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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

#141

Post by beAbU »

bluGill wrote: post #129
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.

A M107 155mm round weights 95lbs when launched. Assuming that is pure lead (this is false, but lead is very cheap and it gives us numbers to work with) I can buy lead ignots for $2.89/lbs. Which puts us at $293 per rounds in just materials. Since we assume the other materials cost money too, plus there is the energy used to turn ignots into a round, it seems unlikely you can get the cost to much under $1000 no matter…

And then you need to add that 5-10x government contract price multiplier to the cost as well.

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

#142

Post by inglor_cz »

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.

Provided that you catch it in time ... the window for doing that is short (several minutes) and you also likely need to expose yourself to potential other drones patroling in your proximity.

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

#143

Post by CapricornNoble »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #70
palata wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20% That's the whole question, and that's kind of the point that the article raises: the success rate does not matter. What matters is the cost. At the same cost, can you do more damage with other weapons or not?

A hit does not equal a kill. Killing a tank or an apc, takes a lot of hits from an FPV drone due to the small payload. I have heard quoted an average of 16 hits. That's why you see videos trying to go in open hatches and the like. And that's why you are seeing cope cages. It doesnt matter how many chains or steel plates you weld on to your tank if you are hit by a TOW or a Javelin, it's still going to get you. They c…

> A Javelin is pretty much one hit one kill, and the hit rate is supposedly at about 89%. So you need like one or two to kill a tank.

Take those extremely high kill rates with a massive grain of salt.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/08/re-ass...

Javelin consumption rates early in the war (500/day) do not match Russian loss rates if the system was ~90% effective. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ukraine-us-reque...

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

#144

Post by inglor_cz »

originalvichy wrote: post #77

FPV drones for combat are a hot flash in the pan. They have had a major effect for now, but naturally as these countermeasures evolve, so weakens their effect. I keep telling people that the terrain and the strategies that Russians use is the primary reason for the effectiveness. Mortars and artillery already handle the same requirements as the author says. The reason they are effective in 2024-25 is that the drip-dr…

"Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx."

This is true, but flat open fields are precisely the places where major mechanized battles usually took place. For the very reason that manoeuvering other equipment in complicated terrain is hard.

Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by CapricornNoble »

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?

There's a really good interview with a Russian drone manufacturer where he talks about how you need to use both.

The fiber-optic drones have small warheads/payloads. They are used to hunt the enemy's EW transmitters. Once the jammers have been suppressed, then the radio-controlled drones with bigger payloads go to work and do the bulk of the damage.

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

#147

Post by aftbit »

originalvichy wrote: post #77

FPV drones for combat are a hot flash in the pan. They have had a major effect for now, but naturally as these countermeasures evolve, so weakens their effect. I keep telling people that the terrain and the strategies that Russians use is the primary reason for the effectiveness. Mortars and artillery already handle the same requirements as the author says. The reason they are effective in 2024-25 is that the drip-dr…

The big thing that FPV drones have going for them is that they're ludicrously cheap and easily constructed from relatively basic parts by moderately skilled people.

It's literally cheaper to strap a grenade to an FPV drone and fly it into a tank hatch than it is to fire a single non-precision artillery round, let alone tens or hundreds of them.

Plus, you can deploy your drones remotely from the top of a trunk deep behind enemy lines and fly them into irreplaceable strategic aviation assets with a shot exchange factor better than 1000x.

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

#148

Post by inglor_cz »

palata wrote: post #63
oersted wrote: post #55

I don’t understand why the author has such a narrow definition of FPV drones. He talks as if reusable drones are a completely different category, that they are all toys designed for enthusiast racers… Generally he implies that a myriad arbitrary technical details are fundamental limitations of this paradigm, it’s a strange mindset. Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if i…

> Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20% That's the whole question, and that's kind of the point that the article raises: the success rate does not matter. What matters is the cost. At the same cost, can you do more damage with other weapons or not?

I think we should not discount the psychological effect.

From what I have read from Ukraine vets, ubiquitous drones make you crazy in a way that tank attacks don't. The difference is in their ubiquity. You are likely to encounter a tank relatively infrequently, and have enough time to recuperate between those encounters. But with a sky full of drones 24/7, or close to that, your nerves will give way sooner or later.

This alone may cripple the forward units.

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

#149

Post by dinfinity »

Reubachi wrote: post #103
dinfinity wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve watched way too much footage from the front. Did you see the videos of a drone dropping a shitload of thermite on a forest canopy? [0] > Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx. Most nations have cellular networks that penetrate buildings and forests just fine. In fact, Ukraine used the Russian cellular network for their recent attac…

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…

Drone 1 (or any other means) destroys the canopy. Drones 2-10 are no longer hindered by said canopy and deliver their payload with extreme and dynamic precision.

Remember that the argument was basically that drones can do nothing useful in (heavily) forested terrain. They can with a little bit of creativity.

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

#150

Post by CapricornNoble »

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…

I think you are overstating the ease of employing an EMP.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/world-wont-end-danger...

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