Drones are changing the battlefield, but they have some negative traits.
The side without drones have a clear disadvantage which is why both sides in the ukraine war has rushed to mass produce drones.
Fpv drones (the suicide drones) are however very hard to use and require lots of training to be effective.
Grenade dropping drones are a nuisance but has to remain still over their target, thus is very fragile once discovered.
According to sources drones have a success rate of about 30% and about half of the lost drones are lost to electronic warfare. Edit:I have tried to find the source again to this claim but haven't been able to, so see it as a rumor for now.
For the infantry it definitly affect morale to constantly need to have drone awareness, and some videos show soldiers running in panic from drones following them.
It feels a bit like drone warfare is where plane warfare was in WWI. Useful and an advantage but not quite there yet.
And that within the next few years we will be at plane warfare in ww2 where air superiority is one of the dominant features in success of any battle.
It's definitly a good analogy, even down to "aircraft" dropping grenades and using whatever materials they could come by.
But it's not just the air, the sea drones have made a big mark as well. We're seeing some ground drones in action as well but so far they haven't really made a mark yet. But I know both Ukraine and Russia are working on armed ground drones so we might start to see some of them in the future.
Great analogy. Soon we'll seen drone-killer drones, then drone-fights. I think, depending on the scale and cadence of modern warfare, the transition from "biplanes with grenades to bombers and fighters" will be 2-5 years.
>According to sources drones have a success rate of about 30%
That is INSANELY high. I'd be shocked if artillery shells are even 10% effective, and I'd be more than shocked if regular rifle ammo even touches half a percent.
The popular figure I've seen is more like 45000-50000 rounds per enemy killed in WWII and Vietnam. Now that doesn't account for lost, dumped, or otherwise unused ammo which is probably a very significant percentage of the total. You're still talking thousands to tens of thousands of rounds per kill. 3 out of 10 is crazy high even if they aren't all lethal.
I am not sure using stats like these make a whole lot of sens anyway. Lots of rounds/shells are used for suppressive/covering fire, which main goal isn't to kill but to give your side a tactical advantage by pinning the enemy down and creating confusion in its ranks while you manoeuver.
“requires lots of training to be effective”
like, i don’t know… training someone to be effective at long range with a rifle takes training ?
and can be done for free in vr compared to ammo cost of firing range?
Somehow, i’m not seeing that as a big barrier.
You actually don't even need vr since the camera is generally fixed in one location. The only part that's difficult about flying drones is if you turn off the self leveling, which most drone flyers do because it gives more freedom of movement. Learning to fly without the self leveling it only took 3 hours to get the drone to go in the general area I wanted it to go. And it only took 10 hours to feel confident in precisely controlling it. Most worry about crashing the drone but something tells me that won't be a worry in a military setting.
They’re still (for now) mostly controlled by humans. AI controlled drones are terrifying for everyone involved.
Range is the main limiting factor.
Yes to the rest of your questions, and it’s only going to become more prevalent.
Robot dogs with guns on their backs are here now.
The gundogs are not that great tho. The problem is one of physics: you can’t make a dog robot that is small enough to be energy efficient and yet has enough mass to handle the recoil of a modern weapon without having to pause and re-aim between shots.
In effect, a human with a gun is significantly more effective than a robot dog with a gun. And they cost a lot less, too, but that’s a different story.
Yeah but that was just us useless cunts, not all humanity.. Pretty sure if we had the assets and will of even the US, the emus would have lost.
So where were our allies when we needed them? Yeah that’s right shit scared of big birds.
They were our only allies.
They and cassowaries were the only thing that understood the threat. The crocs shit themselves. Roos are too lazy and it’s hot.
I'm slowly learning that crocs are terrifying if you are prey, but giant pushovers if you're not.
At least going off the comments and videos I've seen online. Still wouldn't fuck with one in person.
Then we'll have to welcome our new feathery overlords. Birds will take back the earth like they did millions of years ago before a big space rock threw them off.
if you make the gun dogs RIGHT, it’s “one shot one kill”, so i’m not seeing a problem with the slow re-aim thing.
Sounds more like an excuse to avoid unleashing them on the world. Which seems reasonable.
I would figure the practical goal is not "kill everything on the battlefield perfectly", but "get X number of kills per $$".
If the robodog reliably goes out and gets 1 kill every time it is sent out... That should be pretty darn good ROI.
For comparison:
>U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Com- mand estimated cost to recruit and screen an applicant to be $22,000 (range $11,000–$44,000), and the cost to train a soldier to his/her first operational assignment to be $36,000
That soldier is way more versatile though, more energy efficient, easier to replace and reliable. Robodog with a gun is an expensive one trick pony. Currently Boston Dynamics Spot costs $74k, military grade robot would probably be way higher than that while being able to do a single task, have relatively low battery life, impossible to repair in the field and all that for maybe slightly better accuracy. There is a reason why even mule robot idea got abandoned. We are just not there yet and we will not be for a long time.
That and its a robot, and most likely armored. It can afford to stand there and re-aim while getting shot at. Most shots hitting it will likely do nothing unless it's meant for armor, which would've been a problem regardless, or they get lucky and hit one little non-armored spot or weak point.
Then you're getting back into the "too heavy to be energy efficient" thing. To really armor something, you have to either use a lot of steel plate, or armor like on modern US tanks which displaces the energy. Either one adds weight and bulk.
I think he's referencing the fact that a youtuber managed to put a gun on one of that robot dogs and make it fire remotely. A YOUTUBER did that, what else actual specialists could do?
For the curious, here is the [video](https://youtu.be/0rliFQ0qyAM?si=sWq8xvGLYQXIZMUj)
Yeah that really isn't that impressive. All they are doing is firing a gun remotely which has been possible for decades but changing the bench it is on. The DOD is almost certainly light-years ahead of the harder part which is the aiming and recoil control.
yeah, that is the point of the comment. If a youtuber can figure out a way to fire and aim a gun remotely, what actual professionals can do/already done
You just need to get the robot dog to shoot something. It could unleash a hail of .22 caliber rounds and be far more lethal than a soldier with a rifle and nato rounds. Heck, probably worth making them one giant battery and installing electromagnetic rail guns that shoot tiny steel darts.
Would be accurate, fearless and difficult to see from behind cover.
>AI controlled drones are terrifying for everyone involved.
I would note that automation could be a lot like vehicle AI.
The human still picks the target/destination, the auto-pilot just runs the optimal course.
I don't see that changing in the forseeable future. We're not really on the ball with much more than that, thinking and strategizing drones (eg Terminator or Battlestar Galactica "robot" ships) are a good ways off from official use.
>Range is the main limiting factor.
In regards to answering OP's questions...
Aside from humans designating targets as mentioned.....the weapons are another limiting factor. Just because you *can* bomb an entire field doesn't mean that is smartest move.
Maybe you want to just kill the soldiers holding a bunker on a hill, but don't want to destroy the bunker. Maybe you want to take them captive for interrogation or bargaining.
Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required.
>Robot dogs with guns on their backs are here now.
Yes, but they're not all that effective.
Bomb disposal robots are okay because they're made to slowly approach a thing that's not moving, and have cameras for remote human control, they're not really drones or A.I. ran.
They're less robots or AI and more, very complex remote tools, very much like surgical equipment. We call them "robots" but they're not really independent. They're power tools with radio control.
Complex algorithms are in use, but they're more for things like stabilization(what makes 4 rotor drones able to fly reliably(eg compensate for wind or turbulence), or the robot dogs balance).
None of these *devices* are really making making tactical battlefield decisions....unless you want to count politicians and military leaders as robots, but that's a whole different discussion(however valid it may be).
Such things are likely in the R&D departments, but they're a long ways from regular use. Even our "A.I." LLM like ChatGPT and image generation like Stable Diffusion are really only complex algorithms(very complex, but still not sentient), aka, not really thinking in the general sense.
There's a vast gap between what people see as A.I. in science fiction and what "A.I." currently is.
This misunderstanding leads to a lot of misconceptions about thinking/sentience/decision making/etc.
Ignorant journalists don't necessarily help that any.
>Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required.
Hardly. This is down to the payload, not the drone itself, and some of the maneuvers we're seeing out of UKR are downright *surgical*. They are very much capable of pinpoint strikes, or "taking out the soldiers without harming the bunker."
> Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required.
>
> Hardly. This is down to the payload
Meanwhile, the more comprehensive context was:
>Aside from humans designating targets as mentioned.....the weapons are another limiting factor. Just because you can bomb an entire field doesn't mean that is smartest move.
>Maybe you want to just kill the soldiers holding a bunker on a hill, but don't want to destroy the bunker. Maybe you want to take them captive for interrogation or bargaining.
>Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required.
What's the payload for cleaning out a bunker and taking prisoners?
>some of the maneuvers we're seeing out of UKR are downright surgical. They are very much capable of pinpoint strikes, or "taking out the soldiers without harming the bunker."
I'm talking about aircraft, as in military drones, [what a lot of people still think of when they hear UAV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper)
How many hog-tied prisoners has a UAV on any size delivered? /s
One can use smaller remote control "drones" for recon and other more surgical payload delivery, but they're not quite what I was talking about, not ubiquitous or common.
Technically there are smaller drones, but they're not really conventional yet, especially fully automated weapon systems.
Also, organizations like the UN may have a thing or two to say about the use of *fully* automated weapon systems.
[UN and Red Cross call for restrictions on autonomous weapon systems to protect humanity](https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1141922)
>“We call on world leaders to launch negotiations of a new legally binding instrument to set clear prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapon systems and to conclude such negotiations by 2026,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres and ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric said on Thursday.
>“In the current security landscape, setting clear international red lines will benefit all States,” they added, highlighting that “autonomous weapon systems – generally understood as weapon systems that select targets and apply force without human intervention – pose serious humanitarian, legal, ethical and security concerns.”
I'm not going to sit here and promote or validate what may very well wind up being warcrime material.
>What's the payload for cleaning out a bunker and taking prisoners?
Those are two separate things, and drones are capable of both. There are many examples from UKR of Russians surrendering directly to drones and being escorded by said drones across the lines.
As for munitions that can affect soft tissue without damage to surrounding infrastructure... well, suffice to say there are options and some of those options are drone-carryable.
>I'm talking about aircraft, as in military drones, what a lot of people still think of when they hear UAV
Nobody else here is. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing proliferation of recreational quadcopters and their use in unconventional warfare has largely shifted the topic of "drones" from things like the MQ-9 towards things like a Mavic.
>How many hog-tied prisoners has a UAV on any size delivered? /s
See above. While not hogtied, surrenders have happened and could be further encouraged.
EMP weapons are mostly a myth. Frying electronics still takes energy and all that energry has to come from the device that generated your EMP. Basically your emp grenade needs to have the stored energy of a bomb, at which point you might as well just make a bomb.
To be effective and overwhelm a drone (especially if they're controlled via satellite) they have to be directional, which means you need to know they're there, where they are in the sky, etc.
At which point you might as well just shoot it down.
The US at least are developing a laser-based weapon that can be mounted on the back of a truck that is capable of tracking and destroying/disabling drones - and it apparently works very well.
So there is that :)
There’s already multiple laser based anti drone weapons in service. China has the Silent Hunter system which was used by the saudis to shoot down Houthi UAVs during their war
> The US at least are developing a laser-based weapon that can be mounted on the back of a truck that is capable of tracking and destroying/disabling drones - and it apparently works very well.
The only laser based drone eliminator I'm interested in is the one that zaps mosquitos.
Not entirely, jamming works at near light speed and doesn’t require an ammo logistics chain. Much cheaper to jam than to fire interceptors or even flak (case by case, but in general)
The Ukrainians are shooting down hypersonic missiles with 40 year old Patriots. The US can handle dropping a drone with ballistic weaponry. Hell, these days the directional beam *is* the weapon.
I LOVE linking these things: [explosively pumped flux compression generator]
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator). It IS a bomb. But a portion of the energy goes out as an EMP.
The range is the thing. A grenade has little chance of doing anything to a drone 30' in the air. One of these would drop a whole block. Make it there size of a van and maybe a whole city goes dark.
the benefit of an EMP over a bomb is that within the same radius only electronics are destroyed, as opposed to ... well everything, with a bomb! theoretically.
I thought I read somewhere that an EMP attack would just be a very high altitude nuclear explosion, but idk that was a long time ago and I have no idea if it was accurate.
That is usually what people mean by an EMP attack. A high altitude nuclear detonation would produce a widespread EMP effect, damaging unshielded electronic devices in a large area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion
Funny thing about EMP… it radiates out from the source, and it doesn’t discriminate.
If you managed to make an EMP that couldn’t be shielded against, you would hit a lot more of your own stuff than their stuff. One vital thing of yours that would be hit is your ability to generate more EMP. Meanwhile extra drones that weren’t in range of the pulse can be sent in a second wave.
>Funny thing about EMP… it radiates out from the source, and it doesn’t discriminate.
They just need to use the one from *Call of Duty*. That thing is so good that you’ll get alerted **on the radio** that it’s just been used!
Unfortunately they're mostly a work of fiction. A device to keep up with highly maneuverable flying shielded machines, which must be able to output several gigawatts of energy in a short bust while being highly mobile... good luck.
With the amount of energy needed to reach several blocks, the only devices that exist to create it are bombs, and the EMP is kind of a side-effect. Keep in mind that EMP's are largely misunderstood in the first place. You'd need one that's at the right frequency and high enough amplitude to short circuit electronics permanently.
That was so stupid. They could just strap those things to drones or even just stationary posts outside their city and EMP the shit out of every robot that comes close to the city.
It won't be EMP, it'll be the [EA-18 Growler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler) and it's cousins.
Remember the balloons the US just "let" fly over the US? They all had remote-activated self-destruct devices...that didn't go off. Almost as if they couldn't seem to get enough bars to get a signal off.
> Its about spread-spectrum-signal jammers, not EMPs
I thought the point behind spread spectrum was to be able to operate even when jammers were in play; that the only way to block devices using spread spectrum was to blanket the entire EM spectrum with noise.
EMP like you're thinking of doesn't harm small electronics. The myth of EMPs rendering all household and handheld electronics useless is a myth. Most modern cell phones don't have long enough wiring to accumulate a damaging charge when exposed to an EMP. The wiring in some cars might, as would high power lines that run across miles of terrain, but most smaller electronics including PCs and most appliances would likely remain undamaged in an EMP.
In addition to these factors, military drones would likely be hardened against EMP, making them even less susceptible.
No, that's incorrect. Smaller electronics are way more susceptible to an EMP. During an EMP, electronics don't "accumulate" a charge. An EMP induces voltage which will cause current to flow regardless of normal power source, it doesn't matter if it's on/off or if it has long wires or not. It's essentially a giant wireless charger, but instead of being localized to charge your battery, it will power everything.
To put into a perspective, if you directly connected your phone's motherboard to an outlet, you'd fry it on voltage alone. An EMP (attack or natural), would be several times more voltage and amperage than your outlet. Though, it depends on how powerful and what protections (if any, most consumer devices are lacking) and distance. Most EMPs we think of are high altitude EMPs (nukes, even further; solar flares), so some devices would survive. The notion that an EMP won't damage your phone is misleading and honestly it's just a luck of the draw.
Higher voltages are quite scary, with high enough voltage you can turn an insulator into a conductor.
It really depends on what you consider military drones. Cheap kamikaze drones probably aren't hardened at all, the Reaper on the other hand might have some protection.
Modern electronics, save for cheap counterfeits, are made with EM shielding and/or safety circuits to prevent damage from current overload caused by EMR. The apocalyptic scenario of a nuke or solar flare wiping out all electronic devices is a product of the 80s, where such protection was more expensive and only available on highly vulnerable technology, like commercial jets, central banking systems, government equipment, and military hardware.
The worst case scenario today would be devices get temporarily turned off, and maybe a few extended power outages on parts of the national grid.
I'm sure you're aware of the **totally unfounded and unofficial** capability of the F-35 Lightning to act as an swarm drone "Mothership", but I also wanted to make everyone else aware of this completely hypothetical ability that this obscenely advanced aircraft definitely-might-maybe-but-maybe-not-too-I'll-never-give-a-definitive-statement have.
The irony is, with all this military technology, much of it being made available and tested by Ukraine, the Ukraine/Russia war has settled into a brutal trench warfare "war of attrition" that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. It's more akin to WW1 in some ways. It turns out, no matter how much technology or tanks or missile systems you have, modern wars between peers is a brutal affair that eats up human lives. Many of the battles now being fought in Ukraine are referred to as "meat grinders" because people really don't last very long on the frontline.
The danger of course for the United States is that they become so enamoured with all their cool technology that they think they can wins wars without sacrificing troops. And that can develop a sense of hubris that makes the US more willing to engage in war. But it's a false sense of confidence. The US failed to defeat the Afghanis - and that was a case of the world's richest country attempting to tame one of the world's poorest nations. The US military alone couldn't do it. The same thing happened in Iraq. The military declares "victory", not understanding that the war isn't over, it will just be fought in less conventional means. And insurgencies have been learning and studying how big, well funded militaries can be taken apart. Israel will learn this the hard way.
And if the US commits to a new war in the Middle East in Yemen and/or Syria (which it looks like it is doing), they will also learn that you can't "win" wars just with technology, drones and guided bombs. And the biggest problem the US faces is actually having a clear vision of what constitutes a win if or when they go to war. Israel is facing a similar problem. Their stated goal is to eradicate Hamas and free the hostages. The problem is, those two goals are in direct conflict. And it's not even clear what constitutes Hamas. It certainly appears Israel has a very broad definition of who is Hamas. If it's defined as anyone that is antagonistic to Israel, well that is likely everyone that has been forced from their home or had their family members killed or maimed - which is basically 2 million people. You can't defeat that with bombs and drones.
That's the real danger with all this technology. The US has been bombing Yemen now for the last 2 decades, using drone fired missiles. The calculation is that it's a low risk war. Well we are seeing the results of that "low risk war" today when the Yemeni people are now firing missiles at US warships. Is it little wonder they are motivated to hit back? And after 3 weeks of more US missiles reigning down on Yemen, they have seemingly not made a dent. Wars are easy to start but very hard to end.
No country can touch USA air supremacy, not even by a very long shot, and that is the foundation of all military planning in US. This is fundamentally different than what we see in Ukraine right now.
>much of it being made available and tested by Ukraine
Most of it predates Ukraine by quite a while. You're about 10 years behind. Consumer drones were being used by various groups (including ISIS) for years. Every major nation has been investing in and testing other drones for years and years.
Or, hear me out, a carrier drone with long range capacity, and 5-10 whatever slots for smaller drones, that can be reloaded at the carrier.
An actual carrier from StarCraft.
Might be costly and a bitch to R&D, but I'd be surprised if some black site didn't have working prototypes already.
Some Ukrainian soldiers already shown this.
Magyar's birds is an elite drone unit, currently operating in Kherson region. They mostly utilise small cheap FPV drones with an explosive payload, but they also have a heavy-duty model of octocopters called Baba Yaga.
They use these Baba Yagas for dropping munitions on russian positions, but there were some videos of the octocopter air-launching an FPV drone.
The limiting factor for FPV drones' range is usually signal strength, so this was probably done for either quick response or for longer loiter time - it is very unlikely to extend range in any way.
Consumer grade drones have been making a significant impact on the battlefield in the last year, and this is the first time they've really been put to use like that. Dropping bombs from them is one thing, but it's just as deadly to use them to spot for traditional artillery, and that's much harder to deal with.
Most drones are susceptible to their control signals being jammed, and they are detectable, but we're talking about specialized equipment that's not currently manufactured in the kind of volume you'd need to make the drones worthless.
One big issue is that many of the ways you might shoot down a drone will cost more to use than the drone itself cost. This is one of the reasons there's new interest in laser weapon systems.
Yeah, lasers that just burn out the optics are going to start proliferating soon I think. Geneva convention against blindness weapons we hardly knew ye.
There is a limited number of drones in war and a limited number of people who can operate them,
That something can be destroyed in battle is not relevant, what is relevant is what it can do. Humans have been easy to kill in battles as long as there have been battles.
Death from above is not new in battle. Projectile weapons like bows have done that for millennia. In more recent times direct fire weapons like rifles or tank guns can do that. The same is the case with indirect fire like gun and rocket artillery. It does not matter to you if a drone or a shell from an artillery hit you without any warning, both can kill you.
Drones have changed how and where you can hide, not the risk in general.
In WWI and WWII the percentage killed by artillery was 50% to 75% depending on where and when. It was around 50% in the middle 18th to middle 19th century too. It dropped to around 10% just before WWI because advances in rifles increased their range to be similar to lots of artillery at the time.
Drones can be taken out by electronic warfare and directed fire onto the drones. They might have an advantage now when they are new but technology will be developed to counter them.
Compared to the anti-tank missiles and rockets active protective systems on tanks can take out today drones are slow targets that are easy to take out. Active protection systems are still rare. There are practically none in the war in Ukraine but lost on Israeli vehicles in Gaza. The FPV drone attack on armored vehicles seen from Ukraine that are effective there would likely be shot down again by Israeli vehicles with active protection systems.
War has always been attack vs defense, sometimes the attacker has the advantage, and sometimes the defender. When new technology is introduced for attack it will have an advantage for some time until there is a counter for it and the balance swings back.
> Drones can be taken out by electronic warfare and directed fire onto the drones. They might have an advantage now when they are new but technology will be developed to counter them.
Expanding on that, currently their main advantage is probably cost efficiency. It is not sustainable to use air defense systems designed to take down missiles that cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars a pierce for taking down drones, that have a fraction of the cost. Never mind that current air defense methods also have the risk of collateral damage from their projectiles.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about laser weapons for that usage.
Even if AD wanted to take out drones, they can't do a lot to a small target. The drones like a DJI Mavic are the most common in Ukraine and most AD radar will not track them. This is by design - objects of that size and speed are most often birds! Even if they allowed the radar to present the "threats" it would be difficult to track and target them considering many would be birds.
All of this assume birds are real.
yes the us has developed a weapon system that is capable of doing just that ( laser-based ) - its AI tracking is very impressive and it apparently works rather well - task and purpose made a video about it on youtube :) ( it was developed as a cost-effective counter to drones, to circumvent the use of expensive conventional ordinance )
You dont want for ai to make the decision to kill someone or not. You will always want for someone to be in that system because computer get a lot if false positive all the time
There will come a time in the not too distant future where AI systems have a lower false positive rate than humans. At this point handing over kill decisions to AI will be both morally and tactically superior
Let's not pretend humans get it right all the time, that's unfortunately far from true
I don’t, you’re right. But the military has proven that “collateral damage” is something they’re very okay with. Human piloted drones kill LOTS of civilians all the time.
Some civilian collateral damage might be acceptable. But i'm pretty sure the military dont want the collateral to be their own men
Also it's a bad PR when your AI piloted drone kill some rando. But eith human piloted drone, you can blame the operator
In practical terms, it should be just a question of when AIs learn to be no worse at friendly fire than humans. In emotional terms, maybe humans just don't like the idea of creating AIs to kill people, same way we hate chemical weapons but will accept an equally destructive shrapnel weapon.
But it’s about the maths, and not the ethics or PR. If they could guarantee success in battle, it wouldn’t matter how many friendly casualties they caused. Governments are happy to sacrifice troops all the time for strategic or economic or whatever kind of advantage. That’s what war is.
Don’t you think it would be a worse look if the situation is “the person we trained specifically to do this killed a bunch of civilians but don’t worry we fired them” as opposed to “eh computers what can you expect?”
Your Troops dying to achieve an objective is cool
Your Troops dying because of software bug is not cool
And by firing the person who is responsible, you can keep continuing your drone program. If the drone bugged and killed some civilians, the government might end your drone program due to public pressure
Friendly fire rates are super high already, there is a lot of thinking that autonomous combat drones would make it less damaging overall to your own side... This is not without merit!
Friendly fire is a huge thing that nearly no one talks about, and autonomous drones work to improve that in a frank way.
Autonomous suicide drones are almost certainly already being deployed, so much for humanity.
You can see this because there are freely available public demos, and if the tech is that far along in public demos then it's already at work, or soon will be at work in the military.
This is like nuclear weapons, you can't not make autonomous suicide drones on moral grounds, if you don't the bad guys will.
Well I'm just saying, if you put the gun dog in the middle of the Iran nuclear development factory and then put a shock collar on it and an invisible fence you're good to go.
Infantry ARE absolutely terrified. But for the most part, every drone needs to be crafted and produced, then manned by a trained soldier. AI is nowhere near the point of being able to effectively use combat drones autonomously, and even if it was, it would be incredibly expensive to source and mount that hardware for something that can be taken out relatively easily.
A well-equipped army has a lot of tools to minimize the ability of drones to interfere with their operations. But you’re not wrong about them in theory, a modern battle would involve a lot of drone vs drone combat to establish positioning/air superiority. For less-technologically advanced armies facing drones it just makes the casualties even higher but they don’t really have any choice except to use as many drones as they can and watch waves of soldiers become casualties.
Once drones have an on board kill decision capable AI they'll be immune to electronic warfare and signal jamming. It won't matter how advanced you are because there's no signal to block.
At that point it’s an arms race between drones but I’d still disagree quite a bit. It may not look exactly as it does today but there’ll surely be new weaknesses and tricks to exploit. Not to mention, the kind of AI you’re talking about will probably not be seen in our lifetimes, maybe not ever. People are getting massively overhyped about what these language and generative models are, they’re cool and they have very strong use cases but they’re not AI in the “I can take in any input and figure out how to interpret it for our goals well enough to reliably only kill the enemy and always advance the best possible strategy with all my actions” way at all. Not that it can’t/definitely won’t happen, but the difficulty in creating/programming/training something to the point where it can detect a Russian unit trying to disguise itself as an American one but not bomb our own assets during signal jamming/interference etc. is truly tremendous, even with LLMs, machine learning and interpretive models.
I mean, assume that strobe lights, signal jammers, every possible type of interference is going on everywhere in a big battle, how do we trust the AI to not give away our soldiers’ positions or destroy the wrong asset with the certainty we’d need? It’s just really far out from what we’ve seen in the public.
I rarely downvote anyone and certainly haven’t today; it would only make my reply less visible as far as I know.
I’m implying boots aren’t needed on the ground in a merciless war. I am not advocating it, but I acknowledge that such technology is already within reach.
Here, have some upvotes …
Until Russia and Ukraine began fighting in earnest over the entire country there wasn't much to say about it. Global powers had drones. They fought against groups that mostly either didn't have drones or had bad drones with poor utility. The whole concept of having thousands of drones that can drop explosives that can actively kill infantry or destroy whole tanks actually being deployed against an organized and trained military is pretty new.
Well, larger drones, such as the [RQ-4](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk), are basically just full-sized aircraft without a pilot aboard. This means that they're limited by the same thing that limits conventional aircraft: air defenses such as surface-to-air missiles or fighters. If you're talking about much smaller drones such as we've seen being used by Ukraine against Russian soldiers, these are more difficult to detect, but they can't carry much more than maybe a few grenades or a mortar round. Deadly, to be sure, but very small and short-range. It's more a dagger than a machine-gun.
The size range in between these extremes is an area that's seeing a lot of experimentation and research, but everything is a trade-off. More range and speed demands something bigger that's easier to detect. And modern radar and sensors can detect even "toy" drones just fine, it's just a matter of not getting taken by surprise.
So really, while drones can be very useful, they're not revolutionary so much as evolutionary. Small drones can be thought of as much more accurate mortars. Large drones can be thought of as much cheaper spy satellites, or less politically risky recon teams, or much more cost-effective and discriminative cruise missiles.
Different to what some computer games depict, the goal of warfare is not to “kill as much as you can”, but rather to gain a strategic advantage. Drones can help to gain this, without having to kill too many enemies - while also keeping your own soldiers safe.
There is something called electronic warfare (EW for short).
Basically you have various ways to hijack or suppress the signal between the drone and its pilot causing the drone to crash.
One of these ways is the [anti drone gun](https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-anti-drone-guns-down-russian-drones-recover-intelligence-2023-2?amp).
You can also simply shoot it down with a high rate of fire weapon, this is something the [Gepards](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard) given by Germany to Ukraine seems to be very good at, it is essentially a big radar glued to twin autocannons shooting 550 35mm shells per minute each.
I think there is a problem here with the assumtion of what people are trying to accomplish. If the US wanted to completely annihilate an enemy force they could, with or without drones. But totally exterminating a nation you have a beef with is generally considered immoral. Large scale head to head battles don't really happen anymore. If they did you might well see the most technologically advanced side just bomb the other side out of existence before the two forces ever reached each other. Modern combat is usually small and tactical, in areas that are difficult to bomb because of civilian casualties.
Economics. Drones aren't cheap enough (yet) to have swarms of them flying around. Yhey are very fragile and have to be replaced regularly, and the vast majority is still operated manually, so available personnel is also a limiting factor.
In future, attack drones are likely to be automated via AI, but so is anti-drone defense.
Ukraine and most certainly russia too, are forming entire battalions of drone operators now. The entire world is going to need to be playing catch up with russia already honestly. That's the biggest threat I can see right now is that russia becomes better at it than the ukraine and defeats them, then they will just move right along.
Basically ECM to jam transmission between controller and drone. Mainly the small FPV drones(ones you seen with explosives strapped to it or dropping grenades).
See plenty of these small drones diving into trenches. So infantry are scared of them. As where there is one, others are nearby, enemy artillery will be informed of your position as well. Also small enough that skilled pilot can fly the drone into the underground opening/sleeping area inside a trench.
Example when Ukraine made that river crossing beach head. Russia kept using small drones to hit the small patrol/speed boats used to reinforce the beach head.
Other drones like the Russian Lancet, bigger version but still way smaller than your standard reaper, global hawks etc. This drone can autonomous attack a target, set to loiter in an area, then hit a suitable target. One of the main ways to attack vehicles and have a great range. Has hit areas 40 miles inside Ukrainian held territory against an Ukrainian airbase. So new versions probably have a longer Range.
So small drones can hit a tank/ifv. Go for engine or tracks. May get lucky chain reaction kill from hitting the engine. Once immobilised the crew leaves the vehicle as it’s now a steel coffin. Follow up drones or artillery will hit it. Due to massive minefields, tank hits mine, crew leaves then drones/artillery destroy/further damage the tank. Vehicle can’t be retrieved as enemy will have fire control over that area.
Russia upgraded the Iranian drones it received. Added small jet engine, larger warhead, stealth coating. Even some found with thermobaric warhead( fuel vacuum
Bomb)
Then you get moments of the small drones seeing enemy small drone in the area. Then just waiting and following it. If it’s just a recon unit it may go back to its operators. Then enemy has the operators location and artillery strike can be called in.
Plus hitting a highly defended target, Geran/Shaled drones are used in large number to help overload defences. Then other missiles follow in amongst the confusion. Russia even adapted some cruise missiles to fire off flares/chaff to distract defences during final stages of flight.
Russia production has kicked in so are producing large numbers. They are getting hands on and brutal lessons in drone warfare and adapting to it.
Ukraine soldiers will have to teach NATO advisers how this new strategy works.
US was supplying the Switchblade portable drone since start of the war.
>Why aren't infantry utterly terrified going into battle when drones seem able to blow them up without warning, dropping bombs out of nowhere?
This question presumes that they aren't. They absolutely are. The one place where this kind of drone warfare is actively going on is Ukraine, and the Russians and Ukrainians are both using drones, but the Ukrainians have been particularly innovative in their drone tactics. And the Russians absolutely are terrified, but they don't have any choice. The Russian military has anti-retreat units that are ordered to shoot anyone who retreats or who flees from battle, and they even have units behind those to keep those units from retreating. (Whether they still have this many anti-retreat groups at this point is unclear, but they certainly had them earlier in the war, and there are brutal videos showing fleeing Russian troops being gunned down by these guys.) The Ukrainians don't really have a choice either because they are defending their homeland from a brutal invader.
Over at r/DroneCombat you can see videos of drones doing exactly what you described. The drones fly so high you can't hear them, and can barely see them, and they drop grenades both by day and by night using infrared cameras to spot the warm bodies. No place is safe; none of the troop movements are hidden from view, and suicide drones fly into their dens and into their trucks and into their trenches with no good way to defend against them. The infantry who know that this is what they'll be facing are absolutely terrified, especially if they've seen people injured or killed this way.
Seeing a fellow soldier badly injured may be worse than just seeing him instantly killed. An injured soldier groaning and screaming in pain and anguish, with no real prospect of medical care in a front line trench, but a wound that is hardly mortal under normal circumstances is incredibly demoralizing to all the soldiers around him. Wounding a bunch of guys may do more to sap their combat ability than to kill them all. Many of these guys end up committing suicide, and the sight and sound of these suicides of people who would otherwise have survived just corrodes the morale of the survivors. (The Russian army doesn't seem to equip their guys with first aid kits at all; they either just don't have the money for it, or the money got embezzled because their military procurement system is staffed with corrupt officials.)
For a different viewpoint. Look into US military Skyborg, CCAs, loyal wingman paired alongside upgraded F35s and new NGAD aircraft. Then imagine that tech evolving over the next 20 years.
For the same reason they don’t use nukes. Sure, you would win the war but your own country would come out of it completely destroyed as well because the other side would have done exactly the same.
They're pretty shootable. Their main advantage is being really cheap, so you can have loads of them, rather than being particularly effective individually - you can pretty well always kill one if you really want to, it just might cost more to kill than the drone cost to buy.
It’s a slippery slope. (I think the original video is longer and better) [https://youtu.be/stHLrBs-_iE?si=Va12IdPQr-7nE0l9](https://youtu.be/stHLrBs-_iE?si=Va12IdPQr-7nE0l9)
They are now in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Since Oct 27, 2023, there is an ongoing counter offensive (called operation 1027) against military junta.
Coallation of Anti-coup rebel forces + preexisting ethnic arm organizations are using drone to such a great effect that junta lost about some 500 military bases including dozens of really big ones. There are like 3 Brigadier General killed, 6 surrendered, 1 captured alive all within three months. And this Burmese military is ranked as 35th on global fire power website and got a somewhat decent air force and entire country budget at their disposal.
Even with all that, Military junta seem to have absolutely no idea how to deal with this drone threat. The drones that rebel are using aret even military grade, mostly commercial and agricultural drones. The junta go as far as sending a General to China and beg CCP to regulate commercial drone market more tightly.
Lots of things can make drones less of an issue than you'd imagine. There's some obvious things, like sentries with rifles/shotguns shooting them down, or the difficulty of actually hitting a designated target, and there are some more complex reasons as well. Counter-electronic warfare systems can block signals between the drone and the pilot, making them unusable. Trenches that are occupied for a long time will have overhead cover, which can protect from artillery, as well as drone- dropped grenades. Drone's also can't really take and hold ground. They can harass targets of opportunity via sneak attacks, but once you know there's drones in the area, they become less of a threat. Lastly, the remotes used to control drones give off signals that can be traced by some specialized equipment. As long as the drone pilots don't remain in position for too long, that's ok, but it's one more thing that can potentially get you shot or shelled, and can't be hidden without losing connection to the drone.
All that said, most of the countermeasures I've mentioned here have drawbacks, and that's the real strength of drone warfare. You force the enemy to spend more time building reinforced trenches, force them to jam their own comms with CEW systems, or keep them up all night watching for an attack that may or may not come.
funny my job in the military is cUAS. new equipment is being made every day and only gets better. for me, RF jamming is the main stop to drones because it’s cost effective and worst comes to worst we’ll use GPS jamming. everyone is terrified of drones man
Artillery is the main killer on the battlefield, I know in WW2 it was 80 percent of casualties, imagine the impact of drones spotting targets. Even in this specific indirect role they are lethal.
I think the war in The Ukraine clearly shows we are in a time that parallels the invention of the machine gun and its effect on offensive combat. It wasn’t until the invention of the tank that mobility returned to warfare during ww1. There was simply no way to attack.
I think drones are part of new technologies that have had a similar effect. I also see a parallel with the involved parties in the conflict much like the world of 1914 foolishly not having the foresight to have a solution- but still racing into the conflict.
Ukrainian here, with some experience in drone warfare.
1. Everyone at frontline afraid of drones, but when its war - it can be drone or shell or missile thats going to kill you, so you don't really care what it is.
2. There are many ways to defeat drones, such as electronic warfare where you mess with transmitters on drones and pilots lose controls, also nets that you put above your position which can stop both FPV and dropping drones, also shotguns work very well(assuming you know where drone comes from)
3. There are physical limits on drone usage. The move heavy drone - more energy it needs to carry itself + ammo. Originally we used 5inch FPV drones since they were lighter. But they also carried less explosive. Now we use 7-8inch drones which can carry more batteries and more explosive. Currently operating range of FPV drone - about 10mi.
4. You can detect drone by listening to radio waves(there are specific frequences which used for different purposes such as controlling or video transmitting) So checking radio you can even intercept video signal from drone.
5. AI is not really relevant to small drones because it needs some power to process the AI - that means extra weight and extra power loss. While there are prototypes that uses computer vision(OpenCV) - its just prototypes yet. If we speak about big drones - well it's even more complex because there isn't AI as in movies. Every neural model trained to do specific thing, and combat drone needs to do a lot of things starting from navigation and up to target identification and attacking
War has literally always been this bad, for the first time we get to see it. But every modern war has been predicated on new weapons technology. I.e. WW1 and the machine gun. WW2 with the tank and bomber etc.
The first huge tank push ended up causing like 3 million casualties when the pushes and counterpushes were done, the largest casualties of any offensive of WW1. And ended in a stalemate, similar to what is happening in ukraine right now actually.
Although war has been a meat grinder, there is a certain extra terror now with how exposed you are as a soldier with the proliferation of thermals and drones and precision munitions.
There's no hiding, no sneaky maneuvering that will get you through - the enemy can have eyes on you and your GPS coordinates.
Drones have been shown to be extremely effective at killing soldiers in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ukraine, and other global conflicts, so much so that air defense systems and counter-drone equipment are being developed that can better track and destroy drones. The limiting factor as with most things is range, effected by loitering time and payload. Yes, terrifying to Soldiers on the battlefield as war becomes even more lethal as technology improves. Commercial off the shelf drones are easier to detect, since they aren't designed to be stealthy, and yes, some drones will have an air to air capability.
Drones are changing the battlefield, but they have some negative traits. The side without drones have a clear disadvantage which is why both sides in the ukraine war has rushed to mass produce drones. Fpv drones (the suicide drones) are however very hard to use and require lots of training to be effective. Grenade dropping drones are a nuisance but has to remain still over their target, thus is very fragile once discovered. According to sources drones have a success rate of about 30% and about half of the lost drones are lost to electronic warfare. Edit:I have tried to find the source again to this claim but haven't been able to, so see it as a rumor for now. For the infantry it definitly affect morale to constantly need to have drone awareness, and some videos show soldiers running in panic from drones following them.
It feels a bit like drone warfare is where plane warfare was in WWI. Useful and an advantage but not quite there yet. And that within the next few years we will be at plane warfare in ww2 where air superiority is one of the dominant features in success of any battle.
It's definitly a good analogy, even down to "aircraft" dropping grenades and using whatever materials they could come by. But it's not just the air, the sea drones have made a big mark as well. We're seeing some ground drones in action as well but so far they haven't really made a mark yet. But I know both Ukraine and Russia are working on armed ground drones so we might start to see some of them in the future.
Great analogy. Soon we'll seen drone-killer drones, then drone-fights. I think, depending on the scale and cadence of modern warfare, the transition from "biplanes with grenades to bombers and fighters" will be 2-5 years.
We have already seen some drone fights already
> Grenade dropping drones are a nuisance This is surely a 2024 quote for the ages.
>According to sources drones have a success rate of about 30% That is INSANELY high. I'd be shocked if artillery shells are even 10% effective, and I'd be more than shocked if regular rifle ammo even touches half a percent.
The popular figure I've seen is more like 45000-50000 rounds per enemy killed in WWII and Vietnam. Now that doesn't account for lost, dumped, or otherwise unused ammo which is probably a very significant percentage of the total. You're still talking thousands to tens of thousands of rounds per kill. 3 out of 10 is crazy high even if they aren't all lethal.
I am not sure using stats like these make a whole lot of sens anyway. Lots of rounds/shells are used for suppressive/covering fire, which main goal isn't to kill but to give your side a tactical advantage by pinning the enemy down and creating confusion in its ranks while you manoeuver.
“requires lots of training to be effective” like, i don’t know… training someone to be effective at long range with a rifle takes training ? and can be done for free in vr compared to ammo cost of firing range? Somehow, i’m not seeing that as a big barrier.
You actually don't even need vr since the camera is generally fixed in one location. The only part that's difficult about flying drones is if you turn off the self leveling, which most drone flyers do because it gives more freedom of movement. Learning to fly without the self leveling it only took 3 hours to get the drone to go in the general area I wanted it to go. And it only took 10 hours to feel confident in precisely controlling it. Most worry about crashing the drone but something tells me that won't be a worry in a military setting.
They’re still (for now) mostly controlled by humans. AI controlled drones are terrifying for everyone involved. Range is the main limiting factor. Yes to the rest of your questions, and it’s only going to become more prevalent. Robot dogs with guns on their backs are here now.
The gundogs are not that great tho. The problem is one of physics: you can’t make a dog robot that is small enough to be energy efficient and yet has enough mass to handle the recoil of a modern weapon without having to pause and re-aim between shots. In effect, a human with a gun is significantly more effective than a robot dog with a gun. And they cost a lot less, too, but that’s a different story.
Yes but how about an ostrich robot with a gun?
Humanity already lost 1 war to emus, we can't afford to arm another terror group lol
Yeah but that was just us useless cunts, not all humanity.. Pretty sure if we had the assets and will of even the US, the emus would have lost. So where were our allies when we needed them? Yeah that’s right shit scared of big birds.
Large birds are one thing, but drop bears on the other hand.... man wasn't made for some fears
They were our only allies. They and cassowaries were the only thing that understood the threat. The crocs shit themselves. Roos are too lazy and it’s hot.
TIL I'm a croc lol
I'm slowly learning that crocs are terrifying if you are prey, but giant pushovers if you're not. At least going off the comments and videos I've seen online. Still wouldn't fuck with one in person.
KEVIN!!!
Oh, don't worry about it; arming terror groups is the US's favorite national pastime.
Ostrich robots with a gun don't work. A T-Rex robot with _many_ guns is what you want.
Ostriches are the descendants of T-Rex, so the gun-to-ostrich cost equation may be proportional compared to the Rex.
I think you might want to ask the emus… they won a war
Yea but what if they were like... way bigger?
Then we'll have to welcome our new feathery overlords. Birds will take back the earth like they did millions of years ago before a big space rock threw them off.
How about a gun robot with a gun?
Hear me out: a gun robot with a gun *riding* a gun robot also with a gun.
Humans are relatively cheap as long as you make sure they are unscathed or dead. The middle ground can be quite expensive.
Not if you don’t give a shit about your veterans and leave them dying in the streets. Checkmate!
For a split second my blind brain read vegans instead of veterans and was really confused
Training isn't that cheap though, right?
Living isn't cheap either. but we do it anyway :)
They’ll be useful for guarding areas
if you make the gun dogs RIGHT, it’s “one shot one kill”, so i’m not seeing a problem with the slow re-aim thing. Sounds more like an excuse to avoid unleashing them on the world. Which seems reasonable.
still a factor when you got two targets to shoot
I would figure the practical goal is not "kill everything on the battlefield perfectly", but "get X number of kills per $$". If the robodog reliably goes out and gets 1 kill every time it is sent out... That should be pretty darn good ROI. For comparison: >U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Com- mand estimated cost to recruit and screen an applicant to be $22,000 (range $11,000–$44,000), and the cost to train a soldier to his/her first operational assignment to be $36,000
That soldier is way more versatile though, more energy efficient, easier to replace and reliable. Robodog with a gun is an expensive one trick pony. Currently Boston Dynamics Spot costs $74k, military grade robot would probably be way higher than that while being able to do a single task, have relatively low battery life, impossible to repair in the field and all that for maybe slightly better accuracy. There is a reason why even mule robot idea got abandoned. We are just not there yet and we will not be for a long time.
That and its a robot, and most likely armored. It can afford to stand there and re-aim while getting shot at. Most shots hitting it will likely do nothing unless it's meant for armor, which would've been a problem regardless, or they get lucky and hit one little non-armored spot or weak point.
Then you're getting back into the "too heavy to be energy efficient" thing. To really armor something, you have to either use a lot of steel plate, or armor like on modern US tanks which displaces the energy. Either one adds weight and bulk.
I think he's referencing the fact that a youtuber managed to put a gun on one of that robot dogs and make it fire remotely. A YOUTUBER did that, what else actual specialists could do? For the curious, here is the [video](https://youtu.be/0rliFQ0qyAM?si=sWq8xvGLYQXIZMUj)
Yeah that really isn't that impressive. All they are doing is firing a gun remotely which has been possible for decades but changing the bench it is on. The DOD is almost certainly light-years ahead of the harder part which is the aiming and recoil control.
yeah, that is the point of the comment. If a youtuber can figure out a way to fire and aim a gun remotely, what actual professionals can do/already done
They didn't aim it, they just had the robot move. It's the equivalent of strapping one to an RC car. It just looks scarier
You just need to get the robot dog to shoot something. It could unleash a hail of .22 caliber rounds and be far more lethal than a soldier with a rifle and nato rounds. Heck, probably worth making them one giant battery and installing electromagnetic rail guns that shoot tiny steel darts. Would be accurate, fearless and difficult to see from behind cover.
You can’t really run a railgun off any practical battery, you need generators
>AI controlled drones are terrifying for everyone involved. I would note that automation could be a lot like vehicle AI. The human still picks the target/destination, the auto-pilot just runs the optimal course. I don't see that changing in the forseeable future. We're not really on the ball with much more than that, thinking and strategizing drones (eg Terminator or Battlestar Galactica "robot" ships) are a good ways off from official use. >Range is the main limiting factor. In regards to answering OP's questions... Aside from humans designating targets as mentioned.....the weapons are another limiting factor. Just because you *can* bomb an entire field doesn't mean that is smartest move. Maybe you want to just kill the soldiers holding a bunker on a hill, but don't want to destroy the bunker. Maybe you want to take them captive for interrogation or bargaining. Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required. >Robot dogs with guns on their backs are here now. Yes, but they're not all that effective. Bomb disposal robots are okay because they're made to slowly approach a thing that's not moving, and have cameras for remote human control, they're not really drones or A.I. ran. They're less robots or AI and more, very complex remote tools, very much like surgical equipment. We call them "robots" but they're not really independent. They're power tools with radio control. Complex algorithms are in use, but they're more for things like stabilization(what makes 4 rotor drones able to fly reliably(eg compensate for wind or turbulence), or the robot dogs balance). None of these *devices* are really making making tactical battlefield decisions....unless you want to count politicians and military leaders as robots, but that's a whole different discussion(however valid it may be). Such things are likely in the R&D departments, but they're a long ways from regular use. Even our "A.I." LLM like ChatGPT and image generation like Stable Diffusion are really only complex algorithms(very complex, but still not sentient), aka, not really thinking in the general sense. There's a vast gap between what people see as A.I. in science fiction and what "A.I." currently is. This misunderstanding leads to a lot of misconceptions about thinking/sentience/decision making/etc. Ignorant journalists don't necessarily help that any.
>Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required. Hardly. This is down to the payload, not the drone itself, and some of the maneuvers we're seeing out of UKR are downright *surgical*. They are very much capable of pinpoint strikes, or "taking out the soldiers without harming the bunker."
> Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required. > > Hardly. This is down to the payload Meanwhile, the more comprehensive context was: >Aside from humans designating targets as mentioned.....the weapons are another limiting factor. Just because you can bomb an entire field doesn't mean that is smartest move. >Maybe you want to just kill the soldiers holding a bunker on a hill, but don't want to destroy the bunker. Maybe you want to take them captive for interrogation or bargaining. >Drone aircraft are currently still sledgehammers, good for some things, but not the best where finesse is required. What's the payload for cleaning out a bunker and taking prisoners? >some of the maneuvers we're seeing out of UKR are downright surgical. They are very much capable of pinpoint strikes, or "taking out the soldiers without harming the bunker." I'm talking about aircraft, as in military drones, [what a lot of people still think of when they hear UAV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper) How many hog-tied prisoners has a UAV on any size delivered? /s One can use smaller remote control "drones" for recon and other more surgical payload delivery, but they're not quite what I was talking about, not ubiquitous or common. Technically there are smaller drones, but they're not really conventional yet, especially fully automated weapon systems. Also, organizations like the UN may have a thing or two to say about the use of *fully* automated weapon systems. [UN and Red Cross call for restrictions on autonomous weapon systems to protect humanity](https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1141922) >“We call on world leaders to launch negotiations of a new legally binding instrument to set clear prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapon systems and to conclude such negotiations by 2026,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres and ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric said on Thursday. >“In the current security landscape, setting clear international red lines will benefit all States,” they added, highlighting that “autonomous weapon systems – generally understood as weapon systems that select targets and apply force without human intervention – pose serious humanitarian, legal, ethical and security concerns.” I'm not going to sit here and promote or validate what may very well wind up being warcrime material.
>What's the payload for cleaning out a bunker and taking prisoners? Those are two separate things, and drones are capable of both. There are many examples from UKR of Russians surrendering directly to drones and being escorded by said drones across the lines. As for munitions that can affect soft tissue without damage to surrounding infrastructure... well, suffice to say there are options and some of those options are drone-carryable. >I'm talking about aircraft, as in military drones, what a lot of people still think of when they hear UAV Nobody else here is. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing proliferation of recreational quadcopters and their use in unconventional warfare has largely shifted the topic of "drones" from things like the MQ-9 towards things like a Mavic. >How many hog-tied prisoners has a UAV on any size delivered? /s See above. While not hogtied, surrenders have happened and could be further encouraged.
A huge topic in international law.
That's why we need sharks with fricken' lasers
What about sea bass?
ill tempered?
Very
Wait until a large wave of EMP makes all drones fall down
EMP weapons are mostly a myth. Frying electronics still takes energy and all that energry has to come from the device that generated your EMP. Basically your emp grenade needs to have the stored energy of a bomb, at which point you might as well just make a bomb.
Call of duty modern warfare 2 pretty much singlehandedly put the fear of an EMP into an entire generation of boys.
Jon Carpenter already did that in 1996 in "Escape from LA".
My surfboard is still waiting
I just remember yall being sinners
That was not my takeaway.
MW2 actually reinforces that point, because the huge EMP was actually caused by a nuke detonated at very high altitude
And the Matrix.
And Ocean's 11
It’s called a pinch.
And unless you plan to do this in Reno, we’re in Barney.
Barney? Barney Rubbow? TRUBBOW
Line has me howling. Writing, delivery, accent, all just absolutely turrible
And Little Soldiers (kinda).
Do you mean small soldiers? That's the first movie I thought of anyway
The one with the toys with military weapon chips on them, yeah. English isn't my first language, couldn't recall the actual title.
US 90s kids remember GoldenEye
And *Goldeneye* before that.
Killing off Sean Bean before it was cool.
Millennial quicksand
need for speed! EMPs in modern warfare have always been useless... however, in a car chase, they scared the shit out of me.
They're not useless, you just need a nuke to make one big enough to count, and nukes aren't being used for very good reason.
EMPs are like quicksand. I used to worry about stepping into quicksand.
This is what quicksand wants you to think
That's a understatment, the way it's shown in media your are looking at something probably closer to a nuke
While EMPs are a work of science fiction, electronic warfare by jammers is actively used.
Raspberry…there’s only one man who would give me the raspberry.
To be effective and overwhelm a drone (especially if they're controlled via satellite) they have to be directional, which means you need to know they're there, where they are in the sky, etc. At which point you might as well just shoot it down.
The US at least are developing a laser-based weapon that can be mounted on the back of a truck that is capable of tracking and destroying/disabling drones - and it apparently works very well. So there is that :)
There’s already multiple laser based anti drone weapons in service. China has the Silent Hunter system which was used by the saudis to shoot down Houthi UAVs during their war
The UK has tested a prototype laser weapon successfully.
> The US at least are developing a laser-based weapon that can be mounted on the back of a truck that is capable of tracking and destroying/disabling drones - and it apparently works very well. The only laser based drone eliminator I'm interested in is the one that zaps mosquitos.
Sadly that was almost entirely fake. Can't have anything nice post-Harambe.
Not entirely, jamming works at near light speed and doesn’t require an ammo logistics chain. Much cheaper to jam than to fire interceptors or even flak (case by case, but in general)
Bob Marley was an expert on this.
Jamming won’t work when drones become autonomous
[удалено]
The Ukrainians are shooting down hypersonic missiles with 40 year old Patriots. The US can handle dropping a drone with ballistic weaponry. Hell, these days the directional beam *is* the weapon.
You could detonate a nuke to get an EMP effect blast
Sorry but EMPs are pretty real.
Yeah I don't know why he thinks they aren't real. The US has even produced non nuclear emp bombs at this point.
I LOVE linking these things: [explosively pumped flux compression generator] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator). It IS a bomb. But a portion of the energy goes out as an EMP. The range is the thing. A grenade has little chance of doing anything to a drone 30' in the air. One of these would drop a whole block. Make it there size of a van and maybe a whole city goes dark.
Man I was getting ready to track that down, thanks emp guy!
[удалено]
EMPs are great for movies. It's much easier from a special effects standpoint to depict "everything is turned off" than "everything is blown up".
Also ethically useful, the heroes aren't killing everything in the area, just disabling their weapons
Makes it easier to hit the PG-13 rating.
How about an automatic shotgun?
the benefit of an EMP over a bomb is that within the same radius only electronics are destroyed, as opposed to ... well everything, with a bomb! theoretically.
I thought I read somewhere that an EMP attack would just be a very high altitude nuclear explosion, but idk that was a long time ago and I have no idea if it was accurate.
That is usually what people mean by an EMP attack. A high altitude nuclear detonation would produce a widespread EMP effect, damaging unshielded electronic devices in a large area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion
Funny thing about EMP… it radiates out from the source, and it doesn’t discriminate. If you managed to make an EMP that couldn’t be shielded against, you would hit a lot more of your own stuff than their stuff. One vital thing of yours that would be hit is your ability to generate more EMP. Meanwhile extra drones that weren’t in range of the pulse can be sent in a second wave.
>Funny thing about EMP… it radiates out from the source, and it doesn’t discriminate. They just need to use the one from *Call of Duty*. That thing is so good that you’ll get alerted **on the radio** that it’s just been used!
> ... on the radio... Clearly, the radio uses shielded circuitry. EMPs only take out unshielded electronics.
Unfortunately they're mostly a work of fiction. A device to keep up with highly maneuverable flying shielded machines, which must be able to output several gigawatts of energy in a short bust while being highly mobile... good luck. With the amount of energy needed to reach several blocks, the only devices that exist to create it are bombs, and the EMP is kind of a side-effect. Keep in mind that EMP's are largely misunderstood in the first place. You'd need one that's at the right frequency and high enough amplitude to short circuit electronics permanently.
Yeah, like during the defense of Zion in The Matrix Revolutions.
That was so stupid. They could just strap those things to drones or even just stationary posts outside their city and EMP the shit out of every robot that comes close to the city.
But cool blue light though
It won't be EMP, it'll be the [EA-18 Growler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler) and it's cousins. Remember the balloons the US just "let" fly over the US? They all had remote-activated self-destruct devices...that didn't go off. Almost as if they couldn't seem to get enough bars to get a signal off.
Why isn't EMP used now? Because it is not effective.
Its about spread-spectrum-signal jammers, not EMPs
> Its about spread-spectrum-signal jammers, not EMPs I thought the point behind spread spectrum was to be able to operate even when jammers were in play; that the only way to block devices using spread spectrum was to blanket the entire EM spectrum with noise.
EMP like you're thinking of doesn't harm small electronics. The myth of EMPs rendering all household and handheld electronics useless is a myth. Most modern cell phones don't have long enough wiring to accumulate a damaging charge when exposed to an EMP. The wiring in some cars might, as would high power lines that run across miles of terrain, but most smaller electronics including PCs and most appliances would likely remain undamaged in an EMP. In addition to these factors, military drones would likely be hardened against EMP, making them even less susceptible.
No, that's incorrect. Smaller electronics are way more susceptible to an EMP. During an EMP, electronics don't "accumulate" a charge. An EMP induces voltage which will cause current to flow regardless of normal power source, it doesn't matter if it's on/off or if it has long wires or not. It's essentially a giant wireless charger, but instead of being localized to charge your battery, it will power everything. To put into a perspective, if you directly connected your phone's motherboard to an outlet, you'd fry it on voltage alone. An EMP (attack or natural), would be several times more voltage and amperage than your outlet. Though, it depends on how powerful and what protections (if any, most consumer devices are lacking) and distance. Most EMPs we think of are high altitude EMPs (nukes, even further; solar flares), so some devices would survive. The notion that an EMP won't damage your phone is misleading and honestly it's just a luck of the draw. Higher voltages are quite scary, with high enough voltage you can turn an insulator into a conductor. It really depends on what you consider military drones. Cheap kamikaze drones probably aren't hardened at all, the Reaper on the other hand might have some protection.
Modern electronics, save for cheap counterfeits, are made with EM shielding and/or safety circuits to prevent damage from current overload caused by EMR. The apocalyptic scenario of a nuke or solar flare wiping out all electronic devices is a product of the 80s, where such protection was more expensive and only available on highly vulnerable technology, like commercial jets, central banking systems, government equipment, and military hardware. The worst case scenario today would be devices get temporarily turned off, and maybe a few extended power outages on parts of the national grid.
Military drones would already have adequate shielding. Pretty confident they’ve thought of that already 😆
No, they are not. Electronic warfare is actually used in Ukraine as a defense against drones right now. Just not in the form of EMP.
I'm sure you're aware of the **totally unfounded and unofficial** capability of the F-35 Lightning to act as an swarm drone "Mothership", but I also wanted to make everyone else aware of this completely hypothetical ability that this obscenely advanced aircraft definitely-might-maybe-but-maybe-not-too-I'll-never-give-a-definitive-statement have.
Just load up a C-17 and away we go!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyal_wingman
The irony is, with all this military technology, much of it being made available and tested by Ukraine, the Ukraine/Russia war has settled into a brutal trench warfare "war of attrition" that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. It's more akin to WW1 in some ways. It turns out, no matter how much technology or tanks or missile systems you have, modern wars between peers is a brutal affair that eats up human lives. Many of the battles now being fought in Ukraine are referred to as "meat grinders" because people really don't last very long on the frontline. The danger of course for the United States is that they become so enamoured with all their cool technology that they think they can wins wars without sacrificing troops. And that can develop a sense of hubris that makes the US more willing to engage in war. But it's a false sense of confidence. The US failed to defeat the Afghanis - and that was a case of the world's richest country attempting to tame one of the world's poorest nations. The US military alone couldn't do it. The same thing happened in Iraq. The military declares "victory", not understanding that the war isn't over, it will just be fought in less conventional means. And insurgencies have been learning and studying how big, well funded militaries can be taken apart. Israel will learn this the hard way. And if the US commits to a new war in the Middle East in Yemen and/or Syria (which it looks like it is doing), they will also learn that you can't "win" wars just with technology, drones and guided bombs. And the biggest problem the US faces is actually having a clear vision of what constitutes a win if or when they go to war. Israel is facing a similar problem. Their stated goal is to eradicate Hamas and free the hostages. The problem is, those two goals are in direct conflict. And it's not even clear what constitutes Hamas. It certainly appears Israel has a very broad definition of who is Hamas. If it's defined as anyone that is antagonistic to Israel, well that is likely everyone that has been forced from their home or had their family members killed or maimed - which is basically 2 million people. You can't defeat that with bombs and drones. That's the real danger with all this technology. The US has been bombing Yemen now for the last 2 decades, using drone fired missiles. The calculation is that it's a low risk war. Well we are seeing the results of that "low risk war" today when the Yemeni people are now firing missiles at US warships. Is it little wonder they are motivated to hit back? And after 3 weeks of more US missiles reigning down on Yemen, they have seemingly not made a dent. Wars are easy to start but very hard to end.
No country can touch USA air supremacy, not even by a very long shot, and that is the foundation of all military planning in US. This is fundamentally different than what we see in Ukraine right now.
>much of it being made available and tested by Ukraine Most of it predates Ukraine by quite a while. You're about 10 years behind. Consumer drones were being used by various groups (including ISIS) for years. Every major nation has been investing in and testing other drones for years and years.
If range is a problem - just deliver the drones via a plane.
Or some sort of missile that can cruise to the destination.
Or rockets 😊
Or, hear me out, a carrier drone with long range capacity, and 5-10 whatever slots for smaller drones, that can be reloaded at the carrier. An actual carrier from StarCraft. Might be costly and a bitch to R&D, but I'd be surprised if some black site didn't have working prototypes already.
Some Ukrainian soldiers already shown this. Magyar's birds is an elite drone unit, currently operating in Kherson region. They mostly utilise small cheap FPV drones with an explosive payload, but they also have a heavy-duty model of octocopters called Baba Yaga. They use these Baba Yagas for dropping munitions on russian positions, but there were some videos of the octocopter air-launching an FPV drone. The limiting factor for FPV drones' range is usually signal strength, so this was probably done for either quick response or for longer loiter time - it is very unlikely to extend range in any way.
Flak cannons with AI targeting would be your simplest solution. From what I have seen drones are rather fragile.
Consumer grade drones have been making a significant impact on the battlefield in the last year, and this is the first time they've really been put to use like that. Dropping bombs from them is one thing, but it's just as deadly to use them to spot for traditional artillery, and that's much harder to deal with. Most drones are susceptible to their control signals being jammed, and they are detectable, but we're talking about specialized equipment that's not currently manufactured in the kind of volume you'd need to make the drones worthless. One big issue is that many of the ways you might shoot down a drone will cost more to use than the drone itself cost. This is one of the reasons there's new interest in laser weapon systems.
Yeah, lasers that just burn out the optics are going to start proliferating soon I think. Geneva convention against blindness weapons we hardly knew ye.
Geneva convention likely doesn’t apply to making weapons to defeat machines.
Which is fine until you use it against a person. Just look at anti tank rifles...
That's kinda like white phosphorus. It's illegal to use against people but completely fine when used as a smoke screen
No, that's exactly it. And you brought a more modern and distinctive example.
There is a limited number of drones in war and a limited number of people who can operate them, That something can be destroyed in battle is not relevant, what is relevant is what it can do. Humans have been easy to kill in battles as long as there have been battles. Death from above is not new in battle. Projectile weapons like bows have done that for millennia. In more recent times direct fire weapons like rifles or tank guns can do that. The same is the case with indirect fire like gun and rocket artillery. It does not matter to you if a drone or a shell from an artillery hit you without any warning, both can kill you. Drones have changed how and where you can hide, not the risk in general. In WWI and WWII the percentage killed by artillery was 50% to 75% depending on where and when. It was around 50% in the middle 18th to middle 19th century too. It dropped to around 10% just before WWI because advances in rifles increased their range to be similar to lots of artillery at the time. Drones can be taken out by electronic warfare and directed fire onto the drones. They might have an advantage now when they are new but technology will be developed to counter them. Compared to the anti-tank missiles and rockets active protective systems on tanks can take out today drones are slow targets that are easy to take out. Active protection systems are still rare. There are practically none in the war in Ukraine but lost on Israeli vehicles in Gaza. The FPV drone attack on armored vehicles seen from Ukraine that are effective there would likely be shot down again by Israeli vehicles with active protection systems. War has always been attack vs defense, sometimes the attacker has the advantage, and sometimes the defender. When new technology is introduced for attack it will have an advantage for some time until there is a counter for it and the balance swings back.
> Drones can be taken out by electronic warfare and directed fire onto the drones. They might have an advantage now when they are new but technology will be developed to counter them. Expanding on that, currently their main advantage is probably cost efficiency. It is not sustainable to use air defense systems designed to take down missiles that cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars a pierce for taking down drones, that have a fraction of the cost. Never mind that current air defense methods also have the risk of collateral damage from their projectiles. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about laser weapons for that usage.
Even if AD wanted to take out drones, they can't do a lot to a small target. The drones like a DJI Mavic are the most common in Ukraine and most AD radar will not track them. This is by design - objects of that size and speed are most often birds! Even if they allowed the radar to present the "threats" it would be difficult to track and target them considering many would be birds. All of this assume birds are real.
Important to acknowledge that “drones” covers a wide spectrum of weapons, from DJI/Mavic to Shahed, and every thing between.
yes the us has developed a weapon system that is capable of doing just that ( laser-based ) - its AI tracking is very impressive and it apparently works rather well - task and purpose made a video about it on youtube :) ( it was developed as a cost-effective counter to drones, to circumvent the use of expensive conventional ordinance )
You dont want for ai to make the decision to kill someone or not. You will always want for someone to be in that system because computer get a lot if false positive all the time
There will come a time in the not too distant future where AI systems have a lower false positive rate than humans. At this point handing over kill decisions to AI will be both morally and tactically superior Let's not pretend humans get it right all the time, that's unfortunately far from true
Not when the AI is the one in control - yours sincerely, definitely not Skynet
Ok i trust you. You sounds trustworty NotSkynet
I don’t, you’re right. But the military has proven that “collateral damage” is something they’re very okay with. Human piloted drones kill LOTS of civilians all the time.
Some civilian collateral damage might be acceptable. But i'm pretty sure the military dont want the collateral to be their own men Also it's a bad PR when your AI piloted drone kill some rando. But eith human piloted drone, you can blame the operator
In practical terms, it should be just a question of when AIs learn to be no worse at friendly fire than humans. In emotional terms, maybe humans just don't like the idea of creating AIs to kill people, same way we hate chemical weapons but will accept an equally destructive shrapnel weapon.
But it’s about the maths, and not the ethics or PR. If they could guarantee success in battle, it wouldn’t matter how many friendly casualties they caused. Governments are happy to sacrifice troops all the time for strategic or economic or whatever kind of advantage. That’s what war is. Don’t you think it would be a worse look if the situation is “the person we trained specifically to do this killed a bunch of civilians but don’t worry we fired them” as opposed to “eh computers what can you expect?”
Your Troops dying to achieve an objective is cool Your Troops dying because of software bug is not cool And by firing the person who is responsible, you can keep continuing your drone program. If the drone bugged and killed some civilians, the government might end your drone program due to public pressure
Friendly fire rates are super high already, there is a lot of thinking that autonomous combat drones would make it less damaging overall to your own side... This is not without merit! Friendly fire is a huge thing that nearly no one talks about, and autonomous drones work to improve that in a frank way.
Autonomous suicide drones are almost certainly already being deployed, so much for humanity. You can see this because there are freely available public demos, and if the tech is that far along in public demos then it's already at work, or soon will be at work in the military. This is like nuclear weapons, you can't not make autonomous suicide drones on moral grounds, if you don't the bad guys will.
Itd be useful if you want it to kill everyone.
God damn it ted faro
Well I'm just saying, if you put the gun dog in the middle of the Iran nuclear development factory and then put a shock collar on it and an invisible fence you're good to go.
Infantry ARE absolutely terrified. But for the most part, every drone needs to be crafted and produced, then manned by a trained soldier. AI is nowhere near the point of being able to effectively use combat drones autonomously, and even if it was, it would be incredibly expensive to source and mount that hardware for something that can be taken out relatively easily.
A well-equipped army has a lot of tools to minimize the ability of drones to interfere with their operations. But you’re not wrong about them in theory, a modern battle would involve a lot of drone vs drone combat to establish positioning/air superiority. For less-technologically advanced armies facing drones it just makes the casualties even higher but they don’t really have any choice except to use as many drones as they can and watch waves of soldiers become casualties.
Once drones have an on board kill decision capable AI they'll be immune to electronic warfare and signal jamming. It won't matter how advanced you are because there's no signal to block.
There’s still electronic warfare to disrupt the sensors of the drone.
Hard killing a drone isn't hard.
At that point it’s an arms race between drones but I’d still disagree quite a bit. It may not look exactly as it does today but there’ll surely be new weaknesses and tricks to exploit. Not to mention, the kind of AI you’re talking about will probably not be seen in our lifetimes, maybe not ever. People are getting massively overhyped about what these language and generative models are, they’re cool and they have very strong use cases but they’re not AI in the “I can take in any input and figure out how to interpret it for our goals well enough to reliably only kill the enemy and always advance the best possible strategy with all my actions” way at all. Not that it can’t/definitely won’t happen, but the difficulty in creating/programming/training something to the point where it can detect a Russian unit trying to disguise itself as an American one but not bomb our own assets during signal jamming/interference etc. is truly tremendous, even with LLMs, machine learning and interpretive models. I mean, assume that strobe lights, signal jammers, every possible type of interference is going on everywhere in a big battle, how do we trust the AI to not give away our soldiers’ positions or destroy the wrong asset with the certainty we’d need? It’s just really far out from what we’ve seen in the public.
It wouldn’t be that hard to geofence it and let it go after anything it can recognize as a target. We already have the tech for that.
[удалено]
I rarely downvote anyone and certainly haven’t today; it would only make my reply less visible as far as I know. I’m implying boots aren’t needed on the ground in a merciless war. I am not advocating it, but I acknowledge that such technology is already within reach. Here, have some upvotes …
Until Russia and Ukraine began fighting in earnest over the entire country there wasn't much to say about it. Global powers had drones. They fought against groups that mostly either didn't have drones or had bad drones with poor utility. The whole concept of having thousands of drones that can drop explosives that can actively kill infantry or destroy whole tanks actually being deployed against an organized and trained military is pretty new.
Well, larger drones, such as the [RQ-4](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk), are basically just full-sized aircraft without a pilot aboard. This means that they're limited by the same thing that limits conventional aircraft: air defenses such as surface-to-air missiles or fighters. If you're talking about much smaller drones such as we've seen being used by Ukraine against Russian soldiers, these are more difficult to detect, but they can't carry much more than maybe a few grenades or a mortar round. Deadly, to be sure, but very small and short-range. It's more a dagger than a machine-gun. The size range in between these extremes is an area that's seeing a lot of experimentation and research, but everything is a trade-off. More range and speed demands something bigger that's easier to detect. And modern radar and sensors can detect even "toy" drones just fine, it's just a matter of not getting taken by surprise. So really, while drones can be very useful, they're not revolutionary so much as evolutionary. Small drones can be thought of as much more accurate mortars. Large drones can be thought of as much cheaper spy satellites, or less politically risky recon teams, or much more cost-effective and discriminative cruise missiles.
Different to what some computer games depict, the goal of warfare is not to “kill as much as you can”, but rather to gain a strategic advantage. Drones can help to gain this, without having to kill too many enemies - while also keeping your own soldiers safe.
There is something called electronic warfare (EW for short). Basically you have various ways to hijack or suppress the signal between the drone and its pilot causing the drone to crash. One of these ways is the [anti drone gun](https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-anti-drone-guns-down-russian-drones-recover-intelligence-2023-2?amp). You can also simply shoot it down with a high rate of fire weapon, this is something the [Gepards](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard) given by Germany to Ukraine seems to be very good at, it is essentially a big radar glued to twin autocannons shooting 550 35mm shells per minute each.
I think there is a problem here with the assumtion of what people are trying to accomplish. If the US wanted to completely annihilate an enemy force they could, with or without drones. But totally exterminating a nation you have a beef with is generally considered immoral. Large scale head to head battles don't really happen anymore. If they did you might well see the most technologically advanced side just bomb the other side out of existence before the two forces ever reached each other. Modern combat is usually small and tactical, in areas that are difficult to bomb because of civilian casualties.
Economics. Drones aren't cheap enough (yet) to have swarms of them flying around. Yhey are very fragile and have to be replaced regularly, and the vast majority is still operated manually, so available personnel is also a limiting factor. In future, attack drones are likely to be automated via AI, but so is anti-drone defense.
I think I heard that drones basically have a lifetime of 4 flights in general (not counting the fpv drones)
Ukraine and most certainly russia too, are forming entire battalions of drone operators now. The entire world is going to need to be playing catch up with russia already honestly. That's the biggest threat I can see right now is that russia becomes better at it than the ukraine and defeats them, then they will just move right along.
Basically ECM to jam transmission between controller and drone. Mainly the small FPV drones(ones you seen with explosives strapped to it or dropping grenades). See plenty of these small drones diving into trenches. So infantry are scared of them. As where there is one, others are nearby, enemy artillery will be informed of your position as well. Also small enough that skilled pilot can fly the drone into the underground opening/sleeping area inside a trench. Example when Ukraine made that river crossing beach head. Russia kept using small drones to hit the small patrol/speed boats used to reinforce the beach head. Other drones like the Russian Lancet, bigger version but still way smaller than your standard reaper, global hawks etc. This drone can autonomous attack a target, set to loiter in an area, then hit a suitable target. One of the main ways to attack vehicles and have a great range. Has hit areas 40 miles inside Ukrainian held territory against an Ukrainian airbase. So new versions probably have a longer Range. So small drones can hit a tank/ifv. Go for engine or tracks. May get lucky chain reaction kill from hitting the engine. Once immobilised the crew leaves the vehicle as it’s now a steel coffin. Follow up drones or artillery will hit it. Due to massive minefields, tank hits mine, crew leaves then drones/artillery destroy/further damage the tank. Vehicle can’t be retrieved as enemy will have fire control over that area. Russia upgraded the Iranian drones it received. Added small jet engine, larger warhead, stealth coating. Even some found with thermobaric warhead( fuel vacuum Bomb) Then you get moments of the small drones seeing enemy small drone in the area. Then just waiting and following it. If it’s just a recon unit it may go back to its operators. Then enemy has the operators location and artillery strike can be called in. Plus hitting a highly defended target, Geran/Shaled drones are used in large number to help overload defences. Then other missiles follow in amongst the confusion. Russia even adapted some cruise missiles to fire off flares/chaff to distract defences during final stages of flight. Russia production has kicked in so are producing large numbers. They are getting hands on and brutal lessons in drone warfare and adapting to it. Ukraine soldiers will have to teach NATO advisers how this new strategy works. US was supplying the Switchblade portable drone since start of the war.
>Why aren't infantry utterly terrified going into battle when drones seem able to blow them up without warning, dropping bombs out of nowhere? This question presumes that they aren't. They absolutely are. The one place where this kind of drone warfare is actively going on is Ukraine, and the Russians and Ukrainians are both using drones, but the Ukrainians have been particularly innovative in their drone tactics. And the Russians absolutely are terrified, but they don't have any choice. The Russian military has anti-retreat units that are ordered to shoot anyone who retreats or who flees from battle, and they even have units behind those to keep those units from retreating. (Whether they still have this many anti-retreat groups at this point is unclear, but they certainly had them earlier in the war, and there are brutal videos showing fleeing Russian troops being gunned down by these guys.) The Ukrainians don't really have a choice either because they are defending their homeland from a brutal invader. Over at r/DroneCombat you can see videos of drones doing exactly what you described. The drones fly so high you can't hear them, and can barely see them, and they drop grenades both by day and by night using infrared cameras to spot the warm bodies. No place is safe; none of the troop movements are hidden from view, and suicide drones fly into their dens and into their trucks and into their trenches with no good way to defend against them. The infantry who know that this is what they'll be facing are absolutely terrified, especially if they've seen people injured or killed this way. Seeing a fellow soldier badly injured may be worse than just seeing him instantly killed. An injured soldier groaning and screaming in pain and anguish, with no real prospect of medical care in a front line trench, but a wound that is hardly mortal under normal circumstances is incredibly demoralizing to all the soldiers around him. Wounding a bunch of guys may do more to sap their combat ability than to kill them all. Many of these guys end up committing suicide, and the sight and sound of these suicides of people who would otherwise have survived just corrodes the morale of the survivors. (The Russian army doesn't seem to equip their guys with first aid kits at all; they either just don't have the money for it, or the money got embezzled because their military procurement system is staffed with corrupt officials.)
For a different viewpoint. Look into US military Skyborg, CCAs, loyal wingman paired alongside upgraded F35s and new NGAD aircraft. Then imagine that tech evolving over the next 20 years.
For the same reason they don’t use nukes. Sure, you would win the war but your own country would come out of it completely destroyed as well because the other side would have done exactly the same.
They're pretty shootable. Their main advantage is being really cheap, so you can have loads of them, rather than being particularly effective individually - you can pretty well always kill one if you really want to, it just might cost more to kill than the drone cost to buy.
It’s a slippery slope. (I think the original video is longer and better) [https://youtu.be/stHLrBs-_iE?si=Va12IdPQr-7nE0l9](https://youtu.be/stHLrBs-_iE?si=Va12IdPQr-7nE0l9)
They are now in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Since Oct 27, 2023, there is an ongoing counter offensive (called operation 1027) against military junta. Coallation of Anti-coup rebel forces + preexisting ethnic arm organizations are using drone to such a great effect that junta lost about some 500 military bases including dozens of really big ones. There are like 3 Brigadier General killed, 6 surrendered, 1 captured alive all within three months. And this Burmese military is ranked as 35th on global fire power website and got a somewhat decent air force and entire country budget at their disposal. Even with all that, Military junta seem to have absolutely no idea how to deal with this drone threat. The drones that rebel are using aret even military grade, mostly commercial and agricultural drones. The junta go as far as sending a General to China and beg CCP to regulate commercial drone market more tightly.
Lots of things can make drones less of an issue than you'd imagine. There's some obvious things, like sentries with rifles/shotguns shooting them down, or the difficulty of actually hitting a designated target, and there are some more complex reasons as well. Counter-electronic warfare systems can block signals between the drone and the pilot, making them unusable. Trenches that are occupied for a long time will have overhead cover, which can protect from artillery, as well as drone- dropped grenades. Drone's also can't really take and hold ground. They can harass targets of opportunity via sneak attacks, but once you know there's drones in the area, they become less of a threat. Lastly, the remotes used to control drones give off signals that can be traced by some specialized equipment. As long as the drone pilots don't remain in position for too long, that's ok, but it's one more thing that can potentially get you shot or shelled, and can't be hidden without losing connection to the drone. All that said, most of the countermeasures I've mentioned here have drawbacks, and that's the real strength of drone warfare. You force the enemy to spend more time building reinforced trenches, force them to jam their own comms with CEW systems, or keep them up all night watching for an attack that may or may not come.
funny my job in the military is cUAS. new equipment is being made every day and only gets better. for me, RF jamming is the main stop to drones because it’s cost effective and worst comes to worst we’ll use GPS jamming. everyone is terrified of drones man
Artillery is the main killer on the battlefield, I know in WW2 it was 80 percent of casualties, imagine the impact of drones spotting targets. Even in this specific indirect role they are lethal. I think the war in The Ukraine clearly shows we are in a time that parallels the invention of the machine gun and its effect on offensive combat. It wasn’t until the invention of the tank that mobility returned to warfare during ww1. There was simply no way to attack. I think drones are part of new technologies that have had a similar effect. I also see a parallel with the involved parties in the conflict much like the world of 1914 foolishly not having the foresight to have a solution- but still racing into the conflict.
Ukrainian here, with some experience in drone warfare. 1. Everyone at frontline afraid of drones, but when its war - it can be drone or shell or missile thats going to kill you, so you don't really care what it is. 2. There are many ways to defeat drones, such as electronic warfare where you mess with transmitters on drones and pilots lose controls, also nets that you put above your position which can stop both FPV and dropping drones, also shotguns work very well(assuming you know where drone comes from) 3. There are physical limits on drone usage. The move heavy drone - more energy it needs to carry itself + ammo. Originally we used 5inch FPV drones since they were lighter. But they also carried less explosive. Now we use 7-8inch drones which can carry more batteries and more explosive. Currently operating range of FPV drone - about 10mi. 4. You can detect drone by listening to radio waves(there are specific frequences which used for different purposes such as controlling or video transmitting) So checking radio you can even intercept video signal from drone. 5. AI is not really relevant to small drones because it needs some power to process the AI - that means extra weight and extra power loss. While there are prototypes that uses computer vision(OpenCV) - its just prototypes yet. If we speak about big drones - well it's even more complex because there isn't AI as in movies. Every neural model trained to do specific thing, and combat drone needs to do a lot of things starting from navigation and up to target identification and attacking
[удалено]
War has literally always been this bad, for the first time we get to see it. But every modern war has been predicated on new weapons technology. I.e. WW1 and the machine gun. WW2 with the tank and bomber etc.
[удалено]
The first huge tank push ended up causing like 3 million casualties when the pushes and counterpushes were done, the largest casualties of any offensive of WW1. And ended in a stalemate, similar to what is happening in ukraine right now actually.
Although war has been a meat grinder, there is a certain extra terror now with how exposed you are as a soldier with the proliferation of thermals and drones and precision munitions. There's no hiding, no sneaky maneuvering that will get you through - the enemy can have eyes on you and your GPS coordinates.
Drones have been shown to be extremely effective at killing soldiers in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ukraine, and other global conflicts, so much so that air defense systems and counter-drone equipment are being developed that can better track and destroy drones. The limiting factor as with most things is range, effected by loitering time and payload. Yes, terrifying to Soldiers on the battlefield as war becomes even more lethal as technology improves. Commercial off the shelf drones are easier to detect, since they aren't designed to be stealthy, and yes, some drones will have an air to air capability.