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Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

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Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#191

Post by crazygringo »

aogaili wrote: post #167
crazygringo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This has always been the case. It's very common for a war to be lost by the side that runs out of resources first -- whether soldiers, oil, missiles, or whatever the limiting factor is. Right now a major question in the Iran war is how many drones and miss…

You are missing the point again. That has not always been case. Read my other comments why it's the same. But basically with AI/Drones + Global Interconnected Economy + Multilateral world order + Global Information = new system. We never had anything like that, and the argument that this has always been the case is missing my point entirely. But if you don't get, well, you won't get it.

"Again"? When did I miss the "point" the first time?

I don't get it because you haven't explained what is different now. Writing out some equation isn't an explanation. If you don't explain something clearly, and then try to blame people for not understanding, you're not going to have a good time.

You're proposing that wars being decided based on who runs out of resources first is something new. I'm telling you, this has been a major factor in warfare for millenia.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#192

Post by parliament32 »

This wasn't immediately obvious to me, but it's important to note this unit is remotely controlled. The article made it sound autonomous. Further, the unit went back to base nightly (for maintenance / battery swaps I assume).

https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#193

Post by parliament32 »

reenorap wrote: post #44

> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location. Why? Isn't the advantage that it can stay in a position indefinitely? Does it not have infrared cameras, etc?

Powered by what, exactly? Neither lugging around a few tons of fuel or painting a bullseye on yourself via solar panel array sound practical.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#194

Post by dmos62 »

integralid wrote: post #189
dmos62 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think Ukrainian propaganda would go "we can generate N times more manpower than Russia", which is the opposite of what these figures suggest. These figure are about the fact that force generation in Ukraine is a huge problem.

Edit: I first heard of these numbers from Peter Zeihan. I've since heard ballpark-similar estimates from other people. I think of it this way: Russia has a huge manpower pool. Further, their ability to extract actual manpower from it is higher (due to poverty, largely). So Ukraine likewise requires a huge battlefield advantage to break even. Further, Ukraine needs another huge advantage on top of that, so that it's painfully obvious that not only the war is unsustainable, but that it's only unsustainable to Russia: only then will Russia sue for peace. At the moment, it seems like the war is unsustainable for both, which means noone has the advantage.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#195

Post by aogaili »

lazide wrote: post #188
aogaili wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Thanks for the conversation and helping to refine my thinking.

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#196

Post by burnt-resistor »

US MIC graft and corruption has created a woefully obsolete, dinosaur military force adept at only fighting symmetric wars of 1995. Infantry meat assaults, paratroopers, tanks, and all expensive big kinetic systems are all largely obsolete like castles and mounted knights. What needs to happen is automated factories of highly-integrated, standardized, cheap, fast, disposable drone/rocket/loiter and small, light, fast ground and marine systems that can be rapidly deployed in great numbers via standardized containers (20'/40' ISO perhaps) by unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles. The hand-building of fragile, commodity, bespoke, hobby-grade drones isn't scalable or optimized even though it technically works so far, but it's obviously not the best way to sustain and automate production on an industrial scale for lowest cost and most efficient use of human effort. The company/s|country/ies that can produce orders-of-magnitude more drones and drone supervisors/pilots "wins".

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#197

Post by verdverm »

overfeed wrote: post #100
bee_rider wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t heard “dead man zone” (although I don’t really engage much with military stuff so maybe it is just an expression I’m not familiar with). I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language? I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or…

> I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. No man's land is generic and is used in other non-combat scenarios, it could appear in an HOA pamphlet. I like "dead man's zone" or "kill zone" as it clearly communicates both the contestation and lethality very clearly.

During WW1, many bodies which remained in the zone between the trenches, unable to be removed, so it became an accurate description

Re: Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

#199

Post by mikrotikker »

aprentic wrote: post #34

Reading between the lines of the article it seems advanced but not too surprising. I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc. The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means…

I don't understand how it doesn't just get hit by a drone? Is it because the Russian drone pilots all operate from out of theatre and the loss of starlink disabled this?
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