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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

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Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#41

Post by basisword »

flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

>> I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions.

>> You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private?

I want somebody that can be held accountable when it goes wrong. With automated systems we don't have that.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#42

Post by lukan »

bell-cot wrote: post #35
flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

To be fair, that's a relatively buried and brief aspect in the article. Which is otherwise heavy on real-world military realities. Personally, I see anyone fretting about imperfect drones making those decisions as either (1) one of today's 10K, or (2) a performer covering a trending topic. Land mines were deployed at giga-scale over a century ago (WWI). Spring-guns were enough of a problem in England to be outlawed t…

A) land mines are banned in most countries for that reason

B) mines don't move by themself, but stay where you deployed them

A moving autonomous killer drone has a potentially bigger effect if unleashed on the wrong area. Besides, war is usually fought in civilian areas. If you send the drone to the frontline, but its GPS is jammed, it might move somewhere close by.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#43

Post by orbital-decay »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #24
flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

The thing you're missing is that the decision isn't actually made by a machine. It's made by a person much much higher up across a much broader effective surface area. That is, historically to wage war you had to ultimately convince/coerce millions of people to wage that war for you -- continuously for years -- along with millions more to support the effort politically and economically. In the highly automated world,…

The amount of autonomy and decision complexity matters a lot. Autonomously making its way into a known area, recognizing the target and self-correcting to it is basically how every modern cruise missile works.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#44

Post by netsharc »

bamboozled wrote: post #30
Ciantic wrote: post #19

The latest attack deep inside Russian borders were apparently using ArduPilot [1], it is mentioned in the Atlantic article [2]. ArduPilot also has C++ source code in Github [3], also adding an article specifically about ArduPilot and Ukraine [4] [1]: https://ardupilot.org/ [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/uk... [3]: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot [4]: https://www.404media.co/ukra…

"He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ld7ppre9vo

Sun Tzu says it better:

"A military operation involves deception."

He could be telling the truth, he could be lying... A drone programmed to automatically boot up , check its location, and if it's at the right coordinates, take off and crash at some other coordinates (the airfield) is more satisfying to "fans" of automated warfare.

For extra fun, add some other code to "look for plane-like objects to crash into", but now you're approaching dangerous territory of "What if a civilian 737 happens to be boarding at this airfield"...

The reports also mention the truck roof opening remotely, one could also use GPS coordinates to trigger this. But doing it manually from a distance, after checking the surveillance cameras that the coast is clear, is more reliable.

I guess they used smartphones and SIM cards with mobile data for the remote communication...

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#45

Post by netsharc »

orbital-decay wrote: post #43
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing you're missing is that the decision isn't actually made by a machine. It's made by a person much much higher up across a much broader effective surface area. That is, historically to wage war you had to ultimately convince/coerce millions of people to wage that war for you -- continuously for years -- along with millions more to support the effort politically and economically. In the highly automated world,…

The amount of autonomy and decision complexity matters a lot. Autonomously making its way into a known area, recognizing the target and self-correcting to it is basically how every modern cruise missile works.

And now we know making an ersatz cruise missile in the garage is possible...

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#46

Post by JohnBooty »

flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

Can we think slightly more broadly?

Targeting a stationary Tu-95 bomber with no protective measures in place is probably the easiest possible identification task for a drone.

A lot of kill/no-kill decisions are more subtle, or involve unknowns, possible nearby civilians, etc.

Or look at this crazy FPV piloting job. You think AI could do this? Pilot maneuvers through an absolute maze of anti-drone nets to hit a moving truck. (essentially SFW; video terminates slightly before impact)

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1l2aqxp/ukra...

    stressed, emotional, tired front-line private
Drone operators are generally not on the front lines, and sometimes they are literally on the other side of the world sitting in a cubicle. They are usually specialists of some sort, not untrained privates.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#47

Post by netsharc »

jjice wrote: post #18
flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

This issue is too complex for me to really have a good thought at the moment, but I will say that this reminds me of that classic story of the Soviet who didn't launch the nukes during a threat came in from the US. The threat ended up being a false alarm, and that human judgement saved a lot of lives. A machine, assuming it would have launched when seeing that signal, would've ended differently.

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

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#48

Post by varjag »

bamboozled wrote: post #39
varjag wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drones reportedly flew from their containers to the staging area autonomously, where they were taken over by the pilots for the attack approach.

Source?

https://x.com/lemonodor/status/1929269307189469624

You can also see the careful departure of drones from containers in the videos, without extra panning or yaw. Not quite how a human operator would fly them.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#49

Post by bad_haircut72 »

flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

I was once talking to an F35 pilot about what its like and during the conversation he said something, "If its red, its dead" referring to how the computer classifies things as friend/foe for you. I realised it doesnt mean much to have a human in the loop when theyre making their decisions based completely on info the computer serves up anyway.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#50

Post by RenThraysk »

netsharc wrote: post #44
bamboozled wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ld7ppre9vo

Sun Tzu says it better: "A military operation involves deception." He could be telling the truth, he could be lying... A drone programmed to automatically boot up , check its location, and if it's at the right coordinates, take off and crash at some other coordinates (the airfield) is more satisfying to "fans" of automated warfare. For extra fun, add some other code to "look for plane-like objects to crash into", but…

Only need one camera drone capable of identifying targets. And just tells another drone to bomb it.
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