How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

 

This is not going to do anything but go faster, and faster. U.S military needs to light a REAL fire under its own programs.

So this is the next logical step. Fully autonomous for the last mile. Basically likely flying Javelin. Buzzes around under human control until it sees something and then gets cut lose to engage back a km or two. EW becomes a lot less effective as the bubble has to expand, risking detection and engagement. Or risk a system that does not care about EW in the last couple thousand meters.

Edited Sunday at 07:09 PM by The_Capt

[acrashb]

54 minutes ago, dan/california said:

This is not going to do anything but go faster, and faster. U.S military needs to light a REAL fire under its own programs.

Yesterday I bumped into a US infantry soldier who had transitioned to logistics.  We got talking about the war, and he mentioned "drones are the big thing, we're pushing hard" [in reference to US armed forces]. So there's your on-the-ground view.

53 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Bleeping thing worked...

Apply that to Starshield, and that validates your previous point about launching military satellites as quickly as the enemy can disable them, through lowering per-kg cost to orbit.

But also points to a future Kessler syndrome.  So I'm keeping my land-based internet.

 

Edited Sunday at 06:27 PM by acrashb

[dan/california]

 

 

 

 

1 minute ago, acrashb said:

Yesterday I bumped into a US infantry soldier who had transitioned to logistics.  We got talking about the war, and mentioned "drones are the big thing, we're pushing hard" [in reference to US armed forces]. So there's your on-the-ground view.

Apply that to Starshield, and that validates your previous point about launching military satellites as quickly as the enemy can disable them, through lowering per-kg cost to orbit.

But also points to a future Kessler syndrome.  So I'm keeping my land-based internet.

 

I think that was Kimo... actually. But it does bring up another question, does $50 per kilogram to orbit make "Rods From God" a workable thing? That is the catchy name for dropping guided tungsten penetrators from orbit. Have we moved from a situation where that just wouldn't work? To one where the primary restraints on doing it are treaties/politics?

Unfortunately I think Kessler Syndrome has to be considered a near inevitability in the case of a conflict with Russia and/or China. That just needs to built into all the planning assumptions. Yes that is a big very expensive, very messy, and very disruptive thing.

[kimbosbread]

$50 per kg means $500k for a 10 ton payload (Air Force IIRC imagined an 8 ton rod), plus let’s say $1m for the rod and guidance system, assuming SpaceX is building it, and not MIC. That’s brutally cheap. You could probably scale this down a little bit too, or make something that deploys 100x SDBs or JDAMs once it hits 40kft.

Given the logistics constraints of moving weaponry across the Pacific for a war with China, and the benefits of deterring a very likely conflict, there’s really no reason not to just stick a bunch of weaponry in a high orbit instead (or around the moon for safe storage). Not like anybody else has the capability, or will have it within less than a decade or two or three.

That said, Think less about “Rods from God” and more creatively: “What can I do if I can launch hundreds of tons of mass into orbit per day?” Imagine if Space Force contracts SpaceX to build a sunshield at L1 (either monolithic or distributed), except instead of just mitigating global warming, it can also be used to turn off the sun for an entire enemy country.

EDIT (from Wikipedia, re rods from god):

In the case of the system mentioned in the 2003 Air Force report above, a 6.1 by 0.3 metres (20 ft × 1 ft) tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 (11,200 ft/s; 3,400 m/s) has kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT (48 GJ).[15] The mass of such a cylinder is itself greater than 9 short tons (8.2 t), so the practical applications of such a system are limited to those situations where its other characteristics provide a clear and decisive advantage—a conventional bomb/warhead of similar weight to the tungsten rod, delivered by conventional means, provides similar destructive capability and is far more practical and cost-effective.

Edited Sunday at 07:36 PM by kimbosbread

[CHARLIE43]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

So this is the next logical step. Fully autonomous for the last mile. Basically likely flying Javelin. Buzzes around under human control until it sees something and then gets cut lose to engage back a km or two. EW becomes a lot less effective as the bubble has to expand, risking detection and engagement. Or risk a system that does not care about EW in the last couple thousand meters.

"The shape of a human" part bothers me. Even with a high rate of zoom, you are still depending on a soldier to properly identify/designate a target. A friendly vs foe vs civilian thing. Then you come to the problem of losing track or re-designating a target during flight. A lot can happen within a km or two, especially when it comes to a target as small as a human on the battlefield. There are probably other concerns that I would think a highly professional military with an aversion to blue on blue/civilian casualties would want to have ironed out before it would even think about fielding such a weapon. Not only that, at what point does any technology become such a huge threat to humanity that it is also designated a weapon of mass destruction?

I just keep having thoughts of swarms of autonomous drones descending upon populations. And hopefully there are enough scarecrows to fool a good portion of them!

[dan/california]

40 minutes ago, CHARLIE43 said:

"The shape of a human" part bothers me. Even with a high rate of zoom, you are still depending on a soldier to properly identify/designate a target. A friendly vs foe vs civilian thing. Then you come to the problem of losing track or re-designating a target during flight. A lot can happen within a km or two, especially when it comes to a target as small as a human on the battlefield. There are probably other concerns that I would think a highly professional military with an aversion to blue on blue/civilian casualties would want to have ironed out before it would even think about fielding such a weapon. Not only that, at what point does any technology become such a huge threat to humanity that it is also designated a weapon of mass destruction?

I just keep having thoughts of swarms of autonomous drones descending upon populations. And hopefully there are enough scarecrows to fool a good portion of them!

There is no meaningful difference between this risk, and the of getting 155 cluster munitions, or a JDAM, dropped on you because a recon drone, or its operators saw something incorrectly. And I am not saying it isn't a very real risk, just that the risk isn't particularly related to autonomous drones. IFF is a major challenge on the modern battlefield, but a separate one.

 

[The_Capt]

54 minutes ago, CHARLIE43 said:

"The shape of a human" part bothers me. Even with a high rate of zoom, you are still depending on a soldier to properly identify/designate a target. A friendly vs foe vs civilian thing. Then you come to the problem of losing track or re-designating a target during flight. A lot can happen within a km or two, especially when it comes to a target as small as a human on the battlefield. There are probably other concerns that I would think a highly professional military with an aversion to blue on blue/civilian casualties would want to have ironed out before it would even think about fielding such a weapon. Not only that, at what point does any technology become such a huge threat to humanity that it is also designated a weapon of mass destruction?

I just keep having thoughts of swarms of autonomous drones descending upon populations. And hopefully there are enough scarecrows to fool a good portion of them!

It is pretty much a race to the bottom on all this. You can go online and see videos of AI traffic monitoring. We are already at “go kill shape of human” in a multi-spectral sense. Blue force tracking and ID is solvable. Civilians really are not. So the other team won’t care while we try to figure it out. We will be ironing out while the Chinese put these things into the field ahead of us. Sucks but that is what it takes to be the good guys.

As to WMD…damned good question. My guess is we won’t try that route because unlike nukes one can put up a swarm to fend off another swarm (well theoretically). There is no Mutual Assured Destruction paradigm. In fact because it is not Mutual, we will very likely pursue it harder.

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

It is pretty much a race to the bottom on all this. You can go online and see videos of AI traffic monitoring. We are already at “go kill shape of human” in a multi-spectral sense. Blue force tracking and ID is solvable. Civilians really are not. So the other team won’t care while we try to figure it out. We will be ironing out while the Chinese put these things into the field ahead of us. Sucks but that is what it takes to be the good guys.

As to WMD…damned good question. My guess is we won’t try that route because unlike nukes one can put up a swarm to fend off another swarm (well theoretically). There is no Mutual Assured Destruction paradigm. In fact because it is not Mutual, we will very likely pursue it harder.

There is also an enormous difference between a full bore war zone like the front lines, and adjacent areas, in Ukraine, and a counterinsurgency where %90 or better of what you are tracking is civilian.

[CHARLIE43]

Don't get me wrong. I have no doubts that the soldiers in said military are actually testing this technology out regardless of what the upper echelon's thinking is. Whether it's messing with them after hours in the rear or actually taking them into the field and pulling some surprising moves on one another, it's most likely happening on that level. And that is probably the best way to get the upper commands attention on them if they refuse to pay attention otherwise.

[panzermartin]

Hezbollalh strikes major IDF camp with many casualties. Strangely they found a way to penetrate the air defense with unknown drone types. 

It's highly probable Russia is providing Iran (and consequently their proxies ) with battlefield knowledge from the ukrainian drone front. 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

We are already at “go kill shape of human” in a multi-spectral sense.

We're already well ahead of that in capabilities that can be easily stitched together.

Think of that horrific video of the Russians following the Kherson guy home from work and bombing him and his dog.  That was Human targeting, but it didn't need to be.  Feed in a profile of someone specific you're looking to target, have AI predict where and when that person might be at any given time, fly a drone to that spot, use some form of recognition (vehicle and/or face), and then boom... target dead.

This isn't sci-fi.  I could have this system up and running out of my garage within months, maybe a year, using people I know who have the skill sets to accomplish this sort of thing.  And I'm not special.  Neither are the people I know.  So if I'm confident that I could make this happen, I'm positive someone else out there can as well.  A lot of someones.

Steve

[NamEndedAllen]

3 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

Think less about “Rods from God” and more creatively: “What can I do if I can launch hundreds of tons of mass into orbit per day?” Imagine if Space Force contracts SpaceX to build a sunshield at L1 (either monolithic or distributed), except instead of just mitigating global warming, it can also be used to turn off the sun for an entire enemy country.

Which leads immediately to one of the more favored and most chilling explanations for the fundamental questions:

Q “If the universe is teeming with life, where are all the aliens?” 
A: Advanced civilizations always destroy themselves before they can colonize their neck of the woods.

Not the answer we would wish for, but an example of the answer we might be seeing unfold right before our eyes. While lurking in the background - the grey goo nano apocalypse.

[Battlefront.com]

Russia is preparing to go after another hostile Western ideology... couples not wanting to have kids.  Under the proposal an individual vocally supporting not having children could be fined up to $4300 (which in Russia is a MASSIVE amount) and $50,000 fine for companies/organizations.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-explainer-putin-children/33156865.html

Steve

[sburke]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Russia is preparing to go after another hostile Western ideology... couples not wanting to have kids.  Under the proposal an individual vocally supporting not having children could be fined up to $4300 (which in Russia is a MASSIVE amount) and $50,000 fine for companies/organizations.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-explainer-putin-children/33156865.html

Steve

f'n childless cat ladies have to go!

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

We're already well ahead of that in capabilities that can be easily stitched together.

Think of that horrific video of the Russians following the Kherson guy home from work and bombing him and his dog.  That was Human targeting, but it didn't need to be.  Feed in a profile of someone specific you're looking to target, have AI predict where and when that person might be at any given time, fly a drone to that spot, use some form of recognition (vehicle and/or face), and then boom... target dead.

This isn't sci-fi.  I could have this system up and running out of my garage within months, maybe a year, using people I know who have the skill sets to accomplish this sort of thing.  And I'm not special.  Neither are the people I know.  So if I'm confident that I could make this happen, I'm positive someone else out there can as well.  A lot of someones.

Steve

Huh, yeah not sci-fi but unless the people you know are way more special than you claim that's at best doable in some cases, not in general. Not because it is not possible technology-wise but because of a lack of information for the "have AI predict where and when that person might be at any given time" part. If you don't have a detailed schedule of the target person - in which case you hardly need AI to predict anything - you have to rely on publicly available information. Sure, many people put everything they do on social media but many others don't.

Now, if your friends have more... specialized skills like hacking smartphones or surveillance cameras, things are looking different. Although in the first case you likely already have physical access to that person and in the second you already know where to look.

So, in short, building the killer drone is quite doable (but still not something that Joe Average can do in his garage in a few weeks, I think), finding the target person if you don't already know where to look is hard. Luckily we are not talking The Terminator - yet.

[dan/california]

20 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Huh, yeah not sci-fi but unless the people you know are way more special than you claim that's at best doable in some cases, not in general. Not because it is not possible technology-wise but because of a lack of information for the "have AI predict where and when that person might be at any given time" part. If you don't have a detailed schedule of the target person - in which case you hardly need AI to predict anything - you have to rely on publicly available information. Sure, many people put everything they do on social media but many others don't.

Now, if your friends have more... specialized skills like hacking smartphones or surveillance cameras, things are looking different. Although in the first case you likely already have physical access to that person and in the second you already know where to look.

So, in short, building the killer drone is quite doable (but still not something that Joe Average can do in his garage in a few weeks, I think), finding the target person if you don't already know where to look is hard. Luckily we are not talking The Terminator - yet.

Steve probably has above average friends in some of the relevant areas. That said, there are thousands of people, and hundreds of companies and organizations that are capable of doing this now, or very, very soon. By this I mean building drones that be told to hunt down a particular image/object that is already on the operators screen. Some of the basic tech for that has been in one U.S. munition or another for decades. It is not a trivial step for that targeting order to be passed from an image received by a recon drone to whatever we are going to call FPV drones once their is not a person involved any more, but it isn't the Manhattan Project either. I would be utterly shocked if several of the worlds more astute military contractors don't already have that working in at least prototype form.

[sburke]

Russia on verge of anarchy as gunmen target Vladimir Putin's officials and kill three (msn.com)

Three Russian counterterrorism officers were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on their vehicle in Magas, the capital city of the Republic of Ingushetia in Russia's North Caucasus.

The attack occurred on Friday and is believed to be part of a growing feud declared by Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov against politicians from Dagestan and Ingushetia, sparking fears of escalating instability and violence.

The intended target of the attack was reportedly Adam Khamkhoyev, the deputy head of Putin's Centre 'E' counterterrorism task force in Ingushetia.

 

[Butschi]

19 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Steve probably has above average friends in some of the relevant areas. That said, there are thousands of people, and hundreds of companies and organizations that are capable of doing this now, or very, very soon. By this I mean building drones that be told to hunt down a particular image/object that is already on the operators screen. Some of the basic tech for that has been in one U.S. munition or another for decades. It is not a trivial step for that targeting order to be passed from an image received by a recon drone to whatever we are going to call FPV drones once their is not a person involved any more, but it isn't the Manhattan Project either. I would be utterly shocked if several of the worlds more astute military contractors don't already have that working in at least prototype form.

Don't get me wrong, as I said the killer drone itself is not what I doubt. As you and Steve said, the technology for that is there in principle (although we'd have to discuss the details a little more when talking what the intended performance is).

As I understood Steve, he is thinking a little farther than that, meaning the killer drone itself plus the ability to simply feed it some information about a target with some kind of AI system that then goes ahead and actually finds said target.

There is a difference between saying "go patrol this area and attack everything that you can identify as tank" and "here, take this photo and a name, go and find me that target". In the latter case it really depends on what information you have available. Even AI cannot extract information that isn't there. Meaning, if you only have a photo and a name but no more information is available from sources the AI has access to, there is nothing you can do. Don't know if that's really what Steve meant, though.

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

Second army in the world reduced to improvised infantry support guns.

Shouldn't they have tens of thousands of SPG-9s to use? 

[Battlefront.com]

34 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Don't get me wrong, as I said the killer drone itself is not what I doubt. As you and Steve said, the technology for that is there in principle (although we'd have to discuss the details a little more when talking what the intended performance is).

As I understood Steve, he is thinking a little farther than that, meaning the killer drone itself plus the ability to simply feed it some information about a target with some kind of AI system that then goes ahead and actually finds said target.

There is a difference between saying "go patrol this area and attack everything that you can identify as tank" and "here, take this photo and a name, go and find me that target". In the latter case it really depends on what information you have available. Even AI cannot extract information that isn't there. Meaning, if you only have a photo and a name but no more information is available from sources the AI has access to, there is nothing you can do. Don't know if that's really what Steve meant, though.

 

Today I was reminded of the lawsuit against Oracle Systems for illegally tracking people's personal data and Internet use through their backend systems that nobody is even aware of being used.  They then sold that data.  And there's lots more where that came from.

You wouldn't even have to feed a predictive AI system that much information for it to make pretty good guesses at things that are routine for the target.  We Humans are creatures of habit and simplicity.  Work routine is the easiest thing to tap into because all you really need to know is where the person works and that's pretty much all one needs.  Oh, they work from home?  Well, even easier.

Anyway, you don't even need that.  All you need to do is hack into the person's phone and you will have a nice GPS beacon showing where the target is in realtime.

Even if there are some practical hurdles today, they aren't very high and can be jumped with the right incentives.

Battlefield killbots are even easier because they don't need to be so particular.

Steve

[alison]

I really hope this is not something that western governments plan to operationalize. While it is true that since GWoT governments in the west seem to care much less about diplomatically hiding their assassination programs, I think this trend undermines the international rules-based order and fuels internal discord that plays into the hands of rival states - the PRC in particular. It's tough for America to make a moral case against large state sponsors of terrorism when they are still arbitrarily assassinating people on foreign soil via drone. If it becomes further normalized that western governments will simply press a button to send autonomous drones into civilian spaces to do "targeted" assassinations then what are we even fighting for?

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, alison said:

I really hope this is not something that western governments plan to operationalize. While it is true that since GWoT governments in the west seem to care much less about diplomatically hiding their assassination programs, I think this trend undermines the international rules-based order and fuels internal discord that plays into the hands of rival states - the PRC in particular. It's tough for America to make a moral case against large state sponsors of terrorism when they are still arbitrarily assassinating people on foreign soil via drone. If it becomes further normalized that western governments will simply press a button to send autonomous drones into civilian spaces to do "targeted" assassinations then what are we even fighting for?

Case in point.  Politico just published an article detailing Iran's plans to assassinate one or more US officials who were responsible for the killing of Qassem Soleimani.  At the time of his killing there were analysts that felt his killing would have such consequences.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/11/iran-trump-assassination-plans-00183488

When you think about it, with all the murder and mayhem in this world, it's kinda amazing how rare it is that states deliberately kill members of their enemy's leadership, family, and/or friends.  Yet it is pretty easily done.  Now with drones, even easier.

Steve

 

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, Butschi said:

Don't get me wrong, as I said the killer drone itself is not what I doubt. As you and Steve said, the technology for that is there in principle (although we'd have to discuss the details a little more when talking what the intended performance is).

As I understood Steve, he is thinking a little farther than that, meaning the killer drone itself plus the ability to simply feed it some information about a target with some kind of AI system that then goes ahead and actually finds said target.

There is a difference between saying "go patrol this area and attack everything that you can identify as tank" and "here, take this photo and a name, go and find me that target". In the latter case it really depends on what information you have available. Even AI cannot extract information that isn't there. Meaning, if you only have a photo and a name but no more information is available from sources the AI has access to, there is nothing you can do. Don't know if that's really what Steve meant, though.

 

Germany has, at least in principle, much better data privacy laws than the US.  If you're in the US it's a safe assumption that anything you do online (which includes carrying a cellphone anywhere) is tracked, and that the people doing the tracking are sloppy AF about data security.  

In the pre-internet world there was a game, usually called Assassin, or something similar, where a gamemaster would sign up a bunch of people in an area (a town, a high school, a college) and assign each person one of the other players as a target and give them some minimal information about the target.  You didn't even know for sure who was playing and who wasn't.  And people still managed to figure out who their targets were and "assassinate" them (water balloon, nerf gun, motion sensing "bomb" that was just a buzzer, etc).  You totally can't play something like that now, but the availability of information for doing the tracking is way, way better.

[Battlefront.com]

Drone footage uploaded today shows Ukraine's 79th Air Assault Brigade blowing up another battalion sized mech grouping in the Kurakhiv (Donetsk) area.  I would post it but it's particularly graphic, including closeups of a guy burning alive and lots of gore.  No need for that, just a note here that yet another large mech group is scratched from Russia's Order of Battle.

Steve

[sburke]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Case in point.  Politico just published an article detailing Iran's plans to assassinate one or more US officials who were responsible for the killing of Qassem Soleimani.  At the time of his killing there were analysts that felt his killing would have such consequences.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/11/iran-trump-assassination-plans-00183488

When you think about it, with all the murder and mayhem in this world, it's kinda amazing how rare it is that states deliberately kill members of their enemy's leadership, family, and/or friends.  Yet it is pretty easily done.  Now with drones, even easier.

Steve

 

This is 5 years ago.

Opinion | Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy - The New York Times (nytimes.com)