One of the key points of the article is "I feel FPV drones to be mostly a failure because their success rate is low"
Why is that a failure? If one 500$ drone has even only 10% success rate, if the target is a 1M$ equipment it's still a win!
I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
241–250 of 355 posts
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
> TOW's are a thing from the 70s. They are essentially the same thing That's just not true. I've not seen a TOW chase around a guy in a field, well not on r/UkraineWarVideoReport at least.
Because tows are too fast. There is guidance, but the missiles fly at 200+ meters per second. If you fire it at a guy or a vehicle, you either going to hit very fast or miss very fast.
I know, it was a tongue in cheek reply ;)
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#243FPV 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…
Exactly. Many are missing the big picture - while Ukraine has managed to hurt the Russsians with drone warfare, how much has all that really helped Ukraine to drive back the Russians or re-take the territory held by the Russians? The simple answer is that it hasn't. Moreover, drones are not going to give an edge to Ukranian any more as the Russian too have mastered not just counter-drone warfare but also streamlined it into their conventional warfare tactics. (For example, Russians now outproduce the Ukrainians in drones and now use WW2 style motorbikes to evade drone defence - https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/06/25/russias-motorcycle-... ).
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#244They may kind of suck but even so they are still transforming the war in Ukraine. A month or so ago FPV drones took out much of Russia's nuclear bomber fleet ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44150789 ), something like 80% of battlefield casualties are due to drones, neither side pretty much can use tanks because they get taken out by drones. It's a huge change in war fighting. One stat: "In May alone, Ukrainian…
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Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#245Earlier 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…
Isn’t artillery easier to locate/ counter attack than a drone operator station?
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder what the tech gap is to using circular polarized light from the sun as a point of reference for dead reckoning. If Bees use it why not camera systems?
That will give facing. Not range, nor actual bearing (your drone is moving relative to the local air, not to the ground.)
I guess I mean in the sense of if you have the drones starting position, the end location (or approximate) and movement tracking based on terrain movement, like the cheap version of Tomahawk but instead of having a map you just use relative change from a stereo camera/lidar pointed at the ground to track relative movement? I guess the hardware to run that isn't available in mass production.
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#247> Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components). This results in the need for sophisticated de-confliction procedures that, quite simply, do not always work. Even when de-confliction works, sometimes a team must wait as long as half an hour for a frequency to become available before takeoff. If it does not work and two drones find themselves in the air on the same channel at the same time, they will interfere with each other’s signals, usually resulting in a crash. On top of that, the enemy’s drones also fly on the same frequencies, which can also result in interference and a crash.
This gave me the somewhat macabre image of Ukrainian and Russian drones doing automated frequency coordination with each other, so they can orderly proceed in bombing each other's soldiers.
I don't think that's what happens though. But I'm surprised flying drones in the same area as enemy operators is even possible. Wouldn't both sides try to jam or take over each other's signals, deliberately blocking channels, etc - so that in the end, no one could control anything?
Or, if the signals are really unencrypted, what keeps anyone from setting up a radio beacon that just spams the "detonate now" signal on all channels at maximum power. Instant drone-free zone?
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#248> Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components). This results in the need for sophisticated de-confliction procedures that, quite simply, do not always work. Even when…
I suspect jamming and spoofing isn't that trivial and requires lots of gear that needs to be on while giving out its location...
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw some fascinating videos explaining that the terrain caused the war in first place. The huge border between Russia and Ukraine is completely flat grassland. This means that to Russia, Ukraine joining NATO is an unacceptable risk because that border is impossible to defend against NATO tank invasion, and the flatness go all the way to Moscow. A lot of people on internet keep poking fun at Russia inadequate tanks…
Invading eastern Ukraine isn’t going to do anything about that problem. Once Russia failed to take Kyiv in 2022 any strategic justification was gone.
There is the possibility of a peace settlement that includes a provision prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO. Personally, I would say this is a reasonably likely outcome.
Re: I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw some fascinating videos explaining that the terrain caused the war in first place. The huge border between Russia and Ukraine is completely flat grassland. This means that to Russia, Ukraine joining NATO is an unacceptable risk because that border is impossible to defend against NATO tank invasion, and the flatness go all the way to Moscow. A lot of people on internet keep poking fun at Russia inadequate tanks…
>NATO tank invasion Invasion? Oh my, are you delusional? NATO is a defence alliance, stop consuming Russian propaganda maybe.
> NATO is a defence alliance
Libya?