How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Anyone have some reliable stats on this?

Russian LostArmor periodically issues the comparative statistic of videos of drone attacks, spotted in network. Some our twitters were reposting them, but I didn't see it already two or more months. Last time number of spotted UKR drone attacks exceeded RUS about in two times. But our soldiers say situation is getting worse month by month. Russia invests really large money into drones R&D, domestic manufacturing, ordering of drones in China, IT support and pilots training. Especially they are forcing FPV programs and last month their NV FPV have been beginning a real headache for our troops.    

Edited December 10, 2023 by Haiduk

[Armorgunner]

Swedish Commander in chief visit UA units close to the front

https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1733441607658020874?s=20

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Anyone have some reliable stats on this?

I searched some LA data of drone attacks and found, but only for Russian side. 

You can see that since August- September Russians rapidly increased usage of FPV drones (I repeat, this is just spotted video confirmations, real number of attacks are much bigger) And November became a champion with 657 FPV spotted strikes. 

From this total number of FPV attacks videos (2508) they give next results (results, alas, don't reflected on the diagram, so I write from the text of LA): 

Targets destroyed - 373

Targets damaged - 385

Successful hits, but result is unknown - 1093

Result of strike unknown - 336

Misses - 184

So low number of misses can be explained, that usually Russian servicemen post a video of successfull strikes (or successful by their opinion), it's strange if you will post 100 % miss. This will reduce your chances to get donations. According to UKR "Magyar birds" unit they manage to supress/destroy about 60-70 % of drones (both FPV and recon Mavics), but they have special unit with special EW equipmnet for this

What Russian FPV operators have been chosing as targets:

Positions - 916

Infantry out of shelters - 353

logistic vehicles - 345

armored vehciles - 257

buildings - 293  

 

 

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

I searched some LA data of drone attacks and found, but only for Russian side. 

You can see that since August- September Russians rapidly increased usage of FPV drones (I repeat, this is just spotted video confirmations, real number of attacks are much bigger) And November became a champion with 657 FPV spotted strikes. 

From this total number of FPV attacks videos (2508) they give next results (results, alas, don't reflected on the diagram, so I write from the text of LA): 

Targets destroyed - 373

Targets damaged - 385

Successful hits, but result is unknown - 1093

Result of strike unknown - 336

Misses - 184

So low number of misses can be explained, that usually Russian servicemen post a video of successfull strikes (or successful by their opinion), it's strange if you will post 100 % miss. This will reduce your chances to get donations. According to UKR "Magyar birds" unit they manage to supress/destroy about 60-70 % of drones (both FPV and recon Mavics), but they have special unit with special EW equipmnet for this

What Russian FPV operators have been chosing as targets:

Positions - 916

Infantry out of shelters - 353

logistic vehicles - 345

armored vehciles - 257

buildings - 293  

 

 

Thanks for this.  So that comes to about 41 strikes per day - of what we can see.    That ain't great but looks more defensive than offensive.  If we start seeing a few hundred per day in a given area then I think the RA is spooling up for an offensive.  If they can hit deep enough and hard enough they may be able to pull off a UA collapse.  Their problem will the same as the UA: exploitation.  The more one masses, the more one stretched LOCs, the more vulnerable one is.

[Haiduk]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So that comes to about 41 strikes per day

Notice, this is not including Lancets

Edited December 10, 2023 by Haiduk

[dan/california]

I would file this as somewhat significant if it is true, and related to the war as opposed to some sort of domestic dispute. If some piece of the Ukrainian intelligence apparatus can Identify a guy like this as nearly irreplaceable, understand his daily routine well enough, to get a shooter to the right bus stop, and then get away? That is a significant capability.

[Beleg85]

18 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

I searched some LA data of drone attacks and found, but only for Russian side. 

You can see that since August- September Russians rapidly increased usage of FPV drones (I repeat, this is just spotted video confirmations, real number of attacks are much bigger) And November became a champion with 657 FPV spotted strikes. 

Very interesting diagrams, it's good aLostArmour is at least still doing their job.

In the summer, as far as I remember in-depth interview with one Ukranian drone operator, AFU lead the way also tactically- they formed separate detachments inside units that were highly flexible, while Russian drone-operators (outside of former LDPR, who were better in this field) were more acting like sniper teams subjected centrally to Brigade or even higher-level commands, working on specific orders. But it seems this difference also flattened with time.

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

Not really, I think. As I mentioned before, much of the state of the art AI research, including ready made code, is available on the internet. I work in autonomous driving, we often use or modify that kind of stuff.

Autonomously flying drones are a reality already, acquiring targets using image recognition isn't to difficult. It really boils down to what success/failure rate you are willing to tolerate (including friendly fire). If you have enough supply and no problem killing your own troops by accident (we are taking about Russia here) autonomous FPV drones should be quite doable.

Hardware is a bit of an issue but that basically only modifies your success rate.

Do these cheap drones even have computers powerful enough to count all this in real time? This stuff seems much more expensive than average FPV. But if you are right, then it seems chief diadvantage of Russia is still outdated tactical doctrines and squareheads in military and defensive (or rather: offensive) industry. They can unfortunatelly overcome that in time.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Beleg85

[dan/california]

 

34 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Thanks for this.  So that comes to about 41 strikes per day - of what we can see.    That ain't great but looks more defensive than offensive.  If we start seeing a few hundred per day in a given area then I think the RA is spooling up for an offensive.  If they can hit deep enough and hard enough they may be able to pull off a UA collapse.  Their problem will the same as the UA: exploitation.  The more one masses, the more one stretched LOCs, the more vulnerable one is.

 

29 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Notice, this is not including Lancets

 

Quote

 

https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/pixel-feature-drop-december-2023/

. Gemini Nano is our most efficient model built for on-device tasks, and starting today, it's running on Pixel 8 Pro. As the first smartphone engineered for Gemini Nano, it uses the power of Google Tensor G3 to deliver two expanded features: Summarize in Recorder and Smart Reply in Gboard. Gemini Nano running on Pixel 8 Pro offers several advantages by design, helping prevent sensitive data from leaving the phone, as well as offering the ability to use features without a network connection. 

 

Even if the parts of tech industry are trying to prevent it, the basic technology here is essentially perfect for drone guidance. It can only be a matter of months before both Ukraine and Russia hack whoever and whatever they have to hack to be able to field almost completely autonomous drones. The only question is whether the Pentagon is smart enough to make sure the Ukrainians get there first.

Edited December 10, 2023 by dan/california

[Beleg85]

Also adding to topic of land UGV's, here short clip with Russian version, used for evacuation and transport.

Post below one can see a screenshot of another muscovite UGV used for carrying out the wounded; note jammer on side.

These things seems still relaitevly rare on both sides of frontline and chiefly shown in propaganda videos.

 

 

[LongLeftFlank]

10 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Russian drone-operators (outside of former LDPR, who were better in this field) were more acting like sniper teams subjected centrally to Brigade or even higher-level commands, working on specific orders. But it seems this difference also flattened with time.

... But if you are right, then it seems chief diadvantage of Russia is still outdated tactical doctrines and squareheads in military and defensive (or rather: offensive) industry. They can unfortunatelly overcome that in time.

Anecdote on poor drone coordination from RU side, via Dmitri.

[poesel]

5 hours ago, Carolus said:

1) Germany is still providing weapon manufacturing capability to Russia

2) German industry has become the biggest exporters to Kyrgistan and Kazachstan and thus to Russia 

3) Scholz own party is responsible for most of the parliamentary blockades of help to Ukraine and just recently one of the biggest supporters (Roth) of weapon deliveries and aid to Ukraine was voted out during a party summit. I

1) yes unfortunately, as many other states

2) Kazakhstan: biggest imports come from Russia & China (together 52%), Germany is 3rd with 4.5%, USA 4th at 3.8%
https://tradingeconomics.com/kazakhstan/imports-by-country
Kyrgyzstan: China & Russia (67%), Kazakhstan 3rd at 7.9%, USA 6th 2.4%, Germany 7th 1.7%
https://tradingeconomics.com/kyrgyzstan/imports-by-country
Numbers from '22. I don't think the numbers for '23 will change radically.

3) Michael Roth is still MdB and head of the 'Auswärtiger Ausschuß'. What do you mean?

[kimbosbread]

37 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Do these cheap drones even have computers powerful enough to count all this in real time? This stuff seems much more expensive than average FPV. But if you are right, then it seems chief diadvantage of Russia is still outdated tactical doctrines and squareheads in military and defensive (or rather: offensive) industry. They can unfortunatelly overcome that in time.

Yes, cheap and low power. Basic image recognition does not demand a lot of computing power for many tasks. Nvidia has cheapo small board computers (used on Lancet) that is excellent. In a pinch other SBCs work, and a bunch of other companies make cameras with chips included in-camera that do all the recognition.

As Butschi said, it comes down to willingness to tolerate false positives and false negatives in terms of what you hit. If you are ok with that, you can go very cheap, like $100-200 for the computer cheap. Nvidia Jetson nanos are $100-200 IIRC.

Edited December 10, 2023 by kimbosbread

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Russia wasn't leading in developing autonomous systems so far; it demands significant investments, brain-centres and likely technology that may be seen as superficial from Kremlin perspective. Waves of normal drones are in turn already in place, luckily many russian commanders have the same "mental blockade" as older AFU ones, not taking anything other than recon drones and maybe dedicated Lancets as serious replacements for artillery.

Regarding lack of clips from Russian FPV strikes- unfortunatelly untrue for many months already, here some recent compilation:

For more one would need to install TG.

I'm not denying that Russia is using a ton more FPVs than it has in the past, nor that they are ineffective.  However, most of this particular compilation are similar to Russian videos of the past as I've discussed above.  I can see that they are hitting SOMETHING, but for the most part I don't know what or how effective they are.  For all I know the bunkers being shown weren't occupied.

Obviously it's probably just this clip, but compare the Ukraine dozens and dozens of videos we see where we know, for sure, they blew up a functional tank, a bunch of soldiers, some guys on the back of a BMP, a fully loaded GRAD system, etc.

Again, I'm not saying I doubt such videos exist or that I'm doubting Russian FPV effects on the battlefield.  What I am saying is that I think Ukraine does a better job demonstrating FPV effectiveness.

Maybe Russians don't have 2-3 eyes in the sky overwatching the FPV strikes like Ukraine does?

Steve

[Fenris]

Long clip counting the many wrecked RU AFVs around Avdiivka.

Some moral support from Sweden

RAAF F/A-18's might be possible again

Article is paywalled - here's some of what it says

Quote

Ukraine is pleading with the Albanese government for a regular supply of coal as Russia lobs intense attacks on its electricity grid, and will soon make a fresh request for the RAAF’s retired F/A-18 fighter jets after a deal to transfer them to an American company lapsed.

Amid stalemates on the battlefield and in US Congress for further funding of the war effort, Ukrainian defence officials this week included the 1980s-era F/A-18 Hornets as one of the weapons they wanted in top level talks with American counterparts.

Talks between Australian, US and Ukrainian officials to sell Australia’s retired Hornets stalled earlier this year, in part because of the decision to prioritise acquiring F-16 fighter jets instead.

An American aviation company, RAVN, was given the rights to dispose of the aircraft, and initially looked at moving them to the US to be used as “enemy” planes in training exercises.

RAVN’s contract to dispose of the planes lapsed this month, leaving the federal government fully back in charge of their fate. The planes are slated for destruction if they cannot be sold or transferred.

A condition report identified 14 of the 41 airframes in the best condition that could be readied within four to six months to make them airworthy and squeeze another two years of life out of them.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Fenris

[Artkin]

8 minutes ago, Fenris said:

Long clip counting the many wrecked RU AFVs around Avdiivka.

That's the better part of a MRR destroyed there. 

[Beleg85]

29 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm not denying that Russia is using a ton more FPVs than it has in the past, nor that they are ineffective.  However, most of this particular compilation are similar to Russian videos of the past as I've discussed above.  I can see that they are hitting SOMETHING, but for the most part I don't know what or how effective they are.  For all I know the bunkers being shown weren't occupied.

Obviously it's probably just this clip, but compare the Ukraine dozens and dozens of videos we see where we know, for sure, they blew up a functional tank, a bunch of soldiers, some guys on the back of a BMP, a fully loaded GRAD system, etc.

Again, I'm not saying I doubt such videos exist or that I'm doubting Russian FPV effects on the battlefield.  What I am saying is that I think Ukraine does a better job demonstrating FPV effectiveness.

Maybe Russians don't have 2-3 eyes in the sky overwatching the FPV strikes like Ukraine does?

Steve

One need TG to see full palette. Twitter is not popular in Russian- speaking world, therefore we see much less gruesome videos from their side. Btw. it underlines importance of awarnes as to the question of how our sources work AD 2023.

Yes, very often they seem to work more "in blind" than UA, but FPV itself can show its camera before the hits as well. Perhaps they may even simply have less devices to record it on the front, due to general  lower access to civilian volunteers than Ukrainians.

[Carolus]

There is an interesting opportunity because Ukrainians speak Russian and the Taiwanese speak Chinese (at least one of the dialects) and can infiltrate their respective enemies. 

Israel has shown that it is capable of disrupting Iranian operations if they want to simply through massive technological advantage. 

So if the Coalition of the Invaded (or soon to be) wanted, they could start bricking the drone production facilities of their respective nemesis and thus help each other.

And the US and EU will have perfectly plausible deniability, which seems to be what they care about most in the current decade. Just let the Saudis go to town on the Houthis again.

Now we just need to ignite some dschihads to take some pressure from the free world (massive information campaign on Arabic social media about Russian and Chinese anti-islamic policies - you don't even have to lie about those - and build up a Sunni coalition against the heretical Shiites or start arming the Iranian youth that is still protesting against their Mullah regime despite daily hangings) and things could look more stressful for our multipolar friends.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Carolus

[Beleg85]

All very good points about ideological performance of regime:

 

[Kraft]

 

The full video to the 6min cut of all the wrecks.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Kraft

[kimbosbread]

11 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

All very good points about ideological performance of regime…

Among my many side projects is writing a game like Civilization (I’ve written the hex tile layout engine and menu system, but new job got in the way of further work). A friend and I always though political systems like Communism should come with a trade-off: You may order that factory to be built, as you have top-down control, but that does not mean it actually got built, or that it can actually build things properly.

[danfrodo]

feller talking about the beauty of bradleys & other AFVs & IFVs.  we have so many in storage doing nothing that could really make a difference next year.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/10/2210723/-Ukraine-Update-The-Ukrainian-Army-is-expanding-they-need-American-surplus-armor?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_3&pm_medium=web

Here some really nasty FPV drone attacks on infantry, plus collection of other UKR war stuff.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/10/2210784/-More-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-the-spirit-of-Christmas-can-t-be-snuffed-out?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

 

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by danfrodo

[Carolus]

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russians-complain-about-the-quality-of-artillery-shells-from-the-dprk/

 

About the North Korean shells. Shows a picture of the propellant of three different charges. 

[Butschi]

16 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Do these cheap drones even have computers powerful enough to count all this in real time? This stuff seems much more expensive than average FPV.

I don't pretend to be an expert in all things AI or drones. I'm on the prototype end of autonomous driving where hardware limitations are usually not that much of a problem. We put a PC out three inside the car equipped with powerful GPUs. So take what I say with a pinch of salt.

Regarding real-time (sorry if that is clear to everyone already): The term is often a bit misleading because we are usually talking about discrete update steps. So, what we should talk about is frequency of update cycles. Assuming your AI model fits into the system's memory somehow, the better your hardware the higher your update frequency. More is of course always better but what is "good enough"? For the target detection and tracking part, I'd say it depends very much on the type of target. A tank that is stationary or much slower than the drone and is very heavy, so has a lot of inertia, is different than a human who has lower top speed but is way more maneuverable. In one case 1-2 Hz may suffice, in the orher more like 5-10 Hz? (I did pedestrian behaviour prediction for a while where we worked at 10 Hz)

Image recognition wise a good mobile phone has already quite potent hardware. But what is often done when having a potent AI model is taking this to train a much smaller model that fits on some embedded hardware (and maybe only for a specific task). You can run some stuff on a raspberry pi which is really not that expensive and if you produce ASICs at scale it gets much cheaper.

Now, of course you have to assemble the different components (motion control, target acquisition, ...), get this on your hardware, etc. which is not trivial, for sure. But it really should be doable, considering that in principle much of the stuff doesn't even actually require AI (or machine learning). It is by no means as hard as autonomous driving where you have to be correct in 99.99999999% of the situations. If your drones are cheap enough (compared to the targets)... I don't know, the battlefield calculus is certainly different. Is killing a tank 30% of the time while killing one of your guys... 1% (just to put a number here) of the time ok? For us not but for Russia?

 

[Ultradave]

1 hour ago, Carolus said:

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russians-complain-about-the-quality-of-artillery-shells-from-the-dprk/

 

About the North Korean shells. Shows a picture of the propellant of three different charges. 

This is interesting. Besides the obvious quality issues, I'm wondering how they actually work. In US, and UK artillery (although my UK experience was years ago), the powder charge is made up of separate bags of powder, usually 7. This is true whether cased like 105mm, or separate, like 155mm. You normally want to be in a position for range to the potential targets to fire charge 4 or 5. More accuracy, less wear. So part of the firing order from the FDC to the guns is "Charge 4". They cut the extra 3 and drop them in a pit behind the gun and put the case back on (105mm) or remove 5, 6, 7 and retie the 1-4 bags in a stack (155mm). Same thing, the extras are stacked, dropped in a pit, whatever, behind the piece. 

These appear from the picture to have one charge, with no options, leaving all the range variation completely to firing data. 

Does anyone know differently? I have no experience with Soviet era/ Russian artillery beyond seeing a D-30 set up and fired once from a distance at Fort Bragg (now Ft. Liberty).  The artilleryman in me is curious.

Dave

[Haiduk]

Today at about 4:00 of morning Kyiv was attacked by 8 missiles, flying of ballistic trajectories. Launches were conducted from Bryansk oblast. Air raid alarm was turn on already after first explosions. But our Patriot crews are top - all eight missiles were shot down over SE and SW outskirts of the city. 
 

Fragments of shot down missiles damaged several cottages, reportedly four people were slighly injured. Power substation was damaged by fragments, causing cutting of power in more than 100 private houmsteads. 

The type of missiles is clarifying - more likely this can be S-400 due to massive salvo. 

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by Haiduk