Live data from Hacker News

Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

defenceleaders.com

181–190 of 204 posts

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#181
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you don't understand my argument at all. Of course the goal of the war is to make others to submit by force and pain. That's obvious But you missing my point. If in the near future multilateral system, governed by AI, drones and robotics. A war is nothing more than a war of attrition between economies, then in a global interconnected economy with scarce energy, it will become an absurd proposition because one…

Except that is not what is happening at all. Trump started the war to distract everyone, and we’ll all keep dealing with the fallout while he moves on to create another distraction. It isn’t going to actually end anytime soon.

"Trump started the war to distract everyone" that is your opinion.

The war in middle east will not end soon, I agree with that. The question is whether the US will stay or not and how it will be rearranged. Trump is telling people he is will end it soon, but he will leave troops there. But the issue is Iran will keep hunting the economy, and he is now throwing the problem at the European. But what what will the European do? They have no option but to listen to Iran, and what does Iran want? end of the US bases to the region. So basically the US will retreat.

But with regards to the nature of the war itself. It is turning to drone vs drone wars, it is happens as we speak, and this is the first two wars of this scale we witnessing. I'm not sure why you think it is not happening? this is exactly what is happening. And the only reason why Iran is able to pull this off is because of the drones and guided missiles which is allowing them to bleed the globe economically, and an interconnected world, an AI driven speedboat hits a tankers near the shore of Iran, causes the tomato prices to raise at grocery store in California. And people will say, this has always been the case with war, and my argument is that we never had that level of interconnectedness before, we seen weapons that be produced cheaply at scale and can keep inflicting pressure on the other side and we have never lived in a multilateral global world order before. This is truly a new era in human history.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#183
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abstract it away and play video game? What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens > In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked. > they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it…

Yes, but it not like before. We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable. So it is NOT like before. And the logical conclusion, as those drones get better and more widely adopted, is that war will be nothing more a video game with real economics and supply cha…

It is interesting that people give downvoting, so either they enjoy having the current wars continue and people physically killed, or they basically gave up on seeing a better future.

Both cases, it is sad.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#184
post #179
post #25

Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking. A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. A…

From the video with one of these robots (maybe the one in the story?) >We prepared for the combat use of these modules for a very long time. It was a very difficult sector on which the enemy was constantly conducting assault actions. That's why the infantry needed reinforcements. But the robot drone didn't just drive onto the position for a day. Instead of real fighters, an iron one held the line for a month and a ha…

This is the second comment that says that I'm downplaying these situations, so I guess I really wasn't very clear.

Small assault groups of untrained men can still be "very difficult". The defending outposts are similarly small groups. The defenders experience very long, exhausting rotations: a month is considered good: supplies are dropped by drones. This is because as of ~2025 the most dangerous part of a rotation is the infil/outfil. The record for a frontline rotation is close to 500 days (they had to dig their own well underground). Both sides are backed by drones. As someone pointed out, the "expendable" assault groups, in part, serve to draw defenders out for drones. Further, you often hear of anecdata that a defensive position was overrun, because Russians sent bodies after bodies until defenders ran out of ammo. 5:1 death rate (Russian:Ukrainian) is considered good for Russia, 10:1 is something they probably can maintain. Ukraine has to aim for 15:1. Russian personnel losses average around 30k per month since early 2025, which, I hear, is very close to how much they can regenerate at the moment. I've watched an interview on Lindybeige where someone involved with drone pilots said that pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon, kills in the hundreds is normal.

It's not easy to talk about the Ukraine war, because it changes so radically every N months.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#185
post #180
post #25

Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking. A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. A…

> 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death Yeah, excepts apparently these good for nothing oldtimers are taking 5 to 10 square kilometers per day against entrenched integrated force, capable of launching dozens of killer drones per target at a moment notice. Do you feel the inconsistency here? I do.

I do not suggest that the Russian tactic I described doesn't work. I'm saying that these machines are a viable approach to explore. Further, I'm not saying that the Russian strategy is to just repeat this tactic ad nauseam: it's part of a bigger play where they probe for weaknesses across very long lengths of the frontline, stretching Ukrainians thin, and, when weakpoints are found, they do proper, hyper-concentrated assaults with war-hardened veterans.

A big backdrop of this UGV story is that Ukraine is spread very thin. Rumour has it that brigades across the front are 20-40% strong.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#186
post #180
post #25

Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking. A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. A…

> 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death Yeah, excepts apparently these good for nothing oldtimers are taking 5 to 10 square kilometers per day against entrenched integrated force, capable of launching dozens of killer drones per target at a moment notice. Do you feel the inconsistency here? I do.

At that rate Russia will have conquered Ukraine in about a century. The war is clearly going to be decided by attrition, not the current rate of land capture.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#187
post #52

At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day? Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game? In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose. If you think about, we moved human one-…

Finally, my years of playing Starcraft have real-world use! Also: Everyone will soon bow to S. Korea :D

Just gotta worry about the network lag

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#188
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that is not what is happening at all. Trump started the war to distract everyone, and we’ll all keep dealing with the fallout while he moves on to create another distraction. It isn’t going to actually end anytime soon.

"Trump started the war to distract everyone" that is your opinion. The war in middle east will not end soon, I agree with that. The question is whether the US will stay or not and how it will be rearranged. Trump is telling people he is will end it soon, but he will leave troops there. But the issue is Iran will keep hunting the economy, and he is now throwing the problem at the European. But what what will the Europ…

Uh huh.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#189
post #184
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the video with one of these robots (maybe the one in the story?) >We prepared for the combat use of these modules for a very long time. It was a very difficult sector on which the enemy was constantly conducting assault actions. That's why the infantry needed reinforcements. But the robot drone didn't just drive onto the position for a day. Instead of real fighters, an iron one held the line for a month and a ha…

This is the second comment that says that I'm downplaying these situations, so I guess I really wasn't very clear. Small assault groups of untrained men can still be "very difficult". The defending outposts are similarly small groups. The defenders experience very long, exhausting rotations: a month is considered good: supplies are dropped by drones. This is because as of ~2025 the most dangerous part of a rotation i…

>5:1 death rate (Russian:Ukrainian) is considered good for Russia

>pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon, kills in the hundreds is normal.

I am strongly pro-Ukraine in this conflict, but this sounds over the top and unbelievable. Are you sure this is not Ukrainian propaganda? Are there any reliable public sources about this?

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#190
post #184
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the video with one of these robots (maybe the one in the story?) >We prepared for the combat use of these modules for a very long time. It was a very difficult sector on which the enemy was constantly conducting assault actions. That's why the infantry needed reinforcements. But the robot drone didn't just drive onto the position for a day. Instead of real fighters, an iron one held the line for a month and a ha…

This is the second comment that says that I'm downplaying these situations, so I guess I really wasn't very clear. Small assault groups of untrained men can still be "very difficult". The defending outposts are similarly small groups. The defenders experience very long, exhausting rotations: a month is considered good: supplies are dropped by drones. This is because as of ~2025 the most dangerous part of a rotation i…

> pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon

Incredible. I wonder what the most kills is for a single individual through direct action? There’s always the nuclear bombshell but that’s more of a team effort. These kills are through individual action.

Post reply on HN