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I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

warontherocks.com

11–20 of 355 posts

Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

#11

The article talks about signal jammers, but as far as I know most drones there are remote controlled using fiber for exactly that reason?

There are... I think they aren't unproblematic - the fibre can get caught on things etc. Also I read of instances where the opposition can follow the fibre back to find the drone operators.

Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

#13
post #8

> They are controlled by an operator wearing virtual-reality goggles They aren't really using VR headsets, right? The FPV goggles I know are just a screen showing the camera image without any virtual reality.

Yeah I'd much rather use an xreal air or something. You can still see if someone (or an enemy drone) comes to kill you. AR is much better for this.

Probably you want the pilot to be 100% focused on the piloting. Someone else can look around and try to keep the pilot safe.

Also it's not like the pilot has to be exposed.

Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

#16

The article talks about signal jammers, but as far as I know most drones there are remote controlled using fiber for exactly that reason?

There are... I think they aren't unproblematic - the fibre can get caught on things etc. Also I read of instances where the opposition can follow the fibre back to find the drone operators.

Sounds like for fiber optic strikes you gotta do a "shoot and scoot".

Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

#17
> During my time in [...], I collected statistics on the success of our drone operations. I found that [...]

Assuming the writer and their allegiances are what they say, is any of the info valuable to any of their adversaries?

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

Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

#18
post #3

You need to compare this to hit rate with mortars and attrition by counter battery fire on mortar teams. Not to detract from a sober assessment but it's hard to judge without the other parts of the story. Thr tldr would be "temper expectations"

This. Mortar may be 5 times cheaper but 100x easier to destroy it and its crew. Also half of the problems described are purely technical and can be easily solved with some budget. In Ukraine most drones are assembled by volunteers. So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA.

>So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA

Imagine what China can pull off here in case they're in a war.

Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

#19

The article talks about signal jammers, but as far as I know most drones there are remote controlled using fiber for exactly that reason?

Yes, he writes that after he left the battlefield they became more common.

There was a video of a soldier wading through massive amounts of fiber near the front line. Just imagine that for each drone attack there will be 10-50km of fiber dropped on the landscape. It will not rot and stay there until someone cleans it up.

Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

#20
Many of the issues sound like issues coming from using improvised civilian hobbyist tech and doctrine being in its infancy.

If current FPV drones are bit lackluster, it doesn't preclude 'next generation' that are purposefully developed for military use won't be useful. Also it sounds like the designation of "FPV drone" is specific to particular family of drones specific in current day and time, which may be something quite else next year. Like, obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone or loitering munition author complains of (capability to hover easily)? Or "reusable" drone with FPV camera?

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