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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

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Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#101

Post by jajko »

jvanderbot wrote: post #14
Oarch wrote: post #2

Beyond jamming, I imagine some kind of autonomous laser system could also be pretty effective at downing large numbers of drones within a given radius.

Now imagine that but with a shotgun shooting bird/buck shot at decent ROF. Way better. The problem with any point defense system is radiating any energy makes you a big target. So you would want a passive (EO/IR?) or triggered active/passive system.

Why nobody us building automated shotgun based solutions for anti-air defenses... maybe they need more than 100-150m reliable reach? Having 300 of those covering one airfield may not be ideal, nor cost effective, nor easy to manufacture and deploy and maintain in such numbers... we talk about russia after all, they let most of their strategic bombers arrogantly unprotected on runways with full gas tanks.

I don't think western common folks grok how depraved that country is in terms of doing good work, reward systems for such and corruption on every single level. puttin' built a mafia state and pushed this behavior from top->bottom, and these are side effects. Not some soviet competence and discipline, which wasn't stellar either but light years ahead of current state.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#103

Post by XorNot »

jvanderbot wrote: post #14
Oarch wrote: post #2

Beyond jamming, I imagine some kind of autonomous laser system could also be pretty effective at downing large numbers of drones within a given radius.

Now imagine that but with a shotgun shooting bird/buck shot at decent ROF. Way better. The problem with any point defense system is radiating any energy makes you a big target. So you would want a passive (EO/IR?) or triggered active/passive system.

We've had acoustic gunshot detection for years at this point though. It's not like a shotgun firing is a quiet event.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#104

Post by barbazoo »

bamboozled wrote: post #30
Ciantic wrote: post #19

The latest attack deep inside Russian borders were apparently using ArduPilot [1], it is mentioned in the Atlantic article [2]. ArduPilot also has C++ source code in Github [3], also adding an article specifically about ArduPilot and Ukraine [4] [1]: https://ardupilot.org/ [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/uk... [3]: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot [4]: https://www.404media.co/ukra…

"He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ld7ppre9vo

When you watch some of the footage I feel like it’s clear that there were at least some human controlled drones there.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#105

Post by theptip »

bell-cot wrote: post #75
Oarch wrote: post #2

Beyond jamming, I imagine some kind of autonomous laser system could also be pretty effective at downing large numbers of drones within a given radius.

Best-case scenario: The expensive laser system just became the most obvious and highest-value target in the area.

Depends, in this case the strategic bombers are worth more.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#106

Post by koonsolo »

lenerdenator wrote: post #78

Hoping and praying someone in the administration is able to convince Trump to align closer to Ukraine (even if only slightly) because of this. The Ukrainians pulled off an absolute coup on Sunday. A third of a nuclear-armed country's strategic bomber fleet inoperable for the foreseeable future. Someone at NORAD probably said "they should have sent a poet" while looking at the satellite imagery. If middle powers like…

Other countries have hangars or bunkers to store their planes. That Russia doesn't, is really beyond comprehension.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#107

Post by amelius »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #91
flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

When a stressed person mistakenly does something they shouldn't have, they typically stop doing it after only a small handful of mistakes. We get tired, or bored, or we wise up to our mistake. When a misconfigured computer does something wrong, it frequently does it over and over and over again until it is prevented from doing so by an external intervention. No tired private is going to mistakenly rampage through a p…

"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer."

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#108

Post by pookha »

lenerdenator wrote: post #78

Hoping and praying someone in the administration is able to convince Trump to align closer to Ukraine (even if only slightly) because of this. The Ukrainians pulled off an absolute coup on Sunday. A third of a nuclear-armed country's strategic bomber fleet inoperable for the foreseeable future. Someone at NORAD probably said "they should have sent a poet" while looking at the satellite imagery. If middle powers like…

[flagged]

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#109

Post by giantrobot »

twothreeone wrote: post #87

Assuming they were remotely operated - at least partially during the final few minutes of the attack - I wonder if the pilots remained in Ukraine or were hidden somewhere close by. I'm assuming they remained in Ukraine, thousands of kilometers away. If so, how did they pull off the remote connection over enemy territory? The only option somewhere as remote as Irkutsk seems to be Starlink, unless the trucks carried cu…

Over cellular modems in the drones with Russian SIM cards. The operation was prepared for months in advance. Getting a bunch of pre-paid SIM cards from the Russian equivalent to 7-11 (which might just be 7-11) was probably the easiest part of the operation.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#110

Post by XorNot »

_verandaguy wrote: post #71
flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

I think this oversimplifies the matter. At a micro level, sure, you could argue that kill/no-kill decisions are being made by frontline enlisted soldiers, but the stress, the exhaustion, and being able to see your enemy downrange add a degree of humanization and discretion. Wars are brutal. Some warring factions are incredibly brutal. But taking a human life can't be reduced to a `KILL? [Y/N]` decision made by some M…

You could start by not inventing vague hypotheticals to argue against, and instead engaging with observable, measurable strategic and tactical reality?

War is studied. There are journals, papers and research on war fighting at all possible levels.

In the most recent action by Ukraine you can observe actual reality: what did they attack? Military equipment of the enemy. Why did they attack it? To degrade the enemy's ability to sustain and rotate their forces attacking them. What was it for? Well for one thing it will hopefully considerably reduce their ability to bomb civilian targets.

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