Haiduk Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 Example that a tank is not always easy target for drone dropped HEDP and thermobaric grenades. ERA and weakness of charge makes own work, if this is not sniper drop in open hatch or lucky hit in engine area. Here compilation of several drone attempts to finish of abandoned Russian tank. HEDP and two thermobaric grenades in the puddle of fuel can't set the tank on fire. Only last dropped thermobaric grenade penetrated inside the turred and caused fire. Several grenades were defeated by ERA - it's good seen how blocks dissapeared afer activation. But in one case ERA didn't activate 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiduk Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 "Fat FPV drones" strike Russian position with HE charges. Not artillery equivalent, but some sort of 82 mm mortar shell (or even half of 120 mm HE charge) flies directly in the trench or blindage 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zinz Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 https://mastodon.social/@noelreports@mstdn.social/11186901057124296 Interesting fpv development. That should have a far larger range than the quadcopters. But is not that mobile. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiduk Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 (edited) Not only tanks and armored vehicles Russians use in the Avdiivka battle. They also widely use different engineer vehicles, except known UR-77 minecleaners. Here is destroyed BAT-2 - heavy armored tracklayer, which Russians could use for cleaning the way in dense bushes/small trees, private houses area or just like a dozer, who could dig out and throw away mines on the way of column. This BAT-2 has MadMax look because of additioanal steel panels on the side and cage armor on the top. Russian lost near Avdiivka already five different engineer combat vehicles, so their participation in assaults is quite active. Each Russian motor-rifle brigade and division has 7 BAT-2 in own engineer-sapper battalion. And each motor-rifle regiment has one BAT-2/BAT-M in own engineer-sapper company Interesting, that in USSR times BAT-2 produced in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Edited February 3 by Haiduk 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongLeftFlank Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 (edited) 9 hours ago, The_Capt said: My sense is that the entire planet is running low an artillery ammunition - Russia is buying from NK FFS. So 1) what is the production rate and cost of an FPV vs a decent artillery shell? And 2) why can’t we make longer range FPVs? The Swtichblade 600 has something like an 80 km range. The Spike NLOS LR, similar range. So we know we can do long range tac strike (hell, what is “tactical” even mean anymore?). Clearly we have the technology. Challenge is to make it cheaper and with enough mass to push out to 25-30 kms. Why I am a fan of FPVs/loitering is the much lower military overhead costs. Lower logistical (fuel, maint and weight), lower training (FPV drivers vs gun crews, OP crews etc) and signature (eg exposure or enemy c-battery). 1 hour ago, dan/california said: the problem with artillery ammunition, and barrels, is that they have to withstand absurdly high stress. Above is a very technical article from decades ago proving that a slightly cheaper grade of steel was not going to work. Virtually nothing in the civilian economy operates at the same kind of stress levels. So there is exactly as much capacity out there as the government has been willing to pay for. The single biggest lesson of this war is that we weren't paying for even a fraction of enough. What makes this much worse is that production machinery, and the machines to make the production machinery are just as specialized, and the capacity for all of it has withered with three plus decades of very low demand. Resurrecting all of that is requires serious engineering AFTER we get of our rear ends in gear and write the checks, and contracts to pay for it. We have done an absolutely crap job of doing that in a coherent way, that admits this problem isn't going away next week. Rheinmetal and the various U.S. defense contractors need SIGNED CONTRACTS to even get started. Two years in many of those contracts STILL aren't signed. It is a an epic case study in refusing to admit there is a war on. There is real engineering being done on dragging whole process from 1950s tech up to something modern, but please note the 2025 delivery date for the first new model shells. Drones are pretty much the polar opposite in terms of the difficulty of manufacturing. Every single piece that goes into them is common civilian tech. The actual warheads are usually RPG rounds simply because there are warehouses full of them around. There is nothing particularly complicated about designing warhead for drone use that would be lighter, cheaper and more effective. Because drones do not undergo the enormous stresses that being fired even from a RPG, much less a 155mm artillery barrel impose. Any thin wall tubing would work just fine. Soda cans would probably work just fine. Someone just has to decide to order five million of the bleeping things and it ought to be possible to put together a factory in six months that can make a thousand of them an hour with out ever being touched by a human hand. Somebody just has to make a decision and write a contract. The Ukrainians seem to have been trying to get this underway, but nobody else is trying nearly hard enough. At the risk of being over my skis yet again here, can 152/155mm tube artillery be largely superseded in frontline use by a combo of: -> drones for swarming or hunting mobile targets, and for nearly all forms of precision work and harassing fire -> mortars for plastering attackers driven to ground by the drones. Are there cluster rounds for 122mm mortars? -> heavy rockets mounted on a variety of mobile launchers, for demolishing fixed positions once identified ... with the other systems (HIMARs, ATACMs etc.) being used for more 'operational' targets. And remaining heavy tubes joining them in the long range PGM delivery category, ceding their longtime role as the high-volume 'fire hose' of the artillery arm? Edited February 3 by LongLeftFlank 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Capt Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 49 minutes ago, Haiduk said: "Fat FPV drones" strike Russian position with HE charges. Not artillery equivalent, but some sort of 82 mm mortar shell (or even half of 120 mm HE charge) flies directly in the trench or blindage Someone is going to mount a claymore on one of those soon... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Capt Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 17 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said: At the risk of being over my skis yet again here, can 152/155mm tube artillery be largely superseded in frontline use by a combo of: -> drones for swarming or hunting mobile targets, and for nearly all forms of precision work and harassing fire -> mortars for plastering attackers driven to ground by the drones. Are there cluster rounds for 122mm mortars? -> heavy rockets mounted on a variety of mobile launchers, for demolishing fixed positions once identified ... with the other systems (HIMARs, ATACMs etc.) being used for more 'operational' targets. And remaining heavy tubes joining them in the long range PGM delivery category, ceding their longtime role as the high-volume 'fire hose' of the artillery arm? See Haiduk's post above. Someone looks like they stuck a mortar round on an FPV...cut out the middle man. I think the trick to FPVs is scale. I cannot just be one and twos. 200 FPVs in waves, with extra range - that could start looking like a game changer. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan/california Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maciej Zwolinski Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 14 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said: At the risk of being over my skis yet again here, can 152/155mm tube artillery be largely superseded in frontline use by a combo of: -> drones for swarming or hunting mobile targets, and for nearly all forms of precision work and harassing fire -> mortars for plastering attackers driven to ground by the drones. Are there cluster rounds for 122mm mortars? -> heavy rockets mounted on a variety of mobile launchers, for demolishing fixed positions once identified ... with the other systems (HIMARs, ATACMs etc.) being used for more 'operational' targets. And remaining heavy tubes joining them in the long range PGM delivery category, ceding their longtime role as the high-volume 'fire hose' of the artillery arm? Mortars are not in the same range bracket. They do not do 20-40 km deep bombardment missions. Therefore, they can't be far from the front line and do not have a hope of avoiding counterbattery by range. Unless self-propelled, they usually have less sophisticated gunsights and are not breech-loaded: hence the weight of the round is limited to what the crew can manually hoist up in their hands and slide in through the muzzle. For all those reasons, mortars are not good candidates for a gun/howitzer substitute - they are extremely useful and usually in huge demand, but they supplement, not supplant what the proper arty does. Rocket artillery AFAIK nowadays Western rocket artillery has reached sufficient accuracy to do whatever gun artillery can do - but more expensively. Rockets are more pricey than rounds. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haiduk Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 14 minutes ago, The_Capt said: Someone is going to mount a claymore on one of those soon... MON-50 "claymore" type mining with drones is known since 2017. For shrapnel effect of MON sometimes use balls from bearings, which volunteers gather in car services. Then these balls just attach with tape around HE charge 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harmon Rabb Posted February 3 Share Posted February 3 (edited) Really busy week did not have time to read this forum. Did I miss anything happening in the Black Sea? Anyway, just quickly leaving this here. Was all over my Twitter (sorry Elon I will never call it "X") feed. Mr.Carlson joins his fellow travellers Steven Seagal and Scott Ritter in making his pilgrimage to Russia. Edited February 3 by Harmon Rabb 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kimbosbread Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 2 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said: Mortars are not in the same range bracket. They do not do 20-40 km deep bombardment missions. Therefore, they can't be far from the front line and do not have a hope of avoiding counterbattery by range. Unless self-propelled, they usually have less sophisticated gunsights and are not breech-loaded: hence the weight of the round is limited to what the crew can manually hoist up in their hands and slide in through the muzzle. For all those reasons, mortars are not good candidates for a gun/howitzer substitute - they are extremely useful and usually in huge demand, but they supplement, not supplant what the proper arty does. As was discussed a few weeks ago, welding a rail onto a mortar, and attaching a combo gps/gyroscope to get absolute position and orientation would be relatively simple and allow mortars to have much better precision and faster targeting loop when combined with spotter drones. That said, I’m really liking the idea of GLSDB, but smaller and launched using a mortar charge. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 Dozens detained as Russian soldiers' wives call for their return from Ukraine (yahoo.com) More than two dozen people, mostly journalists, were detained Saturday at a protest in central Moscow, as wives and other relatives of Russian servicemen mobilized to fight in Ukraine called for their return, according to independent Russian news reports. The relatives gathered to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, just outside the Kremlin walls. They marked 500 days since Russian President Vladimir Putin in September 2022 ordered a “partial mobilization” of up to 300,000 reservists following battlefield setbacks in Moscow’s full-scale war against Ukraine. The call-up was widely unpopular and prompted hundreds of thousands to flee abroad to avoid being drafted. Wives and relatives of some of the reservists called up in 2022 have campaigned for them to be discharged and replaced with contract soldiers. Saturday’s demonstration was organized by one such campaign group, The Way Home, that on Friday posted on Telegram calling on “wives, mothers, sisters and children” of reservists from across Russia to come to Moscow to “demonstrate (their) unity.” “We want our husbands back alive,” one of the protesters, who only gave her name as Antonina for fear of reprisals, is heard saying in a video published by independent Russian news outlet SOTAvision. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paxromana Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 5 hours ago, dan/california said: In regard to the Ukrainian strikes against Russian oil infrastructure, it is has been known since 1945 that attacking oil infrastructure is most effective method of conducting a strategic bombing campaign. Refineries, and chemical factories, are the linchpin of the modern world. They are big, flammable, impossible to hide, and there are not that many of them. Ukraine should focus on them almost exclusively. The strike someone mentioned on a critical factory for Lancet production is the exception that proves the rule. Indeed. One thing not widely known outside of select military circles is that even near misses and repeated damage to refineries have a cumulative effect ... repairs can be done but the damaged/stressed components become increasingly vulnerable. Of course, that was with much bigger bombs and lots of them. Still, repeated hits with smaller bombs which are much more accurate than WW2 attacks will probably have similar long term effects. The other thing, one the Germans found in WW2, Oil Refinery equipment is all special order stuff with a limited number of suppliers ... so it's sorta like artillery tube/shell production bottlenecks. If you can do enough damage the Russian ability to repair it is severely compromised in terms of timeframe. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan/california Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 5 hours ago, Harmon Rabb said: Really busy week did not have time to read this forum. Did I miss anything happening in the Black Sea? Anyway, just quickly leaving this here. Was all over my Twitter (sorry Elon I will never call it "X") feed. Mr.Carlson joins his fellow travellers Steven Seagal and Scott Ritter in making his pilgrimage to Russia. Carrying a message from Trump perhaps? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan/california Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-3-2024 Quote Key Takeaways: The Kremlin is doubling down on its support for Iran as the US conducts strikes to preempt attacks by Iranian-back proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen against American and other targets. The Kremlin censored a protest by wives of mobilized soldiers in Moscow on February 3 likely to suppress any possible resurgence of a broader social movement in support of Russian soldiers and against the regime. Soviet leadership experienced first-hand the influence that social movements of relatives of Russian soldiers wielded in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Kremlin likely aims to preemptively censor and discredit similar movements before they can garner similar influence. Putin may have learned from the Soviet Union’s prior failure to completely censor soldiers’ relatives and changed tactics, instead using limited censorship and discreditation to keep these movements from building momentum. Russian milbloggers continued to fixate on a recent unsuccessful Russian mechanized assault near Novomykhailivka, Donetsk Oblast and highlight divisions it caused within the Russian information space, which are indicative of wider issues with the Russian military’s ability to adapt in Ukraine. Ukrainian actors conducted a drone strike against the Lukoil oil refinery in Volgograd Oblast on February 3. Ukrainian strikes reportedly temporarily slowed Russia’s production of Lancet loitering munitions. Russian state media confirmed the appointment of two new officials to senior positions in military-adjacent civilian organizations. Ukrainian forces made confirmed advances near Bakhmut amid continued positional engagements along the frontline. Russian soldiers imprisoned for refusing to fight in Ukraine are reportedly dying in Russian detention. Russian authorities continue efforts to militarize Ukrainian youth through the school system. Quote https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/02/02/kremlin-propagandists-finally-acknowledge-anti-war-presidential-hopeful-boris-nadezhdin-and-surprise-they-say-kyiv-and-russia-s-exiled-opposition-are-controlling-him Kremlin propagandists finally acknowledge anti-war presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin, and — surprise! — they say Kyiv and Russia’s exiled opposition are controlling him. Perhaps there are things stirring below the frozen surface of Russian politics. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisl Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 10 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said: At the risk of being over my skis yet again here, can 152/155mm tube artillery be largely superseded in frontline use by a combo of: -> drones for swarming or hunting mobile targets, and for nearly all forms of precision work and harassing fire -> mortars for plastering attackers driven to ground by the drones. Are there cluster rounds for 122mm mortars? -> heavy rockets mounted on a variety of mobile launchers, for demolishing fixed positions once identified ... with the other systems (HIMARs, ATACMs etc.) being used for more 'operational' targets. And remaining heavy tubes joining them in the long range PGM delivery category, ceding their longtime role as the high-volume 'fire hose' of the artillery arm? Small drones don't really have the kind of range to replace 152/155 mm tube artillery. But something I can imagine happening as an intermediate development, once some level of autonomy is built in, is that the tubes will launch shells that have drones inside that deploy a few hundred feet up and then go full autonomous. Like a VT shell that only has one bit of shrapnel that has a mind (and shaped charge) of its own. But from the west you might be more likely to see that happen in HIMARS type rockets, with multiple drones (essentially MIRVs, but without the "reentry" part) that go targeting things. It gets the autonomous drones far enough away that they'll be out of battery before your own people might run into them. From a "what if it blows up the wrong target" perspective: you were launching essentially random explody things into an area. If you'd done it the conventional way you'd have made a moonscape and killed indiscriminately. If your drone isn't perfect it's not any worse than a heavy arty barrage. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carolus Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 1 hour ago, chrisl said: Small drones don't really have the kind of range to replace 152/155 mm tube artillery. But something I can imagine happening as an intermediate development, once some level of autonomy is built in, is that the tubes will launch shells that have drones inside that deploy a few hundred feet up and then go full autonomous. Like a VT shell that only has one bit of shrapnel that has a mind (and shaped charge) of its own. But from the west you might be more likely to see that happen in HIMARS type rockets, with multiple drones (essentially MIRVs, but without the "reentry" part) that go targeting things. It gets the autonomous drones far enough away that they'll be out of battery before your own people might run into them. From a "what if it blows up the wrong target" perspective: you were launching essentially random explody things into an area. If you'd done it the conventional way you'd have made a moonscape and killed indiscriminately. If your drone isn't perfect it's not any worse than a heavy arty barrage. That makes the drones very tiny while raising the requirements to mil standard for howitzer ammo. When I think future I think about the American palletizing cruise missiles. That also makes me think of glide bombs. We are focusing on tunes a lot because that's what the Russians and Ukrainians use. I think the NATO way sounds more like a fat glide bomb that opens up like a cluster bomb and releases the drones over an area. Strap a rocket engine on for range extension if needs be. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyrano01 Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 14 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said: At the risk of being over my skis yet again here, can 152/155mm tube artillery be largely superseded in frontline use by a combo of: -> drones for swarming or hunting mobile targets, and for nearly all forms of precision work and harassing fire -> mortars for plastering attackers driven to ground by the drones. Are there cluster rounds for 122mm mortars? -> heavy rockets mounted on a variety of mobile launchers, for demolishing fixed positions once identified ... with the other systems (HIMARs, ATACMs etc.) being used for more 'operational' targets. And remaining heavy tubes joining them in the long range PGM delivery category, ceding their longtime role as the high-volume 'fire hose' of the artillery arm? Interesting question. The earlier item about shell shortages said that this was undermining the UKR counter-battery capability and I wonder about UAVs doing CB. If your opponent was moderately competent and willing to shoot and scoot then you would have to have your UAVs already in the air near the target battery already in order to get your CB mission away in a timely fashion. Artillery shells and rockets arrive a bit quicker. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Capt Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 1 hour ago, cyrano01 said: Interesting question. The earlier item about shell shortages said that this was undermining the UKR counter-battery capability and I wonder about UAVs doing CB. If your opponent was moderately competent and willing to shoot and scoot then you would have to have your UAVs already in the air near the target battery already in order to get your CB mission away in a timely fashion. Artillery shells and rockets arrive a bit quicker. It is really the old debate on persistence over reaction time. If one has 50 FPVs out hunting 10-20km in depth they may very well find the guns before they have a chance to shoot (big heavy pieces of metal). Or when the guns do shoot one already has an FPV that can track and hunt. Artillery CB essentially gets a signal and tries to drop rounds on it before the enemy can move. Of course if artillery is linked into UAS ISR then one can effectively hunt enemy artillery the same way as FPVs. They are in fact complimentary systems. Guns have the advantage of weight (for now) but suffer from logistics burden. FPVs etc could pass artillery for utility but would need to be able to duplicate the weight of fires - either through high precision or swarming. Interestingly the main limiting factor for FPV range appears to be signal, not actual onboard energy: https://www.getfpv.com/learn/fpv-essentials/beginners-guide-long-range-fpv/ This is interesting because I suspect a lot of the precision FPVs bring to bear is coming from the human operator. We have seen a lot of precise targeting of tanks and IFV based on knowledge of their weaknesses. It is much harder for fully autonomous AI to do the same precise targeting right now (eg which square foot on a tank to hit to trigger secondaries). So keeping the operators brain forward linked is likely going to remain a requirement up to the last few hundred meters for awhile yet. Therefore links back to a human operator become the major factor to range, solve that and there appears no reason why FPVs cannot be striking back 20km or more which is gun support ranges. So the major advantage of a human operated FPV is that is it infinitely more intelligent than a dumb artillery round (and orders of magnitude more than PGM). Application of that intelligence at scale will remain a central challenge. But if one can do it: massed precision beats everything…. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OBJ Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 Sea drones, learning from the Ukrainians to be ready to beat the Chinese. "The program was inspired in part by the low-cost lethal surface drones developed by Ukraine and built with off-the-shelf components, USNI News understands." See US 'Replicator' initiative. https://news.usni.org/2024/01/30/pentagon-puts-out-call-for-swarming-attack-drones-that-could-blunt-a-taiwan-invasion Russian convicts military contracts, longer, less lenient, automatically 'renew' when they conclude, result of unhappy RA non-convicts and relatives. Apparently in the convict 'Storm V' units attrition is high and morale is low. Russian tradition of frontline penal units continues. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68140873 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Morpheus_ Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 (edited) The Battle of Andriivka in 2023: Edited February 4 by _Morpheus_ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kinophile Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 23 hours ago, Haiduk said: "Fat FPV drones" strike Russian position with HE charges. Not artillery equivalent, but some sort of 82 mm mortar shell (or even half of 120 mm HE charge) flies directly in the trench or blindage How long before drones are lobbing a spread of gps guided mortar shells into a given trench/target, RTB, auto reload and returns with a fresh salvo? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vet 0369 Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 On 1/31/2024 at 9:07 PM, billbindc said: I lead a complicated life. Hmmm, what does Department of Transportation pop into my mind? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted February 4 Share Posted February 4 (edited) 7 hours ago, The_Capt said: It is really the old debate on persistence over reaction time. If one has 50 FPVs out hunting 10-20km in depth they may very well find the guns before they have a chance to shoot (big heavy pieces of metal). Or when the guns do shoot one already has an FPV that can track and hunt. Artillery CB essentially gets a signal and tries to drop rounds on it before the enemy can move. Of course if artillery is linked into UAS ISR then one can effectively hunt enemy artillery the same way as FPVs. They are in fact complimentary systems. Guns have the advantage of weight (for now) but suffer from logistics burden. FPVs etc could pass artillery for utility but would need to be able to duplicate the weight of fires - either through high precision or swarming. Interestingly the main limiting factor for FPV range appears to be signal, not actual onboard energy: https://www.getfpv.com/learn/fpv-essentials/beginners-guide-long-range-fpv/ This is interesting because I suspect a lot of the precision FPVs bring to bear is coming from the human operator. We have seen a lot of precise targeting of tanks and IFV based on knowledge of their weaknesses. It is much harder for fully autonomous AI to do the same precise targeting right now (eg which square foot on a tank to hit to trigger secondaries). So keeping the operators brain forward linked is likely going to remain a requirement up to the last few hundred meters for awhile yet. Therefore links back to a human operator become the major factor to range, solve that and there appears no reason why FPVs cannot be striking back 20km or more which is gun support ranges. So the major advantage of a human operated FPV is that is it infinitely more intelligent than a dumb artillery round (and orders of magnitude more than PGM). Application of that intelligence at scale will remain a central challenge. But if one can do it: massed precision beats everything…. Hmm. I'm really not sold on this dronetopianism. Granted, that is partly cap-badge tribalism. Mind you, in Commonwealth-style armies - and probably most Western-style armies - drones are likely to end up in fires units (that is, artillery units) anyway, so it'd be a change but not a loss of organisational influence. As an example, look at how rockets were absorbed by the artillery fraternity. But I don't think tribalism is the only reason influencing my thinking. To start with, it seems like a version of the old argument "if snipers are so great, we should just train every rifleman to be a sniper!" Yes, snipers are great, but the personal attributes required to be a sniper a rare, they're really expensive and slow to train, and the final product is also of niche utility. A notional 18th Sniper Brigade would either be tactically and operationally useless, or a very very expensive hammer being used to crack grapes. Drone operators seem to suffer from the same limitations, and without good drone operators all you'd have is a ToyWorld's-worth of spare parts sitting behind battalion HQ. Drones are really good at hitting and destroying the specific point they're aimed at, but appear to be pretty terrible at damaging or even annoying anything else. That's kind-of ok as long as you have really super great - and really super reliable - tac ISR. 'Dumb' artillery is good at damaging the thing it's aimed at, and great at suppressing that as well as everything else in the general vicinity. PGM artillery shifts that seesaw towards damage and away from suppression, but retains both effects. Also, the drills required for a single artillery forward observer to remove an entire grid square from your "worried about" list are fast (ie, minutes), simple and well trained. Trying to do the same thing with drones would be extremely slow (ie, hours), require hundreds of operators, and consume the entire cognitive abilities of at least a bde HQ. Hopefully nothing "interesting" happens while they're busy with that. Logistically, artillery ammunition is famously "heavy", but it is also very compact and simple. The rounds come packed in geometrically simple tubes, they stack really well, and are insensitive to heat, cold, dry, damp, and being bounced around and generally careless treatment. Drones appear to be light and simple and easy - hell, I can carry two in boxes under my arm, and get a dozen in my car! Well, sure, but how does that scale? When every rifle company is firing off 100 munition-drones per day, and every battalion is burning through a thousand ... where are you putting all the dunnage? Who is assembling them? How many trucks are running about in constant loops to bring them forward from Div HQ? Drones are also kinda fragile. That's partly why they are so comparatively cheap, but what is an acceptable dud-rate for drones? Drones are definitely a problem for conventional artillery, as a supplement to traditional CB. They're also "competition" for conventional artillery, as a supplement to traditional fire support. And that's the key word: supplement. Not replace. Incidentally, part of the reason 'mil-spec' kit tends to be so expensive is that wars are rare and peace is normal. Most kit spends most - like, 99.something% - of it's time sitting around waiting for a war. But it isn't really just sitting there, it's being used on a regular basis to support training and exercises, and that kit needs to stand up to that regular use and abuse, and then be ready to transition to war-use at a moments notice. That ruggedness and decades-long reliability costs money. COTS drones offer none of that. I get that the flash-to-bang time for drones in Ukraine right now is probably being measured in weeks at best but, again; wars are rare and peace is normal. For a standing army that is mostly at peace - like, oh, all of NATO for the last three quarters of a century - that $1000 COTS drone is going to have to last a lot longer than a few weeks. It's going to have to support multiple courses and exercises, over many years. Occasionally one will be expended in training but, as with Javelins or VLLAD missiles, that's going to be the exception rather than the rule. The rest of the time it just gets lugged around as make-weight. Edited February 4 by JonS 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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