How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kimbosbread]

37 minutes ago, JonS said:

Yes, but there is no feedback loop between one autonomous drone and the next, in the way that there is between subsequent rounds from a rifle.

I think that’s a dangerous assumption to make, and I think anybody designing a drone swarm would be stupid not to make them communicate.

No reason a drone can’t identify a target, and then ask peers if anybody else is tracking this. Notice how I said peers? This is a classic distributed systems problem where you want to decide who does what task while minimizing the amount of communication needed. It’s not going to be 100% foolproof, but this stuff works well in practice (see consenus protocols, eventual consistency etc).

[dan/california]

27 minutes ago, JonS said:

Yes, but there is no feedback loop between one autonomous drone and the next, in the way that there is between subsequent rounds from a rifle.

Depending on a great many things this may or may not be true. It is certainly possible it is true and the second drone, and the seventh can't learn anything from the previous attempts. There are great many ways that learning could occur though. The first, most obvious, and certainly happening right now is that the same guy is flying the next drone when it shows up in a few minutes, perhaps less if they have an orbit of them already in the air. The drone pilot knows what he did wrong, and doesn't make the same mistake the next time. The second possibility, the FPV drone is being observed by an ISR drone with vastly better sensors, the operators of the two systems are in communication, and the ISR guy can tell the FPV guy what he did wrong for round 2. Third way, the drones are using at least last kilometer autonomy, and start missing., The aforementioned ISR drone can tell the unit flying the FPV drones to change their targeting parameters. The fourth and most important way though, is that every time someone makes a improvement in an autonomous AI drone program, that program shows up in ALL the drones next month, and it will just iterate forever. So the autonomous piloting systems flying nine months after the first ones come out might be five, or twenty five, or 225 times better than the first models.

[NamEndedAllen]

House Democrats are continuing to suggest they’ll have Speaker Johnson’s back if he will put a vote on aid to Ukraine on the Floor. The bill has already been passed by the Senate.

 

“The head of the House Democratic Caucus suggested Wednesday that Democratic lawmakers stand ready to rescue Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) from a potential GOP coup — if he ushers Ukraine aid through the lower chamber and on to President Biden’s desk. 

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) stopped short of saying he would vote personally to save Johnson from a motion to vacate resolution. But echoing an earlier message from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Aguilar noted a number of Democrats are already on record saying they’d help keep Johnson in power if he stages a vote on the Ukraine package that passed through the Senate in February.

That willingness by Democrats to cross the aisle, Aguilar suggested, should be enough to overcome the number of Republicans who might try to topple Johnson.

“The Speaker needs to put that bill on the floor,” Aguilar said during a press briefing in the Capitol. “You have also heard me say, you have also heard Leader Jeffries say — and he has pointed out that it was an observation, not a declaration — that we feel that if the Speaker does the right thing that he is in a good position.

“But look, we’ve got to do the right thing. We’ve got to pass these bills. We’ve got to have some sanity under this dome. And that means putting bills on the floor that have 300 votes.” “

 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4585578-aguilar-johnson-speaker-ukraine/

 

[JonS]

6 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

I think that’s a dangerous assumption to make, and I think anybody designing a drone swarm would be stupid not to make them communicate.

Ok, there's a couple if things to unpack here.

Firstly, if they're communicating then they aren't autonomous. Heretofore autonomy has been touted as the nirvana to avoid countermeasures, and therefore assumed as a feature. I'm not going to say the autonomists are right and the communicators are wrong, or vice versa. What I will say - again - is that drones will continue to be full of compromises, will not solve all problems, nor invalidate all existing capabilities.

Secondly, "designing" is carrying a bit of weight. My beaver-tailed compadre just recently got a bit pissy about historical precedents because apparently we're only allowed to talk about *this* war, and yet here you are talking about the *next* war, or at least this war next year. More seriously: yes, you probably could improve both accuracy and precision that way (although you seem to be trying to avoid over-killing each targets by avoiding multiple drones attacking the same target, rather than reducing per-drone aiming errors?), but 'we could' is not the same as 'we are.'

Edited April 12 by JonS

[chrisl]

38 minutes ago, JonS said:

Ok, there's a couple if things to unpack here.

Firstly, if they're communicating then they aren't autonomous. Heretofore autonomy has been touted as the nirvana to avoid countermeasures, and therefore assumed as a feature. I'm not going to say the autonomists are right and the communicators are wrong, or vice versa. What I will say - again - is that drones will continue to be full of compromises, will not solve all problems, nor invalidate all existing capabilities.

Secondly, "designing" is carrying a bit of weight. My beaver-tailed compadre just recently got a bit pissy about historical precedents because apparently we're only allowed to talk about *this* war, and yet here you are talking about the *next* war, or at least this war next year. More seriously: yes, you probably could improve both accuracy and precision that way (although you seem to be trying to avoid over-killing each targets be avoiding multiple drones attacking the same target, rather than reducing per-drone aiming errors?), but 'we could' is not the same as 'we are.'

If I send up a swarm of drones that are capable of communicating with each other, while not taking input from me, are they not autonomous?  If I send up a drone that picks what it's doing based on some pre-determined guidelines and then communicates what it's doing back to me, is it not autonomous? 

Autonomy evades certain countermeasures, but doesn't preclude communication. Wouldn't a clever drone herder develop a swarm of drones that had some diverse capabilities?  Maybe give 10 or 20% of them a suite of RF sensors and autonomy to go hunt radars and EW systems, while the rest were capable of picking targets on their own, but also at least some rudimentary communication to keep multiple drones from picking the same target if they happen to have comms with their neighbors?

[Tux]

2 hours ago, chrisl said:

If I send up a swarm of drones that are capable of communicating with each other, while not taking input from me, are they not autonomous?  If I send up a drone that picks what it's doing based on some pre-determined guidelines and then communicates what it's doing back to me, is it not autonomous? 

Autonomy evades certain countermeasures, but doesn't preclude communication. Wouldn't a clever drone herder develop a swarm of drones that had some diverse capabilities?  Maybe give 10 or 20% of them a suite of RF sensors and autonomy to go hunt radars and EW systems, while the rest were capable of picking targets on their own, but also at least some rudimentary communication to keep multiple drones from picking the same target if they happen to have comms with their neighbors?

Every time your autonomous drone tries to communicate, my C-UAS system is ready and willing to listen.

I know we've been round the loop a few times but I, for one, enjoy thinking through this puzzle and reading others' thoughts as well.  Keep it up.

[chrisl]

4 minutes ago, Tux said:

Every time your autonomous drone tries to communicate, my C-UAS system is ready and willing to listen.

I know we've been round the loop a few times but I, for one, enjoy thinking through this puzzle and reading others' thoughts as well.  Keep it up.

Yeah, that's why you might want to keep the communication rudimentary.  If the transmissions are short enough and infrequent enough, you can be somewhere else by the time most C-UAS systems are able to repond.  In a target rich environment, the comms would have to happen only very briefly and just before they all went in for their kills.  If there aren't a lot of targets, it wouldn't need to bother.

[JonS]

3 hours ago, chrisl said:

Wouldn't a clever drone herder develop a swarm of drones that had some diverse capabilities?  Maybe give 10 or 20% of them a suite of RF sensors and autonomy to go hunt radars and EW systems, while the rest were capable of picking targets on their own, but also at least some rudimentary communication to keep multiple drones from picking the same target if they happen to have comms with their neighbors?

You mean like a strike package? With some flying CAP, others on EW, some clearing the route in, a couple providing oversight and a comms rebro and BDA, some SEAD, and of course some bearing warheads and payloads?

Yeah, of course. That all sounds clever and sensible, especially since it's already proven doctrinal approach to getting aerial effects delivery systems into an AO.

It doesn't sound simple or cheap though.

Edited April 12 by JonS

[JonS]

3 hours ago, chrisl said:

are they not autonomous

human autonomous, I suppose, but not machine autonomous. The point, and Tux noted, is that the purpose of autonomy is not to show off how l337 ur hax0rz are, but to preclude the need for comms which can be jammed, spoofed, and targetted.

[poesel]

12 hours ago, JonS said:

Could be useful for the last 10-20 metres, to cope with rapid final jinxing?

I guess the economics for supplying and carrying an extra sensor package just for the last 20m are not there. Especially since radar works in that range, too.

Ultrasonic is only good if you need to detect stuff that radar doesn't bounce off - like a fly. So unless drones become THAT stealthy, sound is off the table.

 

Wrt to swarm communications: the swarm could communicate in ways that are designed to be low range. Like weak IR for example. No physical chance to pick that up from distance.
With mesh networks, the swarm can also be quite large if its density is high enough to relay the communication.

All doable - only question is when we will see it.

[The_Capt]

7 hours ago, JonS said:

Yes, but there is no feedback loop between one autonomous drone and the next, in the way that there is between subsequent rounds from a rifle.

I believe the term being employed was “checkmate”….

[The_Capt]

30 minutes ago, JonS said:

human autonomous, I suppose, but not machine autonomous. The point, and Tux noted, is that the purpose of autonomy is not to show off how l337 ur hax0rz are, but to preclude the need for comms which can be jammed, spoofed, and targetted.

Now who is waving magic wands.  EW is definitely not infinite nor a perfect counter.  Pumping buckets of energy in all directions on the battlefield is the best way to get targeted and blowed up.  We have also seen plenty of HIMARSed EW platforms that prove this.  Also there are other ways for machines to communicate and synchronize than standard comms.  Image recognition algorithms, point to point low energy lasers and sound, to name a few.

The reality is that right now half the planet wants unmanned-power to be able to do what Russia is currently failing at - achieve superiority.  While the other half wants them to do what Ukraine is doing - create enough denial friction to stop a major power.  This means there will be enormous money thrown at this entire sector. 

And UGVs are just peeking out from the bushes.

[Beleg85]

Example of caltrps dropped on road from drone near Krynki:

 

[squatter]

Seems like the general feeling on here is that autonomous weapons are the way forward. 

No-one here feel like we should be arguing for the abolition of autonomous weapons, or are you all already in the 'well the bad guys are gonna do it, so we should do it first' camp? (ie the 'race to the bottom' scenario)

I'm guessing you all caught this short film by the Future of Life Institute a few years back? 

 

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, squatter said:

Seems like the general feeling on here is that autonomous weapons are the way forward. 

No-one here feel like we should be arguing for the abolition of autonomous weapons, or are you all already in the 'well the bad guys are gonna do it, so we should do it first' camp? (ie the 'race to the bottom' scenario)

I'm guessing you all caught this short film by the Future of Life Institute a few years back? 

 

After this war....definitely a race to the bottom.  Ukraine had a $6B defence budget in 2021 - Russia had a $60B+ budget.  Ukraine's ability to stop Russia, push them back and now hold again is in no small part to employment of unmanned systems.

No government on earth is going to "just say no" on that level of disruption based on humanitarian or ethical reasons unless they are so secure that they can somehow take the high ground...looking at places like Iceland.  

What a lot of people in the AP mine and Cluster munitions camps did not understand is just how secondary or even tertiary these systems are to modern militaries.  Or maybe they did and were good with pushing the needle where they could.  Regardless, precision unmanned systems are by definition not indiscriminate. Will they be abused, most definitely.  But the opportunity/risks to the very legal and moral frameworks that would try to outlaw these systems is simply too high.  Fully autonomous systems are not a force multiplier, they are a deterministic weapon.  And as such, we are definitely headed towards them.

[Battlefront.com]

10 hours ago, JonS said:

It's not four VOG-15s?

Those small drones tend to only carry 2x VOG-15.

10 hours ago, JonS said:

Because I'm not a fan of magic thinking.

Look, I have repeatedly said drones are great. But I *also* know they have drawbacks, limitations, and vulnerabilities. Pretending they don't, pretending they can do everything, isn't especially helpful.

I agree, but what you're doing is arguing against the things that they do well vs. artillery as if they don't.  You've even done strawman arguments like these:

10 hours ago, JonS said:

Yes, but it's not like you can back that drone up and try again if the first hit wasn't where you wanted it.

10 hours ago, JonS said:

Yes, but there is no feedback loop between one autonomous drone and the next, in the way that there is between subsequent rounds from a rifle.

Since when did 155 artillery shells, of any sort, have the ability to back up and hit a second time as well as communicate back to the gun what happened?

The primary discussion (at the moment) is about why drones are better than artillery overall.  Saying that they suffer some of the same limitations as artillery is a losing argument because drones are so much cheaper.  In other words, even if drones were on balance no better than artillery in terms of strike effects, they still win out on production, logistics, portability, dispersement, etc.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

House Democrats are continuing to suggest they’ll have Speaker Johnson’s back if he will put a vote on aid to Ukraine on the Floor. The bill has already been passed by the Senate.

 

 

“The head of the House Democratic Caucus suggested Wednesday that Democratic lawmakers stand ready to rescue Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) from a potential GOP coup — if he ushers Ukraine aid through the lower chamber and on to President Biden’s desk. 

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) stopped short of saying he would vote personally to save Johnson from a motion to vacate resolution. But echoing an earlier message from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Aguilar noted a number of Democrats are already on record saying they’d help keep Johnson in power if he stages a vote on the Ukraine package that passed through the Senate in February.

That willingness by Democrats to cross the aisle, Aguilar suggested, should be enough to overcome the number of Republicans who might try to topple Johnson.

“The Speaker needs to put that bill on the floor,” Aguilar said during a press briefing in the Capitol. “You have also heard me say, you have also heard Leader Jeffries say — and he has pointed out that it was an observation, not a declaration — that we feel that if the Speaker does the right thing that he is in a good position.

“But look, we’ve got to do the right thing. We’ve got to pass these bills. We’ve got to have some sanity under this dome. And that means putting bills on the floor that have 300 votes.” “

 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4585578-aguilar-johnson-speaker-ukraine/

 

The Dems are smoking out Johnson from his hidey-hole.  He's run out of excuses for not putting this to a vote, not that the excuses he had before were worthy of a supposed leader.

The fundamental problem is that Johnson personally doesn't want this to come to a vote.  And since he's a very weak leader who doesn't view the country's best interests as trumping his own, will continue to drag this out as long as possible.  For what reason?  I don't know.  Maybe he's thinking that if he delays the aid then Ukraine will have to surrender and this problem will go away?

Steve

[billbindc]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The Dems are smoking out Johnson from his hidey-hole.  He's run out of excuses for not putting this to a vote, not that the excuses he had before were worthy of a supposed leader.

The fundamental problem is that Johnson personally doesn't want this to come to a vote.  And since he's a very weak leader who doesn't view the country's best interests as trumping his own, will continue to drag this out as long as possible.  For what reason?  I don't know.  Maybe he's thinking that if he delays the aid then Ukraine will have to surrender and this problem will go away?

Steve

It's pretty clear Trump has told him not to do it and he's listening. 

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, billbindc said:

It's pretty clear Trump has told him not to do it and he's listening. 

Yup. Add to that he is solidly in the camp that somehow came to the conclusion that foreign aid makes America weaker.  I've never understood that, but there it is.

Also being reported in The Hill this morning... an uptick in US public support for sending aid to Ukraine:

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4589906-support-for-ukraine-aid-increases-gallup/

Steve

[squatter]

34 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

After this war....definitely a race to the bottom.  Ukraine had a $6B defence budget in 2021 - Russia had a $60B+ budget.  Ukraine's ability to stop Russia, push them back and now hold again is in no small part to employment of unmanned systems.

 

Yes of course that is true. But unmanned does not equal autonomous. And yes, of course autonomous weapons will offer huge advantages to those who employ them, but at what cost (see video I linked to above.)? Due to the cheapness and ease of manufacture of autonomous killer drones (once the tech has been developed), the implications of their use by bad actors are horrendous. 

The world did manage to get some level of control over nuclear proliferation (somewhat latterly and post-hoc) - should we not at aspire to learn the lessons from the successes and failures of nuclear non-proliferation and at least attempt to limit autonomous weapon development? 

If we don't then we are heading into an utterly terrifying world, and one most on here seem to have just shrugged and set off down the road towards at the first fork in the road. 

 

[Heirloom_Tomato]

Saw this quote from Tim Snyder and thought it fitting to this discussion. It seems to me, Mike Johnson is looking ahead.

[Tux]

3 minutes ago, squatter said:

Yes of course that is true. But unmanned does not equal autonomous. And yes, of course autonomous weapons will offer huge advantages to those who employ them, but at what cost (see video I linked to above.)? Due to the cheapness and ease of manufacture of autonomous killer drones (once the tech has been developed), the implications of their use by bad actors are horrendous. 

The world did manage to get some level of control over nuclear proliferation (somewhat latterly and post-hoc) - should we not at aspire to learn the lessons from the successes and failures of nuclear non-proliferation and at least attempt to limit autonomous weapon development? 

If we don't then we are heading into an utterly terrifying world, and one most on here seem to have just shrugged and set off down the road towards at the first fork in the road. 

 

I think many countries were probably quite happy to sign up to nuclear non-proliferation given the difficulty and expense involved in setting up your own nuclear arsenal.  Also, if anyone tried to breach non-proliferation treaties then there existed the legacy nuclear-armed powers who were able to carry out enforcement.

There will be basically no significant cost/difficulty barrier to establishing an autonomous killer drone fleet, once the technology exists.  That means any country will be able to do it almost at will, and, if they do, who would be able to stop them?  I think it'd have to be someone with an even bigger fleet, no?  Which means that, in this case, I don't think a treaty can work in the way we'd like it to.

Maybe the real answer is to stop thinking about developing multi-layered C-UAS as a way to free up areas to manoeuvre in southern Ukraine and to start considering it a matter of humanitarian necessity.

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, squatter said:

Yes of course that is true. But unmanned does not equal autonomous. And yes, of course autonomous weapons will offer huge advantages to those who employ them, but at what cost (see video I linked to above.)? Due to the cheapness and ease of manufacture of autonomous killer drones (once the tech has been developed), the implications of their use by bad actors are horrendous. 

The world did manage to get some level of control over nuclear proliferation (somewhat latterly and post-hoc) - should we not at aspire to learn the lessons from the successes and failures of nuclear non-proliferation and at least attempt to limit autonomous weapon development? 

If we don't then we are heading into an utterly terrifying world, and one most on here seem to have just shrugged and set off down the road towards at the first fork in the road. 

 

The issue with fully autonomous is that it offers superiority for a deterministic system.  That driver will pretty much ensure any attempts at regulation/proliferation are going to fall apart.  Now if autonomous systems achieve the level of a WMD with a MAD component, perhaps.  But the best counter to stop fully autonomous weapon systems...are other fully autonomous weapon systems.  We already have this in maritime warfare with missiles and point defence systems.  The CWIS is entirely autonomous once someone flips the switch.  They can target and engage on their own.  Why?  Because a machine can react far faster than a manned gun.

I don't think it is a question of Warhawk shrugging, it is the recognition that the odds of regulation that 1) we can agree upon and 2) sticks, is simply very unlikely.  Nuclear proliferation is a bad example because the morale imperative is not why the major powers did it.  They did so they could exclusively remain the major powers.  The other examples really are somewhat historical anomalies that we are also likely to walk back from as wars become more existential in nature.  Probably the best example is bio or chemical weapons, but we also know that neither of these really stuck either.

Trying to outlaw weapons is like trying to outlaw warfare.  We believe we can because we think that war is solely a political extremity and we can use political legality to control a political mechanism.  The reality is that the nature of warfare we currently subscribe to is the 2nd generation.  The 1st generation was "war is an extension of survival by violent means." That is the older darker nature of warfare that Clausewitz all tried to forget...right up to the point it throws itself in our faces.  In reality, we live in a third generation nature of warfare - "viable violence to achieve political ends."  The introduction of nuclear weapons put us all in a box whereby we can only really wage warfare in a constrained manner.  Go too far and one faces mutual annihilation.  The problem is when 3rd generation collides with the first one. 

So I fully believe in and adhere to the Law of Armed Conflict.  I think we should definitely aspire to be better than we really are.  But I know an existential capability when I see it. And fully autonomous weapon systems are definitely on that list.

Edited April 12 by The_Capt

[Vanir Ausf B]

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but  RUSI just published a paper on the present and near future state of drone warfare.

Mass Precision Strike: Designing UAV Complexes for Land Forces

by Justin Bronk and Jack Watling

Excerpt:

Swarming capabilities are commonly touted as the most significant area of capability development in the small UAV defence sector. However, the requirement to swarm introduces significant hardware and software complexity, which in turn drives cost growth and reduces the number of individual assets that can be fielded for any given budget. Massed UAV groupings, as seen regularly in light shows at civilian displays, rely on a ground control station tracking the position of all UAVs in a formation at all times and a central mission computer sending commands to each one to coordinate their movements. This allows large numbers of very simple small UAVs to fly in a coordinated fashion, but it is not a practical approach for military UAVs and weapons in a contested battlespace, due to terrain masking, EW, signal range and emissions control challenges – the ground control station would be struck, decapitating the whole swarm. Instead, for a mass precision strike complex to be capable of swarming tactics, the individual assets involved must have onboard sensors and low-latency datalinks that are resistant to hostile EW disruption. In addition, each asset must carry a mission computer powerful enough, and software complex enough, to fuse the information about terrain, threats and targets received from its own  sensors and those of other UAVs in the formation through datalinks, and to react to that information dynamically in real time. These capabilities are not inherently new, nor are they reliant on advances in AI or complex machine learning models. However, what the requirements for sensors, datalinks and advanced software do is raise component costs, even if used with an inherently cheap airframe/engine combination.

Furthermore, if a mass precision strike system is premised on swarming tactics for its effectiveness against its core target sets, then the number of assets required to use it in a sustained fashion will be increased, due to the need to consistently project sufficient assets into the target area to swarm. In conjunction with the increased hardware and software complexity required, this requirement to sustainably field swarming UAVs in large quantities over time means that fielding this sort of system as more than a ‘Night One’ theatre entry tool is likely to be uneconomical.

In terms of where swarming capabilities are likely to add value commensurate with the additional cost implied by their inclusion as part of a precision strike complex, the primary application will be to improve the capability to overwhelm air defence systems... Other advantages of swarming capabilities are that they can help reduce wasted warheads by deconflicting target selection so that multiple assets do not hit the same target. However, doing so in a way that can differentiate between a target having been hit and successfully disabled versus a target having been hit ineffectively and thus requiring a repeat strike with another asset requires significantly more advanced sensor and processing capabilities than simple deconfliction. Ultimately, for target deconfliction and strike optimisation, the value added question will come down to whether the additional efficiency against defended and undefended target sets gained from functional swarming capabilities outweighs the strike weight foregone by the increase in individual asset cost and the resultant reduction in quantity.

Edited April 12 by Vanir Ausf B

[Ultradave]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup. Add to that he is solidly in the camp that somehow came to the conclusion that foreign aid makes America weaker.  I've never understood that, but there it is.

Also being reported in The Hill this morning... an uptick in US public support for sending aid to Ukraine:

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4589906-support-for-ukraine-aid-increases-gallup/

Steve

In the last several days there have been visits or major entreaties by Lord Cameron, PM Kishida and Pres. Zelensky. In addition there has been a pretty vocal group in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, advocating for passing the aid bill. Their words were all publicized, at least for anyone who cared to see what they said. It's possible it's having some effect on public opinion.

Dave