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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

#301

Post by ihagen »

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…

Don't forget that drones are evolving very fast and their potential is frightening. What about swarm of unmanned AI and computer vision capable drones spreaded across fields and forests waiting for their prey? You can make antipersonnel drones much smaller as you don't need even to kill the enemy - just to wound. You can place a big batteries across that zones so drones could go recharge theirselves and continue serving. Eventually you can just drop thousands of such killers above the territory or even some city and they will kill every human they find. Ok, then we can make unmanned drone hunters and human killer bots will start to enhance their defense capabilities. That will start another round in evolution where humans on the battlefield are just spectators. Or prey if they unlucky.

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

#302

Post by paganel »

adrian_b wrote: post #292
paganel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is mostly the Russians that are using those, the Ukrainians have also started using them but in less fewer numbers.

As TFA says, Ukraine has a much smaller capacity of producing the required optical fiber, which is the main reason why they are using fewer such drones.

> the required optical fiber

So then why isn't the West providing them with optical fiber?

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

#303

Post by Mawr »

ethbr1 wrote: post #286
sentientslug wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I don’t think that’s their primary concern at the moment

Granted. But it's going to be someone's concern after all this is over. And unlike landmines, how do you detect and remove kilometers of cable?

I was about to respond to your comment above by saying landmines are 1000x worse, but you just said the opposite, which is completely incomprehensible to me. Are you perchance thinking of literally just the environment, not the fact that countless lives will be harmed and lost for decades to come because of the indiscriminate nature of landmines?

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

#304

Post by mike_hearn »

tim333 wrote: post #222

They 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…

The article addresses this in the first few paragraphs. The author argues that whilst the 80% may or may not be accurate, they're using a definition of drone that encompasses many kinds of machine and not just FPV drones which is what he's talking about. He also says the number is highly misleading because most of his FPV drone missions were double-taps where the target had already been taken out by more traditional military assets, and that commanders used drones mostly because they were given them rather than because that was the best military strategy.

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

#305

Post by mike_hearn »

ihagen wrote: post #301
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…

Don't forget that drones are evolving very fast and their potential is frightening. What about swarm of unmanned AI and computer vision capable drones spreaded across fields and forests waiting for their prey? You can make antipersonnel drones much smaller as you don't need even to kill the enemy - just to wound. You can place a big batteries across that zones so drones could go recharge theirselves and continue serv…

The article contradicts this view. It says that drones are hardly evolving: even years into the war they still use easily jammed analogue radio links on a handful of frequencies, and the biggest "upgrade" has been tying a fiber optic cable to them with all the obvious downsides that implies (at double the cost). Nor have they become easier to pilot.

The FPV drone is used in battle largely because they're extremely cheap and use components sourceable from many suppliers backed by hobbyist markets. These devices are so cheap and basic they don't even use digital encryption for the video back to the operator, they don't even take off a third of the time, and you're talking about putting AI chips on them. There is much lower hanging fruit than AI.

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

#306

Post by FirmwareBurner »

gspetr wrote: post #299
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>that you can also solve via better polices and incentives if you want to Nobody can. And it's not like they don't want to. Neither the very traditional and religious Arabic countries like Saudi Arabia (2.14, barely above replacement, and trending down), nor a country like Norway, which can afford the best social program in the world. All have fertility troubles. Urban lifestyle just does fertility in.

>Nobody can.

Yeah you can, they just don't want to because it will be at the cost of short term corporate economic growth.

>And it's not like they don't want to.

They don't want to compromise short term corporate profits. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

>nor a country like Norway, which can afford the best social program in the world

Social programs don't mean shit if nobody can afford to buy urban real estate in the big cities where the jobs are. Norway has different issues than Japan. Every country has different issues.

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

#307

Post by gspetr »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #306
gspetr wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that you can also solve via better polices and incentives if you want to Nobody can. And it's not like they don't want to. Neither the very traditional and religious Arabic countries like Saudi Arabia (2.14, barely above replacement, and trending down), nor a country like Norway, which can afford the best social program in the world. All have fertility troubles. Urban lifestyle just does fertility in.

>Nobody can. Yeah you can, they just don't want to because it will be at the cost of short term corporate economic growth. >And it's not like they don't want to. They don't want to compromise short term corporate profits. They want to have their cake and eat it too. >nor a country like Norway, which can afford the best social program in the world Social programs don't mean shit if nobody can afford to buy urban real…

>Yeah you can

Really? Can you name one developed country besides Israel that has succeeded?

>Social programs don't mean shit if nobody can afford to buy urban real estate in the big cities where the jobs are

The Government Pension Fund Global (Statens pensjonsfond utland), also known as the Oil Fund (Oljefondet), was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. As of June 2025, it had over US$1.9 trillion in assets.

Price of a 3 bedroom house in Oslo: $1.5M

$1.9T / $1.5M = 1.266M houses

Population of Norway is 5.6M

Do you have a better argument than housing affordability?

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

#308

Post by stogot »

thesmok wrote: post #295
paradox242 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to contradict the article, which among other criticisms, specifically says that these drones are more expensive and less reliable than mortars.

There are different calibers of mortar shells, bigger size has more range and power. I think author of the article has cheated by not specifying the caliber, because a 155mm artillery shell cost is more than a $1000, precision guided one cost is tens of thousands. While a drone capable of reaching 10km+ costs less than $1000, without payload.

Ya I didn’t see where the author discussed how imprecise artillery is vs drones. Aren’t mortars even less precise?

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

#309

Post by mike_hearn »

palata wrote: post #160
bluGill wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you add enough "if's", then surely everything is possible :-). I don't think we're anywhere near having drones that happily fly above a war zone, detect an interesting hangar, find a way to get inside and select a target inside. Currently they mostly fly FPV drones manually. The next basic step is to have "terminal engagement", where at some point they can select a target and the drone will fly autonomously to it…

They don't need processing power. The CV can be done at the operator site, allowing operators to handle more drones simultaneously.

It's useful for the fiber powered ones that can loiter indefinitely watching out for other drones and then go chase them.

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

#310

Post by TeMPOraL »

ponector wrote: post #279
ben_w wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to mistake one's own government for the good guys. 20 or so years ago, my degree's optionally-mandatory* industrial placement year had me interviewing at Lockheed Martin. I didn't get it, and in retrospect, given what is now coming to light about UK misbehaviour in Iraq**, I'm glad I didn't. Unfortunately, I don't know what to do about this, as you're correct about the world we live in. * tax thing **…

It's easy to identify who is a evil country and who is a victim in Russo-Ukrainian war. Who is bombing civilians? Shelling cities with inaccurate old missiles? Which cities are destroyed to the ground? Russian state is pure evil, even worse than Iran.

In context of working on military hardware, it's more complex than that. Name whichever state you consider evil, there are good chances they've recently received or bought weapons from a state you don't consider evil. Name whichever state you consider good, there are good chances they sold their weapons to parties you find questionable.

You may build tech that helps the good defenders defeat the forces of the stronger, evil attacker, but 5 years down the line, you may discover that same tech is now used to blow up hospitals and refugee convoys - and it doesn't take your country being on the wrong side of a war, it just takes the usual international politics.

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