How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Butschi]

6 hours ago, dan/california said:

For Starters NATO and the Eu need to figure out if they can live with Romania just annexing it, or not.

I think the answer should be a big "No!". It would play right into Putin's hand because then he could just accuse the West of applying double standards. Something along the lines of evil NATO opposing Russia for bringing their brethren in Donbas and on Crimea home into mother Russia's arms after they actually voted to be part of Russia - when they themselves annex countries because they can.

Would also provide more ammo to the anti-NATO/US factions in the West (who don't necessarily love Putin all that much, either) who see NATO/US as just a bunch of warmongers.

If we want to continue playing this as "we are the good guys" then we really have to play by the rules. As hard as it is and knowing that Putin doesn't.

Edited March 20 by Butschi

[Holien]

This chap is doing fairly decent videos trying to explain attacks and the context of them.

His content on the incursion into Russia has been useful for me to understand exactly where the videos have been taken. 

His analysis is not military grade but by adding maps and context it is useful, to me anyway...

Looks like Russia might have lost some long range bombers? 

 

[Beleg85]

19 hours ago, billbindc said:

We have actual evidence that without 22 million fake votes, Putin would have hit 51% and there was intense coercion and very low turnout. That almost certainly means he would lose a fair election. 

These guys aren't magic. They are sordid, often fumbling, siloviks.

 

     Shilpkin's study is not the evidence- it's approximation of voting anomalies based on various, quite complicated statistical methods. Russian liberals naturally like to call it "ingenious" and whole plethora of superlatives, but even if it is close to truth, it's still just estimate (there are others who put fraud ballots even higher numbers, like 30+ mlns). Especially that turn-out ratio is very murky this time due to war, immigration, online voting and overall atmosphere. Also note 51% isn't any barrier, since there is no one opposition candidate. It is certain some voting base is by default already "lended" by Putin to certified opposition, like Kharitonov (a communist candidate harnessing sentiments of mostly older people, who under more normal circumstances would also support current president).

     More solid are perhaps exit-polls made by foreign polling companies abroad, but they are naturally very limited in their usefulness too. There is interesting logic there- while in Western countries Putin generally lost royally according to exit polls (like last times, circa 15%; his support in Germany for example was unexpectedly low this time), in Turkey, Cyprus, Greece and several other states that absorbed a lot of Russian emigrees or are popular travel destinations,  his support was something like 30-40%, with accordingly high amount of refusals to questions.

So what we can only be sure is only that Russian society is depoliticized, hunkering down and Putin is only viable candidate. Like it was in last years.

About second part you are right- siloviki are crude when comes to electional frauds. They always were. But still I see no reason to see unexpectedly high official ratings of Putin as some sort of desperation on behalf of Kremlin or tectonic changes in Russian psyche. There are other, simpler explenations, including current propaganda needs, over-zelous local officials and overall geopolitical situation.

 

[The_Capt]

45 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

So what we can only be sure is only that Russian society is depoliticized, hunkering down and Putin is only viable candidate. Like it was in last years.

About second part you are right- siloviki are crude when comes to electional frauds. They always were. But still I see no reason to see unexpectedly high official ratings of Putin as some sort of desperation on behalf of Kremlin or tectonic changes in Russian psyche. There are other, simpler explenations, including current propaganda needs, over-zelous local officials and overall geopolitical situation.

Gotta be honest, I am not even sure why this is still a topic of debate.  The posters who have come out and claimed that the last Russian election was “pure as new driven snow” do so with an agenda of heaping as much responsibility and culpability for this war onto the Russian population as possible.  Bizarrely, this means voicing support for the “democratic” process in Russia because it shows what they want it too - everyone in Russia hates Ukraine and supports this war.  We have seen zero actual evidence that this election was anything but a sham in the tradition of the NK election process, beyond the rantings of some very angry (old, I am guessing) Ukrainian men.  They are justified in that anger but not justified in pushing disinformation about the Russian election process, in my opinion.

We have seen and heard from both mainstream news media, and my own federal government that this last election was a complete sham.  The basic mechanisms for an open and fair election are missing or suppressed by the incumbent.  This was not a transparent mandate from the people, it was Putin voting for himself…and surprise…he won!

So what?  Well it basically means that we have little actual insight into how much Russian’s really support (or not) Putin, nor do we really have insight on support for this war based on this last bit of theatre.  We do know that it is not zero, but it is also not “110%”.  Nor has it led to answering the real question: how does support turn into opposition?  Instead we get the usual pre-genocidal nonsense of “only good Russian is a dead one” and hand wringing from the sidelines.

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

So what?  Well it basically means that we have little actual insight into how much Russian’s really support (or not) Putin, nor do we really have insight on support for this war based on this last bit of theatre.  We do know that it is not zero, but it is also not “110%”.  Nor has it led to answering the real question: how does support turn into opposition?  Instead we get the usual pre-genocidal nonsense of “only good Russian is a dead one” and hand wringing from the sidelines.

Hmm I never subscribed to this vengeful nonsense either, if only for its massive simplifications (you definitelly have people of great civil courage there like Kara Mourza or, more controversially, Navalny himself; a pitty so few of them). But on other side that doesn't mean we should look at the world through pink glassess and project on Russia our own expectations how authoritarian system should look like (like folks still waiting Muscovia magicaly falling apart into ethnic pieces). This picture is often created by mediation of liberal Russian emigrees, who mostly try to avoid difficult issues, stick to safe topics like corruption and their conclusion is usually that Russians are just fooled victims of bad old dictator- which was btw. Navalny's greatest sin. Self-pitty is their driver here, not empathy, and that is why so many Ukrainians are pissed on them for.

As I understand their reactions, they are already sensing return of comfortable, relativistic narration "not us, it was Putin's fault" that West fell pray to so many times in history. While in reality it's Russians' long-lasting, deep-rooted mix of collective passivity, brutal domestic culture and historically- proven shauvinism that let them here; Putin is their creation, responsibility and lot. Note it is neither still not North Korea level of control; Russians are not cut off from information like Koreans and have basically unobstructed freedom of movement both internally and abroad.

Practically, we have no means of determining what Russia would look like within softer regime; it was political fiction long time before this conflict started. Important questions now are: how it's economy will hold in this, likely few additional years long war; If it will not hold well, what political and military means Kremlin is ready to apply; Will Europe have guts to supply UA through this period, especially when US fall out, and what would be our reactions to potentiall turmoil in RU (judging by our reactions to Prig's coup, not very proactive, but this attitude may change in time).

Edited March 20 by Beleg85

[alison]

7 hours ago, chrisl said:

And it sounds like DJI is also backdoored so that anybody who has their Aeroscope system can spy on them.  Ukraine has disabled some of that access because they knew at the start that the DJI systems were backdoored.

Encrypting also consumes more energy than not encrypting. So if you're in an environment where you know Pvt. Conscriptovich doesn't have an aeroscope and probably doesn't even have a radio to hear from someone who has one, then you can eke out a little extra range without encryption.  It also simplifies your conops if you're working with all ad hoc equipment so you don't have to worry about the handshaking of the controller/drone pair to sort out keys.  A lot of what Ukraine is using are drones that are literally homebuilt by people who have boxes of various COTS parts.  And after a bit of poking around (certainly not comprehensive) it seems like hobbyists have mostly not cared about encryption.

Some commercial drones, mostly for gov't, law enforcement, and big corporate clients who can afford to spend a lot of money for a small number of drones with data security seem to have it, but it's not widespread beyond that.

I'm sure we'll start seeing at least moderate encryption of the video feeds in Ukraine. It's not a hard thing to do, but it's not the default for hobbyist drone kits.

This video has some recent discussion on how widespread data security is for drones (it's not), and commercially available ones are expensive and not what you want to use for FPV bombs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5-wF63lCXw

 

I just read up on that Aeroscope system and it's the most Chinese **** ever. They're not only not hiding the CCP backdoor, but they've productized it so they can make money on both sides! Get that bag, I suppose, but to my eyes it instantly makes DJI a non-starter for anything outside of hobbyist stuff.

Thanks for sharing that webinar. It was sales-y, but it really drives home the sad state of affairs when they're promoting the security angle of dumping the raw footage to SD card while remaining evasive on the live feed question ("well it's downsampled anyway, so it's not the good stuff"). I was hanging for a more detailed description of the technology they're using to communicate from the drone to the controller, but it appears "security through obscurity" is still the name of the game here. Or perhaps the industry really just takes it as a baseline assumption that the live feed is open, which is bananas to me.

Perhaps for suicide drones it would be okay to skip encryption on the video feed, if it excessively increases the heat and battery drain, or if the lag sucks too bad. It sounds like these things might soon fly autonomously or be carried inside a mothership to a waypoint in the vicinity of the target and only switch over to direct human control for the final targeting and approach, which hopefully would be at a high enough speed that anyone intercepting the feed would not have time to react. There's still a risk if the enemy collect enough of these final approach feeds that they can determine the flight path of the mothership, or extrapolate where you are launching from, but I suppose that's the same risk that exists with artillery.

The spy/recon/overwatch drones, on other hand - the ones that hopefully are going to fly back to base at the end of their mission - those seem like a priority for loading up with all the security. We keep talking on this thread about how maneuver is dead because everyone can see everything going on for miles around, but if everyone is watching everyone else's video feed then what's actually dead is opsec. You can't give people your intel for free, at least make them put up a drone of their own to get it, you know?

In any case, it seems I have been a bit too presumptuous about how all this gear works. I am definitely biased by my experience of living in China and going to various lengths trying to 翻墻 (jump the Great Firewall), and now working in the internet privacy and security space. When there's bombs raining down on your head then nerding out over encryption is probably less important than trying to take out the source ASAP. On one hand I hope I never have to experience that. On the other hand, here in Taiwan, who knows? I hope to not be completely ignorant if **** hits the fan, so I appreciate any wisdom people can share here on the thread.

[The_Capt]

20 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Practically, we have no means of determining what Russia would look like within softer regime; it was political fiction long time before this conflict started. Important questions now are: how it's economy will hold in this, likely few additional years long war; If it will not hold well, what political and military means Kremlin is ready to apply; Will Europe have guts to supply UA through this period, especially when US fall out, and what would be our reactions to potentiall turmoil in RU (judging by our reactions to Prig's coup, not very proactive, but this attitude may change in time).

So basically right where we were before this election?  Personally, I have zero interest in "fixing Russia" and I am pretty confident that I can speak for most westerners on that point.  What I do want to know is just how badly we need to bend it without breaking it and making the situation worse.

But it appears we are back to - we really do not know yet.

[billbindc]

26 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Hmm I never subscribed to this vengeful nonsense either, if only for its massive simplifications (you definitelly have people of great civil courage there like Kara Mourza or, more controversially, Navalny himself; a pitty so few of them). But on other side that doesn't mean we should look at the world through pink glassess and project on Russia our own expectations how authoritarian system should look like (like folks still waiting Muscovia magicaly falling apart into ethnic pieces). This picture is often created by mediation of liberal Russian emigrees, who mostly try to avoid difficult issues, stick to safe topics like corruption and their conclusion is usually that Russians are just fooled victims of bad old dictator- which was btw. Navalny's greatest sin. Self-pitty is their driver here, not empathy, and that is why so many Ukrainians are pissed on them for.

As I understand their reactions, they are already sensing return of comfortable, relativistic narration "not us, it was Putin's fault" that West fell pray to so many times in history. While in reality it's Russians' long-lasting, deep-rooted mix of collective passivity, brutal domestic culture and historically- proven shauvinism that let them here; Putin is their creation, responsibility and lot. Note it is neither still not North Korea level of control; Russians are not cut off from information like Koreans and have basically unobstructed freedom of movement both internally and abroad.

Practically, we have no means of determining what Russia would look like within softer regime; it was political fiction long time before this conflict started. Important questions now are: how it's economy will hold in this, likely few additional years long war; If it will not hold well, what political and military means Kremlin is ready to apply; Will Europe have guts to supply UA through this period, especially when US fall out, and what would be our reactions to potentiall turmoil in RU (judging by our reactions to Prig's coup, not very proactive, but this attitude may change in time).

I agree with much of this which is why I disagree with the way in which the 'election' has been framed both as the thing itself and the interpretation of the result. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in the last day or so, much of Western media actually pretended that it was a plebiscite in the way we understand voting to mean. It clearly was not but rather a propaganda exercise in both legitimizing Putin at home and to a lesser extent delegitimizing voting abroad. To my mind, that's virtually the only real conclusion one can take from the event. 

What we do know about Russia is that it is an autocracy that suffers from the crisis of legitimacy that all autocracies labor beneath which is both why the war began and why, so far, it hasn't ended. But we also know that every Russian revolution has been the child of an unsuccessful war. If we are going to look at deep rooted cultural mores, I think I'd start there.

[billbindc]

15 minutes ago, alison said:

I just read up on that Aeroscope system and it's the most Chinese **** ever. They're not only not hiding the CCP backdoor, but they've productized it so they can make money on both sides! Get that bag, I suppose, but to my eyes it instantly makes DJI a non-starter for anything outside of hobbyist stuff.

Thanks for sharing that webinar. It was sales-y, but it really drives home the sad state of affairs when they're promoting the security angle of dumping the raw footage to SD card while remaining evasive on the live feed question ("well it's downsampled anyway, so it's not the good stuff"). I was hanging for a more detailed description of the technology they're using to communicate from the drone to the controller, but it appears "security through obscurity" is still the name of the game here. Or perhaps the industry really just takes it as a baseline assumption that the live feed is open, which is bananas to me.

Perhaps for suicide drones it would be okay to skip encryption on the video feed, if it excessively increases the heat and battery drain, or if the lag sucks too bad. It sounds like these things might soon fly autonomously or be carried inside a mothership to a waypoint in the vicinity of the target and only switch over to direct human control for the final targeting and approach, which hopefully would be at a high enough speed that anyone intercepting the feed would not have time to react. There's still a risk if the enemy collect enough of these final approach feeds that they can determine the flight path of the mothership, or extrapolate where you are launching from, but I suppose that's the same risk that exists with artillery.

The spy/recon/overwatch drones, on other hand - the ones that hopefully are going to fly back to base at the end of their mission - those seem like a priority for loading up with all the security. We keep talking on this thread about how maneuver is dead because everyone can see everything going on for miles around, but if everyone is watching everyone else's video feed then what's actually dead is opsec. You can't give people your intel for free, at least make them put up a drone of their own to get it, you know?

In any case, it seems I have been a bit too presumptuous about how all this gear works. I am definitely biased by my experience of living in China and going to various lengths trying to 翻墻 (jump the Great Firewall), and now working in the internet privacy and security space. When there's bombs raining down on your head then nerding out over encryption is probably less important than trying to take out the source ASAP. On one hand I hope I never have to experience that. On the other hand, here in Taiwan, who knows? I hope to not be completely ignorant if **** hits the fan, so I appreciate any wisdom people can share here on the thread.

Please keep this conversation going. It's illuminating. 

[Battlefront.com]

31 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

While in reality it's Russians' long-lasting, deep-rooted mix of collective passivity, brutal domestic culture and historically- proven shauvinism that let them here; Putin is their creation, responsibility and lot. Note it is neither still not North Korea level of control; Russians are not cut off from information like Koreans and have basically unobstructed freedom of movement both internally and abroad.

Absolutely this.  It's always very difficult to draw the distinction where the line is drawn between accountability and excuse for actions, be it personal or societal.  We all struggle with this all the time, even in our personal lives. 

You see someone laying into a retail clerk and you think "boy, what a prick!" then you find out that his wife had just been murdered that morning and you think "oh, well... that's different".  Someone who was raised in a drug addicted household becomes a drug addict, someone else does not.  How do you judge someone for simply not being strong enough to keep themselves from not beating the odds and the other for doing so?

This is very true of the Russian population.  While I have understanding and sympathy for why they act the way they do, they should know better.  They should be better.  They should do better.  Since they aren't able to do that on their own, then someone needs to do something to put them on a better path. 

31 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Practically, we have no means of determining what Russia would look like within softer regime; it was political fiction long time before this conflict started. Important questions now are: how it's economy will hold in this, likely few additional years long war; If it will not hold well, what political and military means Kremlin is ready to apply; Will Europe have guts to supply UA through this period, especially when US fall out, and what would be our reactions to potentiall turmoil in RU (judging by our reactions to Prig's coup, not very proactive, but this attitude may change in time).

The realistic opportunity in front of the world today is to speed up the collapse of the Putin regime and then see what the Russians come up with next.  If it's better, then help them go in the right direction.  If it's the same or worse, then continue to treat Russia as it deserves to be treated... as a genocidal regime that is choosing to do harm to others instead of good.

My personal belief is that Russia must break up because I think the only way the country is held together is through the brutality of a Moscow led oppressive state.  If there is no empire to maintain the incentives to have an oppressive state diminishes.  At the very least the resources available for continuing an imperialistic state policy is greatly reduced.  There could be the most imperialistic government in Moscow ever seen, but it's ability to wage war with 1/3rd the population and 1/2 the natural resources it has now means it's inherently less of a threat than today.

With the breakup of Russia comes a lot of very dangerous unknowns.  However, in my view there is no avoiding those risks.  Russia's breaking is inevitable and it is more likely to be violent than non-violent, chaotic than orderly.  I'm not sure if there's a better time for Russia breaking up than now, but if there were I certainly would want to wait for it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

28 minutes ago, alison said:

Perhaps for suicide drones it would be okay to skip encryption on the video feed,

I fully agree.  These days there are so many suicide drones in the air at one time it would be impossible to hack all the signals and figure out what they all mean in time to offer ample warning to the hundreds of (probably) already determined targets.

The other thing is that the FPV operator knows (for the most part) where the target is and how to approach it.  Anybody else watching the feed won't have that information.  Even a small sector of front line is a big area relatively speaking.  There are likely many potential targets at any given time.  And the friendly side watching the video will never, not even with the US military, have the knowledge to know where all the threat points are.  Not to mention have the ability to issue meaningful warnings.

There's only one possible use for tapping into FPV drone feeds that I can envision. And that is if you know you have an operation underway you could concentrate resources on watching local feeds to know when FPVs are in the air and potentially headed towards vulnerable forces.  Not that there's all that much that can be done about it, so we get back to the "it's not very important" aspect of intercepting FPV feeds.

Steve

[Kraft]

Anecdotal comment from a company commander in 5th SturmBat

Quote

The war is no longer the same as it was two years ago, not the same as a year ago, and not even the same as a month ago. Despite the enemy's huge losses in equipment and personnel, they manage to build up strength on the entire front line.

In them, the number of artillery installations on the front line does not decrease. We destroy, liquidate, and they, like mushrooms after the rain, appear again.

Their drones hang over our heads like clouds. There are so many of them that the enemy can experiment, use different frequencies without fear of losing the drone.

The number of air attacks on our positions in three months of 2024 has already exceeded their number for the entire year of 2023.

The amount of enemy infantry that is used as cannon fodder simply does not fit in the head. They go, get bullets, fall, followed by others. They also go, step over their own, get zinc porridge again and fall again. Just have time to load the guns.

But as soon as this meat ends, you think that you can exhale, relax. Never mind! The enemy already knows where our position is. And everything he has in his arsenal is already flying here. Well, if you have a dugout with so-called bald holes - this is the only possibility to survive in such a situation.

 

[Kraft]

Two russians armed with stick and shovel try their luck at air defense but the claymore airburst FPV does not need to get close, better luck next time

[alison]

47 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I fully agree.  These days there are so many suicide drones in the air at one time it would be impossible to hack all the signals and figure out what they all mean in time to offer ample warning to the hundreds of (probably) already determined targets.

The other thing is that the FPV operator knows (for the most part) where the target is and how to approach it.  Anybody else watching the feed won't have that information.  Even a small sector of front line is a big area relatively speaking.  There are likely many potential targets at any given time.  And the friendly side watching the video will never, not even with the US military, have the knowledge to know where all the threat points are.  Not to mention have the ability to issue meaningful warnings.

There's only one possible use for tapping into FPV drone feeds that I can envision. And that is if you know you have an operation underway you could concentrate resources on watching local feeds to know when FPVs are in the air and potentially headed towards vulnerable forces.  Not that there's all that much that can be done about it, so we get back to the "it's not very important" aspect of intercepting FPV feeds.

It seems to me that open video feeds are still a risk when going up against a high-tech adversary. Let's assume and hope that the telemetry like speed, heading and GPS is already fully encrypted and "uncrackable" so it's only the analog video feed that's "in the clear". If we can scan the standard frequencies and find some of those feeds, then pipe those into another system which already has the terrain visually mapped out from its own overflights, it might be possible to geolocate the incoming drone before it's picked up by other detection systems. I remember someone upthread talking about lasers or autocannon targeting the sound of rotors, and if that's the state of the art then intercepting radio signals containing meaningful data is going to give you a much longer lead time.

Of course I am just hypothesizing here, but thinking about scanning radio frequencies looking for audio signals... I am sure that right now hobbyists could set a USB-sized SDR to auto scan, then feed the audio hits into a language model to have it quickly detect what kind of stuff is being discussed on each channel (railroad, logging, weather etc). Video is much more complex but the building blocks are there. If these things travel 60km/h and you start to get signal 10km out, that's up to 10 minutes to figure out where it is and call in one of your anti-drone drones to take it out. Even better if your anti-drone mothership was already in the air taking live footage of the same area to feed back into the model. But as soon as their video feed is encrypted, it shuts down the whole (counter) attack vector.

Edited March 20 by alison
typo

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

I agree with much of this which is why I disagree with the way in which the 'election' has been framed both as the thing itself and the interpretation of the result. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in the last day or so, much of Western media actually pretended that it was a plebiscite in the way we understand voting to mean. It clearly was not but rather a propaganda exercise in both legitimizing Putin at home and to a lesser extent delegitimizing voting abroad. To my mind, that's virtually the only real conclusion one can take from the event. 

What we do know about Russia is that it is an autocracy that suffers from the crisis of legitimacy that all autocracies labor beneath which is both why the war began and why, so far, it hasn't ended. But we also know that every Russian revolution has been the child of an unsuccessful war. If we are going to look at deep rooted cultural mores, I think I'd start there.

Te way to analyze the election is to realize it was propaganda exercise that no more significant than one of Medvedev's drunken rants. We are simply spending to much band width on it.

50 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I fully agree.  These days there are so many suicide drones in the air at one time it would be impossible to hack all the signals and figure out what they all mean in time to offer ample warning to the hundreds of (probably) already determined targets.

The other thing is that the FPV operator knows (for the most part) where the target is and how to approach it.  Anybody else watching the feed won't have that information.  Even a small sector of front line is a big area relatively speaking.  There are likely many potential targets at any given time.  And the friendly side watching the video will never, not even with the US military, have the knowledge to know where all the threat points are.  Not to mention have the ability to issue meaningful warnings.

There's only one possible use for tapping into FPV drone feeds that I can envision. And that is if you know you have an operation underway you could concentrate resources on watching local feeds to know when FPVs are in the air and potentially headed towards vulnerable forces.  Not that there's all that much that can be done about it, so we get back to the "it's not very important" aspect of intercepting FPV feeds.

Steve

see below

5 minutes ago, alison said:

It seems to me that open video feeds are still a risk when going up against a high-tech adversary. Let's assume and hope that the telemetry like speed, heading and GPS is already fully encrypted and "uncrackable" so it's only the analog video feed that's "in the clear". If we can scan the standard frequencies and find some of those feeds, then pipe those into another system which already has the terrain visually mapped out from its own overflights, it might be possible to geolocate the incoming drone before it's picked up by other detection systems. I remember someone upthread talking about lasers or autocannon targeting the sound of rotors, and if that's the state of the art then intercepting radio signals containing meaningful data is going to give you a much longer lead time.

Of course I am just hypothesizing here, but thinking about scanning radio frequencies looking for audio signals... I am sure that right now hobbyists could set a USB-sized SDR to auto scan, then feed the audio hits into a language model to have it quickly detect what kind of stuff is being discussed on each channel (railroad, logging, weather etc). Video is much more complex but the building blocks are there. If these things travel 60km/h and you start to get signal 10km out, that's up to 10 minutes to figure out where it is and call in one of your anti-drone drones to take it out. Even better if your anti-drone mothership was already in the air taking live footage of the same area to feed back into the model. But as soon as their video feed is encrypted, it shuts down the whole (counter) attack vector.

Obviously it would be better if there was an easy way to encrypt the video feeds. That said if I was going to spend money and engineering talent improving FPV drones, I would spend it on making then autonomous, That solves a lot more problems, a lot more effectively.

[Kraft]

15 minutes ago, alison said:

It seems to me that open video feeds are still a risk when going up against a high-tech adversary. Let's assume and hope that the telemetry like speed, heading and GPS is already fully encrypted and "uncrackable" so it's only the analog video feed that's "in the clear". If we can scan the standard frequencies and find some of those feeds, then pipe those into another system which already has the terrain visually mapped out from its own overflights, it might be possible to geolocate the incoming drone before it's picked up by other detection systems. I remember someone upthread talking about lasers or autocannon targeting the sound of rotors, and if that's the state of the art then intercepting radio signals containing meaningful data is going to give you a much longer lead time.

Of course I am just hypothesizing here, but thinking about scanning radio frequencies looking for audio signals... I am sure that right now hobbyists could set a USB-sized SDR to auto scan, then feed the audio hits into a language model to have it quickly detect what kind of stuff is being discussed on each channel (railroad, logging, weather etc). Video is much more complex but the building blocks are there. If these things travel 60km/h and you start to get signal 10km out, that's up to 10 minutes to figure out where it is and call in one of your anti-drone drones to take it out. Even better if your anti-drone mothership was already in the air taking live footage of the same area to feed back into the model. But as soon as their video feed is encrypted, it shuts down the whole (counter) attack vector.

I think just being able to get a rough glimpse of the drones path can help discover the drone team, if they are stretching the range its likely a near straight line from team to target, especially if they are unaware they are being watched and havent adapted

The OSINT geolocators are already incredibly fast at finding even simple treeline locations from a few seconds cut drone footage 

Edited March 20 by Kraft

[chrisl]

42 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I fully agree.  These days there are so many suicide drones in the air at one time it would be impossible to hack all the signals and figure out what they all mean in time to offer ample warning to the hundreds of (probably) already determined targets.

The other thing is that the FPV operator knows (for the most part) where the target is and how to approach it.  Anybody else watching the feed won't have that information.  Even a small sector of front line is a big area relatively speaking.  There are likely many potential targets at any given time.  And the friendly side watching the video will never, not even with the US military, have the knowledge to know where all the threat points are.  Not to mention have the ability to issue meaningful warnings.

There's only one possible use for tapping into FPV drone feeds that I can envision. And that is if you know you have an operation underway you could concentrate resources on watching local feeds to know when FPVs are in the air and potentially headed towards vulnerable forces.  Not that there's all that much that can be done about it, so we get back to the "it's not very important" aspect of intercepting FPV feeds.

Steve

I think it's only going to be reasonable to leave suicide drones unencrypted for a little while longer.  If you're facing a force that has NATO-like SIGINT capabilities, it won't be long before the guys in the back office watching all the friendly drone feeds also have a "red desk" watching all the enemy drone feeds to both guide the anti-drone activities (that still don't really exist) and warn people to duck. There are going to be data siphons in back, and they'll be hard to hit because they can be entirely passive.

If you want fine guidance to the target but want to keep the target secret, you have two modes - encrypted "cruise" mode where you move the cloud of FPV drones into position and then when Serhei is ready to drive one onto Private Conscriptovich he picks an available drone from the cloud (and there will be a cloud of them) and gets it pointed in the right direction, and then flips it into "low lag" that sends him an unencrypted low-lag feed for the last 20-30 seconds of its trip.  And any drone that's going to hit a static (or big and predictable) target won't even need that - it will start with "last 500 m autonomy" where Serhei picks his cloud drone, picks the target with a cursor, and it just goes there.  That's really not far off at this point, and probably closer than dual-control mode.

Fancier countries will also have the drones networked so that they can transfer target information either directly or with a couple clicks from the back office controller.  The overwatching hi-res encrypted drone with optical comm back to HQ picks out targets and then transfers coordinates (and possibly images for image matching) to the kill drones that then don't round trip realtime video, or at least not for most of their trip.

[chrisl]

15 minutes ago, alison said:

It seems to me that open video feeds are still a risk when going up against a high-tech adversary. Let's assume and hope that the telemetry like speed, heading and GPS is already fully encrypted and "uncrackable" so it's only the analog video feed that's "in the clear". If we can scan the standard frequencies and find some of those feeds, then pipe those into another system which already has the terrain visually mapped out from its own overflights, it might be possible to geolocate the incoming drone before it's picked up by other detection systems. I remember someone upthread talking about lasers or autocannon targeting the sound of rotors, and if that's the state of the art then intercepting radio signals containing meaningful data is going to give you a much longer lead time.

Of course I am just hypothesizing here, but thinking about scanning radio frequencies looking for audio signals... I am sure that right now hobbyists could set a USB-sized SDR to auto scan, then feed the audio hits into a language model to have it quickly detect what kind of stuff is being discussed on each channel (railroad, logging, weather etc). Video is much more complex but the building blocks are there. If these things travel 60km/h and you start to get signal 10km out, that's up to 10 minutes to figure out where it is and call in one of your anti-drone drones to take it out. Even better if your anti-drone mothership was already in the air taking live footage of the same area to feed back into the model. But as soon as their video feed is encrypted, it shuts down the whole (counter) attack vector.

From what I could sort through last night, it does sound like control signals for many (most?) drones are encrypted. It's a lot less bandwidth, for sure. But I also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't really true and that a lot of them are encoded so that drones and bases don't get crossed up, but not actually encrypted, and the marketing people don't know the difference.

And I agree that putting together a map of every drone in the sky is probably not that hard, even for hobbyists.  I have a cheap SDR mounted on my garage to pick up ADS-B, along with 50,000 of my closest friends around the country.  It all goes to a server and I can look anywhere and see a map of every aircraft in the sky over the US with a lag of a few seconds.  I know it's a few seconds because when there are brushfires I can watch the trains of planes coming and then know exactly when to walk into the backyard with binoculars and where to look to see some cool old aircraft that have been retrofitted for firefighting.  

And it doesn't matter if they're actually transmitting ADS-B data.  The ones that only send a hex code are accurately located by MLAT. And that's just a bunch of hobbyists with $30 SDR dongles and Raspberry Pis.  If you're a military, you know your opponent isn't going to be nice enough to transmit hex codes in the clear, but they will have some repetitive features of the signal that you can use to generate positions with MLAT.  And it's all done with small passive antennas that just need rough LOS to the area and computers that fit in the palm of your hand and only pull a few watts.

The endpoint is full or nearly full autonomy with minimal transmission.  Any high bandwidth transmission will be optical or relayed through a high altitude relay aircraft (or low satellite constellation) 

[dan/california]

The place where I would focus very heavily on looking for drone video is the protection detail for a head of state. It is already illegal to fly them in DC, and I assume their is some sort of bubble of drone banning that travels around with the President. If five or ten FPV feeds I wasn't expecting popped up, i would be getting the protectee under cover as fast as if the radio started yelling SNIPER.

[sburke]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Personally, I have zero interest in "fixing Russia" and I am pretty confident that I can speak for most westerners on that point. 

But it appears we are back to - we really do not know yet.

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

[The_Capt]

14 minutes ago, sburke said:

I dunno.  My cat was really aggressive and peeing all over the place.  Then I got him "fixed" and he behaves a whole lot better.

Come now...be honest...was it really "the cat" peeing all over the place?

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Kraft said:

Anecdotal comment from a company commander in 5th SturmBat

 

That sounds about right from what we're hearing in other active sectors of the front.  Russia is still able to make up for its losses, even after disastrous meat offensives like Avdiivka.  However, as we've discussed more times than I can count... a frontline commander (and a company commander at that) never, ever has the "full picture".  Especially one in a particularly active sector of front. 

Which means, by definition, this commander is missing some critical information that might not be important to the guys sitting in the trenches today, but it will be significant to them sometime in the future.  That's the sort of stuff we've been talking about here, which is that Russia's loss rate is unsustainable and what it has to replace is not necessarily of equal quality as what was lost.  It is also becoming more and more expensive to refurbish equipment, bribe people into serving, and compensating for the cumulative damage to Russia's economy.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

56 minutes ago, chrisl said:

From what I could sort through last night, it does sound like control signals for many (most?) drones are encrypted. It's a lot less bandwidth, for sure. But I also wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't really true and that a lot of them are encoded so that drones and bases don't get crossed up, but not actually encrypted, and the marketing people don't know the difference.

And I agree that putting together a map of every drone in the sky is probably not that hard, even for hobbyists.  I have a cheap SDR mounted on my garage to pick up ADS-B, along with 50,000 of my closest friends around the country.  It all goes to a server and I can look anywhere and see a map of every aircraft in the sky over the US with a lag of a few seconds.  I know it's a few seconds because when there are brushfires I can watch the trains of planes coming and then know exactly when to walk into the backyard with binoculars and where to look to see some cool old aircraft that have been retrofitted for firefighting.  

And it doesn't matter if they're actually transmitting ADS-B data.  The ones that only send a hex code are accurately located by MLAT. And that's just a bunch of hobbyists with $30 SDR dongles and Raspberry Pis.  If you're a military, you know your opponent isn't going to be nice enough to transmit hex codes in the clear, but they will have some repetitive features of the signal that you can use to generate positions with MLAT.  And it's all done with small passive antennas that just need rough LOS to the area and computers that fit in the palm of your hand and only pull a few watts.

The endpoint is full or nearly full autonomy with minimal transmission.  Any high bandwidth transmission will be optical or relayed through a high altitude relay aircraft (or low satellite constellation) 

Yes, at this point encryption becomes less of an issue because the signals themselves give off current location and historical telemetry information.  This is why autonomous is the obvious way to go because a drone that doesn't transmit is one that can't be detected based on transmissions.

I picture a flowchart where every single if/then scenario eventually leads to autonomous as the counter.

Steve

[kimbosbread]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

I picture a flowchart where every single if/then scenario eventually leads to autonomous as the counter.

Yeah, pretty much this:

• Radiating too much signal?
• Encryption of video?
• Crappy signal?
• Range?
• Battery Life?

All roads lead to one solution, unless you really really really require a human in the loop- and even then, you might not need to send video back, but a text description of potential target, or a still image.

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is very true of the Russian population.  While I have understanding and sympathy for why they act the way they do, they should know better.  They should be better.  They should do better.  Since they aren't able to do that on their own, then someone needs to do something to put them on a better path. 

Add to it our (=broadly Western) reactions to Russian imperialism and hubris. Looking at mistakes in our policy regarding Russia in long decades after fall of USSR (for example every single US president wanted some misty "reset" with Putin), and one sees it almost always we were too soft and cooperative, because "Russia is as it is" rather than too harsh on them. That's why I am more concerned with our potential accomodation with its aggresve heritage rather than with (potentiall) fact that some innocent people in Muscovia may be harmed by throwing them into one bag with nationalists. It's simple process of drawing conclusions and learning. Especially that many Russian oppositionist leaders already have less than stellar conduct since start of this war- very, very few of them will straight away say that Ukrainians have simply right ot defend themselves and that they are fully independtnt country, not some imagined "Slavic brothers".

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

I agree with much of this which is why I disagree with the way in which the 'election' has been framed both as the thing itself and the interpretation of the result. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in the last day or so, much of Western media actually pretended that it was a plebiscite in the way we understand voting to mean. It clearly was not but rather a propaganda exercise in both legitimizing Putin at home and to a lesser extent delegitimizing voting abroad. To my mind, that's virtually the only real conclusion one can take from the event.

Yup, more or less this is the case.

I wouldn't agree that Putin suffers from serious legitimacy crisis, though; there is simply no replacement for him as a leader. He steered biggest country on planet into quagmire he cannot leave, entire hull of this ship is cracking and croaking by chasing this legendary White Whale of multipolar world order, but so far everyone knows there is only one captain on this ship. I mean apart from this clown who took his hat for a moment, but soon was thrown over board like it should be. And the other guide from lowest deck who was bold enough to challange openly, but this issue was done too. Overall, chain of command is known and clear.