How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[danfrodo]

good stuff in this post today.  Close combat video of single UKR soldier vs 4 RU, he kills one or two then some small arms from off camera finish the job.  Also has report of where RU is concentrating fire, and it's east of Kharkiv toward Kupyansk, speculation that maybe Kupyansk is the real goal of this operation.  

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/13/2240482/-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-Ukraine-strikes-another-large-Russian-ammo-dump?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

[Anthony P.]

1 minute ago, poesel said:

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

All of them? And when carrying heavy loads like an RPG-7 grenade?

If you're that certain, I'll bow to your superior wisdom on that specific matter.

[hcrof]

21 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

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.

I think we will just have to agree to disagree at this point. It is up to defence procurement to buy APS or not and how widely they choose to distribute it across platforms.

I wanted to clarify my point above though since I did not include my assumptions behind it. An armoured vehicle will never be invisible to radar, but it can be inconspicuous. If you keep it small, clean and with some multi spectrum camouflage it might be difficult to distinguish between it and a truck or van on radar. At that point you are able to disguise your intent a lot better than a 80tonne MBT with add-on kit everywhere and which lights radar/lidar up like a Christmas tree. 

[Fenris]

Interesting.  Online noise or real story - anyone know?

Wonder if this is the same one we saw last week

Kreminna, 63rd Mech, looks like the attack was defeated

 

Edited May 13 by Fenris

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, hcrof said:

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. 

To my mind, and TTPs back me up on this, the role of the primary weapon system to make the primary role of the vehicle possible. A 30mm chain gun is designed to provide direct fire support to infantry in an all arms team approach.  So if you double hat that gun it is going to be pulled in two directions at once.  Further it will be exploited by the enemy.  So this platoon of Boxers go in on an assault and half of them are pointing at the incoming FPVs. That means the platoon has halved its firepower support in its own survival.  This is why we put AA guns on the top of vehicles in the first place.  The main gun should be focused on the primary mission, not its own self-preservation, that is what secondaries are designed for.  The coax on the tanks was originally designed to blast off close in infantry assault.  This was not a job for the main gun.

Or you introduce another set of platforms entirely and have them provide close in support.  Problem here is that ups the logistics and ISR bill because you now have more vehicles.  So, yes, I am suggesting a C-UAS RWS as well, or put it on a cheap support platform and take those risks.  If a Boxer platoon has their main guns worried about FPVs on an assault they won’t be doing wha those guns were designed for in the first place - supporting the infantry on the last mile.

[holoween]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Sometime 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 spin .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 you 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.

 

If we very roughly scale the 35mm round down to .50cal were looking at 10 subprojectiles compared to 152 and thats just going by weight of the projectile not accounting for how well it stacks. Unless we build a new gun were going to use the m2 so 500rpm compared to 1000rpm for the 35mm. The .50 also has around 150m/s less muzzle velocity.

So to get even remotely close in capability you need to build a whole lot of .50cal turrets. and given that the more expensive parts are the fire controll not the gun itself youre very quickly going to run into way higher costs for similar effect.

And while .50cal ammo is more widespread than 35/30mm those arent exactly rare given they are standard ifv and spaag calibers.

Also the exacto isnt fire and forget

[kimbosbread]

56 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

All of them? And when carrying heavy loads like an RPG-7 grenade?

If you're that certain, I'll bow to your superior wisdom on that specific matter.

Dude. Go buy a hobby drone. These things have much different flying characteristics than a helicopter.

A quadcopter can travel in power under any direction. It can go up and down fast. They can dive, as well as just go straight down because that’s what happens when you have 4 props.

And a fixed wing FPV drone like Lancet can in fact dive quite well. Have you not watched any videos?

[holoween]

11 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

To my mind, and TTPs back me up on this, the role of the primary weapon system to make the primary role of the vehicle possible. A 30mm chain gun is designed to provide direct fire support to infantry in an all arms team approach.  So if you double hat that gun it is going to be pulled in two directions at once.  Further it will be exploited by the enemy.  So this platoon of Boxers go in on an assault and half of them are pointing at the incoming FPVs. That means the platoon has halved its firepower support in its own survival.  This is why we put AA guns on the top of vehicles in the first place.  The main gun should be focused on the primary mission, not its own self-preservation, that is what secondaries are designed for.  The coax on the tanks was originally designed to blast off close in infantry assault.  This was not a job for the main gun.

Or you introduce another set of platforms entirely and have them provide close in support.  Problem here is that ups the logistics and ISR bill because you now have more vehicles.  So, yes, I am suggesting a C-UAS RWS as well, or put it on a cheap support platform and take those risks.  If a Boxer platoon has their main guns worried about FPVs on an assault they won’t be doing wha those guns were designed for in the first place - supporting the infantry on the last mile.

Im sorry but this doctrinally seems really strange to me. Because shooting down fpv drones is supporting its survival. And at least in the german army the idea that the IFV doubles as an AA vehicle isnt exactly new. The marder specifically has an AA gun as main armament

 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

good stuff in this post today.  Close combat video of single UKR soldier vs 4 RU, he kills one or two then some small arms from off camera finish the job.  Also has report of where RU is concentrating fire, and it's east of Kharkiv toward Kupyansk, speculation that maybe Kupyansk is the real goal of this operation.  

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/13/2240482/-Russian-stuff-blowing-up-Ukraine-strikes-another-large-Russian-ammo-dump?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

 

1 hour ago, Anthony P. said:

All of them? And when carrying heavy loads like an RPG-7 grenade?

If you're that certain, I'll bow to your superior wisdom on that specific matter.

I can't post it directly because twitter hates me even more than usual, but there is video in the Daily Kos article above that show a drone diving into the rear deck of a tank, from behind, at a an angle of seventy five to eighty degrees. Assuming the warhead was at least an RPG-7 equivalent, because the the tank went super nova.

[JonS]

50 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

 This is why we put AA guns on the top of vehicles in the first place.  The main gun should be focused on the primary mission, not its own self-preservation, that is what secondaries are designed for.  The coax on the tanks was originally designed to blast off close in infantry assault.  This was not a job for the main gun.

Is this true?

As I understand it, the 50cals on top of Sherman's (and every US tank ever since) were there because the main armament was literally incapable of engaging aerial targets. Furthermore, you couldn't ever man the 50cal /while/ using the main gun - for one thing it required one of the turret crew - who all have better things to be doing in ground  combat - to be outside the turret and on the back deck. And secondly, the concussion of the main armament made standing around outside ... not a great life choice.

Was the coax there to provide a ranging device for the main armament and just happened to be useful for back scratching, or was it there as a back scratcher and was subsequently found to be useful for ranging? I thought it was for ranging, but maybe not?

[MikeyD]

Patton in his pre-war writings considered the tank mg its primary and most useful weapon (Considering what cannons were mounted at the time maybe he had a point). More than 60 years later an M1A2 Abrams commander during Fallujah complained in this sort of fighting his tank is little more than an over-size mg platform. He wasn't complaining about the mg, he was complaining he only had one. Sherman at least had two.

Edited May 14 by MikeyD

[Splinty]

6 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Patton in his pre-war writings considered the tank mg its primary and most useful weapon (Considering what cannons were mounted at the time maybe he had a point). More than 60 years later an M1A2 Abrams commander during Fallujah complained in this sort of fighting his tank is little more than an over-size mg platform. He wasn't complaining about the mg, he was complaining he only had one. Sherman at least had two.

He had three. The commanders and the loaders.

[MikeyD]

...Which would have necessitated unbuttoning, which in Fallujah would be suicidal.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, holoween said:

If we very roughly scale the 35mm round down to .50cal were looking at 10 subprojectiles compared to 152 and thats just going by weight of the projectile not accounting for how well it stacks. Unless we build a new gun were going to use the m2 so 500rpm compared to 1000rpm for the 35mm. The .50 also has around 150m/s less muzzle velocity.

So to get even remotely close in capability you need to build a whole lot of .50cal turrets. and given that the more expensive parts are the fire controll not the gun itself youre very quickly going to run into way higher costs for similar effect.

And while .50cal ammo is more widespread than 35/30mm those arent exactly rare given they are standard ifv and spaag calibers.

Also the exacto isnt fire and forget

Ok, seriously, I am tired of doing the homework here -

It is called the M3 and goes back to Korean War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning  And weighs 65 pounds https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196096/browning-m3-machine-gun/#:~:text=Gun weight%3A 65 lbs. - add on another couple hundred for turret etc.  Slightly faster rate of fire the Oberon 35mm who comes in with turret at 4.5t.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_35.  Now you go do the freakin cost estimate and show which one is cheaper and easier to produce, even at a loss of muzzle velocity and frag.

Exacto- yes it is.

The new .50 BMG gun and improved scope could employ "fire-and-forget" technologies including "fin-stabilized projectiles, spin-stabilized projectiles, internal and/or external aero-actuation control methods, projectile guidance technologies, tamper proofing, small stable power supplies, and advanced sighting, optical resolution and clarity technologies". Its estimated availability at the time was 2015.

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

 

 

 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, holoween said:

Im sorry but this doctrinally seems really strange to me. Because shooting down fpv drones is supporting its survival. And at least in the german army the idea that the IFV doubles as an AA vehicle isnt exactly new. The marder specifically has an AA gun as main armament

 

It is strange to you for a Boxer platoon to have half its main guns pointed at the sky instead of on the objective?  Yes the Marder mounted a gun originally designed for AA but that is not why it is on the damned Marder.  It is an autocannon designed for direct fire support.  Can it do AA?  Sure most cannon have an AD role as defence against tac aviation.  It is designed to counter several dozen FPVs swarming it while trying to support an infantry assault?  No. The real hint is that the gun is mounted on an IFV - “I” stands for Infantry.

The Marder has a repurposed 20mm chain gun for direct fire support.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

Is this true?

As I understand it, the 50cals on top of Sherman's (and every US tank ever since) were there because the main armament was literally incapable of engaging aerial targets. Furthermore, you couldn't ever man the 50cal /while/ using the main gun - for one thing it required one of the turret crew - who all have better things to be doing in ground  combat - to be outside the turret and on the back deck. And secondly, the concussion of the main armament made standing around outside ... not a great life choice.

Was the coax there to provide a ranging device for the main armament and just happened to be useful for back scratching, or was it there as a back scratcher and was subsequently found to be useful for ranging? I thought it was for ranging, but maybe not?

I gotta assume you are taking about coax as your example supports an AA secondary - which I feel like we are arguing over because we need something to argue over by this point. It is a bad sign if we are honestly arguing that the main gun on an IFVs primary role should be AD.

As to coax:
“Coaxial weapons are usually aimed by use of the main gun control. It is usually used to engage infantry or other "soft" targets where use of shots from the main gun would be dangerous, ineffective or wasteful.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_mount#:~:text=Coaxial weapons are usually aimed,be dangerous%2C ineffective or wasteful.

Original coaxials may have been used for ranging but first time I recall hearing about them as a requirement was on the Eastern Front to sweep infantry off close assault, but I am pretty sure they were used before this.  Coaxials on recoilless guns were employed.

Rolling into battle with the main gun as the primary C-UAS system for IFV is a very bad idea. Having cheap secondaries, and a lot of them, along with a layered system of other protection is a very good idea.  I don’t think it will solve for all of the shifts we have seen but it is a start - my money is light, cheap, fast and distributed…and a new concept on what manoeuvre means going forward.

[chrisl]

4 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

All of them? And when carrying heavy loads like an RPG-7 grenade?

If you're that certain, I'll bow to your superior wisdom on that specific matter.

Enough of them.

And that's this month's drones.  In a few months there will be a whole new generation of them.

Spend a couple dollars and a few hundred grams of lift and you can put both the camera and the warhead on gimbals so you can repoint them both straight down on the fly and land an RPG-7 warhead on whatever part of the tank's top surface you want, no flippy-flight required.

We've also seen no shortage of drones that hover at altitude and drop a shaped charge straight down on their victims.  And carrying multiple charges so they can do it more than once if they miss or have enough targets.

 

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, poesel said:

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.

It wouldn't do well in most of the forests around me either, but that's not the point.  The point is that drones are already capable of autonomous navigation through extremely complex terrain.  A bamboo forest is actually more challenging than the forest in temperate forest in the video that The_Capt linked to after mine.

This other point is that autonomy provides for extremely easy coordination compared to Humans.  You can deploy a swarm into the air and have it divide itself up and find it's own way to the target from different angles and arrive there more-or-less simultaneously.

The Rhienmetall weapon is not designed for this sort of encounter.  At all.  Instead, it is designed for more-or-less traditional approaches with long and wide open shots at the approaching enemy.  No complex ground clutter, no need to figure out how it can shoot at target A in one arc and still be able to rotate around to get Targets B, C, and D coming in from separate arcs before one of them hits. 
 

4 hours ago, poesel said:

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.

For sure, but in the Rheinmetall video they are demonstrating a weapon systems that they are claiming will save lives and equipment, the Chinese demonstration was simply showing what AI can do.  Of the two, the Chinese demonstration was vastly more authentic and realistic.

Look at that "swarm" in the Rheinmetall video and explain to me why someone would develop al that tech for a swarm attack and have them march together in a tight cluster at a slow pace in a direct path right out in the open towards their target.  That's like having a color TV and only showing black and white still images.  Sorry, I can't take it seriously.

Steve

 

[dan/california]

3 hours ago, JonS said:

Is this true?

As I understand it, the 50cals on top of Sherman's (and every US tank ever since) were there because the main armament was literally incapable of engaging aerial targets. Furthermore, you couldn't ever man the 50cal /while/ using the main gun - for one thing it required one of the turret crew - who all have better things to be doing in ground  combat - to be outside the turret and on the back deck. And secondly, the concussion of the main armament made standing around outside ... not a great life choice.

Was the coax there to provide a ranging device for the main armament and just happened to be useful for back scratching, or was it there as a back scratcher and was subsequently found to be useful for ranging? I thought it was for ranging, but maybe not?

The stated purpose of the fifty caliber was AA, and a lot of them were mounted in ways that mage it very inconvenient to even fire them the forward direction. It mounted a thirty caliber coax, AND a thirty caliber in the front hull. The standard ammo load out was 6,000 rounds. That would be a lot of ranging. The idea was recon by fire in quantity near as I can tell.

The U.S. still thinks this is a good idea, an Abrams carries about 11,000 rounds for its coax machine gun.

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I gotta assume you are taking about coax as your example supports an AA secondary - which I feel like we are arguing over because we need something to argue over by this point. It is a bad sign if we are honestly arguing that the main gun on an IFVs primary role should be AD.

As to coax:
“Coaxial weapons are usually aimed by use of the main gun control. It is usually used to engage infantry or other "soft" targets where use of shots from the main gun would be dangerous, ineffective or wasteful.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_mount#:~:text=Coaxial weapons are usually aimed,be dangerous%2C ineffective or wasteful.

Original coaxials may have been used for ranging but first time I recall hearing about them as a requirement was on the Eastern Front to sweep infantry off close assault, but I am pretty sure they were used before this.  Coaxials on recoilless guns were employed.

Rolling into battle with the main gun as the primary C-UAS system for IFV is a very bad idea. Having cheap secondaries, and a lot of them, along with a layered system of other protection is a very good idea.  I don’t think it will solve for all of the shifts we have seen but it is a start - my money is light, cheap, fast and distributed…and a new concept on what manoeuvre means going forward.

I can envision a U.S. version of the Tugunska on a Bradley chassis with a gun, SAMs, and that new laser widget they say might, maybe work. But The_Capt is right, they would come at a minimum of fifteen million dollars each, there would never be even ten percent of the number needed, and it still doesn't solve for mines and actual artillery. It would of course be THE priority target for said artillery. Big, expensive, and few is over. I freely acknowledge i didn't always think that, but the evidence is in.

If it can't knock down anything short of an incoming Iskander, it needs to cheap, small, and able to hide.

[hcrof]

8 hours ago, The_Capt said:

To my mind, and TTPs back me up on this, the role of the primary weapon system to make the primary role of the vehicle possible. A 30mm chain gun is designed to provide direct fire support to infantry in an all arms team approach.  So if you double hat that gun it is going to be pulled in two directions at once.  Further it will be exploited by the enemy.  So this platoon of Boxers go in on an assault and half of them are pointing at the incoming FPVs. That means the platoon has halved its firepower support in its own survival.  This is why we put AA guns on the top of vehicles in the first place.  The main gun should be focused on the primary mission, not its own self-preservation, that is what secondaries are designed for.  The coax on the tanks was originally designed to blast off close in infantry assault.  This was not a job for the main gun.

Or you introduce another set of platforms entirely and have them provide close in support.  Problem here is that ups the logistics and ISR bill because you now have more vehicles.  So, yes, I am suggesting a C-UAS RWS as well, or put it on a cheap support platform and take those risks.  If a Boxer platoon has their main guns worried about FPVs on an assault they won’t be doing wha those guns were designed for in the first place - supporting the infantry on the last mile.

So I think we are coming into this with different assumptions. In my mind vehicles are small with minimal crew, so they can only support one weapon system. On the other hand you have more vehicles. 

Whether it is an APC with a single MG or my novel tank with a 40mm, there is not enough space, operators or weight allowance for a secondary RWS just for drones. 

On the other hand we both agree on a drone CAP providing primary drone defence, and I would argue to maximum coordination between vehicles and drones to deal with incoming threats. 

To your point on pressing an assault while being attacked by drones, the majority of the offensive and defensive is being done by your own drones. The vehicles are there to mop up and I would have reserve vehicles on drone overwatch (more platforms) while others shoot up treelines. 

[holoween]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, seriously, I am tired of doing the homework here -

It is called the M3 and goes back to Korean War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning  And weighs 65 pounds https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196096/browning-m3-machine-gun/#:~:text=Gun weight%3A 65 lbs. - add on another couple hundred for turret etc.  Slightly faster rate of fire the Oberon 35mm who comes in with turret at 4.5t.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_35.  Now you go do the freakin cost estimate and show which one is cheaper and easier to produce, even at a loss of muzzle velocity and frag.

Ok so only 15 times less effective rather than 30 times. And it isnt available while the Skynex system is already active i ukraine.

Where it would obviously have value would be for point defense on stuff like supply trucks because carrying a 30mm isnt really feasable there.

 

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Exacto- yes it is.

The new .50 BMG gun and improved scope could employ "fire-and-forget" technologies including "fin-stabilized projectiles, spin-stabilized projectiles, internal and/or external aero-actuation control methods, projectile guidance technologies, tamper proofing, small stable power supplies, and advanced sighting, optical resolution and clarity technologies". Its estimated availability at the time was 2015.

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

good thing your read the articles you post

Quote

It relies on remote-guidance tied to the optics,

or maybe not

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

It is strange to you for a Boxer platoon to have half its main guns pointed at the sky instead of on the objective?  Yes the Marder mounted a gun originally designed for AA but that is not why it is on the damned Marder.  It is an autocannon designed for direct fire support.  Can it do AA?  Sure most cannon have an AD role as defence against tac aviation.  It is designed to counter several dozen FPVs swarming it while trying to support an infantry assault?  No. The real hint is that the gun is mounted on an IFV - “I” stands for Infantry.

The Marder has a repurposed 20mm chain gun for direct fire support.

Not a chain gun its gas/recoil operated. And no its not strange at all. The IFV shoots stuff the infantry has problems with. Thats its main job. That can be other infantry at longer range, combat vehicles or aircraft/helicopters.

And for full FPV swarms you add in these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_30 and EW. So for a mixed company you have 11 30mm guns that can get directed by the AA vehicle to engage incoming drones. And yes that probably isnt perfect but still a whole lot better than anything else even demonstrated so far.

[hcrof]

48 minutes ago, holoween said:

Ok so only 15 times less effective rather than 30 times. And it isnt available while the Skynex system is already active i ukraine.

Where it would obviously have value would be for point defense on stuff like supply trucks because carrying a 30mm isnt really feasable there.

 

good thing your read the articles you post

or maybe not

Not a chain gun its gas/recoil operated. And no its not strange at all. The IFV shoots stuff the infantry has problems with. Thats its main job. That can be other infantry at longer range, combat vehicles or aircraft/helicopters.

And for full FPV swarms you add in these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_30 and EW. So for a mixed company you have 11 30mm guns that can get directed by the AA vehicle to engage incoming drones. And yes that probably isnt perfect but still a whole lot better than anything else even demonstrated so far.

I wonder if it is better to have a single radar on all the shooting vehicles and have them cover one arc each rather than have a single point of failure on a dedicated AD vehicle, but I like the concept - by swarming your vehicles (which can also direct drones at incoming targets too) you can have a terrifying amount of AD Power without expensive and short ranged point defense vehicles.

[Carolus]

If only there was a game with a complex set of cover and spotting rules and large realistic landscape maps where drones could either be indirectly called like an aircraft over a certain area or they would be like slow Javelin missiles that are allowed to be fired without direct line of sight or they would be units of their own (maybe "detached" from a drone controller squad) and be able to follow a waypoint system and give vision to the controlling squad before a fire order makes them crash into a target / building / enemy unit or they attack based on a firing angle you can set from a waypoint (by e.g. "firing a missile straight ahead that has the same model as yourself and despawn yourself at the same time" (like making itself a casualty and then getting buddy help immediately)) and a complex damage system would allow to see the effects of the different warheads on vehicles and how many are shot down by SHORAD / turrets / automatic shotguns.

And what if these drone units had a morale meter which represents signal strength and enemy EW and distance to the controller unit would reduce that meter and if the meter goes too low but an enemy EW unit has a sufficient area of effect, the drone unit would be "captured" (aka go to ground) and if the enemy unit goes away and your own unit comes closer, the drone could be "recaptured".

If only...

Edited May 14 by Carolus

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, holoween said:

good thing your read the articles you post

Ok, I am tired of this snipey little game going on here.  This is not about the facts anymore, this is simply about disagreeing because you clearly do not like the conclusions I have come to but lack the motivation to actually go do the research to come up with your theories.  I am posting all sorts of references and you have backed up your well informed opinion with a YouTube video.

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2014-07-10

“DARPA’s Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program recently conducted the first successful live-fire tests demonstrating in-flight guidance of .50-caliber bullets. This video shows EXACTO rounds maneuvering in flight to hit targets that are offset from where the sniper rifle is aimed. EXACTO’s specially designed ammunition and real-time optical guidance system help track and direct projectiles to their targets by compensating for weather, wind, target movement and other factors that could impede successful hits.”

This round is specifically being designed to be fire and forget (the part of offset from where the rifle is aimed- which was also mentioned int that wiki article) and is still 1) in development and 2) likely classified to an extent.

4 hours ago, holoween said:

And for full FPV swarms you add in these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_30 and EW. So for a mixed company you have 11 30mm guns that can get directed by the AA vehicle to engage incoming drones. And yes that probably isnt perfect but still a whole lot better than anything else even demonstrated so far.

This right here is the problem and you clearly will not come off your position - big loud and expensive is what you want. Fine go lobby your political representative and demand they go that way.  That company of 11 x 30mm guns will cost in the order of 90-95 million (3xSkyranger and 9 x Boxers) for the hardware alone - that buys us “not perfect but better than nothing”.

Now let’s just extrapolate what that company is going to come under on the modern battlefield.  First off the ISR elephant - size and heat signatures, 11 x 30ton vehicles are going to be very  visible well out by a multi-layered ISR suite from ground to space.  Then to compound this, an opponent will be pushing long range UAS and loitering munitions such as Spike LR and Switchblade 600 out to 40kms+ based on these ISR detections.  Many of these will have levels of autonomy that sidestep EW, but there will be significant enemy attrition on that first wave - let’s say 33 long range systems at a cost of 10k each = approx $330k spent by the enemy so far.  

This Boxer company will be under assault at these ranges.  It will likely use APS and these guns to defend itself.  This will add to its ISR signature significantly as firing off a bunch of heavy calibre round is want to do.  But let’s be really optimistic and say that the company is 100% successful and suffers zero loses under this first assault as UAS and loitering come out of the trees (sounds like a good assumption in warfare).

But our stalwart little-company-that-could is now most definitely found and fixed for tracking.  It keeps rolling and the loitering and drone attacks continue, let’s add two more waves to bring the sum total investment by the enemy on this company at around $1m.  After almost 100 strikes it really begs belief that there won’t be losses but this Boxer company are big boys and designed to take losses…they keep on going after 2 hits.  

And then they hit artillery ranges.

The guns are definitely still a thing.  Smart rounds, submunitions and well aimed dumb rounds are going to start falling on our little company at long ranges…think 15-20kms.  These won’t be barrages because they don’t need to, but PGM strikes (and note we are discounting long range rocket systems because an infantry company is not large enough a target…maybe).  At this point things are not going to go well - remember those loitering and UAS are still coming while artillery is dropping.  Skyranger space guns or even cheaper AA is doing nothing for artillery so losses will stack up.  Costs to the enemy will go up, but even if they spend 10m on artillery ammo (which is a lot but let’s roll in overhead) they are at around 11 million and half that company is very likely gone by this point.

But that company keeps going, now down to 6 fancy 30mm guns.  Once they get within 5kms of the front ATGMs and smart mines start to kick in.  UAS drop mines or mines with legs start to position - and they have time to because we have seen this company coming for quite some time now.  ATGMs are top down, standoff son-of-Javelin so they need fewer but costs do go up.  But even at an additional $4m the enemy is at a $15m total investment to defeat a $90m dollar friendly capability.  At this point that company is pretty much stopped cold.  Being extremely generous, the company is no longer effective kms from the ranges those guns and infantry can be effective in a direct fire role.

“Well send in a Bn!” That makes it worse. Bigger is not better, it is worse.  Higher signature, more targets, more assets to try and defend.  Now before the cheap seats weigh in on “ well this is simplistic…ahem ahem.”  Well yes it is, reality is likely worse.  The problem is that countering that cheap layered defensive combination of ISR and systems is 1) impossible with today’s tech and 2) extremely expensive. To defeat the UAS (with the system you propose) we need all those big guns.  We need fancy armor.  We need EW.  We need counter-battery.  We need air superiority, which is nigh impossible.  And our opponent can take a lot of losses on cheap distributed systems before we can regain freedom of action and have any hope of that infantry company making it to the 1-2000 meter mark where it can start doing its job.

”We will have our own UAS bubble”, yes we will.  And if we do it right we can push it onto an enemy and erode their entire defence.  We can manoeuvre our own offensive system of ISR, fires and unmanned like a lethal cloud on the battlefield.  Finding our opponent is much harder - as we saw four guys in a basement with a dozen FPVs are much harder to find than a Boxer company.  But we can do it.  Of course at the point our corrosive lethal cloud can find and eliminate those four guys along with the half dozen guns and ATGM teams, along with the swarms of incoming enemy UAS…I have to ask…what do I need with a $90 million dollar Boxer company?  I can do mop up and seize terrain with much lighter, cheaper faster forces if I have built the winning offensive cloud/bubble system.

Or we could go with “hey it is better than nothing” and pretend that’s good enough.

Edited May 14 by The_Capt