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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

#331

Post by esseph »

neuralRiot wrote: post #245
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…

Isn’t artillery easier to locate/ counter attack than a drone operator station?

Yes.

Run over to the impact crater that was just made, and with a little experience you can quickly know the round type, direction, and distance. If you have those last two you can rattle off a quick counter fire mission.

Artillery counter-fire radar systems can also identify and track artillery/mortar fire.

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

#332

Post by mopsi »

palata wrote: post #274
mopsi wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see a lot of comments saying that "but the technology will improve". When people say "the technology will improve", I think they're usually referring to the drones currently in use becoming much better not due to breakthroughs in technology, but by applying existing technology more effectively for military purposes. Current military drones used in Ukraine are inefficient conversions of civilian products that were…

> Current military drones used in Ukraine are inefficient conversions of civilian products Are you sure about that? Many drone companies have been engineering for the military for years before the Ukraine invasion in 2022. The thing is, those FPV drones are super, super, super cheap. We do have better technology, it does exist. But it is more expensive. Is it worth it then? That's the question.

Those drone companies are offering ridiculously expensive and overengineered products like the Switchblade, even though a drone 1/10 of its price can do the same job in many scenarios. These are bloated products that have seen little combat and haven't been trimmed down to the bare essentials. They are the Juiceros of the drone world.

Meanwhile, we have cheap FPV drones that have proven themselves in combat, but they remain toys upgraded with 3D-printed parts by tinkerers. They haven't been repackaged into proper military products and adapted for mass manufacturing.

The sweet spot between a toy and a $20k+ product from a military supplier remains largely unaddressed. It's like the early days of personal computing when some people had already assembled working machines in their garages and demonstrated their usefulness, but there were no rugged and standardized mass-market versions yet that could be ordered by the hundreds of thousands.

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

#333

Post by kjkjadksj »

speeder wrote: post #227
kjkjadksj wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if they didn’t bother their neighbors they wouldn’t have to worry about NATO. Seems like a self imposed wound there.

Whenever I see this reasoning, I wonder how many people really believe not a single NATO country will ever elect a nutjob that might just decide to invade someone for a bullshit reason. For example, hypothetically, what is the chance for a major NATO country will never have a president that might decide to bomb another country out of the blue, because that country according to said president, has weapons of mass dest…

There is a big difference between behaving like Saddam Husain vs a geopolitically boring country where nothing happens ever and the people have a high standard of peaceful living as a result. Another self imposed wound for Saddam choosing to be an overall thorn in the side during most of his entire regime. Iraqis could have had the chill high standard of living boring peaceful lives that is part and parcel in the western world. We act like these things are impossible to achieve elsewhere but really the people take to that readily when it is made available, and it is merely the leadership that needs to stop the almost high school tier tit for tat feuding and military mindset of the world that some have. We see this with every society that goes from warbent and militant to basically nothing happening since that pivotal regime change or shift in the wind moment and living peacefully: e.g. Japan after WWII. South Korea. Vietnam. Yugoslavia. East Germany. Spain. Italy. The list goes on with examples from around the world over the last century. Entropy favors peace but it is leadership that steers things otherwise every time.

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

#334

Post by general1726 »

speeder wrote: post #125
alphabettsy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

> 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.

This can be reversed and then Russia was supposed to be able to use its supply of 20000 prewar tanks to just swipe through Ukraine and stop at Uzghorod like an Iraqi 2003 style thunder run. It tried to, but failed miserably.

Maybe 19th and early 20th century doctrines are no longer alive with guided ammunition and spotting drones constantly in the air. Actually we can see it in Ukraine today, the moment when Russia setups an armored column it will often get disassembled by drones and artillery kilometers before reaching the zero line. It requires major effort and sacrifice to move frontline few meters on open terrain.

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

#335

Post by palata »

msgodel wrote: post #312
palata wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drone is 500$. If the board is 300$, it makes it a lot more expensive. What's the value of that board? How much does it help? Remember that you need to fly it with FPV to the place where the operator can select the target. So you have a radio link at some point, that can be jammed.

He's being generous. This could be done with a raspberry pi.

Have you tried it, or are you just guessing?

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

#336

Post by msgodel »

palata wrote: post #335
msgodel wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's being generous. This could be done with a raspberry pi.

Have you tried it, or are you just guessing?

Yeah I've run various yolo implementations on my main computer and I've read what other people have measured on current and last gen raspberry pis.

Again I think people overestimate how much compute this takes and underestimate how cheap embedded compute has gotten.

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

#337

Post by LorenPechtel »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #246
LorenPechtel wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you can do terrain following entirely in software unless you already have an accurate image of what to expect--and a munition will never know the fine detail. (Coarse detail--I would expect you could do a fair job of steering a ballistic missile based on images of the target area. Closest match and figure out in what way the image is stretched is at least theoretically possible with camera + software. Computationally practical, I don't know, nor how accurate it could be.)

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

#338

Post by nradov »

rcxdude wrote: post #282
speeder wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I see this reasoning, I wonder how many people really believe not a single NATO country will ever elect a nutjob that might just decide to invade someone for a bullshit reason. For example, hypothetically, what is the chance for a major NATO country will never have a president that might decide to bomb another country out of the blue, because that country according to said president, has weapons of mass dest…

So? Nothing in NATO brings the rest of the alliance along for the ride in that case. The core agreement is defensive, not offensive, and historically NATO has not at all been unified on attacks on other countries.

NATO was fairly well united in attacks on Afghanistan, Serbia, and Libya. (I'm just clarifying the historical record, not attempting to justify Russia's actions.)

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

#339

Post by seec »

stogot wrote: post #308
thesmok wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course they are less precise. And in most cases, they need quite a few rounds to adjust their aim at the target, so his comparaison was already stupid unfair.

He takes into account all the drones that don't work and then goes on and pretends artillery is 100% accurate and has an absurdly low cost (at the price he is quoting, they are basically sending grenades).

Let's not even discuss moving target or penetrating inside fortified targets which mortar will never be able to do.

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

#340

Post by seec »

ethbr1 wrote: post #284
Fokamul wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was wondering about that. At military-industrial scale, that's a lot of fiber optic cable. And it's glass, no? So not going to environmentally degrade over time. Considering the fighting is mostly over agricultural fields, what are the long term consequences of years of war?

At the extreme of 10KM range we are taking about 2.4kg of glass maximum. Spread of over 10km. It is largely insignificant.

Even if you had 100 drones starting from the same exact place and going to the exact same place you would find 24g of glass per meter. A single leftover beer bottle would be at least 6 times that amount.

When you worry about stuff it is useful to do the work.

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