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

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

#131

Post by bluGill »

dizhn wrote: post #127
matusp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracing the fiber back is possible only in extremely favorable conditions. The light must hit the cable just right and there cannot be too many cables from previous runs on the battlefield.

It's not too bad when they see the drone passing by. I have no idea how often this can happen without being seen though.

Those cables are 10km long. You can trade a couple hundred meters when the drone is flying by, but there are several KM that you cannot even see at the same time as you can see the drone.

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

#132

Post by general1726 »

avoutos wrote: post #67

Even if the technology improves and the economics of scale reduces the cost, I still don't buy the narrative that swarms of tiny kamikaze drones will radically change warfare. Aside from radio jamming, I have not seen an actual defense against a strong EMP. To defend against an EMP wiping out your drone swarm, you would have to invest in shielding etc which would remove them from the class of small cheap drones. Idk…

Usually the initial attack (From Ukrainian perspective) is stopped by regular military weapons like AT, Artillery, Mines and drones are used to mop up the battlefield - Burn out abandoned vehicles and hunt scattered soldiers

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

#133

Post by bluGill »

TheChaplain wrote: post #6

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

From what I understand Ukraine is not using many fiber drones because there are other disadvantages. They can have them, but they mostly choose to use radio anyway. Russia is using a lot of fiber drones.

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

#134

Post by Fokamul »

dizhn wrote: post #124
abracadaniel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched the video of one navigating a series of nets to weave its way inside and into the open hatch of a tank. It’s ridiculously impressive.

I watched a video of one being destroyed by cutting the trailing fiber optic cable with a pair of scissors. Also impressive.

Yes, def. possible. But right now in UA's regions where drones are used the most, there are so many used fiber-optic cables laying on the fields, that you have basically zero chance to cut them all, because you would be cutting already discarded ones.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wcMZWRJL_m4

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

#135

Post by CapricornNoble »

esseph wrote: post #115
Reubachi wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your linked video is interesting, but I fail to see how this at all differentiates/promotes drone usage versus artillery, indirect fire. Your video shows something that an artillery corps could accomplish just as easily and not at all be prone to EW. Granted, moving indirect fire is probably more expensive than a single fpv drone dropping a thermite bomb, but at scale indirect fire is far cheaper, more effective, and…

Think of the fpv drone like a smol guided TOW missile at extremely low cost. The artillery, while destructive, is not going to be nearly as accurate. If you want artillery to hit something on the move accurately you want something like a laser adjusted Excalibur round. The drone is actually extremely efficient.

Laser-guided artillery rounds have been around a while. The Soviets were using laser-guided 240mm heavy mortar rounds in Afghanistan.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1351804050035499...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M712_Copperhead

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

#136

Post by tclancy »

hnaccount_rng wrote: post #121
varjag wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 is a cost of a 60mm mortar shell. It is a hand grenade sized munition lobbed from a Pringles can sized weapon to the range of 1-2km. This is generally not the thing that comes to mind when you think of artillery strike. A 155mm (dumb, unguided) shell would set you back 5-8K USD. That's before the propellant charge, fuse and amortization of the artillery piece and its 5 man crew.

Then again the payload of an FPV is much more comparable to the mortar round than to the 155mm one

But theoretically much better aimed. Don’t know if there’s enough data here to do the math. Plus that it’s a bit gauche to do math about human lives, but here we are.

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

#137

Post by bluGill »

sottol wrote: post #112
throwawayffffas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to compare it to other man portable guided weapons like the FGM-148 Javelin. The Javelin is much much better in all respects, except perhaps range. But is about 100 - 200 times more expensive. If you can afford* the Javelins and the TOW's of the world that's what you are going to use otherwise, you are stuck with FPVs. Afford means not only fiscally, but production capacity wise as well.

Doesn't a single javelin missile cost almost 200k? The drones I've seen I'd budget at 150-300$ plus explosives. I think that puts the javelin more at 500-1000x as expensive imo.

You need 15 drones to do what a javelin can do though, and that is at best. If the tank armor is good a small drone cannot do any damage (that is why drones try to fly in open hatches - bypass the armor), while a javelin can go through modern armor.

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

#138

Post by bluGill »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #102
bboygravity wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's fertility rate is 1. Even if they win the war, they still eventually will have lost.

Fertility rate is a problem for the future, that you can also solve via better polices and incentives if you want to, meanwhile dying or being enslaved in a war is a problem for right now that you can't escape via policies. Which one you think is worse? Also, most wealthy industrialized western nations have the same fertility issues, some are only compensating by huge legal and ilegal immigration which can be causing…

Fertility rate in China has been less than one for decades. They have a lot of people, but they are heavily weighted to old.

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

#139

Post by bluGill »

palata wrote: post #41
msgodel wrote: post #15

Soon they'll be using CV and won't need FPV.

You still want someone to get the drone to a place where it can see the target, and someone to select this target. Only then can CV do the last part ("terminal engagement"). But that also means it won't go inside a hangar and find the target there.

IF you tell it go into the hanger and find a target CV can do that. It might not be the best target in the hanger, but that doesn't matter too much if you can get in.

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

#140

Post by dinfinity »

palata wrote: post #107
dinfinity wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't forget that drones have been used in this war for years 3 years of usage is brand new. Neither Ukraine nor Russia have been designing and producing purpose-built FPV drones since the beginning (I assume things are well underway now). It's a bunch of consumer shit thrown together, which makes it kind of incredible that they work as well as they do. An equivalent would be something like taping an assault rifle…

> 3 years of usage is brand new. Usage, sure. But the technology is not. Those drones are flying smartphones. We have already had mass-produced consumer drones for more than a decade. We don't use them because they are new, we use them because they are cheap and accessible. I am not sure what you call "consumer shit" here. They go for cheap FPV drones precisely because they are cheap. But the autopilot running in the…

You based your doubt for whether the technology would improve on consumer shit thrown together for a few years as opposed to military technology purposely designed and built over a long period. That is bad reasoning. There is nothing more to it and it is thus far more likely that the technology will improve than not.
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