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The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

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Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#91

Post by jollybean »

Countermeasures will evolve quickly.

What will 'change things' is when China makes these and sends 1000 of them to Taiwan all at once with another few thousand in reserve.

The cost/scale/saturation issue hasn't really been explored.

Notably - the 'West' is helpless to support Ukraine because nobody has anything useful except the Americans who have mostly 'super high end gear'.

It'd be nice to see Ukraine being brought onto F-series jets, predators and other gear sooner than later.

The other glaring hole is AA - Patriots are really expensive and there's only a few of them, this feels like a weakness to me in that Russia could feasibly strike those and then what?

There's a 'mid market' of gear that needs to be sorted out.

Finally - artillery - it's not going away, we're struggling to get Ukraine what amounts to almost ancient tech.

NATO should have 100's of M777's in reserve, precisely for these occasions, i.e. to lend out as necessary.

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#92

Post by pfbtgom »

Steltek wrote: post #70
robonerd wrote: post #2

> Several news sources have reported that a single TB2 drone can be purchased for a million dollars, but Bayraktar, while not giving a precise figure, told me that it costs more. In any event, single-unit figures are misleading; TB2s are sold as a “platform,” along with portable command stations and communications equipment. In 2019, Ukraine bought a fleet of at least six TB2s for a reported sixty-nine million dollar…

Wouldn't a COTS drone be relatively easy to jam or have early warning by detecting its control/video links? I get why Russia is having trouble adapting (logistics, sanctions, brain drain, paper tiger military) but outside of the Russia-Ukraine war, how effective would a COTS drone really be in a different state-vs-state direct conflict?

I’m not sure how effective signal jamming would be against COTS quadcopters. It’s relatively easy to provide on-loss-of-signal instructions to the navigation microcontroller. Perhaps it could be a return to set location command or a home in on signal jammer and explode command.

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#93

Post by juanani »

robonerd wrote: post #47
ch4s3 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems superficially reasonable, but it looks like the TB2 Bayraktar was used to bomb the fuel depot in Bryansk less than two weeks ago and that's 150km into Russia. They seemed to have used the TB2 the other day on Snake Island. As of a week ago there had been 6 internationally confirmed incidents where a Tb2 was shot down. They were known to have had at least 20 when the war started and have received more sense…

> So one can only assume that either Russia's air defense isn't as good as everyone thought, they aren't using it effectively, or the drone is harder to shoot down as operated than people thought. All of the above I bet.

No post body was provided.

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#94

Post by jollybean »

openasocket wrote: post #22
robonerd wrote: post #2

> Several news sources have reported that a single TB2 drone can be purchased for a million dollars, but Bayraktar, while not giving a precise figure, told me that it costs more. In any event, single-unit figures are misleading; TB2s are sold as a “platform,” along with portable command stations and communications equipment. In 2019, Ukraine bought a fleet of at least six TB2s for a reported sixty-nine million dollar…

You should take a look at the switchblade. The switchblade 300 model has the equivalent of a 40mm grenade as a warhead, 2.7kg weight, endurance of 10 minutes and a range of around 10km all puts it well in that lower end range. Couldn't find any pricing data, but I imagine more COTS approaches could come out pretty cheap. I'm actually surprised we've got man-portable loitering munitions like the switchblade in use bef…

I don't even see how the 'switchblade' is useful for anything but special operations strikes on 'key assets' - which is what it was designed for.

It doesn't matter if it's 'price effective per kg' - it can't disable a tank, and might not disable a soft target without a direct it.

The 900 series is the one that might be quite useful.

All of that said, we'll have to see how countermeasures work it may be that they develop rapidly to neutralize drones ...

... and then a rational actor like China takes the 'saturation approach' and launches 100's of them at a single battalion etc..

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#95

Post by blagie »

outworlder wrote: post #65
wrnr wrote: post #37

Why are these things as effective as they are in the ukrain-russian war? Don't these things show up on radar and therefor vulnerable to conventional anti air defence. Before the start of the war experts where warning that russia could lock down the air space of the whole of europe. These single propeller planes can not be as fast as jet engines and need to be almost on top of their target to drop bombs on them? What…

> What is preventing Russia from building these things in the thousands and I don't know patrol the skies of eastern ukrain with it? You need to build them, you need to train operators, you need to deploy said operators. They are not autonomous. A better question is, if Russia's electronic warfare capabilities are so amazing, how are the drones even able to operate? We'll probably find out that the capabilities were…

My suspicion is that the Russian weapons and munitions are fine, but that there isn't any coordination, integration, management, or planning. If I'm sitting at an S400, and I see a radar blip, I probably don't know if it's GA, commercial aviation, news helicopter, Russian military plane returning, or a Ukrainian drone. I just know something's flying.

This is all speculation based on how I expect the governments there work.

I suspect that if the Ukrainians wanted Russian munitions, they'd just need to wander over in Russian uniforms, and pick some up...

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#96

Post by jollybean »

gpderetta wrote: post #87
greedo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper to use a drone for spotting instead of a FIST unit. That's what's working for the UA. Kamikaze drones have a role for the smaller units, but at the battalion level, it's better to use a surveillance drone to coordinate fires from mortars, MLRS and artillery. The rounds fired from these systems typically have longer range than a drone, a higher rate of fire, and larger warheads.

In fact it seems to me that overall drones as artillery spotters have been much more impactful than direct fire drones in this war.

Yes, except for the strategic things like hitting AA, ships etc..

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#97

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jollybean wrote: post #91

Countermeasures will evolve quickly. What will 'change things' is when China makes these and sends 1000 of them to Taiwan all at once with another few thousand in reserve. The cost/scale/saturation issue hasn't really been explored. Notably - the 'West' is helpless to support Ukraine because nobody has anything useful except the Americans who have mostly 'super high end gear'. It'd be nice to see Ukraine being brough…

> the 'West' is helpless to support Ukraine because nobody has anything useful

Are we watching the same war?

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#98

Post by jollybean »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #14
melling wrote: post #4

I’m a little surprised that drones in Ukraine haven’t been discussed widely on HN. Ukraine doesn’t have the air force, pilots are expensive and take a lot of time of to train Here are a few interesting stories that I saw over the past couple of months https://www.reuters.com/world/us-rapidly-developed-ghost-dro... https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-technology-bu... https://www.popsci.com/aviation/black-ha…

Ukraine absolutely has an airforce. According to a recent CNN article, "In early March, about two weeks into the war, the defense official said Ukraine has 56 fighter aircraft, which composed about 80% of its fixed-wing fighters" https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/20/politics/ukraine-aircraft-spa...

They are not flying a lot of missions. It was down to a few sorties a day.

Neither Air Force is spending a lot of time in hotly contested territory.

I suggest UKR AF is really just patrolling within the territory they control as a deterrent to Russian AF.

But neither spending a lot of time directly in each other's turf.

A bit sad UKR doesn't have better AA because Russia is flying a lot more sorties on their lines than they should be able to get away with. They are a bit too fast for MANPADs.

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#99

Post by jollybean »

01100011 wrote: post #18
georgeg23 wrote: post #7

There were protests at SpaceX when it was revealed the Turksat 5B satellite would command and control these TB2 drones, extending their range from operator line-of-sight to near global. Elon decided to go ahead with the launch. At some point we need to start calling SpaceX a defense company.

I would venture a guess that nearly every SiValley darling supports the military-industrial complex in some fashion. The military-industrial complex started SiValley, after all. If you don't think there's a military application for AI, self-driving whatevers, logistics innovations, or even social media you are uninformed or willfully ignorant.

I would go way further and venture that Space X and those satellites have background relationships with defence industry all along.

Most of Elon's businesses have state related support in some way (even Twitter), it's part of how he operates.

Re: The Turkish drone that changed the nature of warfare

#100

Post by throwaway0a5e »

pfbtgom wrote: post #92
Steltek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a COTS drone be relatively easy to jam or have early warning by detecting its control/video links? I get why Russia is having trouble adapting (logistics, sanctions, brain drain, paper tiger military) but outside of the Russia-Ukraine war, how effective would a COTS drone really be in a different state-vs-state direct conflict?

I’m not sure how effective signal jamming would be against COTS quadcopters. It’s relatively easy to provide on-loss-of-signal instructions to the navigation microcontroller. Perhaps it could be a return to set location command or a home in on signal jammer and explode command.

>or a home in on signal jammer and explode command.

Congratulations, you just invented the anti-radiation missile.

The drone space seems to be speed running decades of SAM and combat aviation tech.

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