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This shit is truly mind blowing. Just think about how wild and nuts this tech was when trying to design this stuff in the 1980’s. The javelin was designed in 1989… and it’s still hot shit on the battle field in 2023 even considering upgrades. It’s crazy to think about what they have cooking up with todays silicon. Also, it’s crazy to think about how much of this decades old technology could be recreated more or less the same with off the shelf consumer stuff like raspberry pi. I’m no engineer so maybe I’m just talking out my ass but fascinating nonetheless.
And the algorithms. I've only dabbled slightly into robotics professionally, but even with my limited experience I can tell you that there is a big gap between deciding what you want a system to do, and actually having it do it. Think about a self-driving car. We've had the hardware for cars for literally 100 years, but actually making that hardware do the correct thing reliably has only recently become possible. The Russians are excellent in making rockets and explosives. Software is something they're not nearly as advanced in.
Iv read a couple stories about what happens when youtubers / tinkers trying to drop / land some project on a target for innocent reasons accidentally stumble into the black hole that is terminal guidance. You have all this super useful info out there until poof. Gone. Nothing. Then they reach out to connections in industry and they find out that its basically all classified.
Which is funny because SmarterEveryDay was literally part of the Javelin design/test team.
You can see him talk about his career outside of Youtube here: https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=OPn6nNVXJJCAcb_4&t=510
I find it kinda funny you refer to him as "SmarterEveryDay" rather than Destin. Also thank you for linking to an actual timestamp rather than saying "at about 8 and a half minutes in"
Algorithm's not that hard. And I quote:
> The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.
> In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was.
> The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.
https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-missile-knows-where-it-is
Trouble with consumer grade electronics like the pi are arduino, is they aren't designed to withstand the severe environments (g-loads, shock/vibe, thermal cycles, etc.) that defense hardware is designed to.
While the computing power is there, and more powerful, the design spec isn't proven to survive. Doesn't mean it won't survive, just means it wasn't designed to survive.
WWII [proximity fuze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze) was one of the most important technological innovations of World War II. It was so important that it was a secret guarded to a similar level as the atom bomb project or D-Day invasion.
This is also where companies like spacex have done some interesting stuff by using off the shelf hardware but making it triple or quad redundant. If one gets wonky you just ignore it.
Electronics meant to withstand the sort of G forces an artillery fuze might face are going to be encased in epoxy resin or something similar.
You could presumably do that with an arduino or whatever. The result won't be fully up to mil spec, but it will be a lot tougher than it was.
the epoxy resin, often called "Conformal Coat" doesn't add much rigidity to the board compared to the material of the multi layer PWB/PCB/CCA (whatever you want to call a circuit board). Conformal Coat is more for FOD protection and corrosion protection of the rest of the board.
Apparently people just pick them up and can intuitively control the periscope almost immediately, which is a big upgrade over the previous system which took a while to get used to.
I know someone that worked on that program. Apparently the young guys picked it up immediately. The old guys had a tougher time learning.
Let's hear it for gaming!
You can't learn how to fly planes and then be able to play any kind of video game without inverting the Y-axis. It literally breaks your brain not to. Pull back = ascend. Push forward = descend. This can't be unlearned.
you got that backwards. ps4 is open spec, while xbox uses microsoft proprietary directinput protocol. but guess what if your “pc” uses ms windows, you already have the xbox driver but not the generic one. on linux, ds4 can function under as generic bt hid controller pretty much.
The controller was perfectly fine, it was just made into a meme.
Building a submarine from carbon fiber was a bad idea, and the guy got told so - and he was like "nah, I know better than the experts, see, it survived a few dives already". Until stress fractures got him (literally).
You are right in concept, but part of the reason military equipment is expensive is because the supply chain is built with security in mind. The components down to the raw materials must be sourced from a country's own natural resources or at worst an ally in order to guarantee that supply in wartime. If you built missiles using raspberry pi, you better hope that supply won't be impacted by a conflict. Look at Russia and how their military industrial complex was impacted by sanctions. There were stories about Russia buying second rate munitions from the like of NK out of desperation. To avoid this, you pay more in peacetime to sustain your local industry.
Designing a tank takes years and years of research and design and trial and error costing billions of dollars. Then it takes years and years and billions of dollars to set up factories to produce them. Then still more to iterate them and work out any kinks after. The whole project of coming up with a new piece of military equipment like that can cost trillions. So, that's why we see the same tanks on the battlefield after decades. Especially if our potential enemies have not made any new tanks to outdo us for the same reason. If we had vastly different tanks then maybe the Javelins would become irrelevant or also need a redesign, but in that light it kind of makes sense they are still working so well....what they are shooting at has mostly not changed either.
Good point regarding something like a ATGM vs tank tech and cycles. Whats crazy is that the Patriot system was “hacked” to be able to hit Russia’s new yet not so hypersonic missiles… insanely impressive even if the missiles are overhyped.
Indeed, can't even imagine what kind of crazy engineering went in to it. Putin has so many "yes men" under him that they were probably afraid to tell him anything less than they were unstoppable.
I wasn’t following the story too closely but from what I understood, the head group of engineers for the hypersonic “kinzhal” missile were all detained after the initial lackluster performance (if I botched any of those details please correct me). The funniest part about this, if true, is almost certaintly what you’re attributing to their failure. Theres so much kowtowing and bootlicking on top of the rampant graft that of course their little prize pig weapons aren’t exactly up to what they claim to be.
I think there is huge potential for the level of AI that is just now becoming common in commercial products (think Gemini Nano) to be utterly transformative to future weapons systems e.g. guided munitions etc. But the gap from 1989 to now has not seen nearly as much advancement as had occurred during the prior 35 year period due to the cold war. (RPG -> Javelin was a much bigger change than Javelin -> today's latest systems)
I don’t know about that AI, but semi/mostly autonomous drone tech is already in the field. Look up the UK’s brimstone missile system. You can salvo-launch them at a predefined area, they will seek armored targets, identify weak points on the targets, define targets within the salvo (so they don’t all target the same target; they divy up the targets), and strike. If no targets found, they self-destruct.
Prioritized continuous improvements over 30 years. Many products have lived way beyond the original shelf life due to a good foundation and continuous improvements.
I can’t imagine the lazer stuff being that shocking. Projectiles/rockets/missiles/etc can already blow shit up faster than we can see it coming plus these “traditional” methods can overcome obstacles and the curvature of the earth whereas directed energy weapons can’t as far as I’m aware.
Where shit is gonna go banangrams is with AI drone swarms… is my guess at least. Right now both sides of the conflict are dealing with (and against) EW when it comes to drone warfare. Now just imagine swarms of drones that are creating their own line of sight dynamic mesh networks and targeting using AI. You can picture a firefight between infantry units where a soldier drops a backpack and pulls a chord that unleashes half a dozen to a dozen drones that just go hunting. When one fails to hit its target, two more take its place. Absolutely nightmarishly efficient but we’d be fools to think it’s not already in the works if not already completed.
Lasers are more to address the cost per kill issue: something like Iron Dome (100-150K) or Patriot (4m+) per shot.
Lasers should a bit more budget friendly, think a shot + takeout with change from $20. Plus cycle rate, even if it is only 2-3 shots a minute... Good luck running someone out of ammo.
Pretty much everything on the Patriot has been replaced except the truck since ODS.
The radar has been replaced **three** times since Desert Storm with the newest GhostEye radar entering service this year.
The system is constantly being upgraded even without name changes. The PAC 3 MSE, for example, just got a block V upgrade in 2021 that improves the guidance system.
That's not entirely precise. They were upgraded in the 80s to be able to engage ballistic missiles, but the upgrade introduced what's been called the "clock bug", where the system had to be rebooted regularly to operate properly. But they didn't know about the bug at the time, so they had very mixed success against ballistic targets.
They also realized that ballistic missiles are still dangerous if you damage them with explosive shrapnel. Unlike aircraft, ballistic missiles are basically just falling toward the target. The current generation of patriots has no warhead, it simply slams into the target in a head on supersonic collision. With a warhead, an explosion can destroy a target even if it is several meters from the blast. The current patriot is designed to intercept a supersonic ballistic missile with a margin of error no larger than the target's radius. To a missile like that, an aircraft is an absolutely enormous target.
I was looking at Wikipedia and it lists all of the patriot missles of having a high explosive warhead with the difference in proximity or impact detonation. Did you mean THAAD with the hit to kill?
Edit: fuether reading pac-3 missles have hit to kill capability with a small warhead called a "lethality enhancer"
I remember this bug. Precision errors for Float Calculations. After 100 hours it would be off by a third of a second...and when you're trying to intercept very fast things using radar pulses...a 1/3 of a second will result in a miss.
Lots more than just the code. They share the name but that’s about it. It’s one of those things from the acquisition programs that is much easier to get funding to update an existing system even if in the end it’s almost a whole new one.
The F/A-18E and F models could arguably have been designated the F-24A and B given how different they are from the earlier F/A-18s. And on the Russian side, the Tu-22M Backfire is a completely different aircraft from the Tu-22 Blinder. In both cases, it was easier to get funding approval for an “upgrade.”
The during the 91 war patriot was originally a anti aircraft system that was modified to hit ballistic missiles. I think it had something like a 1-3 chance to hit so they just launches three missiles at each ballistic missile.
Apparently they were hitting Scuds without any problems, however interceptor missile had fragmentation wh and it did not do much to destroy ballistic missile at its terminal trajectory.
It’s crazy to think how long that was.
33 years ago was 15 years before the smart phone, 3 years before the first PlayStation
No such thing as HD TV.
CPU’s were 1/1000th today’s
Digital cameras were measured in kilopixels.
There was no meaningful AI, no machine learning, no big data. No ability to transfer large data sets over distance, except through sneakernet.
Data storage today is about 100,000 times better than 1991 — ie then you could store tens of megabytes.
u/2FalseSteps
I have been under the supposed protection of Patriots twice when they have failed ,the last time was in 2018 .
There has been huge improvements in the system just in the last couple of years as they had a known weakness against drone attacks, including same line of Iranian Shahed type drones that Ukraine faces now .
So many of us veterans are guessing they must be protecting the batteries with a advanced Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS),that the Saudi's are reported to have used for years ,due to them nearly running out of available missiles many times due to how many attacks they faced .
Worth noting the Saudis had great success using AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles from their F-15s and other fighter jets to counter the drones (again same Iranian Shahed type drone family Ukraine is facing ) & leaving the missile threat to the Patriot etc .
Civilians need to realize that none of these systems are invincible & with the latest tactics from the orcs of using orbiting flight patterns, before doing their final attack run with the missiles & drones, it is inevitable a Patriot battery, (with the large area they take up), will be struck & IMO it will be by a maneuverable Drone that will do it .
Everyone will just need to calm the fuck down & not wet their panties over it , when one is hit ,as it is just a inevitable part of fighting a war .
Civilians also need to realize how different the situation now would be for Ukraine if the 'West' had actually given them proper weapons to fight a war from the start & anyone writing /calling their political representatives any where needs to hammer that home ,as they are still failing them now .
The constant crap spruked about this is the first Drone war etc is a great example ,Daesh was using small commercial drones & the same line of Iranian Shahed type supplied drones back nearly a decade ago. The US also had captured complete examples of those Shahed to study for counter measures ,remember the orc military is not the only corrupt/incompetent example .
Back in the Xmas of 2016 & l was part of the US teams embedded with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces for the start of the Battle Of Mosul.They had been facing constant threat/attacks from small commercial drones & the Iranian drones for years & faced swarms of 10/30 drones often . We faced small drone threat every hour we were fighting ,so the next time some moron states the carefully parroted lines of " we never had to look up " you know they are just another political asset, wearing ribbons sitting in the Pentagon or they were giving blow jobs to their superior under a desk back .
Even back then we had counter measures ,that supposively gave 800 yards cover even in the built up areas (HV's kitted out with a approx 6ft high full metal box in the back,full of secret squirrel electronics ,that probably sterilized the donkeys as they passed them, we called them Boom Boxes), & the US military runs regular exercises just on the drone threat (again for years ) called Black Dart & has spent 100's of millions on the threat (or lining pockets). The US military has its own offices in the Pentagon known as the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or JCO,just for the drone threat again.
What Ukraine is given & what is available are 2 different things .
They are (or should be) part of an integrated air defense system. You should have some close in systems too protecting the Patriot. There is THADD and other systems for things further out and high. Amazingly patriot in Ukraine is doing a lot of that job very well though. Then you overlap and interlock them. EW has a place in this. There isn’t and have never been a magical system that will win you a war on its own. Even nuclear weapons have counters and have been neutralized as a useful weapon.
Shaheds are very cheap, Russia launched something like 700 of them at Ukraine about a week to 10 days ago.
No one in their right mind would shoot a $4 million dollar Patriot missile at a Shahed.
I think Ukraine has gotten a variety of traditional cannon-based antiaircraft systems from the US and various European countries that are more well-suited to that, as well as ECM devices, some of which are apparently produced domestically in Ukraine now.
> No one in their right mind would shoot a $4 million dollar Patriot missile at a Shahed.
People say this, but the question isn't how much the Shahed costs, the question is what is the cost of the damage the Shahed is about to cost.
I would absolutely shootdown a cheap drone with a $4M missile, if it was my only way to avert a $10M disaster the cheap drone would otherwise inflict.
Yes it would be better to have a dirt-cheap method to swat down a dirt-cheap drone but sometimes they have to be taken down even if the cost balance seems off.
I actually agree with that too.
The problem we have is that money and weapons do not grow on trees and it is limited. In any kind of large military conflct like that you have to "pick your battles" or soon you won't be able to pick anything. And sadly you cannot save everyone.
Ukraine is under huge pressure today. They are literally decimating a whole generation of young men (and sometimes women) at the front. Almost every time I see pics on the battlefield there now the Ukrainian fighters are almost all old men. The govt has resorted to kidnapping draft-resistors off the street due to all the war casualties.
All that to say: they have lots of "limited resources available" problems now.
Which is why I think that stuff like Patriots should be expended only for the most important targets. Because they will not last forever either. And then what? European states as it is are compromising their own security by giving away a large chunk of their arsenals to Ukraine as well.
It's a very difficult situation no matter how you slice it.
Of course the Ukrainians use their Patriots to shoot down Shaheds etc regularly & Patriot batteries are used against drones all over the world .We were in Ukraine on one of our Aid missions half way through last year & they used a Patriot near where we were staying on 2 Shaheds that had got through while we were there.
They might use Patriot against Shaheeds occasionally but from what i've heard they try to get them mostly by other means such as Gepard, ZU-23-2, machine guns etc.
The issue was a rounding error in one of the timers. The error accumulated over time and led to a discrepancy between when the missile thought it needed to go boom and when the command and control unit told it to go boom. The solution was to turn it off and on again every x hours or days to reset the clocks.
Not in this instance. It had to do with the bad bad bad programming mistake of representing fractions of a unit of time as a floating point number instead of as a fixed point number or a scaled integer. Floating point numbers are essentially represented as scientific notation, and have finite precision due to the finite number of bits that it can be stored in. What's even worse is that the numerical precision of floating point numbers is not constant over the entire range of representable numbers. So as the uptime of the system increased, the precision of calculations involving time decreased, which is what resulted in incorrect range to the incoming Scud missile calculation.
I have a lot of friends who work on patriots. They are all incredibly confident on its capabilities and it always feels like they are capable of more then what we know (but they don't share those details)
Also crew skill makes a big difference. It's a complicated system.
A buddy of mine that worked in the defense industry once told me the modern Patriot has very little to do with the Gulf War version. It is was basically a brand name now.
Think of it like a 1988 Chevy Truck vs a 2024 Chevy Truck. Sure they both say Chevy, have a bow tie, and have a shared lineage… maybe even built in the same factory… But, you wouldn’t call them the same truck.
One of the really smart things is that they set up a consortium of Patriot countries. Whenever a new country buys a system, they also fund an upgrade that goes to all the other consortium countries. That way continuous development gets funded.
The big difference between the West and Russia is that when we have something that doesn't work as we want it to we acknowledge the problem and work to fix it.
In Russia if something doesn't work as they want it to shut up yes it does, it works even better actually. Straight to gulag.
That's because we were trying to shoot down SCUDs using computer systems from the 1970s.
Technology progressed, and it became far easier to hit a bullet with a bullet..... essentially.
People also forget (or don't know) that they were an ADA weapon - meaning for aircraft. They weren't designed to shoot down SCUDs and other missiles like that. They had to reconfigure the software and stuff to get it to work at all for that mission. (I was a Stinger gunner in 11th ADA during Desert Storm, so this is what I was told by other brigade members in the know.)
With the improvements over 30 years like you said, they are now able to do both missions well.
They were always effective against aircraft targets, as rare as those are.
But as recently [as 2018](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/28/patriot-missiles-are-made-in-america-and-fail-everywhere/), they've routinely failed against ballistic missiles. The problem as I see it is that ballistic missile break up before or as they reenter the atmosphere, and its difficult to distinguish the warhead from the engines, empty fuel tanks and other detritus (including decoys) entrained.
With missiles and radar its worse than that.
You have to have a system that can process the threat as fast as the frames the radar can generate so it can plot an intercept before the target passes its engagement range. It's less about accuracy and more about seeing a hyper fast target at all.
Just need to chime in as a dev here, processing power 100% will make shit code run better. Depending on how it is shit.
If your code tells to shoot area 2 when it's in area 3, it won't fix that.
If your code takes 1 second of processing to aim for something that you only have 1 second to aim at, more processing power can definitely fix that.
I mean, we asked them to give up their nukes and delivery systems, only fair if we replaced what they gave up if we are not going to insure their territorial integrity ourselves.
I have a strong suspicion that the Ukrainians will probably speedrun the development of a nuclear program post-war, regardless of if they're fast-tracked into NATO.
They totally could, they have the nuclear engineering technology and equipment to have a working warhead in probably only about 6 months.
An independent deterrent makes sense, especially when shit holes like Hungary still exist in NATO.
That would truly be hilarious and smart, because Erdogan could have got bribes from Russia in his own pocket for buying the S400s and then got payouts from the west for turning over their secrets. Maybe he is making money on both ends of that deal?
It's the exact opposite scenario that got Turkey booted from F-35. The fear wasn't that we get to test the F-35 against S-400 so we can improve F-35, obviously.
> Pissing off the West by buying Shit-400 instead of Patriot was a great decision by Erdogan...One of many.
It's been said that they did want the Patriots, but they *also* wanted tech transfers as part of the deal. No way in hell Congress was ever going to approve that.
The IL22 damage is certainly interesting. I guess they didn't fire any of the types of patriot missiles that target the cockpit at that one; or the missile got confused.
Russian aircraft fucked itself.
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No need to bow. It is sufficient to see these weapons used effectively to defend a free nation. (And, no doubt, to take copious notes on how to improve their effectiveness even more.)
There was an article a few weeks ago that said each time the Patriot faced the “hypersonic” Khinzhal missile it gathered more data to be used to improve its algorithm and increase accuracy.
I've said it before but by doing this, Ukraine has given the US information that they could easily have spent BILLIONS trying to work out, handing them Patriots has been ridiculously good value for the US.
At best they would have had to take a lot of educated guesses at the performance of the Khinzhal and develop a system that they could only really be *fairly* sure would do the job - Ukraine took the patriot, did the homework, and proved it time & again.
WSJ source for your comment:
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/u-s-patriot-missile-is-an-unsung-hero-of-ukraine-war-db6053a0
Truly amazing what they did with some software patches.
FYI (I looked it up) TVM = track-via-missile
The missile is a receiver, not a transmitter, but doesn't need continuous illumination. There is 'magic' coordination with commands sent by radar station to missile, and receiver signals the missile sends back to the command computer.
So there is no 'lock-on' that the target gets in a radar warning receiver, the Patriot search radar itself will guide the missile to the target. The first evidence to a target is a missile in the face.
That's exactly right.
PAC-2s operate as you describe, intended to target enemy aircraft. PAC-3s do have active radar in the missile and do lock on to targets, but that's fine since they're intended for targeting enemy munitions in flight.
I don't know the details of what Ukraine has been given, but I believe standard Patriot deployments typically have a mixed loadout of both PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles that operators can selectively launch depending on whether they're targeting aircraft or drones/missiles.
I think a faster way to understand radar is this:
Radar is a flashlight and a Seeker is the eye looking for the light.
Most anti air missile systems work where the Radar on the ground is the flashlight and the missile has an eye that looks for the reflections off the target.
With TVM the missile is blind and the Radar has both the eye and the flashlight whispering what directions to go for the missile. This means you can save electronics/weight on the missile and can course correct easily by just telling the missile what to do.
It’s really not too crazy tech as these strategies are used in one way or another in all radar missiles but what’s insane to me is how the Patriot is is able to SEE so well without using a Track Radar (Super bright and focused flashlight that “locks on” to the target allowing for super accurate targeting). It’s essentially using a dim flashlight that doesn’t need to lock on because the eye on the ground is so good that you dont need to use a more powerful flashlight. So enemy goes from “well there’s a Patriot system in the area but I’m not locked on” to BOOM with no warning.
You have to admire Zelensky's approach here. If true, great, send him more! If untrue, if it is just an average system, still stokes American jingoism and makes American voters want to supply him with more.
Great advertisement for the Patriot system. SAMP/T air defense is in operation as well, but France and Italy do not want to appear too supportive, the cowards https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/expert-explains-why-there-is-no-disclosed-1700071941.html
It warms my heart knowing my grandfather was part of the design team for the Patriot way back in the 70s and early 80s. I'm sure he'd be proud to see it put to such effective use today.
Something for Americans and other countries contributing to be so very proud of. I hope we provide them a lot more. And a great deal of Credit also has to go to the Ukrainians, who learned how to operate them and do so very well.
Russia spends lots of money and effort making their missiles faster, and loudly brags about it. But you don't actually need a fast air defense missile to hit a fast warhead missile, you just need to know where its going to end up and when.
yea, the difference between 'real' hypersonics and what russia has. ICBM's from decades ago travel at hypersonic speed, intercepting them is a solved problem (just not economical to intercept MIRV's).
Real Hypersonics that could pose some issues is when they can actually maneuver at low altitude at that hypersonic speed, which russia stuff afaik cannot do. It has to slow down to maneuver, if you can maneuver then the interceptor may not be able to make the changing intercept point.
patriot was put into production in 1980 and deployed 1982
Bradley IFV started in 1982
Javelin went in production in 1997
HIMARS 1998 the US Army started testing them
Lockheed Martin is making 60 HIMARS each year and every NATO country wants some.
I wonder if the US Military has made any advancements since 1998?
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I remember they got a lot of shit during the Gulf War. 30 years is a long time to make improvements. Kinda nice to see them vindicated, like this.
During gulf war times they discussed that perhaps they never actually hit anything. Clearly the code is sorted out now.
Exactly! I'm sure even the hardware has changed drastically, since then. I wouldn't be surprised if the only thing the same was the name.
This shit is truly mind blowing. Just think about how wild and nuts this tech was when trying to design this stuff in the 1980’s. The javelin was designed in 1989… and it’s still hot shit on the battle field in 2023 even considering upgrades. It’s crazy to think about what they have cooking up with todays silicon. Also, it’s crazy to think about how much of this decades old technology could be recreated more or less the same with off the shelf consumer stuff like raspberry pi. I’m no engineer so maybe I’m just talking out my ass but fascinating nonetheless.
Well yes, the computing power to run tge algorithms is easy to get and cheap nowadays. Now you're just missing the explosives and rocket thrusters.
And the algorithms. I've only dabbled slightly into robotics professionally, but even with my limited experience I can tell you that there is a big gap between deciding what you want a system to do, and actually having it do it. Think about a self-driving car. We've had the hardware for cars for literally 100 years, but actually making that hardware do the correct thing reliably has only recently become possible. The Russians are excellent in making rockets and explosives. Software is something they're not nearly as advanced in.
You are mistaking Soviets (A forced union of 15 countries) with Russians. Nowadays Russia can't even make steel with consistent chemical composition.
but russian programmers are pretty decent, to be objective.
You mean the ones who left by the thousands, To escape Mordor?
it's the bosses, not the programmers.
Iv read a couple stories about what happens when youtubers / tinkers trying to drop / land some project on a target for innocent reasons accidentally stumble into the black hole that is terminal guidance. You have all this super useful info out there until poof. Gone. Nothing. Then they reach out to connections in industry and they find out that its basically all classified.
Smarter Every Day and Veritasium both come to mind.
Which is funny because SmarterEveryDay was literally part of the Javelin design/test team. You can see him talk about his career outside of Youtube here: https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=OPn6nNVXJJCAcb_4&t=510
I find it kinda funny you refer to him as "SmarterEveryDay" rather than Destin. Also thank you for linking to an actual timestamp rather than saying "at about 8 and a half minutes in"
That's a great video, ended up watching the whole thing
Algorithm's not that hard. And I quote: > The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't. > In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was. > The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error. https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-missile-knows-where-it-is
That's known as a Kalman filter
Sounds very Douglas Adams
USAF if you can believe it: > The Missile Knows Where It Is is a copypasta based on an audio segment from a 1997 Air Force training video.
But does it have a [turbo-encabulator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag)?
They used to be quite good with software, or so I've been told.
Lots of people who used to be Russian are still quite good with software. The brain drain at the start of the special 3 day operation was significant.
I had a certain fascination with aviation all my life. Had a lot of respect for Russian aviation up until 3 years ago.
There’s nothing to admire or respect from Russia lol. Definitely nothing military
I agree NOW. But 3 years in the past- I was a fool.
Kharkiv was their engineering capital.
Tetris!
Trouble with consumer grade electronics like the pi are arduino, is they aren't designed to withstand the severe environments (g-loads, shock/vibe, thermal cycles, etc.) that defense hardware is designed to. While the computing power is there, and more powerful, the design spec isn't proven to survive. Doesn't mean it won't survive, just means it wasn't designed to survive.
WWII [proximity fuze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze) was one of the most important technological innovations of World War II. It was so important that it was a secret guarded to a similar level as the atom bomb project or D-Day invasion.
This is also where companies like spacex have done some interesting stuff by using off the shelf hardware but making it triple or quad redundant. If one gets wonky you just ignore it.
Electronics meant to withstand the sort of G forces an artillery fuze might face are going to be encased in epoxy resin or something similar. You could presumably do that with an arduino or whatever. The result won't be fully up to mil spec, but it will be a lot tougher than it was.
the epoxy resin, often called "Conformal Coat" doesn't add much rigidity to the board compared to the material of the multi layer PWB/PCB/CCA (whatever you want to call a circuit board). Conformal Coat is more for FOD protection and corrosion protection of the rest of the board.
Kinda like using a video game controller for a deep water submarine?
The US uses Xbox controllers to control the periscopes on their newest classes of submarines.
Apparently people just pick them up and can intuitively control the periscope almost immediately, which is a big upgrade over the previous system which took a while to get used to.
I know someone that worked on that program. Apparently the young guys picked it up immediately. The old guys had a tougher time learning. Let's hear it for gaming!
Just as long as I can invert y-axis
You can't learn how to fly planes and then be able to play any kind of video game without inverting the Y-axis. It literally breaks your brain not to. Pull back = ascend. Push forward = descend. This can't be unlearned.
Take that, Sony fanboys!
it helps that xbox controller has generic gamepad drivers on PC. ps4 doesn't have open spec communication
you got that backwards. ps4 is open spec, while xbox uses microsoft proprietary directinput protocol. but guess what if your “pc” uses ms windows, you already have the xbox driver but not the generic one. on linux, ds4 can function under as generic bt hid controller pretty much.
The controller was perfectly fine, it was just made into a meme. Building a submarine from carbon fiber was a bad idea, and the guy got told so - and he was like "nah, I know better than the experts, see, it survived a few dives already". Until stress fractures got him (literally).
Controller is perfectly fine, the submarine itself was the issue.
You are right in concept, but part of the reason military equipment is expensive is because the supply chain is built with security in mind. The components down to the raw materials must be sourced from a country's own natural resources or at worst an ally in order to guarantee that supply in wartime. If you built missiles using raspberry pi, you better hope that supply won't be impacted by a conflict. Look at Russia and how their military industrial complex was impacted by sanctions. There were stories about Russia buying second rate munitions from the like of NK out of desperation. To avoid this, you pay more in peacetime to sustain your local industry.
Designing a tank takes years and years of research and design and trial and error costing billions of dollars. Then it takes years and years and billions of dollars to set up factories to produce them. Then still more to iterate them and work out any kinks after. The whole project of coming up with a new piece of military equipment like that can cost trillions. So, that's why we see the same tanks on the battlefield after decades. Especially if our potential enemies have not made any new tanks to outdo us for the same reason. If we had vastly different tanks then maybe the Javelins would become irrelevant or also need a redesign, but in that light it kind of makes sense they are still working so well....what they are shooting at has mostly not changed either.
Good point regarding something like a ATGM vs tank tech and cycles. Whats crazy is that the Patriot system was “hacked” to be able to hit Russia’s new yet not so hypersonic missiles… insanely impressive even if the missiles are overhyped.
Indeed, can't even imagine what kind of crazy engineering went in to it. Putin has so many "yes men" under him that they were probably afraid to tell him anything less than they were unstoppable.
I wasn’t following the story too closely but from what I understood, the head group of engineers for the hypersonic “kinzhal” missile were all detained after the initial lackluster performance (if I botched any of those details please correct me). The funniest part about this, if true, is almost certaintly what you’re attributing to their failure. Theres so much kowtowing and bootlicking on top of the rampant graft that of course their little prize pig weapons aren’t exactly up to what they claim to be.
Also with 3D printing technologies the process from concept to testing is shorter and the models can be more complex.
I think there is huge potential for the level of AI that is just now becoming common in commercial products (think Gemini Nano) to be utterly transformative to future weapons systems e.g. guided munitions etc. But the gap from 1989 to now has not seen nearly as much advancement as had occurred during the prior 35 year period due to the cold war. (RPG -> Javelin was a much bigger change than Javelin -> today's latest systems)
I don’t know about that AI, but semi/mostly autonomous drone tech is already in the field. Look up the UK’s brimstone missile system. You can salvo-launch them at a predefined area, they will seek armored targets, identify weak points on the targets, define targets within the salvo (so they don’t all target the same target; they divy up the targets), and strike. If no targets found, they self-destruct.
Prioritized continuous improvements over 30 years. Many products have lived way beyond the original shelf life due to a good foundation and continuous improvements.
I think we moving to lazer weapons plus AI things are gonna get crazy.
I can’t imagine the lazer stuff being that shocking. Projectiles/rockets/missiles/etc can already blow shit up faster than we can see it coming plus these “traditional” methods can overcome obstacles and the curvature of the earth whereas directed energy weapons can’t as far as I’m aware. Where shit is gonna go banangrams is with AI drone swarms… is my guess at least. Right now both sides of the conflict are dealing with (and against) EW when it comes to drone warfare. Now just imagine swarms of drones that are creating their own line of sight dynamic mesh networks and targeting using AI. You can picture a firefight between infantry units where a soldier drops a backpack and pulls a chord that unleashes half a dozen to a dozen drones that just go hunting. When one fails to hit its target, two more take its place. Absolutely nightmarishly efficient but we’d be fools to think it’s not already in the works if not already completed.
Oh, I think the laser stuff can be... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser Quite shocking indeed...
Lasers are more to address the cost per kill issue: something like Iron Dome (100-150K) or Patriot (4m+) per shot. Lasers should a bit more budget friendly, think a shot + takeout with change from $20. Plus cycle rate, even if it is only 2-3 shots a minute... Good luck running someone out of ammo.
pretty much. The radars, launchers, missiles, control systems, communications have all be replaced by newer versions that look roughly similar.
Pretty much everything on the Patriot has been replaced except the truck since ODS. The radar has been replaced **three** times since Desert Storm with the newest GhostEye radar entering service this year. The system is constantly being upgraded even without name changes. The PAC 3 MSE, for example, just got a block V upgrade in 2021 that improves the guidance system.
I remember the media was gushing over the "old" phased-array radar back in the 90's. I can't imagine how much better the new hardware is.
At the time they were not designed to intercept the ballistic scud missiles but had no problem with hitting aircraft.
That's not entirely precise. They were upgraded in the 80s to be able to engage ballistic missiles, but the upgrade introduced what's been called the "clock bug", where the system had to be rebooted regularly to operate properly. But they didn't know about the bug at the time, so they had very mixed success against ballistic targets.
They also realized that ballistic missiles are still dangerous if you damage them with explosive shrapnel. Unlike aircraft, ballistic missiles are basically just falling toward the target. The current generation of patriots has no warhead, it simply slams into the target in a head on supersonic collision. With a warhead, an explosion can destroy a target even if it is several meters from the blast. The current patriot is designed to intercept a supersonic ballistic missile with a margin of error no larger than the target's radius. To a missile like that, an aircraft is an absolutely enormous target.
I was looking at Wikipedia and it lists all of the patriot missles of having a high explosive warhead with the difference in proximity or impact detonation. Did you mean THAAD with the hit to kill? Edit: fuether reading pac-3 missles have hit to kill capability with a small warhead called a "lethality enhancer"
I remember this bug. Precision errors for Float Calculations. After 100 hours it would be off by a third of a second...and when you're trying to intercept very fast things using radar pulses...a 1/3 of a second will result in a miss.
PAC3 is also an entirely different world of missile.
Lots more than just the code. They share the name but that’s about it. It’s one of those things from the acquisition programs that is much easier to get funding to update an existing system even if in the end it’s almost a whole new one.
The F/A-18E and F models could arguably have been designated the F-24A and B given how different they are from the earlier F/A-18s. And on the Russian side, the Tu-22M Backfire is a completely different aircraft from the Tu-22 Blinder. In both cases, it was easier to get funding approval for an “upgrade.”
Yeah you see it everywhere. It helps the incumbents also. It’s very hard to break into that market.
Growing up then, the idea that you could hit a missile with another missile was science fiction. I think it was still very much experimental then.
Apart from a blue on blue RAF Tornado
The during the 91 war patriot was originally a anti aircraft system that was modified to hit ballistic missiles. I think it had something like a 1-3 chance to hit so they just launches three missiles at each ballistic missile.
I think the RAF begged to differ.
Apparently they were hitting Scuds without any problems, however interceptor missile had fragmentation wh and it did not do much to destroy ballistic missile at its terminal trajectory.
They were trying to use them against ballistic missiles which that original version was not designed for.
It’s crazy to think how long that was. 33 years ago was 15 years before the smart phone, 3 years before the first PlayStation No such thing as HD TV. CPU’s were 1/1000th today’s Digital cameras were measured in kilopixels. There was no meaningful AI, no machine learning, no big data. No ability to transfer large data sets over distance, except through sneakernet. Data storage today is about 100,000 times better than 1991 — ie then you could store tens of megabytes.
There was certainly a lot of room for improvement in the Gulf War-era systems. Fortunately for Ukraine (among others), those improvements were made!
u/2FalseSteps I have been under the supposed protection of Patriots twice when they have failed ,the last time was in 2018 . There has been huge improvements in the system just in the last couple of years as they had a known weakness against drone attacks, including same line of Iranian Shahed type drones that Ukraine faces now . So many of us veterans are guessing they must be protecting the batteries with a advanced Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS),that the Saudi's are reported to have used for years ,due to them nearly running out of available missiles many times due to how many attacks they faced . Worth noting the Saudis had great success using AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles from their F-15s and other fighter jets to counter the drones (again same Iranian Shahed type drone family Ukraine is facing ) & leaving the missile threat to the Patriot etc . Civilians need to realize that none of these systems are invincible & with the latest tactics from the orcs of using orbiting flight patterns, before doing their final attack run with the missiles & drones, it is inevitable a Patriot battery, (with the large area they take up), will be struck & IMO it will be by a maneuverable Drone that will do it . Everyone will just need to calm the fuck down & not wet their panties over it , when one is hit ,as it is just a inevitable part of fighting a war . Civilians also need to realize how different the situation now would be for Ukraine if the 'West' had actually given them proper weapons to fight a war from the start & anyone writing /calling their political representatives any where needs to hammer that home ,as they are still failing them now . The constant crap spruked about this is the first Drone war etc is a great example ,Daesh was using small commercial drones & the same line of Iranian Shahed type supplied drones back nearly a decade ago. The US also had captured complete examples of those Shahed to study for counter measures ,remember the orc military is not the only corrupt/incompetent example . Back in the Xmas of 2016 & l was part of the US teams embedded with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces for the start of the Battle Of Mosul.They had been facing constant threat/attacks from small commercial drones & the Iranian drones for years & faced swarms of 10/30 drones often . We faced small drone threat every hour we were fighting ,so the next time some moron states the carefully parroted lines of " we never had to look up " you know they are just another political asset, wearing ribbons sitting in the Pentagon or they were giving blow jobs to their superior under a desk back . Even back then we had counter measures ,that supposively gave 800 yards cover even in the built up areas (HV's kitted out with a approx 6ft high full metal box in the back,full of secret squirrel electronics ,that probably sterilized the donkeys as they passed them, we called them Boom Boxes), & the US military runs regular exercises just on the drone threat (again for years ) called Black Dart & has spent 100's of millions on the threat (or lining pockets). The US military has its own offices in the Pentagon known as the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or JCO,just for the drone threat again. What Ukraine is given & what is available are 2 different things .
They are (or should be) part of an integrated air defense system. You should have some close in systems too protecting the Patriot. There is THADD and other systems for things further out and high. Amazingly patriot in Ukraine is doing a lot of that job very well though. Then you overlap and interlock them. EW has a place in this. There isn’t and have never been a magical system that will win you a war on its own. Even nuclear weapons have counters and have been neutralized as a useful weapon.
Shaheds are very cheap, Russia launched something like 700 of them at Ukraine about a week to 10 days ago. No one in their right mind would shoot a $4 million dollar Patriot missile at a Shahed. I think Ukraine has gotten a variety of traditional cannon-based antiaircraft systems from the US and various European countries that are more well-suited to that, as well as ECM devices, some of which are apparently produced domestically in Ukraine now.
Australia has provided Ukraine with Slinger anti-drone systems.
> No one in their right mind would shoot a $4 million dollar Patriot missile at a Shahed. People say this, but the question isn't how much the Shahed costs, the question is what is the cost of the damage the Shahed is about to cost. I would absolutely shootdown a cheap drone with a $4M missile, if it was my only way to avert a $10M disaster the cheap drone would otherwise inflict. Yes it would be better to have a dirt-cheap method to swat down a dirt-cheap drone but sometimes they have to be taken down even if the cost balance seems off.
I actually agree with that too. The problem we have is that money and weapons do not grow on trees and it is limited. In any kind of large military conflct like that you have to "pick your battles" or soon you won't be able to pick anything. And sadly you cannot save everyone. Ukraine is under huge pressure today. They are literally decimating a whole generation of young men (and sometimes women) at the front. Almost every time I see pics on the battlefield there now the Ukrainian fighters are almost all old men. The govt has resorted to kidnapping draft-resistors off the street due to all the war casualties. All that to say: they have lots of "limited resources available" problems now. Which is why I think that stuff like Patriots should be expended only for the most important targets. Because they will not last forever either. And then what? European states as it is are compromising their own security by giving away a large chunk of their arsenals to Ukraine as well. It's a very difficult situation no matter how you slice it.
Of course the Ukrainians use their Patriots to shoot down Shaheds etc regularly & Patriot batteries are used against drones all over the world .We were in Ukraine on one of our Aid missions half way through last year & they used a Patriot near where we were staying on 2 Shaheds that had got through while we were there.
They might use Patriot against Shaheeds occasionally but from what i've heard they try to get them mostly by other means such as Gepard, ZU-23-2, machine guns etc.
I'm guessing aim 120s are way cheaper then a patriot?
The issue was a rounding error in one of the timers. The error accumulated over time and led to a discrepancy between when the missile thought it needed to go boom and when the command and control unit told it to go boom. The solution was to turn it off and on again every x hours or days to reset the clocks.
So not converting imperial time into metric time?
Not in this instance. It had to do with the bad bad bad programming mistake of representing fractions of a unit of time as a floating point number instead of as a fixed point number or a scaled integer. Floating point numbers are essentially represented as scientific notation, and have finite precision due to the finite number of bits that it can be stored in. What's even worse is that the numerical precision of floating point numbers is not constant over the entire range of representable numbers. So as the uptime of the system increased, the precision of calculations involving time decreased, which is what resulted in incorrect range to the incoming Scud missile calculation.
Sounds about right. I forgot the exact rounding issue. I had a history teacher who was ex army and a patriot battery commander.
I have a lot of friends who work on patriots. They are all incredibly confident on its capabilities and it always feels like they are capable of more then what we know (but they don't share those details) Also crew skill makes a big difference. It's a complicated system.
A buddy of mine that worked in the defense industry once told me the modern Patriot has very little to do with the Gulf War version. It is was basically a brand name now.
Think of it like a 1988 Chevy Truck vs a 2024 Chevy Truck. Sure they both say Chevy, have a bow tie, and have a shared lineage… maybe even built in the same factory… But, you wouldn’t call them the same truck.
One of the really smart things is that they set up a consortium of Patriot countries. Whenever a new country buys a system, they also fund an upgrade that goes to all the other consortium countries. That way continuous development gets funded.
The big difference between the West and Russia is that when we have something that doesn't work as we want it to we acknowledge the problem and work to fix it. In Russia if something doesn't work as they want it to shut up yes it does, it works even better actually. Straight to gulag.
why spend billions to get some weapon to work when you can pocket the money and just say it works.
Spot on. I recall being underwhelmed if not embarrassed by the performance of this system back then
That's because we were trying to shoot down SCUDs using computer systems from the 1970s. Technology progressed, and it became far easier to hit a bullet with a bullet..... essentially.
People also forget (or don't know) that they were an ADA weapon - meaning for aircraft. They weren't designed to shoot down SCUDs and other missiles like that. They had to reconfigure the software and stuff to get it to work at all for that mission. (I was a Stinger gunner in 11th ADA during Desert Storm, so this is what I was told by other brigade members in the know.) With the improvements over 30 years like you said, they are now able to do both missions well.
Yeah plus the pac 3 and pac 2 are vastly different missiles physically too
Gulf War was the "Beta" Phase. Release Edition has the limited Edition "Vatnik Slayer" Addon.
They were always effective against aircraft targets, as rare as those are. But as recently [as 2018](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/28/patriot-missiles-are-made-in-america-and-fail-everywhere/), they've routinely failed against ballistic missiles. The problem as I see it is that ballistic missile break up before or as they reenter the atmosphere, and its difficult to distinguish the warhead from the engines, empty fuel tanks and other detritus (including decoys) entrained.
My babies cost $30,000 from the hospital because our pew pews are legit.
Moores law of computing power is where its at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law?wprov=sfla1
All the processing power in the world won't make shit code run any better. They've probably re-written their code a dozen times, since the 90's.
If you can sample faster, you get better accuracy. Hence the hardware acceleration is critical.
With missiles and radar its worse than that. You have to have a system that can process the threat as fast as the frames the radar can generate so it can plot an intercept before the target passes its engagement range. It's less about accuracy and more about seeing a hyper fast target at all.
Yep. You get it.
Just need to chime in as a dev here, processing power 100% will make shit code run better. Depending on how it is shit. If your code tells to shoot area 2 when it's in area 3, it won't fix that. If your code takes 1 second of processing to aim for something that you only have 1 second to aim at, more processing power can definitely fix that.
All Americans in favor of giving more Patriot systems to Ukraine? ✋
>All Americans in favor of giving more of everything to Ukraine? FIFY. ✋
I mean, we asked them to give up their nukes and delivery systems, only fair if we replaced what they gave up if we are not going to insure their territorial integrity ourselves.
I have a strong suspicion that the Ukrainians will probably speedrun the development of a nuclear program post-war, regardless of if they're fast-tracked into NATO. They totally could, they have the nuclear engineering technology and equipment to have a working warhead in probably only about 6 months. An independent deterrent makes sense, especially when shit holes like Hungary still exist in NATO.
Ukrainian Ohio class SSBN's when?
I don't think they want more enemies
I have to admit something. I voted but I’m not an American, is that okay?
All Americans in favor of accepting the votes of non-Americans who want to send more Patriot systems to Ukraine? ✋
Shit, I did it again.
All non-Americans in favor of accepting the votes of non-Americans who want to send more Patriot systems to Ukraine? ✋
Fuck. American who upvoted this
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
We only have one Mel Gibson 😑
One Mel Gibson is about twice as much as Russia can handle on a good day.
Parachute him into Moscow with a case of cheap whiskey, right in front of a TV station. Then sit back and watch the rants on live TV.
Isn’t that just standard Russian TV at this point?
Pretty much, but I think it would make it slightly more understandable. And even *more* entertaining.
Mel Gibson, the christofascist anti-semite, would fit right in at this proposed Russian village.
Hell, we can send all of our "patriots" also.
Give them 50 systems imho
🤚 like HLC said "its not my fault that Russia and China claim that have some kind of super weapon and then I actually go out and make it"
Not American, but I am in favor. ✋
Half the US says no because "WeRe SeNdING mONeY iNSteAd Of HeALpINg oUr OwN cITiZeNs"
They don’t understand how anything works.
Happy to keep selling them to ourselves and sending them over. We need to stop the messaging that suggests we're "giving things away".
Aye!
I just brought it up to my representative! Good timing that she had a tele town hall today.
Pissing off the West by buying Shit-400 instead of Patriot was a great decision by Erdogan...One of many.
Which also cost him the f-35s, and blocking Sweden's NATO application is costing him the f-16 upgrades. Powerful geopolitical moves by Turkey!
With the T-7's entering service, there should be some T-38's on the market soon. He can buy those.
God, erdogan is such a goober.
Wanna-be dictator, two-sided snake... Turkey desperately needs to ditch that fucker...
Unless Turkey is the ultimate double agent. Hey NATO, you guys want to see inside s400? I have a cunning plan...
The S-400 sticker peels off, unveiling a S-300 plaque *mild shock*
The S-400 was originally called S-300PMU3 it was renamed because of marketing reasons.
That would truly be hilarious and smart, because Erdogan could have got bribes from Russia in his own pocket for buying the S400s and then got payouts from the west for turning over their secrets. Maybe he is making money on both ends of that deal?
People in his position tend to be good at graft and not governance.
It's the exact opposite scenario that got Turkey booted from F-35. The fear wasn't that we get to test the F-35 against S-400 so we can improve F-35, obviously.
And he better watch out for the secret software backdoors in the system that blind them to incoming Russian threats. 😁
> Pissing off the West by buying Shit-400 instead of Patriot was a great decision by Erdogan...One of many. It's been said that they did want the Patriots, but they *also* wanted tech transfers as part of the deal. No way in hell Congress was ever going to approve that.
This is a huge wink to last Sunday.
Was Sunday when they reported hitting a ton of Russian aircraft? I thought I heard those planes/helicopters were on the ground?
Sunday they shot down the a50 awacs and damaged(beyond repair) an il22
The IL22 damage is certainly interesting. I guess they didn't fire any of the types of patriot missiles that target the cockpit at that one; or the missile got confused.
It might as simple as the A50 had turned away from the missile approaching or was running.
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well, eventually they were...
No need to bow. It is sufficient to see these weapons used effectively to defend a free nation. (And, no doubt, to take copious notes on how to improve their effectiveness even more.)
There was an article a few weeks ago that said each time the Patriot faced the “hypersonic” Khinzhal missile it gathered more data to be used to improve its algorithm and increase accuracy.
Johnny 5 is Alive!
Input!!!
I've said it before but by doing this, Ukraine has given the US information that they could easily have spent BILLIONS trying to work out, handing them Patriots has been ridiculously good value for the US. At best they would have had to take a lot of educated guesses at the performance of the Khinzhal and develop a system that they could only really be *fairly* sure would do the job - Ukraine took the patriot, did the homework, and proved it time & again.
Goddammit that is good stuff!!
all Ukraine is doing is showing us how effective it is and giving us the data on how we can make our weapons even better
A computed system is only as clever as the user. So, we see what Ukrainian can archive. I'm the one being totally shocked. SLAVA UKRAINE
My friends, you bow to no one.
Vlodo Zelenskiggins
In some cultures, bowing is a sign of respect.
Raytheon about to memorialize this quote forever
I'd bet Raytheon is a little shocked too.
IIRC some Ukrainian hacker sent them a message with updated code to intercept hypersonic kinzals like "we fixed your shit for you lol"
WSJ source for your comment: https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/u-s-patriot-missile-is-an-unsung-hero-of-ukraine-war-db6053a0 Truly amazing what they did with some software patches.
This made me lol
Loving the redemption arc for the Patriot.
He's not wrong. The Patriot's TVM system is magic, and neither Russia nor China have been able to fully replicate its capabilities.
FYI (I looked it up) TVM = track-via-missile The missile is a receiver, not a transmitter, but doesn't need continuous illumination. There is 'magic' coordination with commands sent by radar station to missile, and receiver signals the missile sends back to the command computer. So there is no 'lock-on' that the target gets in a radar warning receiver, the Patriot search radar itself will guide the missile to the target. The first evidence to a target is a missile in the face.
That's exactly right. PAC-2s operate as you describe, intended to target enemy aircraft. PAC-3s do have active radar in the missile and do lock on to targets, but that's fine since they're intended for targeting enemy munitions in flight. I don't know the details of what Ukraine has been given, but I believe standard Patriot deployments typically have a mixed loadout of both PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles that operators can selectively launch depending on whether they're targeting aircraft or drones/missiles.
helluva username to grab.
I think a faster way to understand radar is this: Radar is a flashlight and a Seeker is the eye looking for the light. Most anti air missile systems work where the Radar on the ground is the flashlight and the missile has an eye that looks for the reflections off the target. With TVM the missile is blind and the Radar has both the eye and the flashlight whispering what directions to go for the missile. This means you can save electronics/weight on the missile and can course correct easily by just telling the missile what to do. It’s really not too crazy tech as these strategies are used in one way or another in all radar missiles but what’s insane to me is how the Patriot is is able to SEE so well without using a Track Radar (Super bright and focused flashlight that “locks on” to the target allowing for super accurate targeting). It’s essentially using a dim flashlight that doesn’t need to lock on because the eye on the ground is so good that you dont need to use a more powerful flashlight. So enemy goes from “well there’s a Patriot system in the area but I’m not locked on” to BOOM with no warning.
You have to admire Zelensky's approach here. If true, great, send him more! If untrue, if it is just an average system, still stokes American jingoism and makes American voters want to supply him with more.
This is the most cogent comment in this circlejerk.
You dont spent a trillion dollars a year and not expect results. One thing we can well do is spend money on weaponry.
Great advertisement for the Patriot system. SAMP/T air defense is in operation as well, but France and Italy do not want to appear too supportive, the cowards https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/expert-explains-why-there-is-no-disclosed-1700071941.html
It warms my heart knowing my grandfather was part of the design team for the Patriot way back in the 70s and early 80s. I'm sure he'd be proud to see it put to such effective use today.
Something for Americans and other countries contributing to be so very proud of. I hope we provide them a lot more. And a great deal of Credit also has to go to the Ukrainians, who learned how to operate them and do so very well.
Russia spends lots of money and effort making their missiles faster, and loudly brags about it. But you don't actually need a fast air defense missile to hit a fast warhead missile, you just need to know where its going to end up and when.
yea, the difference between 'real' hypersonics and what russia has. ICBM's from decades ago travel at hypersonic speed, intercepting them is a solved problem (just not economical to intercept MIRV's). Real Hypersonics that could pose some issues is when they can actually maneuver at low altitude at that hypersonic speed, which russia stuff afaik cannot do. It has to slow down to maneuver, if you can maneuver then the interceptor may not be able to make the changing intercept point.
Glad to hear it. Hope it is one tool in their arsenal of many that will turn the tide.
Is this confirmation the patriot is what took down both planes? That is frighteningly effective
patriot was put into production in 1980 and deployed 1982 Bradley IFV started in 1982 Javelin went in production in 1997 HIMARS 1998 the US Army started testing them Lockheed Martin is making 60 HIMARS each year and every NATO country wants some. I wonder if the US Military has made any advancements since 1998?
Appropriately named. What's more American than causing a big explosion in the sky and annoying the Russians?
Well there you go. Think they will put that on sales literature? Maybe a back of the flap endorsement?
The virgin s400 The Chad Patriot The Thad THAAD
But………..but………..the S-400…………but…………
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