How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, Tenses said:

I think that ridiculing the additional ability, which Boxer has in self defense against drones is baseless. On modern battlefield everything like this is useful.

As for general counter we should drop the thinking that something essentialy changed in a way, which cancels all previous solutions. UAVs are essentialy air force, but the one which managed to get very low, very close and very small. To counter air threat we need both our own fighter/interceptor UAVs and ground point/area defence. 30mm Boxer turret is very capable because unlike smaller and cheaper solutions like 50 cal., which would be perfect for this situation, it can reach farther and shoot down all kinds of aerial targets, also very tough. It should be supplemented by at least 10, if not 100 times more 50 cal. auto turrets to turn the tide of cost effectiveness but all is needed and all should be used, if necessary. 

There is currently discussion relating to navy war against drones on Red Sea and general conclusion is that no one will be waiting for the drone to come in the range of 2km to kill it with cheap point defense. All assets should be used and cheaper solutions should be implemented on the go.

I would much more take Boxer with anti drone capability than with no such option. It can do well with so many threats that it makes this kind of platforms very versatile.

The ridicule wasn't on the poor Boxer, it was on the test and video.  This is the tech porn that gets rolled out at every trade show as industry tries to sell something because they built it, not because it will work.

Things have "essentially changed" and we need some serious rethinks - that is my premise after watching this war very closely for over two years.  Now there are two camps around this: those who agree and those who disagree.  For those who disagree some just have not seen enough evidence...ok, well time will tell.  And then there are those who disagree because they do not want it, no matter what, for any number of reasons.

 If history is any indication, we will take an agonizing long and expensive route to shift to wherever war is shifting towards.  But warfare shifts.  It has in my lifetime and will continue to.  I can recall old officer's and NCOs decrying that "GPS is just a fad!  Gimme a map and compass!" Ok, fine, whatever.

I would like to think we can all agree that the shifts in this war alone have been awe inspiring even if what we do about them is unclear.  

 

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, poesel said:

Yeah, agree. I don't understand the hate here.

Because it is a typical defense industry giving a false sense of security by showing an expensive system working in almost ideal conditions.  Is it better than nothing?  Sure, anything is better than nothing.  But if the Boxer is driving down a road with real world terrain conditions, I don't see it doing much of anything against this:

There's all kinds of scenarios to throw into the mix that this Boxer system would fail to address, such as multiple swarms timed to come at the gun (or what it is protecting) from multiple angles simultaneously.

The risk of slick marketing products like this is that they will likely cost too much for too little and tie up resources that could have been invested into broader solutions against a wider range of threats.

Steve

 

[Probus]

I have a feeling that future APS systems are going to be responsible for quite a few bird... eliminations...

[LongLeftFlank]

3 hours ago, holoween said:

Yes going slow is the answer for drones against aps unless..

https://youtu.be/RkQFhPJuxgk?feature=shared

Good! The slow blade penetrates the shield.

[holoween]

50 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

FFS have a meeting fellas, gimme an exploding 50 cal round.  Build in a miniature proximity fuse...it is 2024.  30mm is a big slow gun hitting many fast moving little bastards.  Better yet, a minigun that shoots .22 cal rounds and make a land warfare version of a CWIS.  Small enough you could mount 2 or 3 on a Boxer.

Sometimes i wonder how much you even think through your suggestions.

One of the issues for aps you bring up is the stadoff ability of newer atgm/drones and yet you now suggest weapons for it that have dramatically less range than what is currently being used and also needs a direct hit rather than hit anywhere within a few meters.

And asking for a miniaturized proximity fuse against a almost fully plastic target that actually works and doesnt cost several times the drones cost itself.

[quakerparrot67]

1 minute ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Good! The slow blade penetrates the shield.

Yes, gurney.

[LongLeftFlank]

3 minutes ago, quakerparrot67 said:

Yes, gurney.

Lynch's Dune 1984: everyone's favourite bad movie.

[LongLeftFlank]

51 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

But if the Boxer is driving down a road with real world terrain conditions, I don't see it doing much of anything against this:

 

Well I've never been totally sure that Chinese drones-in-bamboo video is undoctored either....

(speaking as someone who has had to cut effing out-of-control bamboo-from-hell)

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

One of the issues for aps you bring up is the stadoff ability of newer atgm/drones and yet you now suggest weapons for it that have dramatically less range than what is currently being used and also needs a direct hit rather than hit anywhere within a few meters.

And asking for a miniaturized proximity fuse against a almost fully plastic target that actually works and doesnt cost several times the drones cost itself.

No, you don’t seem to get it. For point defense, you want a much smaller, lighter and cheaper weapon with plentiful ammo. A giant 30mm turret is not going to provide cheap defense. You can’t mount this turret on any small vehicles, and it’s a big giant target that is hard to hide, and it won’t be able to do anything about the purpose built combat drones that will pop and fire NLOS munitions like Brimstone once their picket drones get downed.

Air defense is a series of bubbles, and for 200m-2km, a lightweight fast moving munition makes a lot more sense, and will likely be cost-competitive with 35mm smart shells (not to mention the whole stupid turret). See China Lake’s poverty missile for $5k with a 1lb warhead at 5lb weight, or any FPV drone being used in Ukraine. For longer range, we already have missiles.

If Rheinmetall was so confident, they should build a bunch and send them to the front lines, or ship one to the US where we have test ranges that are as big as entire EU countries, and go against a few Ukrainian drone operators. But no, they built a 90s weapon for a 2030s fight.

Edited May 13 by kimbosbread

[Vanir Ausf B]

Tatarigami_UA on the Kharkiv situation:

• The attack was not unexpected: HUR representative Andriy Yusov stated that the enemy's actions began according to a known schedule that had been communicated to authorities, leadership, and command. My team has publicly reported about dispersed units along the border as well
• Given the current lack of information, it's too early to draw definitive conclusions. However, the abandonment of positions and advancement beyond the grey zone indicates brigade leadership's and the strategic command's inability to react to threats despite having intel
• This is the result of systematic issues stemming from a lack of understanding of brigade capabilities and readiness, along with problems in personnel training, leading to an inability to effectively position and allocate resources when needed.
• The delayed aid from the West, particularly in terms of artillery and artillery shells, is indeed contributing to the problem. However, this issue is not the core problem in this case, and blaming the West for it is counter-productive.

https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1790086938046710097

[danfrodo]

18 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Tatarigami_UA on the Kharkiv situation:

• The attack was not unexpected: HUR representative Andriy Yusov stated that the enemy's actions began according to a known schedule that had been communicated to authorities, leadership, and command. My team has publicly reported about dispersed units along the border as well
• Given the current lack of information, it's too early to draw definitive conclusions. However, the abandonment of positions and advancement beyond the grey zone indicates brigade leadership's and the strategic command's inability to react to threats despite having intel
• This is the result of systematic issues stemming from a lack of understanding of brigade capabilities and readiness, along with problems in personnel training, leading to an inability to effectively position and allocate resources when needed.
• The delayed aid from the West, particularly in terms of artillery and artillery shells, is indeed contributing to the problem. However, this issue is not the core problem in this case, and blaming the West for it is counter-productive.

https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1790086938046710097

That's disconcerting.  At the same time, there's reports that RU lost 1700 in one day -- cutting by half that's still a good day for UKR.  Hopefully RU will push recklessly and get smashed.  Time will tell.  

[hcrof]

41 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

No, you don’t seem to get it. For point defense, you want a much smaller, lighter and cheaper weapon with plentiful ammo. A giant 30mm turret is not going to provide cheap defense. You can’t mount this turret on any small vehicles, and it’s a big giant target that is hard to hide, and it won’t be able to do anything about the purpose built combat drones that will pop and fire NLOS munitions like Brimstone once their picket drones get downed.

Air defense is a series of bubbles, and for 200m-2km, a lightweight fast moving munition makes a lot more sense, and will likely be cost-competitive with 35mm smart shells (not to mention the whole stupid turret). See China Lake’s poverty missile for $5k with a 1lb warhead at 5lb weight, or any FPV drone being used in Ukraine. For longer range, we already have missiles.

If Rheinmetall was so confident, they should build a bunch and send them to the front lines, or ship one to the US where we have test ranges that are as big as entire EU countries, and go against a few Ukrainian drone operators. But no, they built a 90s weapon for a 2030s fight.

But a 30mm does a lot more than just drone defense. It primarily shoots infantry and light armour and would be present on the vehicle anyway. rheinmetall are offering a small upgrade to allow it to act as part of the defence onion against drones. If it performs more or less as advertised why is this a bad thing? 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, holoween said:

Sometimes i wonder how much you even think through your suggestions.

One of the issues for aps you bring up is the stadoff ability of newer atgm/drones and yet you now suggest weapons for it that have dramatically less range than what is currently being used and also needs a direct hit rather than hit anywhere within a few meters.

And asking for a miniaturized proximity fuse against a almost fully plastic target that actually works and doesnt cost several times the drones cost itself.

Sometimes I wonder how much you even think through your answers.

So the 35mm round they are using had a clever end-muzzle switch to set the detonation ranges, this is how the 35mm round knows when to detonate - it is fed the info by the targeting systems onboard...cool.

https://www.rheinmetall.com/Rheinmetall Group/brochure-download/Weapon-Ammmunition/D108e0721-Ahead-KETF-35x228-PMD062-RWMS.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinmetall_Oerlikon_Millennium_Gun

Now a 35mm shell is 1.38 inches across.  A .50 cal round is 12.7mm, so slightly less than half.  Now if we only had an HE .50 cal round...hmm..oh wait...we do...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raufoss_Mk_211

So the insurmountable engineering challenge is to take the fuse that is in a 35mm shell and somehow - using dark magic from the far side of the moon perhaps - and put a version of it in an existing .50 cal round.  Why do this?  Well the .50 gun is a lot more prevalent than the 35mm, it is lighter and it has a higher rate of fire...and it is cheaper.

So we are already using a smart fuze on a flying piece of plastic...we need another smart fuze.  One can buy, carry and shoot .50 cals a lot faster and cheaper than a 35mm space gun.  Hell gimme a good old 20mm AGL, same idea.  Oh wait, I know this is all crazy hi tech hand waving, they could never fit anything like that into a .50 cal shell...oh wait you right, they stuck a fire and forget guidance system on one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXACTO

 

In 2014, FFS.  Now I am basically making your side of the argument for you.  We need this, precision small kinetic rounds at range in combination with CUAS CAP.  I want them on cheap mass producible fast light armor.  You want them on a 7m Euro 25-30 ton beast.

But it is good to see the western military school of "any solution has to be as expensive and large as possible" is alive and well.

 

Edited May 13 by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, hcrof said:

But a 30mm does a lot more than just drone defense. It primarily shoots infantry and light armour and would be present on the vehicle anyway. rheinmetall are offering a small upgrade to allow it to act as part of the defence onion against drones. If it performs more or less as advertised why is this a bad thing? 

Mainly because we want the main gun focused on direct fires support, not waving around in the air at bird sized drones.  It is too much gun that we may need elsewhere...assuming we get within direct fire range of course.  A smaller, cheaper point defense gun would make far more sense, in combination with a whole lot of other stuff.  My other issue with the big ol 30mm is its weight but maybe we could work around that.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Well I've never been totally sure that Chinese drones-in-bamboo video is undoctored either....

Could be but not only example:

Lotta doctoring going on

[Anthony P.]

6 hours ago, hcrof said:

Artillery delivered munitions, the Chinese javelin copy, NLAW, the new TOW and any copies the Chinese might make, drone drops and fpv drones can all easily do top attack and that is just the stuff off the top of my head. In fact I see line of sight attacks being the minority of attacks in the future.

Artillery shells, even guided ones, are hardly a new threat.

Both the NLAW and new TOWs are top attack, but not diving in from high. Rather they come flying in horizontally, just a few feet above the tank. Even current APSs can absolutely deal with that, they just have to be reprogrammed to intercept projectiles which they currently would ignore thinking they are going to miss high. And if you steer an FPV drone into a Stuke like dive attack, it's just going to spin out of control. There's a reason all those films show them attacking in quite shallow angles.

What you or I "see being the future" is very subjective and doesn't mean a whole lot as far as debates go.

 

Quote

As for very slow, if you don't have a lower limit on speed for your APS it will fire at birds and oncoming street signs. But dropped munitions and FPV drones can come in slower than a bird. So you add more bells and whistles to try and reduce the false positive rate and your cost and processing power just went up again. 

You can't have your cake and eat it. If you're going to go overboard with absurdly slow attacks, you:
A, fail to catch up with the target
B, won't hit it with enough energy to detonate the munition
C, will be flying so slow that you'll give people plenty of time to spot the drone and shoot it down

The real problem is that you're downplaying the ability of modern technology in a manner which would befit Pierre Sprey. AESA based APSs are literally at the point of detecting and classifying bullets: if that's something they're starting to become capable of, they probably won't have much of a problem detecting and classifying a geriatric drone moving slower than a glacier.

Edited May 13 by Anthony P.

[Anthony P.]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

We've seen plenty of vehicles parked in thick forests get destroyed by artillery spotted by UAS.  APS doesn't protect against that sort of threat at all.

They certainly don't, but I'm not arguing that APSs is a silver bullet. Nothing happens or works in a vacuum, drones will likely need to be countered by increased ECM and light AAA (more than both sides have been doing for months already) and possibly new technological developments along the lines of interceptor drones, direct energy weapons and more science fiction-esque weapons.

 

Quote

Aside from this, we have seen some amount of successful attacks on vehicles parked under cover.  Drones can fly between trees in some cases.  Not too long ago we saw strikes on Russian vehicles that were inside a warehouse.  We've also seen plenty of drones flying into windows, including the slow stalking ones of Magyar taking out Russian ISR posts along the Dnepr.

Sure, but I'd say "no silver bullets" and "we only see when it works" again.

ERA didn't make tanks invulnerable to ATGMs. Neither will parking AFVs under better cover and concealment, but I'd bet it'll be part of the solution.

And we only see the films of drones finding and destroying targets. We don't see films of drones returning to base not having found anything to engage because the Russkies had done their homework and concealed those dozen tanks the drone flew past unwittingly, the drones which get shot down or the ones which crash because the Russkies were on top of their ECM game that day.

[hcrof]

17 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Mainly because we want the main gun focused on direct fires support, not waving around in the air at bird sized drones.  It is too much gun that we may need elsewhere...assuming we get within direct fire range of course.  A smaller, cheaper point defense gun would make far more sense, in combination with a whole lot of other stuff.  My other issue with the big ol 30mm is its weight but maybe we could work around that.

My view is that you have one primary weapon system on a vehicle and that is the one with your fancy upgrades. Yes you can add a coax and a missile tube slaved to the main sight but are you suggesting a RWS with high grade optics and stabilisation on top of it as well? 

If your vehicle has a 50 cal, that is what shoots the drones (although I am a little skeptical about it's effectiveness) if it has a 30mm than that shoots the drones. (The nice thing about a 30mm is it can also get the Mavic/orlan types as well as the imminent fpvs). 

The gun, as you point out, is just one layer of the survivability onion. I don't think it needs to be a dedicated system. 

[Tux]

17 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

And if you steer an FPV drone into a Stuke like dive attack, it's just going to spin out of control. There's a reason all those films show them attacking in quite shallow angles.

Sorry, I must have missed something: why can’t FPVs be flown in a steep dive?  Why do they “spin out of control”?  I assume you don’t mean they enter an actual spin if you try and dive them too steeply, since that would make no sense at all.

[hcrof]

36 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Artillery shells, even guided ones, are hardly a new threat.

Both the NLAW and new TOWs are top attack, but not diving in from high. Rather they come flying in horizontally, just a few feet above the tank. Even current APSs can absolutely deal with that, they just have to be reprogrammed to intercept projectiles which they currently would ignore thinking they are going to miss high. And if you steer an FPV drone into a Stuke like dive attack, it's just going to spin out of control. There's a reason all those films show them attacking in quite shallow angles.

What you or I "see being the future" is very subjective and doesn't mean a whole lot as far as debates go.

 

You can't have your cake and eat it. If you're going to go overboard with absurdly slow attacks, you:
A, fail to catch up with the target
B, won't hit it with enough energy to detonate the munition
C, will be flying so slow that you'll give people plenty of time to spot the drone and shoot it down

The real problem is that you're downplaying the ability of modern technology in a manner which would befit Pierre Sprey. AESA based APSs are literally at the point of detecting and classifying bullets: if that's something they're starting to become capable of, they probably won't have much of a problem detecting and classifying a geriatric drone moving slower than a glacier.

I am not denying the tech is there, I am just saying it is impractical. To have hemispheric coverage how many aesa radars do you need? And how many shooters? One for each side so 5? 

So now find space for them amongst your smoke dischargers, antennas, sights, hatches, main weapon, storage etc. Great, now you can't really use ERA because all surfaces are covered in stuff. And your radar return is huge because you are covered in spiky bits of metal. 

But let's go further. You need to maintain 5 radar sets and 5 shooters. They might get damaged by tree branches. They might get damaged by small arms fire. They might randomly stop working at the worst moment. We have already talked about EM emissions but what about the danger to infantry and soft skin vehicles nearby? 

I think they are impractical, unless you are defending a patriot radar or something. 

Edit: and to be clear, it might even be worth it if APS could defend against all threats reliably, but they defend against a subset of threats most of the time (according to the manufacturer). And they cost a lot of money. 

Edited May 13 by hcrof

[Anthony P.]

3 minutes ago, Tux said:

Sorry, I must have missed something: why can’t FPVs be flown in a steep dive?  Why do they “spin out of control”?  I assume you don’t mean they enter an actual spin if you try and dive them too steeply, since that would make no sense at all.

Well, it's not that no drone can attack in a steep dive. But as of now, most of these drones are commercially sourced drones and those aren't designed to tip over into steep dives. I'm not an aerospace engineer so don't expect detailed explanations on why they'd crash, but you'd run into issues with overspeeding, losing lift, etc. These drones are usually rotary wing (i.e. helicopter rotors rather than planes with propellers), and those don't take kindly to going too fast, pitching much, or banking over on their sides.

So not an actual spin, no, the pilot would lose control and the drone would tumble violently out of the sky.

 

There's possibly also the issue of signal delay: if the drone's camera feed is lagging by maybe a second or two, it wouldn't be practical to attempt to dive onto a moving target as you'd have to lead it (i.e. pilot the drone in two, or maybe even three dimensions). Safer then to descend to be on level with the target and just chase after it, controlling the drone in just one dimension.

[Anthony P.]

8 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I am not denying the tech is there, I am just saying it is impractical.

I'm cutting out the details, because those are a lot of theories which you're molding expressly to add completely hypothetical circumstances favouring your argument.

APSs already cover more or less a 360° area around the AFV it's protecting, so it's not as though several munitions around it is some strange, foreign concept.

I completely fail to see why radar return is suddenly an important factor? Tanks aren't exactly stealth vehicles to begin with, and adding a few fairly small additional objects is hardly going to add anything to what's already an extremely conspicuous radar target.

 

Yes, APSs will likely not shoot down every single thing thrown at a tank. Just the same as how ERA won't stop every single ATGM from reaching the armour, or how the armour won't stop every single shell, sabot or missile from penetrating the tank, or how blowout panels won't save every single tank crew from a tank brewing up, or how their crew's PPE won't always save every single one of them, or how even the tank's gun being there doesn't guarantee that it too might malfunction "at the worst moment". Does that mean that all of those things too are worthless features which shouldn't be pursued?

Soon the tank will just be a lonely set of tracks in an empty field at this rate of scrapping and/or discounting everything which isn't guaranteed to always work out perfectly.

[poesel]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Because it is a typical defense industry giving a false sense of security by showing an expensive system working in almost ideal conditions.  Is it better than nothing?  Sure, anything is better than nothing.  But if the Boxer is driving down a road with real world terrain conditions, I don't see it doing much of anything against this:

 

I think it's a bit funny that you take this as an example. A bamboo forest is 'real world terrain', but let's fly this swarm in a fir forest for a laugh.

Impressive as this video is, it is a prepared demonstration, as is the Boxers'. We will never know how often they tried until they got one without a drone crashing.

The Boxer demo is nothing more than an ad. And we all have seen enough of those to know what the difference between an ad and reality is. Now, some here seem to think that everyone who says, that this update is a good thing, has fallen for it and thinks this is the new Wunderwaffe that will end the war.

Nope. I just think this is a good update to an existing system that makes it better. It will help in some situations and won't in others. That is all.

 

Btw.: for once the Germans did not totally overengineer something and just went with what was available, and yet you still don't like it...

 

 

[photon]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

We need this, precision small kinetic rounds at range in combination with CUAS CAP. 

This is almost the combination the USN settled on against the kamikaze threat. Radar guided CAP at long range, proximity fused semi-automatic dual purpose 5" guns firing explosive shells at medium range for anything that eluded the CAP, 40mm automatic wing choppers at short range for anything that eluded the flak barrage. Scale everything down by a factor of 10 and you've got what you're proposing.

But the key to the whole thing was having a metric asspile of semi-disposable ships because some percentage of the attacks will get through and if that degrades your combat power too much you're in real trouble. We used DD picket sponges (we had approximately infinity destroyers at that point), an inner cordon of battleships (that could no longer project useful combat power, but could throw up walls of flak), and an inner-inner core of very vulnerable very cheap carriers mixed with less vulnerable big expensive carriers.

But the real key to naval operational maneuver was the Big Blue Blanket (tm). If you systematically suppress all the launch sites, then everything else is just backup. What does that look like in land warfare? I have no idea. There are too many launch sites, because the launch site is anywhere.

I could see a heavily armored legacy mech formation (hopefully with some sort of unmanned drive; we lost a lot of men in the picket destroyers) working like a drone-atgm sponge while other systems apply combat power to degrade the enemy operational system?

[poesel]

22 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Well, it's not that no drone can attack in a steep dive. But as of now, most of these drones are commercially sourced drones and those aren't designed to tip over into steep dives.

Sorry, but no. They can dive. The maneuverability of these things is insane.

The reason they don't do dive attacks is that the camera is usually fixed in such an angle, that you can look forward when you fly forward. Since the copter has to tilt forward to fly forward, the camera needs to look up a few degrees.
Long story short: with these type of drones, you cannot look at your target if you do a StuKa attack.