small, airborne rf-emitter within 10km.

As has been noted by many already, if you lose the drone war in a future symmetrical, conventional conflict, you likely lose the war.  An efficient ‘drone fighter’ intended purely for area denial to all drones (except its own kind and until proper discrimination is practical) goes a long way towards mitigating that risk.

[Beleg85]

33 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Along with Dagestan gatherings of people in Karachayevo-Cherkesiya Republuc demand from local authorities to expel all Jews beyond trrritory of Republic

They just started to react with deploying Rosgvardia. Interesting- on one side, Kremlin is unlikely to commit into perpetrating outbursts of street violence as it can spiral out of controll very quickly and is problematic from reputation standpoint. But on the other, there is well-known tradition of channeling anger into something neutral from their perspective. It also aligns with Putin's new mission of "representing" Global South.

Long time ago we discussed it here- Dagestan is potentiall powderkegg and "muslim udnerbelly" of Russia, perhaps more important than Chechnya due to demographics and lack of true self-governance.

[Haiduk]

Russian 82 mm 2B9 Vasilyok automatic mortar, mounted on the truck at the work. You can see rate of fire

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by Haiduk

[FancyCat]

On 10/22/2023 at 1:39 AM, FancyCat said:

3 days later, another 6 ships. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-18/ukraine-s-risky-bet-pays-off-with-ships-streaming-to-its-ports

Article from Bloomberg a few days ago noted a similar volume shipped this month compared with the first month of the UN brokered Black Sea grain deal, and that included at least 9 Panamax vessels, the largest size vessels that normally ship grain, indicating insurance brokers are willing to risk retaliation by Russia. 

 

 

8 days later, 20 more ships sail through the corridor. 

Quote

As of today, 53 ships have now passed through the Black Sea humanitarian corridor, bringing over 2 million tons of agricultural products and other cargo to the world.

 

 

[Haiduk]

Probably the first video of RBS-17 usage

 

[Haiduk]

Ukraine reportedly has started a forming of new batch of five brigades: 150th, 151st, 152nd, 153rd, 154th

Currently unknown either will be they mechanized or motorized, or infantry. Also I'm no clue where we will take at least 450 armored vehicles and 150 tanks for them, when we have sharp lack of light armor even in existing brigades.

Especially painful about this, when you have seen such news that Canada is going on to scrap dozens of light armor, which could be repaired and used in Ukraine:  https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/armoured-vehicles-armatec-ukraine-dnd-1.6973154

 

The Department of National Defence (DND) says 67 tracked light armour vehicles (TLAVs) out of a fleet of 140 are "parked awaiting final demilitarization and disposal, or are being used as a source of spare parts" for the 73 vehicles that remain in service.

All of the M113 troop carriers, which have been in service for decades, are in "poor condition" and are awaiting disposal, DND says. The Canadian army also has 195 LAV II Bisons and 149 Coyote armoured reconnaissance vehicles that will be taken out of service this year, as well.

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by Haiduk

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

IDF and Hamas are not symmetrical conventional warfare, which is good news for hybrid warfare and insurgents.  Urban hybrid warfare is still unknown with respect to impacts….I guess we will see.  If the IDF had 1 million next gen UAS capable of autonomous targeting, backed up by some nightmare Boston Dynamics thing out of Black Mirror I suspect it would be a lot easier to take Gaza.

Having swarms and the C4ISR backbone behind them is not necessarily decisive…however, it is undecidable.  UAS currently cannot take and hold ground.  They have limited range but that is changing.  As such they are purpose built for denial.  We are seeing massive mutual denial in Ukraine right now and in 10 years this war will look like WW1 era AirPower with respect to technologies such as UAS and PGM…way too much at stake to not chase those.

What we have not see is the full potential of swarms on offence.  Here they will likely be part of an arms team - lighter infantry and deep fires seem to be the most likely suspects.  Corrosive warfare is a theory, and it has limits.  Manoeuvre warfare is nearly impossible if one’s opponent has working swarms you cannot counter and a C4ISR backbone behind it.  We have seen more than enough examples of why this is.  One could go for good ol Attrition warfare, seems to be Russias game.  But these new systems are just so damned cheap.  Short of Total War and crippling an opposing nations entire industry, it looks like one can swat UAS all day and never run out of targets.  PGM are also getting cheaper, as is data.

So we basically have a Big Undeciding in warfare.  Air Superiority, Maritime Superiority - both metrics of Control vs Denial.  Ground warfare was supposed to be the Domain of Decision, but it has become undecidable…until one can break an opponents C4ISR/PGM/Unmanned system while sustaining your own.

An Undecision is a powerful thing.

We talked just a wee bit that unmanned will, eventually, require retiring large portions of traditional mechanized warfare doctrine and replace it with something entirely new.

For example, if I want to attack a sector of front I could send swarms of loitering drones over it for days at a time.  Anything of the enemy spotted moving gets zapped.  Anything capable of defending against unmanned systems gets zapped.  Any fixed positions uncovered through various ISR means gets zapped.  If nothing is spotted, then fly back for refueling.  Work in shifts like this for a few days or weeks and then move in with unmanned ground and aerial systems to see what's still capable of fighting, zap those, then go in with hybrid manned/unmanned when you're sure they're spent.

This will then require a change in defensive doctrine to create semi-autonomous nodes that are designed to be cut off for weeks and yet still be effective.  Resupply missions would be via unmanned vehicles.

Yup, lots of work to be done figuring this stuff out.

Steve

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

IDF and Hamas are not symmetrical conventional warfare, which is good news for hybrid warfare and insurgents.  Urban hybrid warfare is still unknown with respect to impacts….I guess we will see.  If the IDF had 1 million next gen UAS capable of autonomous targeting, backed up by some nightmare Boston Dynamics thing out of Black Mirror I suspect it would be a lot easier to take Gaza.

Having swarms and the C4ISR backbone behind them is not necessarily decisive…however, it is undecidable.  UAS currently cannot take and hold ground.  They have limited range but that is changing.  As such they are purpose built for denial.  We are seeing massive mutual denial in Ukraine right now and in 10 years this war will look like WW1 era AirPower with respect to technologies such as UAS and PGM…way too much at stake to not chase those.

What we have not see is the full potential of swarms on offence.  Here they will likely be part of an arms team - lighter infantry and deep fires seem to be the most likely suspects.  Corrosive warfare is a theory, and it has limits.  Manoeuvre warfare is nearly impossible if one’s opponent has working swarms you cannot counter and a C4ISR backbone behind it.  We have seen more than enough examples of why this is.  One could go for good ol Attrition warfare, seems to be Russias game.  But these new systems are just so damned cheap.  Short of Total War and crippling an opposing nations entire industry, it looks like one can swat UAS all day and never run out of targets.  PGM are also getting cheaper, as is data.

So we basically have a Big Undeciding in warfare.  Air Superiority, Maritime Superiority - both metrics of Control vs Denial.  Ground warfare was supposed to be the Domain of Decision, but it has become undecidable…until one can break an opponents C4ISR/PGM/Unmanned system while sustaining your own.

An Undecision is a powerful thing.

So you want to start a new US/Canadian defense company?

[Probus]

Can drones not be spoofed using tarps and/or camo nets over the trench system.  Seems like a cheap way to reduce casualties.

[kimbosbread]

3 minutes ago, Probus said:

Can drones not be spoofed using tarps and/or camo nets over the trench system.  Seems like a cheap way to reduce casualties.

You have to distinguish between what exactly you are spoofing. Are you trying to hide from a human, a high resolution camera, or a crafty computer, or a combination of all 3?

A human controlled fpv drone is oven NSTC (720x480px) to reduce data throughput/latency, plus there are always signal issues. So maybe you can disguise yourself enough from that.

A more surveillance oriented system might be shooting 4k video, which will make harder. Or there’s thermal.

An autonomous drone will be limited by onboard processing power/ml algorithms and models. Given the amount of power available on modern phones, you can get that a fused thermal + optical sensor could recognize camouflage nets and tarps, and see those as a nice juicy target. And if it’s a quadcopter, why not just sit down on the ground and watch and wait? Loitering munition doesn’t mean it has to be in the air to loiter.

[Battlefront.com]

16 minutes ago, Probus said:

Can drones not be spoofed using tarps and/or camo nets over the trench system.  Seems like a cheap way to reduce casualties.

We have seen some of this already.  Both sides have employed elaborate fake vehicles, for example.  We've seen close up pics of some of these decoys and Russian video of them thinking they scored a hit on the real thing.

But as Kimbosbread just said, you have to know what you are trying to spoof.  For example, laying camo netting over bare ground to make it look like there's a trench system could very well fool some systems but not all (especially thermal).  Likewise, putting tarps or netting over real trenches doesn't work against eyeballs because there will be other telltales that the terrain is occupied and where the defenses might be. 

The more sophisticated and deliberate the observing ISR, the less likely these counter measures will work reliably.  As with traditional ISR, it's all about having diverse sources for information gathering and a means of combining them into an understanding that is stronger than any one individual system's capabilities.

That said, for absolute sure camo/decoys will likely be an important part of a layered defense strategy.  Even if the strategy works only 1 out of 10 times, that's 1 more surprise for the enemy that you otherwise wouldn't have.

Steve

[Butschi]

6 hours ago, chrisl said:

If you're Tesla it's trickier. You can put cameras on cars driven by people with excellent driving records and then correlate the video to the drivers' actions and hope you got it right.  Sometimes they seem to drive into firetrucks, though. (Dude, where's my LIDAR?)

You are mixing up a few things here. Camera and LIDAR are about detecting and tracking objects, localisation (e.g. finding my position in relation to known landmarks) and finding out how many lanes there are on a road and on which you are (in case you don't have an HD map). The task of driving itself is (usually) not learned via camera or lidar directly but using trajectories which involve odometry (which can include above sensors, though).

Nitpicking aside, loads of training data are important but you can, and really have to, use synthetic data, i.e. simulation, too. This is because your autonomous system will experience situations that the excellent human driver hasn't shown you and it won't know how to get out of such a state. And you get there just by small compounding errors from localisation, odometry, etc.

The more relevant part for our discussion: You don't need bazillion tons of real life training data. If you have good simulation, the variation you get from that can offset the inaccuracies. What's more important, though: Again, we are really not talking about autonomous driving. Missing a truck in 1% of the cases kills people and ruins your company. So 99% accuracy isn't enough. But if my drone gets the tank in 50% of the cases and otherwise misses or hits something else I'm fine with that. And you can get there with way less than half the Internet for training data.

6 hours ago, chrisl said:

It's a lot harder if you're Russia and don't have an internal semiconductor industry base.

They do have China for that, I guess. But really I don't think you need specialized hardware for that. Much of the stuff will work on your average mobile.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Butschi

[chrisl]

23 minutes ago, Butschi said:

You are mixing up a few things here. Camera and LIDAR are about detecting and tracking objects, localisation (e.g. finding my position in relation to known landmarks) and finding out how many lanes there are on a road and on which you are (in case you don't have an HD map). The task of driving itself is (usually) not learned via camera or lidar directly but using trajectories which involve odometry (which can include above sensors, though).

And about building up a model of what's around them and what not to run into.  There will always be things outside the training space that the system has to realize it needs to avoid.  And I was really just taking a potshot at Tesla's difficulty in detecting stationary emergency vehicles using its camera-only system.

 

Quote

Nitpicking aside, loads of training data are important but you can, and really have to, use synthetic data, i.e. simulation, too. This is because your autonomous system will experience situation that excellent human driver hasn't shown you and it won't know how to get out of such a state. And you get there just by small compounding errors from localisation, odometry, etc.

The more relevant part for our discussion: You don't need bazillion tons of real life training data. If you have good simulation, the variation you get from that can offset the inaccuracies. What's more important, though: Again, we are really not talking about autonomous driving. Missing a truck in 1% of the cases kills people and ruins your company. So 99% accuracy isn't enough. But if my drone gets the tank in 50% of the cases and otherwise misses it hits something else I'm fine with that. And you can get there with way less than half the Internet for training data.

Sort of.  Driving is also a much more defined and controlled environment than a battlefield (fully acknowledging that the driving environment is absolutely packed with unpredictable, uncontrolled things).  At least you have a model of roads, standards for lanes and markings, standard signage and traffic controls, rules that you can expect other objects to mostly follow, etc.  So anything that's a deviation from that model has to be deal with, but things that comply with the model you can "ignore", or at least treat as normal operating conditions.  In the battlefield environment, the whole environment can be changing rapidly, and generating meaningful simulation data may be almost as hard as getting real training data.  If you're training to hit big, expensive, slow to change things like tanks and trucks, you can train based on "find things like this and ignore other things". If you're training to find and hit things that only fill a pixel or two and don't stand out from the background (a drone at distance), it's trickier.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, chrisl said:

So you want to start a new US/Canadian defense company?

I want to retire someplace quiet and dig a deep hole.  Watch 80s movies on DVDs off grid.  And maybe die in peace before our machine overlords enslave us all.

[poesel]

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.

[chrisl]

6 minutes ago, poesel said:

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.

It's certainly a doable thing - it's by no means a magic technology, and probably doable with public/private keys without even having to add another transceiver.  The catch is that you have to implement it across all your drones, and the dronespace seems to be too diverse and moving too fast for it to get integrated without being in the way in Ukraine.

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

The more relevant part for our discussion: You don't need bazillion tons of real life training data. If you have good simulation, the variation you get from that can offset the inaccuracies. What's more important, though: Again, we are really not talking about autonomous driving. Missing a truck in 1% of the cases kills people and ruins your company. So 99% accuracy isn't enough. But if my drone gets the tank in 50% of the cases and otherwise misses it hits something else I'm fine with that. And you can get there with way less than half the Internet for training data.

These are two very important points worth repeating!

[kimbosbread]

44 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I want to retire someplace quiet and dig a deep hole.  Watch 80s movies on DVDs off grid.  And maybe die in peace before our machine overlords enslave us all.

When I retire from building distributed systems and machine learning whatnots, I want to build the machine overlords!