How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[cesmonkey]

 

[Probus]

 

Here are a couple of videos from a few days back.  Do they show the end of the Tunguska, Tor and Strela type short range AAA assets?  Not exactly sure what was getting blasted, but it seemed like a similar system to the Tunguska.

That probably means that Chaparral, Avenger and Gephardt type systems are obsolete also.  You can't really carry out a successful offensive without a system like this that can destroy drones en-mass.

This subject has probably already been discussed at length, but I missed it.  Can someone give me a quick recap?

Thanks!

[Tenses]

On Liveuamap it looks like Russians started assaults on Toretsk and Niu-York. This is middle of the front between Bachmut and Avdiivka and can be both good and bad information.

Bad is obviously that Russians has capacity to do that. Good is that they started these assaults even though there is currently no chance to even restrict access to this part of the front as both Avdiivka - Ocheretyne and Bachmut - Chasiv Yar are far from allowing some sort of encirclement.

Still, this should be watched closely as this is another point on the entire front, which is going to be hot and will keep occupied not a small portion of Ukrainian defenders. Fall of these will also mean that Bachmut and Avdiivka will create axis along the entire Donbas front.

[LongLeftFlank]

12 minutes ago, Tenses said:

On Liveuamap it looks like Russians started assaults on Toretsk and Niu-York. This is middle of the front between Bachmut and Avdiivka and can be both good and bad information.

Bad is obviously that Russians has capacity to do that. Good is that they started these assaults even though there is currently no chance to even restrict access to this part of the front as both Avdiivka - Ocheretyne and Bachmut - Chasiv Yar are far from allowing some sort of encirclement.

Still, this should be watched closely as this is another point on the entire front, which is going to be hot and will keep occupied not a small portion of Ukrainian defenders. Fall of these will also mean that Bachmut and Avdiivka will create axis along the entire Donbas front.

Wow, isn't Niu York-Toretsk the last major portion of the prewar (post-2014) Ukrainian fortified line in the Donbas?

And yet the Ivans are choosing to attack it frontally?

...They really seem to feel a need to get rid of their extra people, don't they?

(my best guess is it's because it's a portion of the front they can still kind of resupply).

[cesmonkey]

17 minutes ago, Tenses said:

On Liveuamap it looks like Russians started assaults on Toretsk and Niu-York. This is middle of the front between Bachmut and Avdiivka and can be both good and bad information.

Bad is obviously that Russians has capacity to do that. Good is that they started these assaults even though there is currently no chance to even restrict access to this part of the front as both Avdiivka - Ocheretyne and Bachmut - Chasiv Yar are far from allowing some sort of encirclement.

Still, this should be watched closely as this is another point on the entire front, which is going to be hot and will keep occupied not a small portion of Ukrainian defenders. Fall of these will also mean that Bachmut and Avdiivka will create axis along the entire Donbas front.

Mashovts talks about it today.

Here's the last part:
https://t.me/zvizdecmanhustu/1995
 

Quote

Why now…?

It’s also clear...

Time is running out, June is running out, and the enemy failed to create the preconditions for a “beautiful operation to encircle Toretsk.” Therefore, in order not to ultimately disrupt all the plans, plans and schedules of the summer-autumn campaign of 2024 in terms of this area, obviously, the enemy command hastened to organize a “breakthrough to Toretsk”, hoping for surprise and “non-triviality of such a decision” ... and so far, it turned out to be right in these calculations.

Well, to summarize...

In my biased and subjective opinion, in the Toretsk direction, SO FAR, we are dealing with some kind of enemy attempt from the category of "... like will go" (by the way, a fairly frequent method of the Russian command to "probe" the defense system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in one direction or another). But so far, in the Toretsk direction, it is "working out" quite successfully... however, I very much doubt that the Russian command , in general, seriously considers the “assault from the east” of Toretsk as, in fact, the main one...

Therefore, flanks, flanks and flanks again...

In this sense, I would track... where exactly the main forces will be “concentrated” 27th motorized rifle division (MSD) of the enemy...

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[LongLeftFlank]

15 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

I haven't been following the back and forth with all this stuff, but the idea that western militaries aren't adapting to shifts in warfare seems a bit of a stretch to me.  At least in terms of the US military.  I get that this is in your wheelhouse, and you apparently are very passionate about it - and that's a good thing.  I hope I'm not misrepresenting your beliefs or arguments and I absolutely respect your opinion.  However, one could make the argument that the US is at the leading edge of the changing face of warfare.  I'm not sure when Canada first knew what a drone was, but the US has been using drones since the 1990s. 

The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator (often referred to as the Predator drone) is an American remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) built by General Atomics that was used primarily by the United States Air Force (USAF) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Conceived in the early 1990s for aerial reconnaissance and forward observation roles, the Predator carries cameras and other sensors. It was modified and upgraded to carry and fire two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles or other munitions. The aircraft entered service in 1995, and saw combat in the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the NATO intervention in Bosnia, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Iraq War, Yemen, the 2011 Libyan civil war, the 2014 intervention in Syria, and Somalia.

Granted these were recon drones, but the US came up with the FPS drone with a warhead in 2012

Designed by the United States Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and developed by the United States Army,^[7] The Switchblade was designed to assist US troops in responding to enemy ambushes in Afghanistan. Close air support takes time to arrive, is costly to operate, and risks collateral damage in urban areas. Troop-carried guided missiles, such as the FGM-148 Javelin, are also significantly larger, heavier, and more expensive, and only a few, if any, are carried on a typical patrol. Human-portable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the Raven or Puma can spot threats but lack weapons. The backpackable, relatively inexpensive Switchblade has sensors to help spot enemy fighters and an explosive warhead to attack them from above, which is especially helpful in dug-in positions like rooftops or ridge lines.

On July 29, 2011, the U.S. Army awarded AeroVironment a $4.9 million contract for "rapid fielding" of an unspecified number of Switchblades to forces in Afghanistan.^[8][9][10] On March 20, 2012, the Army added $5.1 million, totaling $10 million.^[11]

So yeah, the US is fully aware of drones and has been using them for decades.  Now did the US Army anticipate the full impact that these drones are having on the current battlefield?  I'm not sure - probably not, but I'm pretty confident that someone in the US Military had a stray thought of what might be possible so the idea that Western Military's are sitting back with mouth agape going 'wow, what the heck is going on in Ukraine?  I've neither seen such a thing nor anticipated such a thing!' is just crazy to me.  Maybe a review of the drones currently in use by the various branches of the US Military could be instructive (from Wikipedia).  It's not like the US Military doesn't know what a drone is.

Current

• MQ-1C Gray Eagle
• RQ-4 Global Hawk
• MQ-4C Triton
• RQ-7 Shadow
• MQ-8B Fire Scout/MQ-8C Fire Scout
• MQ-9 Reaper
• CQ-10 Snowgoose
• RQ-11 Raven
• RQ-12 Wasp
• MQ-19 Aerosonde
• RQ-20 Puma
• RQ-21 Blackjack
• RQ-170 Sentinel
• RQ-180
• Altius-600
• Black Hornet Nano
• Coyote
• Jump 20 VTOL
• Snipe NAV
• Switchblade
• Stalker
• ScanEagle
• Northrop Grumman Bat
• Phoenix Ghost

Future

• MQ-25 Stingray

 

One might make the argument that the US Army was already anticipating the current environment to some extent with the Future Combat System way back in 2003.  I put some stuff in red below (from Wikipedia)

Future Combat Systems (FCS) was the United States Army's principal modernization program from 2003 to early 2009.^[1] Formally launched in 2003, FCS was envisioned to create new brigades equipped with new manned and unmanned vehicles linked by an unprecedented fast and flexible battlefield network. The U.S. Army claimed it was their "most ambitious and far-reaching modernization" program since World War II.^[2] Between 1995 and 2009, $32 billion was expended on programs such as this, "with little to show for it".^[3]

One of the programs that came out of the $32 billion expenditure was the concept of tracking friendly ("blue") forces on the field via a GPS-enabled computer system known as Blue Force Tracking (BFT). The concept of BFT was implemented by the US Army through the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2) platform. The FBCB2 system in particular and the BFT system in general have won numerous awards and accolades, including: recognition in 2001 as one of the five best-managed software programs in the entire U.S. Government,^[4] the 2003 Institute for Defense and Government Advancement's award for most innovative U.S. Government program,^[5] the 2003 Federal Computer Week Monticello Award (given in recognition of an information system that has a direct, meaningful impact on human lives), and the Battlespace Information 2005 "Best Program in Support of Coalition Operations".^[6] The proof-of-concept success of FBCB2, its extensive testing during Operation Foal Eagle (FE 99, FE 00), its certification at the Fort Irwin National Training Center, and its proven field usage in live combat operations spanning over a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to BFT adoption by many users including the United States Marine Corps, the United States Air Force, the United States Navy ground-based expeditionary forces (e.g., United States Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC) and Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) units), the United Kingdom, and German Soldier System IdZ-ES+.

In April and May 2009, Pentagon and army officials announced that the FCS vehicle-development effort would be canceled. The rest of the FCS effort would be swept into a new, pan-army program called the Army Brigade Combat Team Modernization Program.^[7]

Oh, and the end of the tank because of the use of Javelins on the battlefield?  One would assume that since the US makes the Javelin, the US Army would be aware of its capabilities and how it impacts the battlefield.  Whether or not the US Military anticipated how it might operate if on the receiving end of all these drones and Javelins is an open question.  However, I'm not sure that you are giving enough credit to how powerful the US Military is - by itself without even adding in any allies.  Could China cause some issues?  Recent reports of missiles with fuel cells filled with water aside, on paper maybe China would be an issue, but that would doubtless primarily be a naval and air conflict.  If Russia fought the US and NATO, Russia would be pounded into dust.  There is no scenario where NATO fights Russia and it turns into Trench Warfare where nobody can advance and drones rule the battlefield to the detriment of NATO.  That's not even accounting for the leadership advantage that NATO holds.  If NATO holds air supremacy then guess what happens to all your logistics trains?  Guess what happens to all your artillery batteries?  Can FPV drones have an impact for Russia?  Sure, but let's not get carried away and assume that NATO is going to get stuck in trench warfare.  I can't sit here today and rule it out completely, but the odds are not in favor of that sort of an outcome.  You dismiss Iraqi capabilities, but they were widely regarded as having some of the most numerous and capable air defenses in the world at the time and look how much good it did them.  I am confident that the US Military can adapt appropriately to the shifts warfare.  

 

 

 

Nice summary, thanks.

I believe the Ryan Firebee was first deployed as an unmanned photorecon platform in Indochina in the 1960s.

[cesmonkey]

https://www.casematepublishers.com/9781612007892/the-dawn-of-the-drone/

[The_Capt]

6 hours ago, holoween said:

Its quite hard to leverage a massive numbers advantedge if youre restricted to 1-2 roads to move on that your vehicles cant leave or they get stuck in mud.

So the russians

couldnt leave the roads with vehicles

had a lack of infantry to work offroad

had a lot of unmotivated personel

were sitting in traffic jams so much of the force couldnt be used simultaniously

didnt have the air ground integration to suppress enemy arty and make up for the above point

focused on a speedy advance

And we had a fairly clear pattern emerging. The russians advance along a road, runs into 1-2 tanks covering the road from a town supported by some infantry. The russians stop one town ahead trying to organize and get anihilated there by arty. Eventually they get their arty on line and the infantry to flank the position to force ukraine to withdraw. and repeat every few km. meanwhile their supplies get disrupted by the tropps they bypassed.

In the south with better ground an less ability for ukraine to mass arty the russians made good progress. Sure you can say there was treason involved but to me that sells luke a ukraine sux to explain russian success.

 

And for naval drones we do have a decent data point in the gulf of aden with western ships reliably shooting down drones, anti ship missiles and destroying USV.

There is definitely some truth to all this.  The RA timing was terrible terrain and weather wise and they were definitely not prepared…that may explain the first 3 days it does not explain Feb-Mar ‘22.  The RA advanced on 5-6 operational corridors with the advance from Sumy coming in at over 250 kms deep.  The UA was initially overwhelmed, the RuAF was active forward and lobbing cruise missiles all over the place. The Black Sea Flee had freedom of movement and action.

All that did not fail due to bad roads or lack of secondary routes.  Along those corridors they had infantry but how do infantry do defile drills out to 5kms? They had artillery advantage and levels of air superiority…and it all failed.  The UA had fewer guns and armor, fewer ready infantry and were at a lower level of readiness (recall the RA had been “in training” for months).  What they did have is C4ISR and the ability to leverage it.

It is too far a stretch to write of the Russian failure down to the factors you more above.  Further, I could by these issues happened but along all 5 operational corridors…at the same time?  And then the RA just forgot how to do “combined arms”…for 6 weeks?  C’mon, that is beyond reasonable.  Something else was happening here and we have posted a lot of analysis that supports this.

The problem with overestimating an opponent is one is too cautious and you risk missing opportunities.  The problem with underestimating an opponent is that you miss threats and real risk. I have heard this rationalization before, and it definitely has elements of truth to it but it cannot explain what we saw happen.  A nation of quadcopters, light infantry and NLAWs held off an opponent who’s attacked in a textbook multi-axis overwhelming operation.  And then kept holding them off for weeks and engineered an operational collapse.

Here is a question for this theory: if the RA can hold an 800km front with freakishly low infantry density in 2024, why could they not hold the ground they took in 2022? 

[chris talpas]

Perun is back with a most topical video.

 

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Honestly? Fair enough. I misread on my sources and it looks like most of the attempt reforms were post Chechen war. Though I would point out that Russian military reforms post 2008 failed to address problems that are now biting them hard in Ukraine. 



Honestly probably going to drop out of this line of discussion overall as its clear we have a difference of opinion that's getting increasingly hostile, at least I feel it is. I'm happy to leave it at wait and see. I thank you both for the discussion, but maybe work on being a little less...abrasive with your assertions. You two acting like you know better than literally dozens of countries and their military apparatuses is...quite something, even if you bring up some very good points. Maybe you are both right and all those people are wrong, in which case my god were doomed.

Yes, honestly. You are very much entitled to your opinion and are free to translate facts as you see fit.  Where this gets uncool very fast, particularly in this day and age, is when someone misrepresents facts to support their argument. Now it can happen by mistake or misremembering but it needs to be corrected:

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

“In 1988 military spending was a single line item in the Soviet Union state budget, totaling 21 billion rubles (68.8 billion 1988 U.S. dollars). Given the size of the military establishment, however, the actual figure was considered to be far higher. However, in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Russian Federation as an independent state, between 1991 and 1997 Russia's defence spending fell by a factor of eight in real prices.^[2] Between 1988 and 1993 weapons production in Russia fell by at least 50% for virtually every major weapons system.”

Your position is that Russian reforms somehow led to strategic failure in Chechnya in the 90s.  This is evidence that militaries that recklessly lean forward may fail.  The reality is that these were not “reforms” but a full on resourcing collapse due to the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia was not progressively reforming into the future, it was trying not to completely fall apart.

We can agree to disagree.  We can translate events differently.  What we cannot do is misrepresent facts to fit an argument. After all this fuss and bother we are back to matters of degree.  I do not say “we are doomed”, we do have to chose how painful this next evolution will be. A tremendous amount of experimentation and concept development is needed here.  We cannot run headlong into transformation without doing Conceive-Design first.  That is not “me knowing more than everyone” it is the cornerstone of military force development.  What we do need is open eyes and ideas during that Conceive-Design phase.  An ability to challenge assumptions and go in directions inconceivable before this war. Then once we have measured twice…then we do transformative force development.  The question you never asked (and should have) was: ok, how do we get there?  

It is the aversion to “radical” that stifles thinking and new force concepts.  It kills them in the crib. The single largest problem with your theory/position is that it situates any estimates on change. This ensures that we will wind up with incremental, slow and steady shifts…even if it turns out we need to move farther faster. LLF is correct, you have no doubt. You have certainty.  And this is not a time of no doubts and certainty. It is a time of forward thinking, risk taking and staying very light on the feet. Absolute best case is we find that our current portfolios are future proof. Worst case is that we are 1939 France. The trick is figuring out where in between those two poles is the best position for the next war.

[LongLeftFlank]

21 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

LLF is correct, you have no doubt. You have certainty.  And this is not a time of no doubts and certainty.

"For avoidance of doubt" is legal jargon.  Clearly you don't spend enough time with contract lawyers (and I'm sure you're just gutted about that )

...I wasn't actually referring to ATH's state of mind, but we all learned some new things from the discussion, so thanks anyway.

[The_Capt]

16 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

"For avoidance of doubt" is legal jargon.  Clearly you don't spend enough time with contract lawyers (and I'm sure you're just gutted about that )

...I wasn't actually referring to ATH's state of mind, but we all learned some new things from the discussion, so thanks anyway.

Hey look, I learned some lawyer speak today…now I need to go take a shower. I think no small amount of the yelling is around the fact that people largely do not understand how military force development happens - and for that they should also be forever grateful.  It takes 10-20 years for a modern military to shift trajectories. There are more boards, trials and stages than most people would believe.  So when I advocate for some weird light infantry hybrid formation we are taking a decade to get the damn thing off a drawing board. Experimentation, testing and buy and tries with a  truly humbling level of bureaucracy hurdles to jump through.

Likely explains my strong aversion to “steady and deliberate.”  This is code within the business for “slow roll until it goes away.” I could do a Perun video but I just don’t have the strength.  In the end I strongly suspect ATH’s viewpoint will win out, I am fighting deep military culture and service equities raging at this windmill.  No BS, we had one file come by where the radical idea was to change the name of a school from “Canadian Forces” to “Canadian Armed Forces” as a major joint initiative.  

Gimme a month and I can probably get more into things, within limits of course.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Hey look, I learned some lawyer speak today…now I need to go take a shower. I think no small amount of the yelling is around the fact that people largely do not understand how military force development happens - and for that they should also be forever grateful.  It takes 10-20 years for a modern military to shift trajectories. There are more boards, trials and stages than most people would believe.  So when I advocate for some weird light infantry hybrid formation we are taking a decade to get the damn thing off a drawing board. Experimentation, testing and buy and tries with a  truly humbling level of bureaucracy hurdles to jump through.

Likely explains my strong aversion to “steady and deliberate.”  This is code within the business for “slow roll until it goes away.” I could do a Perun video but I just don’t have the strength.  In the end I strongly suspect ATH’s viewpoint will win out, I am fighting deep military culture and service equities raging at this windmill.  No BS, we had one file come by where the radical idea was to change the name of a school from “Canadian Forces” to “Canadian Armed Forces” as a major joint initiative.  

Gimme a month and I can probably get more into things, within limits of course.

You ever consider trying to collaborate with Perun? In addition to the book about Afghanistan you need to write with Combat_Infantryman, and your book length take on this war? Poor guy, it might be less work to NOT retire...

[G.I. Joe]

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Nice summary, thanks.

I believe the Ryan Firebee was first deployed as an unmanned photorecon platform in Indochina in the 1960s.

That is correct, although the Interstate TDR-1 was first used to attack Japanese shipping in 1944, so it would be accurate to say that the U.S. has been using drones since World War II.

[Battlefront.com]

8 hours ago, chrisl said:

Ukraine is on track to build 1M drones in 2024 - that's at least 80,000/month, which is why we see them chasing individual russian soldiers around.  They aren't in any kind of short supply and their combat efficiency is high (fewer than 10 drones per casualty, possibly fewer than 5).  Most of the parts come from (drum roll).....China.  It's basically all consumer stuff and the attitude from China is that it goes into a container off to foreign distributors and it's not China's problem as long as their manufacturers get paid. 

Yup, though though it took Ukraine nearly 2 years to get to this level of production with little help from the West other than money.  That should not have been the case.  The Arsenal of Democracy (to revive that term) should have had something on the shelf ready to go or, at a minimum, something far enough along that it could have been scaled up rather quickly.  Instead, the West had NOTHING even remotely close to fitting Ukraine's needs before the war started.  So much so that even 2.5 years into the war it still doesn't. 

No matter how one tries to excuse it, this is a massive non-hindsight failing of the West.

8 hours ago, chrisl said:

Part of the reason the US pays a lot for drones is that they try to not be dependent on parts from China and there's a lot smaller and less efficient supply chain for those.  There's also never been commitment by the US military to buy enormous numbers of them, so there aren't factories to crank out the drone parts in huge quantities at low unit costs.  The chinese drone parts are all intended for civilian/business/hobbyist use and are produced in large quantities with good scale efficiencies. 

True, which underscores my point.  I don't know if the chicken or the egg came first, but the result of all of this is industry only offered expensive and slow rate of production products which the military bought without pushing for cheaper and fast production.

If the US military had put out a call for something cheap and easy to produce, I think industry would have responded to it.  We would not be talking drones at the same price point as those from China, but we'd at least have a better tool in the toolbox than we do now.

8 hours ago, chrisl said:

All of them except the Drone40 are oriented towards local ISR in terms of design and production quantities.  A few of the less expensive (less than ~$50K/unit) have been produced in quantities of several thousand

The older ones (before about 2010) are basically RC airplanes that cost a few $M each for ISR and are basically obsolete now.  If the airframes were still in production you could redo their entire inside for cheap, but I suspect that they're not.  Of those, it looks like only the Puma was produced at scale of more than a few hundred (more than 1000 produced). The Wasp is archaic and has been replaced by the SkyDio X2D, which costs about $10K each without batteries or accessories.

This is one of the things about this discussion that The_Capt and I are getting frustrated by.  We make a solid, straight forward point and the push back is a bunch of irrelevant or outdated or incorrect information to support an opposing position.  It takes time to parse poop thrown at a wall to see what sticks.  That list of drones as evidence of the West keeping up with the times was a bunch of poop.  In fact, it does way more to support my position than it did support ArmouredTopHat's position.

8 hours ago, chrisl said:

The Drone 40 is the only one under $5K.  It's about $1000/each for a 40 mm grenade with rotors and a 60 minute dwell time.  It has a kind of silly design feature - it's made to be launched from a 40 mm grenade launcher.  But it probably is more cost, mass, and capability effective to not include the features that enable that and spend the mass and volume on either more battery or more bang.

Yes, that one caught my eye as an exception to the rest in the list.  It's been a while since I looked at the Drone 40.  It's an interesting product that has a lot of promise, I think.  The 40mm launch design isn't silly IMHO.  It ensures that the drone is compact, which means a single person can carry a lot of them.  You can also have a stand alone grenade launcher which is relatively light and compact.  It allows a drone to be quickly and easily deployed while on the move because your launch platform is inherently mobile and offers LOS aiming around obstacles for launching. 

8 hours ago, chrisl said:

So yes, there's been some experimentation with drones by the US, but given what it's been, it's entirely local ISR oriented, and likely limited to special units, given the quantities.  There's been almost no development of drone munitions (other than the Drone 40 and Switchblade), and switchblade was procured in experimental quantities and even "mass" production is ~500/month, as compared to 80,000+/month that Ukraine can use.  There's only just starting to be development of precision munition delivery with drones, and there doesn't seem to be any doctrine developed around it - that will more likely be copied from Ukraine than the other way around.

Exactly my argument And let's not forget that both Drone 40 and Black Hornet were invented and are produced by non-US based companies (Australia and Norway respectively).  Which again underscores my criticism of US military industrial priorities towards low production expensive items.

Steve

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, Probus said:

 

Here are a couple of videos from a few days back.  Do they show the end of the Tunguska, Tor and Strela type short range AAA assets?  Not exactly sure what was getting blasted, but it seemed like a similar system to the Tunguska.

That probably means that Chaparral, Avenger and Gephardt type systems are obsolete also.  You can't really carry out a successful offensive without a system like this that can destroy drones en-mass.

This subject has probably already been discussed at length, but I missed it.  Can someone give me a quick recap?

Thanks!

They are legacy systems whose sensors probably never see the drones that are killing them, and ignore them if the do. Throwing out all targets that are moving below a certain speed is almost certainly one of the issues, there who knows how many others. 

The longer term issue is that if you have a thirty million dollar modernized Gephardt that can kill every drone for five kilometers you have keep it from being killed by 155 cluster munitions and and even higher level systems, for which it instantly becomes the number one target. We aren't going to build five thousand of those vehicles for this war. If we spend the equivalent of the F-35 program building them for the NEXT war, they had better be able to handle the full spectrum of threats. 

Edited Sunday at 04:10 PM by dan/california

[chris talpas]

8 minutes ago, dan/california said:

You ever consider trying to collaborate with Perun? In addition to the book about Afghanistan you need to write with Combat_Infantryman, and your book length take on this war? Poor guy, it might be less work to NOT retire...

Would love to see The_Capt and Perun collaborate especially as special advisors to the next government on how to fix Canada’s very broken military procurement process.  Canada needs to spend more both to be in line with NATO minimal spending expectations and also because winter is coming.  Fix the system to best make use of those new dollars.  Buy more off the shelf but choose wisely.

One area of leveraging local talent is in AI research 

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

"For avoidance of doubt" is legal jargon.  Clearly you don't spend enough time with contract lawyers (and I'm sure you're just gutted about that )

...I wasn't actually referring to ATH's state of mind, but we all learned some new things from the discussion, so thanks anyway.

Having just spent a few months reviewing a couple of contracts, know that I very much understood your point

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

21 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

That is correct, although the Interstate TDR-1 was first used to attack Japanese shipping in 1944, so it would be accurate to say that the U.S. has been using drones since World War II.

The Germans also experimented with this in WW2, though one can also argue (quite easily) that V-1 and V-2s were effectively drones.

With that in mind, the excuses for the Western militaries being so very far behind the curve gets even weaker.  Other weapons, proven in WW2 and after, have been developed as fast (and sometimes faster) than technology can support.  But for various reasons drones have not kept up with the times.  The biggest evidence of that is Ukraine was able to purchase, off the shelf, 10s of thousands of commercial drones for its needs because the tech was already that well established.

Steve

[chris talpas]

Thought this was interesting in highlighting some Russian unconventional conflict within NATO 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/30/europe/russia-hybrid-war-nato

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

After a bit of sleep and reflection, I will largely stand by most of my argument though I admit I made several statements poorly. I'm going to keep it buried though because I was actively losing my sanity over it, even if I might have been swayed on certain points. I again thank Steve and Capt for mostly good discussion though. Its certainly food for thought and I genuinely believe they are onto something, especially in certain areas. They provided a great read on a lot of stuff so kudos for them for providing that. 

On the topic of something I can more readily debate and talk about, the sorry saga of the T-14 continues. I find RedEffect is pretty biased towards Russian / Soviet systems, so for him to find this a little baffling says a lot really. Another case of a Russian wunderwaffe being a disappointment (though I think this one has been anticipated) 

Even with me being a tank buff, I can happily admit that Armata has been a great case of what not to do for a tank design, right at a time where tanks need to be designed in new ways to deal with the reality of combat. This was a badly designed vehicle from the onset and its already aged poorly just as much as legacy Soviet tank platforms. 
 

 

Edited Sunday at 05:09 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, that one caught my eye as an exception to the rest in the list.  It's been a while since I looked at the Drone 40.  It's an interesting product that has a lot of promise, I think.  The 40mm launch design isn't silly IMHO.  It ensures that the drone is compact, which means a single person can carry a lot of them.  You can also have a stand alone grenade launcher which is relatively light and compact.  It allows a drone to be quickly and easily deployed while on the move because your launch platform is inherently mobile and offers LOS aiming around obstacles for launching. 

The compact size is ideal and a good thing, but it already has range and dwell time that are so long that the boost from the launcher is in the noise, and several features are built in to support that.  If they're just going to be carried ~5 at a time by light infantry, they'll get more benefit from having more battery or explosive and just throwing them or letting them fly quietly out of their hands (and not signaling their location with the bang of the launcher).  

Being able to launch them from a 40 mm launcher only becomes an advantage when they're fully autonomous and you're making so many that you can stuff every automatic grenade launcher full of them.  Then they're a murderbot swarm and there's no such thing as cover because they're no longer ballistic.  If do manage to find a good hiding place, they have enough dwell to wait around and mug you when you try to sneak away later. 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

After a bit of sleep and reflection, I will largely stand by most of my argument though I admit I made several statements poorly. I'm going to keep it buried though because I was actively losing my sanity over it, even if I might have been swayed on certain points. I again thank Steve and Capt for mostly good discussion though. Its certainly food for thought and I genuinely believe they are onto something, especially in certain areas. They provided a great read on a lot of stuff so kudos for them for providing that. 

On the topic of something I can more readily debate and talk about, the sorry saga of the T-14 continues. I find RedEffect is pretty biased towards Russian / Soviet systems, so for him to find this a little baffling says a lot really. Another case of a Russian wunderwaffe being a disappointment (though I think this one has been anticipated) 

Even with me being a tank buff, I can happily admit that Armata has been a great case of what not to do for a tank design, right at a time where tanks need to be designed in new ways to deal with the reality of combat. This was a badly designed vehicle from the onset and its already aged poorly just as much as legacy Soviet tank platforms. 
 

 

Is there any real evidence that the Armata is anything more than a Rose Parade float that they haven't gotten around to putting the flowers on yet?  For as much as actually gets shown, it could be plywood over a T-34 chassis stolen from an old monument.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, chris talpas said:

Would love to see The_Capt and Perun collaborate especially as special advisors to the next government on how to fix Canada’s very broken military procurement process.  Canada needs to spend more both to be in line with NATO minimal spending expectations and also because winter is coming.  Fix the system to best make use of those new dollars.  Buy more off the shelf but choose wisely.

One area of leveraging local talent is in AI research 

 

We crunched some numbers on this.  In order for Canada to spend 2% GDP we are looking I. The neighbourhood of an additional $18B annually.  Now we are a rich little nation, and the Liberals are all about taxing everything and spending like a drunken sailor, so we could raise the money.  The problem is that the Canadian defence industry is too small to absorb that kind of spending (whoops).  So we would basically be spending it out of country which politicians of every stripe pretty nervous.

So step 1 - invest in a Canadian Defence Industry.  We actually have a lot of high tech and AI expertise.  We could really make a go of unmanned systems development and even sell it globally, an offset to Chinese dominance.  But that would require a long game strategy…something we simply do not do.

I need to take a break from “advising” to be honest.  Maybe I will do something less painful for awhile, like learning to eat glass for a carnival act.