How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[A Canadian Cat]

8 minutes ago, hcrof said:

The way I see it is that if you bombard and area with artillery then everything in an ellipse of hundreds of meters is at risk of dying. I don't see much difference in designating a killbox for drones and letting them go for it. In fact a killbox is better since it can be defined more precisely and the stroke can be closer to your own troops. 

My point is you cannot do that. How do you define the kill box - remember it needs to work when GPS is denied by EW systems. Yes, artillery are using maps and can make mistakes. I realize that. Like I said though statements like "my friend died in an artillery strike" and "my friend died after being hunted by AI drone" land very differently.

We can argue that it shouldn't but no one else cares

[The_Capt]

46 minutes ago, A Canadian Cat said:

This where I see an issue with autonomous drone usage - namely friendly fire and civilian casualties. I'm not sure how big the issue will be, that will be based on how these automatic targeting systems work. Friendly fire or killing of civilians could be a serious problem with autonomous drones if this isn't handled well / correctly.

The comparison to the Navy CWIS autonomous systems doesn't really work because there is a clear exclusion zone around fleets and warships to the point that if some civilian wondered inside that area they would get no sympathy when they get whacked. So, those systems can be weapons free and autonomous for certain ranges without risking civilian or friendly casualties. In other words humans have managed the space those autonomous systems work in so that they can target anything that comes with in them "safely".

Autonomous drones hunting enemy soldiers, tanks and other vehicles do not have that kind of space. They have to operate in a much messier and chaotic environment. Lots can be done, make the targeting smarter, geo-fencing, range cut offs etc. but the issue is none of that is as clear cut as "get within 100m of a destroyer you die".

All of those problems have solutions of varying degrees of effectiveness some of which can now be attacked (geo-fencing really should not be relied on for this) or have short comings that have unknown or known failure points (targeting only enemy AFVs is not actually easy and since these systems are actually trying to kill people that problem is more important to deal with).

I'm not saying there will not be autonomous drones or that we should try to ban them. I don't think we can do that. I am saying that these systems are going to have problems that human controlled systems don't. Or perhaps a better way of saying it would be they are going to have different failure issues and those failures are going to hit the public's ear differently and that needs to be managed.

Or not I suppose  

Not sure how comfortable I would be in a row boat of or Cessna around an active CWIS but fair points.  I think these problems are definitely going to have problems, some unintended and some very much intended.  Some bad actors will gleefully employ them on civilians to terrorize and as part of an overall genocidal campaign.  In reality there is no real difference between a cruise missile striking a civilian housing complex and a cruise missile carrying a bunch of assassination drones.  The drones will be far more effective and vicious but are basically doing the same job.

I am saying that banning fully autonomous drones is a fools errand.  Hell, regulating them is going to be pretty damned hard.  Why?  Because they are potential war-winners right now.  Unmanned systems of all types are deterministic of outcomes.  As such they become, in an existential war, non-negotiable.  Some nations will try and remain on high horses - no doubt Canada will - but this will be as hypocritical as the nuclear equation.  Canada has no nuclear weapons and shakes a finger in haughty disapproval of them, but our very survival has rested upon the safety of the US nuclear umbrella…that we are not even paying for.  Unmanned will be the same beast in many ways.  Some nations will reject them but will be first in line to have them protect any troop contributions to a western coalition.

The one thing I do not know is if unmanned stand as a 3rd shift in the nature of war yet.  Their impact on the battlefield is pretty much undeniable by this point.

[omae2]

12 minutes ago, A Canadian Cat said:

My point is you cannot do that. How do you define the kill box - remember it needs to work when GPS is denied by EW systems. Yes, artillery are using maps and can make mistakes. I realize that. Like I said though statements like "my friend died in an artillery strike" and "my friend died after being hunted by AI drone" land very differently.

We can argue that it shouldn't but no one else cares

Drones could just identify landmarks, or have integrated satellite pictures or other type of maps that help it with navigation.

[Vet 0369]

On 4/9/2024 at 11:37 AM, photon said:

You could maybe talk me into the main gun being useful for shore bombardment, but good gravy - if you're firing at hostile vessels, how many things have gone badly wrong by that point? I'm really curious when was the last time a ship fired its main gun at another ship in anger?

Even though I’m not Navy, if I remember correctly, on a modern Navy ship, the missiles are used against other ships and air threats while the “main gun” is usually radar controlled and rapid fire to be used against small, fast, agile boats (can you say Iranian gunboats). I don’t believe we use “shore bombardments” any more. We use air strikes, which are more accurate. Forget about all the movies showing shore bombardments from 70 to 90 years ago.

[sburke]

1 minute ago, Vet 0369 said:

Even though I’m not Navy, if I remember correctly, on a modern Navy ship, the missiles are used against other ships and air threats while the “main gun” is usually radar controlled and rapid fire to be used against small, fast, agile boats (can you say Iranian gunboats). I don’t believe we use “shore bombardments” any more. We use air strikes, which are more accurate. Forget about all the movies showing shore bombardments from 70 to 90 years ago.

whoa!  40 years!  Don't make em go by faster than they already do!  

U.S. BATTLESHIP POUNDS HILLS HELD BY SYRIANS IN LEBANON; BRITAIN; PULLING OUT TROOPS - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[A Canadian Cat]

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think these problems are definitely going to have problems, some unintended and some very much intended.  Some bad actors will gleefully employ them on civilians to terrorize and as part of an overall genocidal campaign.  

Yep.

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

In reality there is no real difference between a cruise missile striking a civilian housing complex and a cruise missile carrying a bunch of assassination drones.  The drones will be far more effective and vicious but are basically doing the same job.

Oh I agree. I think your bundle of assassination drones are way scarier for the civilian population and media even though X number of civilians targeted and killed is not really different. The bad actors are going to like the extra scare feature.

[A Canadian Cat]

21 minutes ago, omae2 said:

Drones could just identify landmarks, or have integrated satellite pictures or other type of maps that help it with navigation.

Which landmarks are those again?

To be fair, you are correct, for sure landmarks are a way to go etc. My point is its not a solved problem yet and how well it works will govern how people ultimately feel about it. Both those in the armed forces - who's opinion counts and those in the civilian population - who's opinion counts in a different way.

Edited April 16 by A Canadian Cat
Changed the image so it would properly embed

[Tux]

14 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Unmanned systems of all types are deterministic of outcomes.

This is only true until they are countered.  The real power play in all this would be to focus almost entirely on an affordable and extremely effective C-UAS system.  Once western armies can reliably counter an enemy’s drone fleet then they could take the moral high ground by eschewing autonomous human-hunting killbots (FPVs and autonomous targeting of enemy vehicles are still fair game) and driving a worldwide conversation about everyone else doing the same.

[A Canadian Cat]

10 minutes ago, sburke said:

whoa!  40 years!  Don't make em go by faster than they already do!  

LOL. I don't think your link pointing to a digital scan of an actual news paper (remember those, me neither) article makes it feel more recent.  

[FancyCat]

Not sure if its a sale with a expiration date, but i just noticed a 50% off sale on almost everything on the store in Battlefront.com? I don't see anything mentioning it anywhere else and I don't check the store pages often so I figured i would say something. Good time to get some DLC perhaps. 

Edited April 16 by FancyCat

[Vanir Ausf B]

Zelenskiy says the Trypilska thermal power plant was destroyed because there were more missiles incoming than interceptors outgoing.

"There were 11 missiles flying. We destroyed the first seven, and four (remaining) destroyed Trypillia. Why? Because there were zero missiles. We ran out of missiles to defend Trypillial"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-says-ran-missiles-stop-103157624.html

[fry30]

Yeah I think its time to finally suck it up and grab CMRT again... I'll never figure out where the heck that damned key is. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Tux said:

This is only true until they are countered.  The real power play in all this would be to focus almost entirely on an affordable and extremely effective C-UAS system.  Once western armies can reliably counter an enemy’s drone fleet then they could take the moral high ground by eschewing autonomous human-hunting killbots (FPVs and autonomous targeting of enemy vehicles are still fair game) and driving a worldwide conversation about everyone else doing the same.

And here we have the downward slope.  A cheap and effective C-Unmanned system is most likely other autonomous unmanned systems.  Having a person in the loop for every c-drone drone, is just going to slow things down and likely give advantage to an opponent.  

So my guess we are looking at a fully autonomous forward edge (in 3 dimensions) of fully autonomous systems for peer sides.  Those edges will collide and supported by other legacy systems will try and knock each other out.  Deep strike plays in here etc.  Once a sides bubble collapses...they are dead.  Collapse enough bubbles and they lose the war.

So we are back to fully autonomous race to the bottom.  A lot of friction in warfare is human-based.  Remove the human with a good enough AI and lose the friction.  The moral high ground will always give way in the face of existential threats...this is why nukes work.

[cesmonkey]

 

[Fenris]

It's being called the blyatmobile, saying under the turtle shell armour it's all EW equipment.  A new type of AFV is born?

Similarly, something that looks like a bat-sub being developed

 

Edited April 16 by Fenris

[Tux]

10 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And here we have the downward slope.  A cheap and effective C-Unmanned system is most likely other autonomous unmanned systems.  Having a person in the loop for every c-drone drone, is just going to slow things down and likely give advantage to an opponent.  

So my guess we are looking at a fully autonomous forward edge (in 3 dimensions) of fully autonomous systems for peer sides.  Those edges will collide and supported by other legacy systems will try and knock each other out.  Deep strike plays in here etc.  Once a sides bubble collapses...they are dead.  Collapse enough bubbles and they lose the war.

So we are back to fully autonomous race to the bottom.  A lot of friction in warfare is human-based.  Remove the human with a good enough AI and lose the friction.  The moral high ground will always give way in the face of existential threats...this is why nukes work.

I don’t think I expressed myself clearly enough.

I fully agree that the best C-UAS is likely to be an autonomous C-UAS drone. My point is, if and when you can field such an effective C-UAS design that the enemy’s UAS are effectively nullified, you have stopped their autonomous attack drones from being deterministic weapons.  The ‘do or die’ argument for unrestricted targeting of enemy soldiers, etc. has disappeared. C-UAS is now (arguably) the deterministic system since it basically grants the successful user the choice of how to prosecute the rest of the war.  That is when it would be viable, imo, to eschew autonomous targeting of human beings and promote global abandonment of such an idea.  Autonomous targeting of other enemy equipment (ships, aircraft, UGVs, etc.) would still be fine - that’s not the animalistic nightmare-inducing stuff.  Autonomous targeting of individual people/crowds of people is what could be abandoned and there’s a chance the world might hurry to agree, for once. 

[paxromana]

2 hours ago, Tux said:

Autonomous targeting of individual people/crowds of people is what could be abandoned and there’s a chance the world might hurry to agree, for once. 

North Korea? Iran> Nutjob Terrorists?

Good luck with that ...

[Kraft]

Quote

Russia's meat grinder soldiers - 50,000 confirmed dead

In the second 12 months on the front line - as Moscow pushed its so-called meat grinder strategy - we found the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first year.

Prisoners under Wagner survived on average 3 Months, those under official russian strafbats only 2 months.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-68819853

 

Edited April 17 by Kraft

[Carolus]

From the strike on the airfield in Crimea.

 

 

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, Tux said:

I don’t think I expressed myself clearly enough.

I fully agree that the best C-UAS is likely to be an autonomous C-UAS drone. My point is, if and when you can field such an effective C-UAS design that the enemy’s UAS are effectively nullified, you have stopped their autonomous attack drones from being deterministic weapons.  The ‘do or die’ argument for unrestricted targeting of enemy soldiers, etc. has disappeared. C-UAS is now (arguably) the deterministic system since it basically grants the successful user the choice of how to prosecute the rest of the war.  That is when it would be viable, imo, to eschew autonomous targeting of human beings and promote global abandonment of such an idea.  Autonomous targeting of other enemy equipment (ships, aircraft, UGVs, etc.) would still be fine - that’s not the animalistic nightmare-inducing stuff.  Autonomous targeting of individual people/crowds of people is what could be abandoned and there’s a chance the world might hurry to agree, for once. 

That is one hopeful theory but I think history is not entirely onside.  As we see in Ukraine, warfare is not simply political, it is personal.  So if/when an opponent’s unmanned bubble collapses they may very well refuse to accept defeat and fight on.  They will do so by various means that will cause you casualties. There will be a lot of pressure to reduce those casualties.  Autonomous weapons will be one of the best ways to do this. So I do not see a winning side simply switching modes mid-war.  In fact attacks on the will to fight are very often pointed directly at populations…we are literally seeing this unfold everyday in both Ukraine and hr Middle East.  So fully autonomous as terror weapons against civilian populations is tragically predictable.

Further, just because one can collapse an opponent’s unmanned systems bubble does not mean it will stay collapsed without destroying that opponent’s ability to access/produce more systems.  That will mean attacks on deep industrial infrastructure and varying degrees of resistance.  Trying to managed semi vs full autonomy based on ethical grounds in this sort of environment is a challenge few nations will do and even fewer will do well.

And this assumes the war stays a clean standup fight and does not go hybrid.  Insurrection, partisan resistance and guerrilla warfare will ensure that fully autonomous stay on the forefront of any modern force.  But it will also be very attractive to hybrid resistance for all the same reasons - can’t jam/EW easily, faster and more lethal, range.

The advantages are too strong, the effects too deterministic, the stakes too high.

[Kraft]

 

 

[Tux]

2 hours ago, paxromana said:

North Korea? Iran> Nutjob Terrorists?

Good luck with that ...

This is true of absolutely everything.  If you want to you can argue against trying to control any hazardous substance or unethical weapon based on the argument that ‘the North Koreans won’t listen’.  It gets the rest of the world nowhere. 

[Tux]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

That is one hopeful theory but I think history is not entirely onside.  As we see in Ukraine, warfare is not simply political, it is personal.  So if/when an opponent’s unmanned bubble collapses they may very well refuse to accept defeat and fight on.  They will do so by various means that will cause you casualties. There will be a lot of pressure to reduce those casualties.  Autonomous weapons will be one of the best ways to do this. So I do not see a winning side simply switching modes mid-war.

I totally agree and am focusing on nightmare weapons which hunt down individual human beings in order to kill or maim them.  Autonomy against vehicles, factories, equipment and other unmanned systems will be ubiquitous and I think relatively uncontroversial.  It's when these things start being used specifically to kill people that the world will cry abomination, just as they have done in the past with other systems that lead to outsized (even if unintended) risk to civilians (cluster munitions, AP mines, etc.) or which offend one too many animalistic sensibilities when they are used (flamethrowers).  I understand that none of those weapons were considered deterministic at the time but it's the reaction they induce which I think they will share with human-targeting drones.  So, once such drones can no longer be considered deterministic, the momentum could gather to outlaw autonomous targeting of human beings.

All very hopeful, for sure.  I am just raising the possibility in light of the fact that the most offensive type of UAS won't be deterministic (and therefore necessary) forever.

 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

In fact attacks on the will to fight are very often pointed directly at populations…we are literally seeing this unfold everyday in both Ukraine and hr Middle East.  So fully autonomous as terror weapons against civilian populations is tragically predictable.

I agree but don't think it will impact the weapons that people try to regulate, once they are not really necessary.  Many of the attacks you are referring to are already considered warcrimes, after all...

 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Further, just because one can collapse an opponent’s unmanned systems bubble does not mean it will stay collapsed without destroying that opponent’s ability to access/produce more systems.  That will mean attacks on deep industrial infrastructure and varying degrees of resistance.  Trying to managed semi vs full autonomy based on ethical grounds in this sort of environment is a challenge few nations will do and even fewer will do well.

Granted.  No argument from me against autonomous attacks on infrastructure, etc.  My suggestion is that semi-autonomy *could* be reserved for targeting humans in the long term and once C-UAS has become deterministic to the point that whoever wins the C-UAS fight can maintain that dominance and effectively choose whether they use fully-autonomous-hellborn-head-poppers or not.

 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

And this assumes the war stays a clean standup fight and does not go hybrid.  Insurrection, partisan resistance and guerrilla warfare will ensure that fully autonomous stay on the forefront of any modern force.  But it will also be very attractive to hybrid resistance for all the same reasons - can’t jam/EW easily, faster and more lethal, range.

This is similar to paxromana's point.  Someone, somewhere, will try to autonomously attack men, women and children who wear the wrong type of clothing or use the wrong vowel sounds.  I get it.  However, if dominant and widespread C-UAS systems exist, then that needn't be a weapon of choice for whichever corner of humanity ethics end up sheltering in.  That's all.

 

My prediction?  None of the above will matter and people everywhere will have to live with a permanent new mortal threat vector in their lives.  My hope?  Once these systems are routinely countered then we'll find a way to discourage or prevent their widespread use in the first place.

[Artkin]

14 hours ago, Fenris said:

It's being called the blyatmobile, saying under the turtle shell armour it's all EW equipment.  A new type of AFV is born?

Similarly, something that looks like a bat-sub being developed

 

As cool as it is to see whats being developed... 

Can these guys stop taking pictures of everything? What ever happened to secrecy?

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, Tux said:

My prediction?  None of the above will matter and people everywhere will have to live with a permanent new mortal threat vector in their lives.  My hope?  Once these systems are routinely countered then we'll find a way to discourage or prevent their widespread use in the first place.

I think the major flaw here is that somehow we can “routinely counter” unmanned systems to the point that their utility comes into question and therefore the moral ethical “rightness” can hold sway.  Like other disruptive technologies unmanned will go far and wide (already has) and likely remain a competitive space for decades, if not centuries.  There is no “whelp that was unpleasant” followed by “now we can go back to the way things were”.  It does not apply to military application nor regulation.  

We cannot unsee or unknow what has already happened.  There is no magic wands to make it all go away.  Even unmanned counters will remain a highly competitive space where arms races to counter-counters will occur all the time.  Hoping that unmanned weapons will somehow disappear is like hoping bullets disappear because we invented body armor.

This paradigm shift has been decades in the making.  This war has only demonstrated that it has arrived.  We will likely try to regulate - hell we try to regulate every new weapons technology, but like air power, cyber and space the punchline is inevitable.  So what?  Dive into the game and be better and faster than opponents.  Blunt the effects and understand what unmanned superiority means.  Shape future battlefields now through rapid smart adoption.  Not military cultural conservatism or pinning hopes on the “better angels”.  We are in a new age of warfare, there is no getting past that.  All that remains is how well we can navigate this new reality.