[HN Gopher] A whole age of warfare sank with the Moskva
___________________________________________________________________
A whole age of warfare sank with the Moskva
Author : gpayan
Score : 174 points
Date : 2022-05-23 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| Steltek wrote:
| Sinking a ship via missile isn't a new thing (1980's, HMS
| Sheffield). One should be extremely careful drawing conclusions
| about military tech based on Russian performance. If I was an
| American captain, I wouldn't be worried about a lucky pair of
| missiles. A swarm of dozens of missiles would be a different
| story, however.
| nradov wrote:
| In fact a US warship did successfully defend against a similar
| attack in 2016.
|
| https://news.usni.org/2016/10/11/uss-mason-fired-3-missiles-...
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| >Sinking a ship via missile isn't a new thing (1980's, HMS
| Sheffield).
|
| Earlier than that- the Israelis lost the destroyer _Eilat_ to
| Egyptian SS-N-2 Styx missiles in 1967.
|
| In fact, the Germans had quite a lot of success with air-
| launched anti-ship missiles in WW2, although it's debatable
| whether those count- they were more like guided bombs.
|
| Interestingly, though, this _does_ seem to be the first case of
| a large warship being successfully sunk by a missile launched
| from dry land. Argentina hit HMS _Glamorgan_ with a truck-
| launched Exocet in 1982, killing 14 of the crew, destroying the
| embarked helicopter, and achieving a successful mission kill,
| but it didn 't sink. And Yugoslavia used an anti- _tank_
| missile to sink a small Croatian armed speedboat during the
| 1991 Siege of Dubrovnik. Every other sinking of a ship by a
| missile has involved one launched from the sea or air.
| bell-cot wrote:
| You might want to read up on how the Sheffield sank -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sheffield_(D80)#Board_of_i...
| . Some choice bits:
|
| - Argentine forces carefully analyzed their target, studied,
| trained, practiced, and drilled for the attack. Over and over
| and over. Almost as if they believed there was a real war on,
| and actually wanted to hit an enemy with their weapons...
|
| - British forces mostly couldn't be bothered to analyze their
| defenses for weaknesses. Let alone train, practice, or drill.
| Then they footgunned their best warning system, and didn't
| realize they were under attack until human-eyeball lookouts saw
| smoke from the rocket motors of the incoming missiles. Once
| warned, the bridge officers basically sat on their hands and
| gawked. (Vs., say, alerting the crew. Or trying to use some of
| the various anti-missile defense systems that the ship had.)
|
| - The ~5,000 ton "warship" was designed so poorly that one
| modest hit knocked out both her electrical and fire-fighting
| systems. Even back in WWII, having redundant critical systems
| was a well-known and much-valued feature of all _real_
| warships.
|
| - Hours into the crew's efforts to fight the fires (resulting
| from the missile hit), coordination and command of the fire-
| fighting efforts were somewhere between underwhelming and non-
| existent.
|
| Blunt Summary: The aircraft, missile, and anti-missile
| technologies used (or available) during the attack on the HMS
| Sheffield were no more than costumes and props in a play. The
| real meat of the play was a human story that would fit quite
| comfortably into the Old Testament. On one side was a small
| group of skilled and determined warriors, intensely focused on
| winning. On the other side was a crowd of clueless noobs,
| wandering through the scenery and telling themselves that they
| were a real army.
| alaricus wrote:
| Wasn't the Turkish Bayraktar drone also involved in the sinking
| of Moskva?
|
| Not to rain on the "feel-good" parade, but Moskva was laid down
| in 1976 and launched in 1979. It was older than most people on
| HackerNews. Don't treat it as bleeding edge technology.
| dotopotoro wrote:
| Also, It was decommissioned then reinstated. However it was
| still a flagship.
| nazavo wrote:
| A cool thing about Neptune is the technology wasn't property
| tested for the prime time before and is relatively fresh
| technology! Ukrainian forces had used them successfully and have
| proven the high precision weapon know-how is still going strong
| in the country.
| [deleted]
| cpursley wrote:
| Neptune is just an upgraded Russian antiship missile tech from
| the late 80s. But clearly still pretty effective with the right
| targeting.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| When you bet on your current ship defences to intercept new
| hypersonic missiles, you are taking too big of a bet.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Huh? Neptune isn't hypersonic. In fact, it is subsonic.
| tlear wrote:
| Absolute garbage of an article. It is S300 an ancient AA platform
| that denied Russia Air supremacy, it is combination of Artillery
| and drones not Javelin that been most lethal and it most
| definitely not a completely unimpressive Neptune that is
| equivalent of a missiles that went into device half a century
| ago.. wait Russia still easily blockades Odessa
|
| In Donbas now war resembles most the WW2 with mass of artillery
| being exchanged for drone directed artillery. Not Javelin, not
| any other man portable anything can dislodge Russian or Ukranians
| for that matter. Massed drone directed artillery and rocket
| artillery is the current go to.
|
| Those ideas of infiltrating marines to Chinese islands are so
| idiotic as to defy all belief.. I hope whoever came up with that
| is on the first boat there
|
| Last but not least perhaps journalist writing for Atlantic can
| read some book about WW1? Like something basic that covers
| eastern front? Offense did not go anywhere and no Somme was not a
| bayonet charge ffs
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Large vessels, aircraft carriers are sitting ducks for rockets.
| Even with some anti rocket defense.
|
| It costs large amounts of money to build big ships and it costs
| little to sink them.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Some of the costs are hidden. The Neptune missile was cheap.
| The hidden, often unaccounted for part of that system however
| are the ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance)
| capabilities to find the target. Anti-Ship missiles (AShMs)
| like the Neptune and practically any others have a limited
| ability to see what's around them because of the altitude they
| fly at and the overall small frame for radar power. This means
| the operator has to identify where the ship is, where it's
| going, and then fire their missiles to intercept. There's
| practically no communication afterwards (certainly not in
| Neptune's case) so the further away the ship it, the greater
| the chances it will move in that time and the missiles will
| fail to acquire it. (Firing closer as you can imagine brings
| its own risks.)
|
| So you need a system or system of systems to find your target,
| relay that information down to your launchers (securely,
| quietly, and timely!) so you can launch your _relatively_ cheap
| weapon. That 's where all of the investment in communications,
| radars, overhead platforms (drones, aircraft, satellites) comes
| into play. The GlobalHawk that had been flying over the Black
| Sea for weeks at 40,000 feet isn't cheap, but without one,
| one's firing missiles blind.
|
| The further out you get, the more eyes and links you need to
| find and track your target, and that's where it gets expensive.
| It also becomes less of a sure bet.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| After WW2 European countries came to this conclusion that war
| between technologically advanced industrial nations no longer
| makes economic sense.
|
| Obviously it all predicates on politicians making somewhat
| rational decisions.
| troon-lover wrote:
| ghaff wrote:
| Which is why aircraft carriers aren't tooling around the ocean
| on their lonesome.
| lumost wrote:
| An aircraft carrier can operate 400-1000km from a target, while
| moving at 40 kph. Much more time to mount an adequate defense
| compared to the Moskva 50km distance from the coast while
| sitting idle.
| baq wrote:
| khinzals are supposed to be carrier killers.
| trasz wrote:
| Same way Russia is supposed to have a 2nd army in the
| world.
|
| AFAIK at this point Kinzhal was successfully used only
| once, against a barn.
| cpursley wrote:
| Kinzhal has been used multiple times according to western
| sources. Once against an underground weapons store where
| it's kinetic energy acted as a bunker buster. And a few
| other times against high level targets like foreign
| weapon stores and mercenaries.
| trasz wrote:
| This "underground weapons store" sounds exactly like how
| Russian sources described what later turned out to be a
| barn.
| [deleted]
| caycep wrote:
| the issue is - what is the D21 (and brethren) capability? I
| think the war gaming w/ the late USSR and now China as the
| opposing force worried re theater-capable ICBMs. It's not
| like the carrier can hide these days...
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Can it not? I'd reverse the question: Can China find it?
|
| That's the part that I find missing from these discussions.
| Missiles like the D21 sound really deadly, but the
| information and communications needed to successfully
| target a carrier hundreds or thousands of miles away and
| deliver the weapon successfully is the much more difficult
| part of the equation. As the U.S. Navy (paraphrasing) said
| themselves, "The D21 has a long kill chain, and plenty of
| places to disrupt that kill-chain."
|
| Likewise, the carrier goes around with much more than it's
| planes and escorts. It has the information being fed to it
| from ISR elsewhere, from satellites overhead to pre-mission
| information, communications eavesdropping, etc to know what
| they're up against and when and where they might encounter
| it. That, in my opinion is far more important than the
| specifics and specs of such and such weapon.
|
| The success or defeat of a carrier battle group I think is
| going to depend far more on who knows what and when, and
| therefor, what's going on in the electromagnetic spectrum,
| than any singular missile.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'Can it not? I'd reverse the question: Can China find
| it?'
|
| You can find it yourself on free satellite imagery
| collected by the european sentinel satellites, provided
| globally free of charge. All ships are really easy to see
| from space, especially giant carriers.
|
| Ofcourse sentinel takes images once every few days, and
| how that compares to spy satellites and how you target a
| missile from there i dunno
| nradov wrote:
| Ships move around. Those satellites don't provide the
| real-time target tracks needed by ballistic missiles.
| Reconnaissance satellites are themselves no longer
| survivable.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Spot on. To add to this, the Navy knows those satellite
| tracks. It's one thing to spot a carrier in port from a
| days old image. It's another to find it actively evading
| you in wartime.
|
| And regarding the satellites themselves, also agreed. I
| really believe that success at sea is going to depend a
| large part on success in space, and many countries know
| it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| What possible action can a carrier take to evade
| satellite that can take daily photographs? Its not a
| plane, it cant travel a thousand kilometers in a day. It
| can only be withing a limited radius of it's initial
| position
|
| I would expect that every major nation keeps track of
| every carrier on a daily basis
| monocasa wrote:
| Also, China has it's own spy satellites. They're
| supposedly about equal to US versions in capabilities,
| China just doesn't have nearly as many of them.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| This is the whole reason carriers move in groups. Plus in
| modern naval warfare, if you can see the enemy on the horizon,
| they are already too close.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This is true-ish but the eleven US supercarriers and their
| accompanying carrier battle groups are vastly different from
| any other navy on the planet. Other nations do not have ships
| of a comparable size.
|
| Two UK carriers come closest to the way the US Navy works, but
| are smaller. Russia's lone, damaged carrier is 25% smaller and
| may travel with a roughly comparable escort, if and when it
| becomes operational again.
|
| Many other nations' carriers are one half to one fifth the size
| of a supercarrier. They exist to provide STOL/helicopter
| platforms.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| French carrier has proper catapult launch capability and
| seemingly so does the new chinese carrier. They sorties are
| smaller, but that's another matter
| jacquesm wrote:
| One thing I noticed about this war is that in the beginning a lot
| of planes were downed, this slowed to a trickle and then almost
| entirely stopped once the Western front disappeared and only the
| Eastern remained. I'm not quite clear on whether that is because
| they are no longer flying sorties because they're too afraid of
| surface-to-air defenses, whether they are out of planes or some
| other reason (such as the defenders no longer being able to down
| enemy planes).
| mhh__ wrote:
| I think there's still a trickle of SU-25s being shot down.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| I agree that missiles are the future, but unless the enemy is
| coming to you as is the case with Ukraine, then you are going to
| need a platform to deliver the missiles.
| [deleted]
| lettergram wrote:
| > The military we have--an army built around tanks, a navy built
| around ships, and an air force built around planes, all of which
| are technologically advanced and astronomically expensive--is
| platform-centric.
|
| The US has been transitioning off tanks for a while now
|
| https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021...
|
| I suspect, most systems will continue to move underwater for the
| navy. We will also likely couple it with autonomous drones and
| decoys
| caycep wrote:
| yeah, I remember that was the whole idea re the Stryker
| divisions of the army too.
|
| reading that article, maybe that means there are longer range
| standoff weapons than Javelin/Stinger up the infantry's sleeve
| that we may not know about yet?
| greedo wrote:
| No, there's no magic bullets waiting to be unveiled for the
| infantry or Marines. Stinger is old, in some ways out of
| date, and a planned replacement was never given enough
| funding to proceed. Javelin? It's fine for the foreseeable
| future, until top-attack defenses get good enough to reduce
| its effectiveness. Things like Trophy APS might be the
| solution, but those aren't cheap.
|
| Eventually, the AGM-179 will replace the
| TOW/Hellfire/Maverick missiles, but this isn't really
| something soldiers will be humping around on raids like in
| Ukraine. These are heavy missiles (not counting their launch
| hardware), that require vehicles or aircraft to employ.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The US hasn't been transitioning off tanks. One of the US's
| ground forces (the USMC) is getting rid of tanks, but the other
| ground forces (the actual US Army) is still retaining them.
| Indeed, one of the reasons that the USMC is getting rid of
| tanks is because it's arguing that the US Army can provide them
| when needed.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It didn't sink, it literally pulled into port 4 days later. This
| is disinformation posing as analysis.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| anovikov wrote:
| It couldn't have it's main missile defence system engage these
| missiles because it only operates in 180 degree sector and the
| ship was turned into opposite direction because it was alerted
| by a decoy force of Bayraktar drones.
|
| CIWS could fire though, and apparently they did fire, but
| missed.
| _kbh_ wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that a flag ship of a navy that was
| repaired in 2020 and was set to be in use until 2040, was meant
| to be scuttled in 2022.
|
| https://tass.com/defense/1173927
| frostburg wrote:
| The Moskva had been recently refitted (possibly this involved
| embezzling the pertintent funds, but still), "it was ready to
| be scuttled" is just propaganda aimed at understating the loss.
| trasz wrote:
| It was - for western standards. For Russian standards it was a
| flagship, and - as mentioned above - a critically important
| one.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| In fact Moskva was refurbished in 2021, played a critical role
| in protecting the entire Black Sea Fleet whenever it left port
| with its very much online S-300 SAM, and likely didn't see the
| attack coming because of operator error and being distracted by
| the Bayraktar drone, not because of any lack of equipment.
| gerikson wrote:
| Twitter thread from Bret Devereaux with some critique of this
| piece.
|
| https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1528581923446181898...
| rapnie wrote:
| Guy has a blog. Rather sends 26 tweets for sake of convenience.
| Or is that for max exposure?
| gerikson wrote:
| Probably because his blog is for more planned essays.
|
| Twitter is good for one-off observations.
|
| I've personally started a "microblog" for that kind of stuff.
| nomilk wrote:
| Personally, I'm new to twitter, and I much prefer these long
| chains of tweets rather than long form blog posts or
| articles. These long chains of tweets allow one to give
| support, comment on, disagree with, share or like a
| particular sentence or idea, rather than the entire
| collection, thus allowing more nuance.
|
| Other advantages:
|
| - Quickly understand which tweets/sentences matter by
| scanning the likes
|
| - Debate can stem from any tweet, so discussion is
| immediately less conflated and more focussed on specific
| parts or ideas
| h2odragon wrote:
| Thank you. Lots of folks complain about twitter threads,
| few actually articulate any positives even when they find
| there to be some.
| fintechjock wrote:
| I also thought of u/Sir_Budington's comment when this article
| was posted to r/CredibleDefense:
|
| > The thing is that things like anti tank and ship missiles are
| primarily defensive weapons, not offensive ones. Sure, a
| Javelin can wreck a tank, but it's not going to break through a
| front line. Sure, a harpoon can sink a ship, but it's not going
| to project power halfway across the world. A Patriot missile
| can shoot down a plane, but it's not going to target moving
| targets 100 miles behind enemy lines, or provide CAS.
|
| > Does this mean that in recent years that the power balance
| has swung in favour of defenders? Maybe. But that doesn't mean
| you get rid of offensive capabilities.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Well said. To build on that, it also brings to mind a few of
| the more expert commentary on YouTube on "why the tank is not
| dead". Military History Visualized has a good video on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY (There's others
| as well, and he references them)
|
| My overall take away from the Atlantic piece is that they've
| fallen into the same trap as much of the rest of the
| internet. Large platforms have not been rendered obsolete
| because of the advent of these weapons, just as they weren't
| during the 70s with the first large battles involving Anti-
| tank and Anti-Ship missiles. (The former has a number of
| well-cited examples, but for the latter, I call attention to
| the Battle of Latakia
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Latakia )
|
| It's worth nothing as well that the Neptune AShM isn't really
| a revolutionary weapon, and is marginally improved over
| classes of AShMs developed in the 80s. It's notary comes from
| the fact that Ukraine essentially was able redevelop the
| capability of the old Kh-35, with modest improvements. It's
| not a next-gen missile such as a LRASM.
|
| Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone
| through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon.
| It's been around for decades, and as we're finding along with
| the Stinger, the U.S. needs to reactivate the manufacturing
| to build them from scratch which has been dormant for
| decades.
|
| I draw attention to the fact that these are older weapons.
| Drones are giving troops in the field better ability to
| target than ever before, but the fundamentals haven't changed
| and the same difficulties apply. WaPo had an exclusive
| stating that it was U.S. Intelligence that gave the
| Ukrainians the necessary info to find and target the Moskava
| with their missiles. The weapons themselves are just one part
| in long chain of capabilities.
|
| So that's where I think this piece misses much, because it's
| ignorant of some of the other elements of how all this comes
| together. The U.S. has been aware of China's long range
| precision fires for quite some time, and while they're
| worrysome, they're not terrified. To paraphrase a quote I
| heard, "a long kill chain provides plenty of opportunities to
| disrupt it along the way."
|
| And that's where the Russians have failed. Not because
| they're being surprised for the first time by these weapons
| (they invented many of the earliest examples themselves!) but
| because they're not fighting effectively. As some
| commentators have noted, the supporting elements that would
| defend against these weapons are not in place, the systems
| designed to counter them are not active/maintained (which was
| probably the case of the Moskava), and the
| intelligence/reconnaissance that would have identified and
| monitored these threats are not in place. All of this
| contributes to failure.
|
| The Russians are not getting wrecked by guided missiles
| because they're so high tech, they're getting wrecked because
| they're inept.
| paganel wrote:
| > they're getting wrecked because they're inept.
|
| They're "getting wrecked" in terms of human and materiel
| losses, even though those seem to have stabilised compared
| to March/April, the reality on the ground is that the
| Russians have managed to acquire a land-bridge to Crimea
| and that they've mostly conquered the two regions of
| Lugansk and Donetsk.
| fintechjock wrote:
| > Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone
| through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon.
| It's been around for decades, and as we're finding along
| with the Stinger, the U.S. needs to reactivate the
| manufacturing to build them from scratch which has been
| dormant for decades.
|
| My understanding is that the U.S. sunsetted or reduced
| Javelin and Stinger production because of assumed air
| superiority in any potential conflict (COIN or near-peer).
|
| For all of their love of redundancy, do you think that they
| are overconfident in air superiority?
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Hard to say. My guess (and it's just a guess!) is that
| they didn't see the need to ramp up Stinger production as
| there were so many sitting around. (Javelin is a
| different question and I'll omit that one for now.)
|
| I hear the "they'll rely on air superiority" bit a lot,
| but haven't read anything official that suggests that
| it's actual policy. It might just be one of those things
| that went unsaid as priorities shifted elsewhere. I think
| the Ballistic Missile Defense debate sucked a lot of
| oxygen out of the need for ground-based aircraft defense.
|
| There's growing calls for more robust aircraft defense,
| both against fighter airplanes and drones, and it's
| getting some attention as you can read here:
| https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-
| battalion...
|
| I note though that these are short-range systems, and I
| haven't seen much new for longer range systems such as
| what some NATO countries are doing with NASAMS, and so it
| seems like things have been quiet in the U.S. for medium
| and upper tier (BMD being the exception.)
|
| I've long wondered if there's hesitance to overlap medium
| and upper tier defenses with counter-air operations
| because of the risk of blue-on-blue engagement (See the
| Persian Gulf War and Patriot), and that it might be there
| reason why there's so little development in this space.
| Deconflicting those two things sounds rather difficult to
| me, and given our lack of success to date, the U.S. might
| simply have strategized that - with a few exceptions -
| it's best to leave medium and high altitudes to aircraft
| and just not worry about shooting down your own pilots.
|
| But that's just a guess. It's an interesting question and
| one I'll be curious to see play out.
| greedo wrote:
| Whenever I try and understand what the Pentagon's actual
| policies are, I give up on reading announcements from
| PAOs etc. and look at what items each branch is funding.
| The Navy has had a great UCAS for 8 years, but has barely
| funded it compared to how many F-18s it buys. So this
| tells me that the VF mafia in the Navy doesn't want
| competition.
|
| The Army has cancelled the following systems in the last
| few decades: Comanche, Crusader, and FCS. Yet it spent
| the money on these and only cancelled them when the costs
| ballooned out of control. Other than buying Avenger in
| the 1980s, the Army has almost completely neglected
| SHORAD. This tells me they don't give a hoot about the
| threat. Compare that to Comanche. They are all in on the
| Future Vertical Lift program. For Crusader, they've
| decided on incremental (and seemingly perpetual) upgrades
| to the M109. As well as investing heavily in ATACMs and
| PrSM.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Both the Navy and the USAF suffer from this in that the
| brass is staffed with former pilots, and those who have
| had combat experience at that. A lot of other missions
| have received little attention as a result, Space being a
| good example.
|
| I think they're slowly coming around to the idea that
| they need these, though it's arriving in the form of
| supporting roles and to solve a pilot shortage.
|
| With regards to ground, many of those cancellations came
| about as a result of the end of the Cold War. Comanche
| and Crusader were both 80's era programs The threat of a
| general European land war receded tremendously. Had those
| gone forward, I'm sure they'd be useful, but aged now
| even. I do wonder how useful Crusader would have been,
| given the shift to highly mobile wheeled SPGs as opposed
| to armored ones. (See CAESAR and Archer systems).
|
| FCS was later, and tripped over itself I think trying to
| make a series of vehicles that could do everything at a
| time when we weren't sure what we wanted a vehicle to do
| other than survive IEDs. They wanted air mobility (low
| weight!) but networking, tons of firepower, and be
| resistant to ATGMs and the odd buried 155mm shell
| exploding underneath it. It sounds like the Bradley all
| over again, but it's a tricky problem to solve. A
| combination of electronic jamming for IEDs and active
| protection for ATGMs might finally solve the problem.
| Might.
|
| I think you're right about SHORAD, and given the aerial
| performance in the Gulf and elsewhere, they've had little
| reason to think otherwise. The USAF and Navy have been so
| effective up until late that the Air-to-Air squadrons
| have had so little to do that the USAF invented sorties
| for their F-22 squadrons just to give them a shot at
| advancement compared to their A2G brethren. And while the
| Russians have been cranking out one fancy Flanker variant
| after another, they haven't had the funds to build them
| in any quality. The PAK-FA has been little more than a
| demonstrator. And up until relatively recently, the
| Chinese have been struggling to replicate Western and
| Russian turbofan technology. Lack of decent engines has
| held them back for years. It seems they're finally
| turning the corner on that.
|
| So yeah, they haven't had much reason to pay attention to
| it. Drones are starting to make them pay attention
| though. https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-
| shorad-battalion...
|
| Better late than never I suppose.
| mhh__ wrote:
| This is also roughly Nicolas "The chieftain" Moran's argument
| for why the tank is still an important weapon.
| dmurray wrote:
| Threadreader link:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1528581923446181898.html
| dncornholio wrote:
| God I hate twitter. Why they still hang on to their silly
| limited functionality, I don't know. Is it fear of change?
| Threadreader is even worse, with all those ads!
| sgc wrote:
| Try nitter.net
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's pretty weak critique. For my entire time on earth, the
| threat of missiles like Exocet is a material threat that is
| only countered by marginally reliable SAMs and point defense.
| Missiles and drones only get smarter, and defense challenges
| get more challenging.
|
| Even speedboats with rockets or explosives strapped to them are
| a threat to warships, who were mostly protected by obscurity -
| finding ships at sea is hard. Drones negate a lot of that.
|
| People will wave away the obvious by saying "The Russians are
| idiots", "The ship was old", etc, but the reality is a defender
| only has to fuck up once. The Russians should have (and may
| have in other scenarios) shot down that drone, but obviously
| failed.
|
| Even the mighty US Navy has trouble teaching sailors to steer
| ships. Operationally the US Navy is exponentially more capable
| than the Russians... but remember, you only need to screw up
| once. Fundamentally, the current operating model of big navies
| is on a path to irrelevance. Nerds can argue if the early
| ironclad battles were truly relevant, but the fact remains that
| whether that moment was key or not, the end result was the
| same.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| I don't understand the USMC. They were active in Afghanistan- a
| landlocked country with zero.zero beaches.
|
| Reminds me of the German "paratroopers" who spend most of the war
| as overly qualified infantry.
| ranger207 wrote:
| The USMC has long been fighting for relevance. Fighting in
| Afghanistan was simply them doing literally anything just to do
| something
| balletto wrote:
| The Marine Corps proposed to take over most of the fighting
| in Afghanistan: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/washington
| /11military.htm...
|
| Agree that it was playing the game to justify its existence.
| Personally I think "the nation's ready response force" is a
| good and necessary mission.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Part of the capabilities of the Marines is being able to move
| quickly and rapidly deploy anywhere which is useful in a shock
| or front line component to move in in front of slower
| sustainment forces like the Army.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They are assault/shock troops.
|
| The Army has a sprawling operation and mission, but the Marines
| focus around that shock infantry model. The entire organization
| is focused around that, which has good and bad attributes.
| tra3 wrote:
| "Generation kill", the book and the miniseries, is about
| marines invading Iraq in 2003 in unarmored humvees. Didn't make
| sense then either.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Let's put it like this: The South China Sea isn't called Sea
| because it's landlocked.
| indymike wrote:
| The sooner we fully adopt loitering munitions (like the
| switchblade), drones, and divest of easy targets for drones,
| missiles and loitering munitions (which are really suicide
| drones) the better.
| trashtester wrote:
| I'm guessing the B52's will outlive the switchblades by a
| factor of 10.
|
| Switchblades are a bit like 1914 "bombers". Useless by 1916.
| monocasa wrote:
| Agreed. In fact, you know what a B-52 can hold a whole lot
| of? Little drones that can loiter for an hour or so looking
| for whatever their ML aglos think is 'enemy' before devolving
| down to essentially cluster munitions when their battery is
| about to die.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| There was a harbinger of this in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict,
| when Argentine forces sunk HMS _Sheffield_ with Exocet missiles.
| Also, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020 was showing the
| effectiveness of drones, and I 'm sure Ukraine was taking notes.
| fractallyte wrote:
| From the article: _"When you look at what weapons are on top of
| the Ukrainians' wish list," Moulton told me, "it isn't towed
| howitzers. Top of their list are armed drones, anti-tank
| missiles, and anti-ship missiles."_
|
| Actually, _no!_ Why is this still being rehashed?? Zelensky
| specifically requested: artillery, artillery shells, Multiple
| Launch Rocket Systems, armored vehicles, tanks, air defense
| systems, and military aircraft.
|
| He said: _"When some leaders ask me what weapons I need, I need a
| moment to calm myself, because I already told them the week
| before. It's Groundhog Day. I feel like Bill Murray."_
| (Liberation Without Victory, The Atlantic,
| https://archive.ph/nz2Da)
|
| And while Javelins, and other missiles, have proven invaluable in
| taking out armored vehicles, the _more_ effective weapon has been
| artillery (often targeted with the aid of drones).
| greedo wrote:
| Artillery just isn't sexy enough to capture the media's
| attention. The King Of Battle has knocked out far more vehicles
| in Ukraine than any ATGMs.
| paganel wrote:
| Thank you for this comment, I had to scroll all the way down to
| read some good-sense (I had made a comment basically identical
| to yours when it comes to artillery+drones a little earlier).
|
| I think it all comes down to the "educated" Western audiences
| only following this conflict through the eyes of the Western
| media, which Western media has its own incentives (about which
| this is not the place to write at length), suffice is to say
| that their reports don't accurately reflect the situation on
| the battleground.
|
| What does reflect the situation on the battleground is the
| videos coming from both side (Ukrainian and Russian) which
| clearly show that artillery (plus cheap commercial drones used
| as spotters) is bringing in most of the losses. The greatest
| military Russian defeat [1] in this war until now was the
| result of artillery and drones, not of javelins, not of any
| fancy and expensive Western-provided weapons.
|
| Later edit: This [2] is good, old artillery in use (in this
| case by the Russians). There's no javelins nor drones all by
| themselves that can take those artillery pieces out.
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/uqbam9/new_drone_f...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1528738177741201410
| giantg2 wrote:
| "So far, in Ukraine, the signature land weapon hasn't been a tank
| but an anti-tank missile: the Javelin. The signature air weapon
| hasn't been an aircraft, but an anti-air missile: the Stinger.
| And as the sinking of the Moskva showed, the signature maritime
| weapon hasn't been a ship but an anti-ship missile: the Neptune."
|
| If you look at it solely from the Ukrainian point of view - yes.
| The Russians are relying heavily on platforms, even if they are
| losing. That doesn't mean that there isn't value in those
| platforms, just that they are being misapplied. For example, a
| tank is much more valuable to use against another tank than to
| use against dispersed ground troops. We would likely see them
| being valued differently in a near-peer conflict that was more
| coordinated/strategic (one of the biggest enemies of the Russians
| has been their leaders' own greed and lack of preparation,
| training, and coordination).
|
| War is largely about economics. Of course using man-portable
| anti-platform weapons is ideal - you can destroy equipment that
| takes months or years to build at .1% of it's cost. Just like
| using left over or homemade munitions for IEDs can generate a lot
| of damage (physical and economic), especially over the course of
| a decade or two.
| lnsru wrote:
| Where are any economics in Ukraine war? Russian loses are
| comparable to whole army of a small country.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're asking. The west is helping Ukraine
| economically, especially with the delivery of weapons on a
| scale that they would not be able to normally pay for. The
| west is also implementing sanctions to hurt Russia
| economically (there are even some articles coming out that it
| is affecting daily life in Russia now). And the losses
| sustained by Russia in the war will take years or even
| decades to recover from since they can't build or finance
| equipment as fast as they are losing it (not even getting
| into the personnel side of things). It's unsustainable.
| exabrial wrote:
| > And as the sinking of the Moskva showed, the signature maritime
| weapon hasn't been a ship but an anti-ship missile: the Neptune.
|
| Absolutely incorrect analysis. The signature marine weapon is the
| Poseidon P8. This is a heavily modified Boeing 737 NG configured
| for maritime intelligence and attack. This is what sank the
| Moskva.
|
| If you read the analysis from intelligence reports, the Neptune
| is a rather unremarkable anti-surface missile with underwhelming
| capabilities. The Poseidon hovered hundreds of miles away and
| relayed the combat information to Ukraine commanders when the
| Moskva was weakened; and more than likely, when its short range
| defenses were down (likely due to Russian Incompetence). No doubt
| the Poseidon has watched every Russian Naval asset to figure out
| they were taking down defense radars and they devised a plan to
| sneak a relatively crappy Neptune missile in.
|
| I think the defining age is intelligence, but then again, hasn't
| it always been? It's just taking on new forms. One of the most
| important and urgent projects the Air Force will undertaken is
| AWACs replacement with another 737 variant that has PESA, AESA,
| ELINT, AEW capabilities to this platform and provide the same
| level of battlefield intelligence on solid ground as we have that
| the P8 provides for maritime.
| Animats wrote:
| _The Neptune is a rather unremarkable anti-surface missile with
| underwhelming capabilities._
|
| It had enough range to reach the target from shore, enough
| precision to hit it, and enough warhead to kill it. That's good
| enough.
|
| The lesson from this is that warships can no longer operate
| with impunity near a hostile shore against a reasonably
| equipped opponent. "Near" is at least 100km. A truck-mounted
| system can now take out a major combatant vessel.
|
| Finding large ships isn't that difficult any more. They show up
| on everything from civilian satellite imagery to drone cameras.
| exabrial wrote:
| It's far more complicated than you think to sink a modern
| combat ship with a missile. The Neptune would qualify as
| "minimally capable" and if it weren't for Russian
| incompetence and target intelligence, or it wouldn't have
| succeeded.
|
| First, you have the sea. It's flat, it's quiet, and it's
| pretty much void of surface and aerial radar contacts.
| Missile stealth is really hard in this environment because of
| the quiet background, and the Neptune is not stealthy. The
| ship-based radars are really only limited to the curvature of
| the earth... so for the Moskva, that's probably 9miles in bad
| conditions, 18miles in best conditions. The cold background
| even allows IRST to work quite effectively (not sure if the
| Moskva has that capability). The target ship is going to know
| you're coming, especially the Moskva, as in the absolute
| worst conditions, that's about 30s-45s of warning time, or
| 10m-15m if you have an AEW radar.
|
| Second, radar blindness is a two way street. You can fire a
| missile, but it will be blind to its target until it's pretty
| close and can activate some sort of terminal phase guidance.
| Navies _always_ keep their ships moving to avoid attacks.
| Basically, for a sub-sonic missile, you can fire it at where
| the target is now, but by the time it gets to where it thinks
| the target is, it may not be there anymore. There's a couple
| of ways to handle this. For Navy's very modern LRASM, that's
| a passive link receiving mid-course updates, with fallback to
| GPS/Inertial guidance. For the Neptune, it's just inertial
| guidance. Just _moving_ the target ship around randomly is
| enough to protect it from a Neptune strike and Russia did not
| do this.
|
| Third, your missile needs to broadside. Ships are designed to
| cut through the water, so a head-on attack will just cause
| the missile to skip off the bow. Your missile needs to have
| enough spare fuel to turn about and detect the orientation of
| the ship. Again, you can defeat this by randomly turning your
| ship a bunch of times. There's a case in the Falklands war
| where an Exocet was coming in hard for a kill, but the ship's
| commander had enough time to orient the ship towards the
| missile with full rudder, and the Exocet bounced, then
| exploded on the deck rather than penetrating. There was
| damage, but ship stayed in combat. The Neptune doesn't have
| great loiter time. And its rudimentary radar terminal
| guidance it's probably easily attacked electronically anyway.
|
| Finally you have point defenses. Russia actually has quite
| sophisticated CIWS systems, both missile and rotary cannon.
| It's speculated that the only really guaranteed way to defeat
| these systems is a saturation attack, which was not the case,
| or a supersonic terminal phase, which the Neptune is not
| capable of. Russia pretty much had all its defenses down.
|
| So no, the Neptune is really not that sophisticated. This
| attack was successful purely based on knowing the limitations
| of the weapon system and timely intelligence.
| fpoling wrote:
| There is an interesting speculation that perhaps most of
| its way the missiles where in either in the radar shadow of
| the Snake island or the island added sufficient noise to
| hide the missiles.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It's speculated that the only really guaranteed way to
| defeat these systems is a saturation attack
|
| Why haven't we seen a saturation attack in reality?
|
| Obviously, there haven't been a whole lot of naval
| conflicts in recent decades. And antiship missiles are not
| cheap (although, obviously much cheaper than _ships_ )
|
| But, still. They seem like such an obvious method of attack
| that it seems weird we haven't really seen one in earnest.
|
| Are there specific technological issues that need to be
| worked out?
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| >> The Neptune is a rather unremarkable anti-surface missile
| with underwhelming capabilities.
|
| > It had enough range to reach the target from shore, enough
| precision to hit it, and enough warhead to kill it. That's
| good enough.
|
| When you put it like that, it's kind of scary to think what
| GP's definition of whelming capabilities would be.
| avar wrote:
| > Poseidon P8. This is a heavily modified Boeing 737 Max[...]
|
| It's a variant of the 737-NG, not the 737-MAX.
| exabrial wrote:
| ah yes, you are correct
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Well, not really. The defining thing here is grey-zone warfare.
|
| The Moskva (and ships in general) aren't really made for a war
| where you can't shoot down AWACS. Because they can't be.
|
| Generally the assumption is that the AWACS is going to be shot
| down, very fast. It's a pretty solid one to make, too.
|
| But of course there was also a lot of incompetence, and the
| sheer age and obsolescence of the Moskva didn't help either.
| Tossrock wrote:
| Why would that be a solid assumption? If Russia were actually
| engaging US forces and was "allowed" to shoot the AWACS, then
| they would also be engaging the USAF - by far the most
| effective air force in the world - who would deny such
| attempts.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The USAF (nor anyone else) has no practical way to defend
| an AWACS against a near-peer enemy. That's kind of the
| point of the R-37 or PL-15 (even moreso the PL-21), soft
| targets such as AWACS are vulnerable at 300-400km. That's
| also the real value proposition of the Su-57, even though
| they are few and probably can't defeat an F-22, it sure can
| defeat an AWACS and it's not feasible to detect it before
| it gets within 300km of an AWACS.
| greedo wrote:
| You're making huge assumptions here. One is the
| reliability of anti-AWACs AAMs, while ignoring both kill-
| chain issues and ECM etc. Sure the Russian AF might be
| able to use them during a "bolt out of the blue" attack,
| but once hostilities have commenced, any airbase that
| hosts MIG-31BMs will be targeted heavily.
| stefan_ wrote:
| This is just LARPing. A TB2 could spot that ship just as well
| and neither it nor the P8 can guide the anti-ship missile that
| was used.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > No doubt the Poseidon has watched every Russian Naval asset
| to figure out they were taking down defense radars and they
| devised a plan to sneak a relatively crappy Neptune missile in.
|
| Is it just me, or does this comment appear arrogant?
|
| You you are taking all the credit and belittling the folks that
| did all the fighting, based on nothing but your own
| speculation?
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah, this over the top jingoism even for HN. I'm surprised.
| occamrazor wrote:
| By the way, Poseidon occupied in the Greek Pantheon a role very
| similar to the Roman Neptune.
|
| Navy weapon-namegivers lack imagination.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I get into arguments with pro-Navy people about the laughable
| waste of Naval surface ships.
|
| As you state, antiship missiles are unremarkable, I believe
| 1980s pop and drop from above are undefendable. I got argued
| down about antiship ICBM/IRBMs, but I still think they will
| work. And drone subs will make any nearshore unnavigable to
| capital ships, if the cost of your carrier is 10x the cost of a
| fleet of 100 drone subs whose only job is basically fire a
| couple torpedos.
|
| Drones/infantry portable weapons are being tested in real time
| by the pentagon with the Ukraine war, against a reasonable
| facsimile of a peer war.
|
| The only thing lacking is high altitude anti air, but I think
| this war will result in the true air superiority denial weapon:
| the cheap air drone. Hell, it could be a solar balloon-drone
| hybrid: stay up as long as you want, relocate with "acceptable"
| flexibility, fire missiles at aircraft.
|
| That will push more emphasis to Space superiority I predict.
|
| The other aspect of force multiplication of drones hasn't been
| properly explored or used yet in this war: drones are currently
| used as CENTRALLY coordinated weapons. But if you also have
| combined arms drones coordinated by boots-on-ground infantry,
| that means your ten man squad can direct (with low casualty
| risk) ten faster, better armed, more capable drones in
| helicopter, grenade shelling, scouting, and direct fire. And if
| you can give basic AI orders to a drone once you get it place
| and then direct other drones into position, then a 10 man squad
| may be able to direct 20-30 ones. And they can have reserves to
| deploy if their controlled drones get damaged. And they are
| probably more durable to fire.
|
| Truly effective infantry forces have sergeants and officers
| with ability to adapt tactical battle plans on the fly. Current
| drone organization doesn't strongly support this, but then
| again we are in the stone age of drones.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > But if you also have combined arms drones coordinated by
| boots-on-ground infantry,
|
| Brings back memories of Network-Centric Warfare [0], with
| self-synchronising edge-based forces operating on the cusp of
| tactical anarchy, IIRC.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-centric_warfare
| dathinab wrote:
| Intelligence is one of the most important aspects.
|
| Through also we had been at a point where a lot of trope
| movements are always under watch by satellites and now
| supplemented by various kinds of drones (some call it the
| unblinking eye) before.
|
| We also have a lot of ways to take advantage of it (long range
| artillery, big drones, Javelins, small suicide drones, etc.).
|
| What changed is not the general capabilities we have nothing I
| listed (except maybe the small suicide drones) is new.
|
| What is new is how we can and in case of Ukrain do combine this
| weaponry and information systems.
|
| So I don't thing any of the tech involved is the defining
| factor, it's the combination of them in the right strategy.
| wcarss wrote:
| For anyone else thinking (especially later in this thread)
| "what is AWACS?":
|
| > AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) is the name of
| the specific system installed in the E-3 and Japanese Boeing
| E-767 AEW&C airframes, but is often used as a general synonym
| for AEW&C.
|
| > An airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system is an
| airborne radar system designed to detect aircraft, ships,
| vehicles, missiles, and other incoming projectiles at long
| ranges and perform command and control
|
| from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_early_warning_and_con...
| hbarka wrote:
| I read that the opportunity wasn't due to defense radars being
| down. It was due to a diversion tactic (annoyance drone)
| created to fool the radar operators into focusing on a false
| flag.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Link to intel report?
|
| There have also been regular AWACS circular flights over
| Romania near the Black Sea and Global Hawk flights in the Black
| Sea.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The fact that Ukraine seems to have had, or had access to,
| uncannily accurate intelligence does seem to be the signature
| fact of this war.
|
| Arms without targeting are at best areal suppression weapons.
| Russia's impressive-looking mobile rocket-launcher batteries
| appear formidable, but their effect seems largely to be
| producing a few seconds of terror over a few hectares of land.
|
| Ukraine's ability to target individual generals with precision,
| to distract and destroy naval flagships, to down helicoptors,
| to drop munitions on or through tank hatches, to land artillery
| and rockets with precision on massed troops and materiel ...
| has been tremendously effective. The shot:kill ratios seem to
| be extremely high.
|
| At the same time, the US has telegraphed Russian moves, plans,
| and force structures with precision as well.
|
| What the state and source of this intelligence is varies. Part
| clearly comes from near-theatre sources such as the Poseidon,
| other AWACS assets, and probably other capabilities in Nato
| Europe, Turkey (itself both part of Europe and Nato, though
| notable for its position on the Black Sea and control of the
| Bosperous). Much all but certainly from satellite observations.
| And I'd suspect a considerable degree is based on signals
| intelligence.
|
| Russia _does not control those domains_ , and has been unable
| to establish clear control within them. This is unlike, say,
| any major US campaign of the past 30 years, whatever _other_
| concerns might have as to their legitimacy, with the exclusion
| of satellite capabilities. To date, Russia has not felt it has
| the ability to move against those intelligence assets. It
| certainly has the ability to _do_ so should it choose, and a
| more general conflict might result in that. But for now, it is
| pinned down in a fishbowl.
|
| Effect here though seems to be a combination of intelligence as
| to enemy position and operations, the ability to deliver force
| to specific points of need, invulnerability of observation
| posts, and a general popular support within the theatre of
| operations. As well as remarkable material support from outside
| entities.
|
| This will be (and all but certainly _is being_ ) studied in war
| colleges and curricula for generations.
| rjsw wrote:
| > to drop munitions on or through tank hatches
|
| I don't think this is down to intelligence, it is just how
| the NATO anti-tank missiles are designed to work.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Drops are usually made through consumer-grade drones.
|
| Those drones have limited range, and need to be proximate
| to, and be able to rapidly find, targets.
|
| Which requires intel.
|
| At this point ... I lack specific information on where or
| how that intel is aquired. Some may be from surveillance-
| drone flights or getting lucky sending out individual
| drone-attack missions. I suspect more, however.
| rjsw wrote:
| Are there figures available on how many Russian tanks
| have been destroyed by drones and how many by Javelin and
| NLAW?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I don't know offhand, though among the more reliable open
| sources groups seems to be Oryx.
|
| They've been reporting on _verified losses_ , but not
| _means of loss_ so far as I 'm aware.
|
| https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-
| docum...
| distances wrote:
| Totally unreliable personal take of public tank busting
| videos: Stugna-P is the most common, then various drones
| dropping AT grenades. These two lead by a large margin,
| followed by Javelin and NLAW, and finally a scattering of
| others like Panzerfaust.
|
| I'm sure the reality could be something quite different.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Considering I didn't find a single successful Switchblade
| drone video in 3 months (1 which missed quite a bit), I
| would say this output is heavily moderated and for good
| reasons.
|
| Ukrainians want to prop their technology for sales/morale
| (Stugna), US probably doesn't want to show off their
| latest technology marvel.
|
| The other option is, Switchblade drones are completely
| useless and thus unused by Ukraine. I don't believe that
| even if it may not be some wonder weapon to solve it all.
| distances wrote:
| There may be secrecy too, but Stugna and drone hits are
| also the easiest to document so makes sense we have video
| material for those. Probably also at least one order of
| magnitude more widespread among the troops than the
| Switchblades.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Switchblades do seem curiously missing-in-action.
|
| From past and current online research: Switchblades seem
| to have only recently been announced for shipping to
| Ukraine. I've found one video _claiming_ to be a strike
| (against a machine-gun nest), though that seems more
| probably to be mortar rounds.
|
| There is also a report of Switchblade remains reported by
| Russians, though again, only in poorly-sourced video.
|
| My read is that the munitions haven't entered active use
| at large scale. The Switchblade 300 is largely an
| antipersonnel / nonarmoured vehicle weapon, and may not
| be as telegenic as tank-busting Javelins and NLAWs.
| elorant wrote:
| Just a few weeks ago there was a US aircraft carrier in
| northern Aegean, just a few miles off the port of
| Alexandroupolis where there is a US naval base. It seemed odd
| that for such a low significance base the US would bring an
| aircraft carrier in the area, but my guess is that it was
| involved in some kind of operations in the Black Sea region.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The US moves carriers into trouble areas as a show of
| force. It's like having having a bouncer's attention at a
| bar. There's a world of hurt waiting if you step out of
| line.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's not merely display.
|
| A CTG affords considerable intelligence, logistical, and
| rapid-response capabilities.
| pjc50 wrote:
| They've been in the Med for a while:
| https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_191063.htm
| kmonsen wrote:
| What I have wondered: let's say the US gives some predator
| drones to Ukraine, and then "trains" their military to use
| them. What is to stop the US from actually piloting these
| drones from Tampa or whatever, perhaps through a cable from
| Ukraine to Poland? Would be very hard to prove who were
| actually piloting them at any given time.
| daemoens wrote:
| The issue is that predator drones will be shot down almost
| immediately which makes it a non-starter. It flies high and
| slow which makes it extremely easy to attack. Even fighters
| on both sides have been flying extremely low due to both
| sides having an abundance of anti-air.
| concordDance wrote:
| Are they any easier to shoot down than the Bayraktars?
| JohnBooty wrote:
| What is to stop the US from actually piloting these drones
|
| Technically, probably nothing.
|
| Diplomatically? The risk of nuclear escalation or various
| WWIII-esque scenarios, because at that point you have the
| US military directly killing Russians.
|
| Assuming that the US (gulp) does _not_ actually want WWIII,
| I can 't see them flying the drones themselves unless they
| could somehow have 100% plausible deniability. Keep in mind
| that Ukranian facilities and perhaps the whole country
| itself could fall to Russia, and all secrets might then be
| revealed to the Russians. Or a single base could be
| captured. Or Russia may be able to spy/intercept/deduce
| this information.
| XorNot wrote:
| A very good reason Russia won't touch satellite assets is
| that most of the early warning systems are based on those: if
| your early warning system goes down, then you're
| exceptionally vulnerable to a first strike.
| watersb wrote:
| Even worse: with the loss of early-warning satellite
| assets, you have to decide how to use (or not!) nuclear
| weapons with extremely noisy information.
| hedora wrote:
| > This is unlike, say, any major US campaign of the past 30
| years
|
| This seems exactly like both Iraq wars, except that Sadam's
| troops might have had working encrypted radios.
|
| In the first war, massively undergunned (in terms of number
| of rounds of ammunition) US tanks would enter a battle, and
| 66% of them would immediately get stuck in a boot loop, or
| otherwise break down.
|
| The remaining ones would rapidly fire a dozen rounds or so a
| few miles in a dozen different directions, anihilating enemy
| equipment well before it had any hope of striking back.
|
| Then, logistics people would go out and fix the stranded
| tanks.
|
| It's pretty obvious that the targeting systems and supply
| lines were what held everything together during those
| campaigns.
|
| Ukraine has been dominating in those two dimensions as well
| (using US equipment and intelligence, in many cases).
| boc wrote:
| I love when I find new source material for /r/NCD in the
| wild.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Source on the tank boot-loop issues?
|
| First I've ever heard of that.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Yes because it's freshly invented by the OP.
|
| Just junk.
| wil421 wrote:
| Not according to a report to the Government Accountability
| Office about the Abrams and Bradley vehicles. However, the
| report does say the support and recover vehicles caused
| slowdowns.
|
| >During the war, the Abrams tank exhibited good
| reliability, lethality, sur- vivability, and mobility, but
| limited range, according to the observations of commanders,
| crews, maintenance personnel, and Army after action
| reports. Reported Army readiness rates for the Abrams were
| 90 percent or higher during the ground war-indicating a
| high availability to move, shoot, and communicate during
| combat.[1]
|
| [1]https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-92-94.pdf
| sgt101 wrote:
| This is 180' different from any of the scholarly well
| researched information about GW1 and 2 that is out there.
|
| You sir, you need to provide some references.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >This is unlike, say, any major US campaign of the past 30
| years
|
| because the US did not face a formidable adversary in the
| past _75_ years
|
| in a war somewhat comparable with this one in terms of
| manpower and tech - the Korean War, the US had suffered heavy
| casualties and had only narrowly escaped a complete defeat
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| What do you mean by "comparable with this one in terms of
| manpower and tech"?
|
| South Korea and allied powers were significantly outmanned
| during the Korean War, and the idea that the US had any
| kind of decisive technology advantage in theatre is belied
| by the accounts of lack of US preparedness post WWII.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| yes, that's exactly why it's comparable
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I guess I just have no idea what you're calling
| comparable. In this analogy, is the US Ukraine? Is North
| Korea Russia? What is the point you're trying to make?
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| a numerically inferior force (the US / Russia) up against
| an adversary (North Korea + China / Ukraine) funded,
| armed with modern tech by a powerful entity (USSR / NATO)
|
| and the point I'm trying to make is that it is laughable
| to compare fighting a modern military to Iraq and
| Afghanistan
| w7 wrote:
| They're still not totally comparable. US was having to
| force project across an ocean while Russia seems to be
| having issues just past its boarders, despite being
| geared towards land wars, judging by their lack of
| progress and signs of logistical desperation in abandoned
| camps.
|
| Much of Ukraine's equipment is Soviet era just like
| Russia's is. USSR was a direct belligerent in the Korean
| War, not just a supporter like NATO is.
|
| Prior to the start of this conflict Russia had superior
| numbers and pounced before Ukraine mobilized.
|
| Russia also has the massive advantage of being able to
| strike from their own and neighboring territories without
| retaliation.
|
| Constant nuclear-whining is preventing NATO from
| performing air interventions like the USSR saw fit to do
| during the Korean and Vietnam war.
|
| Too many differences in variables. Russia's incompetence
| alone does not make this comparable.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Russia is the numerically inferior force vs. Ukraine in
| this example? Uhm OK.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| I understand where did you get the impression that Russia
| is waging a total war, but they only have 200K or so
| troops deployed in Ukraine
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was launched with 160,000
| troops on the ground.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq
|
| http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/18/sprj.irq.deploy
| men...
|
| Russian forces in the 1st & 2nd Chechen wars (1994--6 and
| 1999--2009, respectively) were in the 70k -- 80k range.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War
|
| A force of 200,000 is a very considerable invasion force.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > A force of 200,000 is a very considerable invasion
| force.
|
| Yes, but Ukraine has 900k reservists and a reason to
| activate them all.
|
| Russia, thus far, has hoped to avoid having to do a big
| manpower increase.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| According to Zelensky, Ukraine has now 700 000 on active
| duty.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's not what your original comment said.
|
| Is the Korean war comparable, or a non-significant
| adversary of the past 75 years?
|
| (The Korean war began 72 years ago, and ended with an
| armistice 69 years ago.)
| w7 wrote:
| I still don't understand how it's comparable. US had the
| handicap of fighting along side South Korea while a full
| ocean away when the North had direct assistance from 2
| massive neighboring land joined countries. China alone
| had nearly 2 million forces committed, and still couldn't
| take the entire south.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| because the US did not face a formidable adversary
| in the past 75 years
|
| Clearly not a _peer_ to the US nor close to it, but Iraq 's
| military in the Persian Gulf war was more formidable than
| many give it credit for.
|
| Those were not green troops. They had fought Iran for close
| to a decade, were well-equipped, and were fighting on their
| home terrain against a US force that had little to no
| modern desert warfare experience.
|
| I don't think the US-led coalition's brilliant strategy and
| execution should be confused with a total lack of fighting
| prowess on Iraq's part.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There are of course two ways of looking at this.
|
| One would be that the US chooses its engagements. Even
| given that, Korea (1950--53, within your 75 year window),
| Vietnam, and the Yugoslav war (in which the US was not a
| major participant but did contribute to the no-fly zone)
| were reasonably significant, involving Chinese and Russian
| forces and arms. The Iraq conflicts were not highly
| symmetric, but did involve threats to US forces, which the
| US mitigated. On balance, the US seems to treat even highly
| asymmetric opponents with respect as concerns their ability
| to inflict harm and damage, and seeks to minimise that.
|
| Another is that _even where it faces a highly asymmetric
| adversary_ , there are:
|
| - A long and formidible force build-up.
|
| - A preliminary air-superiority campaign in which any
| possible defences are neutralised.
|
| - A concerted effort to maintain superiority.
|
| I'd say it's a bit from A, a bit from B. But the clear
| lessons are that the U.S. values, and achieves, total air
| superiority. In the present conflict in Ukraine, Russia did
| not, and has not.
|
| Technology has also clearly moved on. The major development
| of the aughts was in IEDs and remote attacks. To an extent,
| the US applied countermeasures here again via air and
| intelligence superiority, with reconnaissance which both
| detected in advance _and replayed after successful attacks_
| the placement and entities engaged in IED emplacements.
|
| I've had discussions elsewhere over the characteristics of
| Switchblade drones, in particular their one-way "kamikazi"
| modes. I see two principle advantages:
|
| - A one-way mission should nearly double _range_ , and
| increase _defended area_ by the _square_ of the range.
|
| - A returning low-speed munition would tend to invite
| return-fire on the launch point.
|
| Since Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost drones are carried into
| the field by individual troops, increased mass, decreased
| range, and greater vulnerability of the deploying troops
| would all be strongly negative characteristics. My
| counterypart in that discussion was not convinced, though I
| find the rationale fairly strong.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| >My counterypart in that discussion was not convinced,
| though I find the rationale fairly strong.
|
| I also see drones primarily (and incredibly) useful for
| recon, but not for combat - we already have cruise
| missiles and guided artillery for that, and under wartime
| economy, they could be mass produced much cheaper than
| they are now
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Clearly both.
|
| But the combat results do appear impressive, both on the
| video-watching public and on Russian invading forces and
| their leadership, for whom plans appear to have
| significantly changed.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Don't forget the United States and a succession of puppet
| regimes in South Vietnam/Cambodia lost to the North
| Vietnamese/Vietnamese despite managing to inflict losses of
| approximately 100x enemy and civilians and other countries
| residents (the favorite accounting method of measuring
| success at the time) by 1980.
| leereeves wrote:
| That was a political decision, not a military defeat.
| Politicians never allowed the military to attack the
| north. Instead, the military was given a purely defensive
| mission, which they performed successfully, until
| politicians ordered them to leave.
| ece wrote:
| Maybe the Vietnamese/Chinese intelligence was better than
| the US intelligence.
| corrral wrote:
| The intel sharing arrangements (I wonder who's actually
| calling the shots--literally--for fire control purposes...
| every link in the chain slows things down, and they seem to
| be working _very_ effectively, which implies few links
| indeed) seem to me to be clearly the most interesting and
| effective facet of this war. Pity we may never get the story
| of what 's actually going on, because it seems to be a really
| remarkable effort.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The impression I get is that the US feeds them satellite
| info on the general disposition of Russian forces, but the
| individual targeting seems to be done by drones, some of
| which are consumer-grade. They seem _incredibly_ accurate.
|
| It seems unlikely that there is direct US involvement - the
| US doesn't want that and it would slow the Ukranians down.
|
| They seem to have their own networked fire control:
| https://en.defence-
| ua.com/events/digitization_of_ukrainian_a... , and have
| said that Starlink was critical, after the Russian
| cyberattack bricked a lot of satellite terminals.
|
| They even have a local drone startup:
| https://interestingengineering.com/ukraines-combat-drone-
| the...
| trhway wrote:
| >the individual targeting seems to be done by drones,
| some of which are consumer-grade. They seem incredibly
| accurate.
|
| a very impressive example https://www.reddit.com/r/Combat
| Footage/comments/tttrzs/ukrai...
|
| Wrt. original article - Moskva's air-defenses weren't
| upgraded during last modernization (completed 2020) due
| to budget. They upgraded its cruise missiles which got
| land attack capabilities though - that tells about
| Russian priorities. The old air-defenses - S-300 and OSA
| - had issues against such a low flying missiles like
| Neptunes (i.e. 2-4 meters) though AK-630 CIWS could have
| potentially shot down those missile if activated on time
| by the info from the main radar. There are also
| unconfirmed reports that a Bayraktar was hanging around
| and took away a lot of attention and probably took down
| the main S-300 radar antenna of the Moskva right before
| the attack. The Bayraktar also was doing the mid-course
| guidance of the missiles thus allowing to not use the
| main radar of the Neptune battery thus avoiding the
| battery position detection by Russia.
| syntheweave wrote:
| The irony is that as warfare increasingly goes in the
| direction of technological signals and controls, the
| meaning of "direct involvement" diffuses such that
| belligerents cannot be pinned down on the nature or
| degree of their involvement. If the US provided people
| that deployed in Ukraine to do reconnaissance, that would
| be "direct". But if it's satellite data or drones,
| they're shielded from blame; and yet, the generals would
| in almost every case prefer more technology over more
| troops, because it automates away a slew of logistical
| and operational issues and gives them more options
| moment-to-moment, even if it creates a larger dependency
| on having the best tech.
|
| If the trend towards use of technology continues in this
| way, future wars between nations will be stopped before
| they go kinetic by reframing the entire coordination
| problem that causes them into something addressed through
| information warfare instead. At worst, you might see low-
| level stochastic violence.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Many people think that radar won WW2. The US used radar-guided
| anti-aircraft guns, which doubled their accuracy (in essence
| doubling the number of guns). Flak guns used radar proximity
| fuses in the shells. Ship big guns used radar targeting. And,
| of course, radar made for long range detection of where the
| enemy was.
|
| In the Gulf War, when the enemy fired a shell, radar was used
| to calculate where it was fired from, and that location got a
| radar-directed shell directly onto it.
|
| Incredibly effective.
| jdkee wrote:
| Proximity fuses vastly increased the effectiveness of anti-
| aircraft fire and the story of their development is
| fascinating.
|
| See https://www.historynet.com/proximity-fuze/
| jhallenworld wrote:
| They were impressive: a four tube electronic device that
| could survive being fired from a gun.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Cryptonomicon (a fictional book) basically argues
| cryptography won the war.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's not an unreasonable point of view. It certainly played
| a large role in the victory at Midway, and the defeat of
| the U-Boot campaign.
| Bud wrote:
| This is all very fascinating as a minor theoretical
| discussion, I'm sure, but we all know that WWII was
| actually won by Wolverine and Captain America. ;)
| trothamel wrote:
| The best discussion of this I've heared was from a docent
| at the National Crypologic Museum, located on the NSA
| grounds. His version was that the war was won by those
| fighting it, but if it hadn't been for good intelligence,
| they could have fought just as hard and been less
| effective.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Radar won the tactical battlefield. Intelligence won the
| strategic war.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Industrial capacity won WW2.
|
| 90% of the merchant vessels in the world belonged to the
| British.
|
| The British Empire and the the USA were the 2 largest
| economies in the world.
|
| Once the USA entered the war the outcome was not in
| doubt, even if the German army hadn't been given mission
| impossible vs. the Russians - although if they hadn't
| then the Russians would have attacked them.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Also access to oil was a big deal. Hitler attacking the
| Soviet Union was at least partially to secure access to
| oil.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Counter artillery is incredible effective. When I was in the
| army they told us to never be close to artillery firing as it
| was expected that the location would be determined by radar
| from the shell and you would expect an answer very quickly.
|
| Note that Ukraine now has gotten new artillery from France
| that has longer range than apparently anything the Russians
| have.
| kens wrote:
| I keep a mental list of things that are claimed to have won
| WW2. Some of them are radar, cryptography, oil, the atomic
| bomb, industrial production, economic power, Colossus, the
| Eastern front, hydroelectric power, air power, and rubber.
| (I'm sure I'm forgetting lots.) My conclusion is that you can
| pick just about anything and explain how it won the war.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > I'm sure I'm forgetting lots
|
| Logistics
| ilamont wrote:
| _Shortly after the sinking, reports emerged that a U.S. Navy
| P-8A Poseidon was in the area before the attack, suggesting
| that the U.S. may have provided detailed targeting information
| to the Ukrainians to target the ship.
|
| Carlson said while the U.S. could give Ukrainian forces a
| general idea of where the ship was, it could not provide
| necessary tracking information to the Neptunes because P-8s
| datalinks were incompatible._
|
| https://news.usni.org/2022/05/05/warship-moskva-was-blind-to...
| ckozlowski wrote:
| That's probably where the reported TB2 came into play. The
| U.S. gives them general information, but it's more than
| enough for the Ukrainians to vector in one of their drones,
| which they likely do have those links for, and feed that to
| the missile battery.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I thought the TB2's were used as decoys? Apparently Russian
| ships can only target in a 180 degree arc, so send some
| TB2's highly visible but out of range on one side and send
| some ocean skimming missiles in from the other side.
| exabrial wrote:
| Targeting information no, but that's a distraction in the
| news to downplay the significance.
|
| * Boat moving slowly? Check.
|
| * Boat oriented in correct direction for broadside attack at
| the waterline? Check.
|
| * Short range defense radars down? Check.
|
| * Other defense assets out of the area? Check.
|
| "Ok bring up your targeting radars and fire"
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Every part of that whole operation was significant.
|
| But the core of the article still stays - smaller weaponry
| is becoming much more effective and in any future conflict
| will be critical.
|
| We can see it through the centuries - from big castles and
| heavy armoured knights, to lightly armoured mobile units
| and temporary fortifications.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| So, the hypothesis is that _both_ the Russian and Ukrainian
| stories are accurate? The ship was disabled by fire, and
| then attacked when weakened?
| exhilaration wrote:
| No, I think the hypothesis is that the ship's short-range
| radar was disabled due to crew errors or equipment
| obsolescence, something which the P-8A Poseidon could
| detect and relay to the Ukrainians. That provided a
| window during which Neptune missiles could be
| successfully used. The "fire" started after the missiles
| struck the ship.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Anti-platform weapons have met their match with countermeasures
| like the Israeli Trophy system against ATGMs which brought tanks
| back into warfare in full force. Anti drone weapons are
| everywhere. Aircraft have stealth and DIRCMs.
|
| The problem with Moskva was tactical - it was a sitting duck
| without adequate protection. I wouldn't read too much into it.
| pueblito wrote:
| bnralt wrote:
| The guy also blamed the Anders Breivik atack on Muslims when it
| first happened, then tried to stealth edit when news about the
| attacker came out to make it seem like he wasn't saying it was
| Muslims, then got called out for the stealth edit and said he
| had actually wrote that it was an edit but the computer screwed
| everything up[1]. I was always kind of surprised that this was
| treated as no big deal.
|
| Also worth noting the unsettling fact that it seems almost all
| mention of this has disappeared from the internet (at least,
| the easily accessible internet). I was only able to find his
| refutation of the criticism below (which shares the basic facts
| of the above, but leaves out other criticisms like edits of the
| original piece that still weren't treated as such). Sometimes
| it seems like people have a better time finding bad things a
| random person said on Twitter a decade ago than acts of
| malfeasance from a major publication a decade ago.
|
| [Edit: Finally found an old blog post laying out the issue well
| by digging around Twitter and find a tweet from some years ago.
| Couldn't find it at all through Google, even when limiting the
| results to the week it happened and looking through every
| single result Google gave . Check it the blog post here[2].]
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110809051022mp_/http://www.the...
|
| [2] https://flapola.blogspot.com/2011/07/no-shame-at-
| atlantic.ht...
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents -
| they change more specific topics into more generic ones, which
| makes threads more repetitive and therefore less interesting.
| In the case of ideological topics, more generic also means more
| inflammatory, and we're trying to avoid bursting into flames
| here.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| (In case anyone's worried, this point holds regardless of which
| ideology the tangent is about, and the above is just a
| procedural comment and not a statement either way about the
| underlying ideologies.)
| trasz wrote:
| While the part at the end - about Ukraine - is clearly
| ideological blurb, the main part of that comment isn't
| ideological at all: it documents a somewhat shady track
| record of the source.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| He also arrogated to himself the right to decide what anti-
| Semitism was when Maureen Dowd called someone a "neocon puppet
| master"
| SilverBirch wrote:
| It seems almost bizarre that someone would try to take lessons on
| the US military from the Moskva. I mean.... you can but I think
| the lessons would be more along the lines of "Make sure you have
| well maintained military equipment with well trained personnel".
|
| All the reporting I've seen suggests that the Moskva was very
| old, wasn't refurbished very well, and even with these big
| caveats something must have gone seriously wrong for it to be
| sunk in the way it was.
|
| So taking that and drawing larger conclusions seems strange.
| mhh__ wrote:
| This war is like crack cocaine for the twitter contrarian mob.
|
| They'll complain other people are just following the current
| thing, but they absolutely love it too.
| SamBam wrote:
| Yes, most of the consensus I've seen is that even if a modern
| ship somehow failed to intercept those missiles (which it
| probably wouldn't have), a modern and well-trained/motivated
| _crew_ should have been able to immediately shut down the
| flooding and damaged caused by two comparatively small
| explosions, and prevented the ship from sinking. An entire ship
| sinking because of that level of damage is what was most mind-
| boggling, from what I understand.
|
| Regardless, the point of the article is less about the
| specifics of the Moskva, so I think it's a fair hook.
| Sharlin wrote:
| If the missiles managed to blow the Moskva's ammo, that would
| certainly be enough to explain the sinking. That would've
| been a lucky hit however.
| nimbius wrote:
| navies in general are in a very pondersome position in the 21st
| century. Most missile technology has significantly outpaced
| their ability to operate uncontested in blue water. this has
| led to endless, aimless voyages, rattling the chains of
| kissingers soft power to evermore capable adversaries who
| simply arent as interested as they were 50 years ago.
|
| These fleets are expensive to maintain. without a purpose like
| the cold war which afforded constant meaningful training, they
| become little more than a floating maritime exercise in
| cleaning and cooking. The accident rate of the US navy in the
| past decade serves as far more of a teachable resource than the
| Moskva.
| XorNot wrote:
| This would be a mistake: since the Millennium Challenge war
| games [1] its been apparent the US is making some very bold
| (read: dangerous) assumptions about the safety of their fleet
| operating in coastal areas, and a Moskva-like outcome was
| something which was essentially predicted by them.
|
| Ukraine (with US support most likely) essentially pulled off
| this sort of operation in the exact sort of environment it was
| expected. The biggest distinction is the Ukranians have a very
| limited number of weapons in play to use on operations like
| this.
|
| At the very least the US needs to assume that in limited scale
| regional wars like this, the presumption of ideal warfighting
| conditions won't exist and you might be dealing with someone
| overtly receiving a lot of state backing - i.e. the US can't
| reasonably sanction China.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
| ericmay wrote:
| > about the safety of their fleet operating in coastal areas
|
| > i.e. the US can't reasonably sanction China.
|
| Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume you're linking
| these ideas together.
|
| From a military standpoint, at least today, the US can use
| its blue water navy to patrol and shut down shipments of
| resources going _in_ to China pretty well. You don 't need to
| get near the Chinese coast to do that. The US also has no
| interest in any sort of land warfare in China, so ultimately
| the strategy is containment. That's why the US (and Biden
| announced this again today) would absolutely go to war with
| China over Taiwan, because for China to take Taiwan is to
| break out of this containment zone and basically eliminate
| most of the effectiveness of the US Navy in the Pacific as it
| would relate to China, and undoubtedly end the US as global
| hegemon.
|
| I think people assume that the US Navy has to be close to
| China in order to do damage and therefore naval ships are
| screwed because China will launch missles. While I do think
| the US Navy would conduct operations and quickly learn what
| exact capabilities the Chinese have, I don't think their
| effectiveness is limited to near-shore operations. Frankly,
| the US can shut down all maritime trade for China and now all
| of a sudden the Chinese are trying to ship in food and goods
| and energy products (oil and coal) via road, which I don't
| think is currently feasible.
|
| But I also don't think China is foolish enough to actually
| try and invade Taiwan, because that would be like Ukraine,
| except with the US actively fighting. Some suggest China may
| try and launch a limited nuclear strike on a location like
| Guam, but I think that's very dangerous because the US would
| no doubt retaliate on mainland Chinese military assets and it
| either ends right then and there with both sides calling a
| truce (and China not invading Taiwan) or it would continue to
| escalate into a limited nuclear exchange, which would be
| catastrophic. China doesn't and won't have the military
| strength to take over Taiwan unless it's willing to take
| insane losses, like Russia is now (but worse) in Ukraine.
|
| * I also have a pet conspiracy theory that the war in Iraq
| was launched to warm up the US military and give it practice
| with combined arms tactics against an enemy that can fight
| back, but not too hard.
| paganel wrote:
| > (oil and coal) via road, which I don't think is currently
| feasible
|
| They'll be able to ship oil via rail and pipes from Western
| Siberia and the Russian Far East pretty soon, which,
| granted, is not as cheap as sea transport but is good
| enough. I think they have enough coal available inside
| China's borders.
|
| I still cannot understand what the US strategists think
| when they're throwing the Russians (and their huge mineral
| resources) directly into China's hands. On this Kissinger
| is of course right, i.e. he mentioned recently that back in
| the day the US was careful not to diplomatically "fight"
| against both China and the USSR/Russia at the same time,
| for good reason.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| > They'll be able to ship oil via rail and pipes from
| Western Siberia and the Russian Far East pretty soon
|
| Not even close to that. Transsiberian railways are
| already operating at full capacity, mostly due to re-
| routed coal exports. Both rail and pipes will take a
| decade to build to re-route supplies to China from sea to
| land.
| ericmay wrote:
| > I still cannot understand what the US strategists think
| when they're throwing the Russians
|
| US and NATO and the West gave Russia all the opportunity
| it needed to integrate and they refused.
|
| Also the resources don't matter much. Ok so China buys
| them cheaply from Russia, and then the US buys them
| cheaply from other producers, and China keeps making
| products. What's the issue?
| paganel wrote:
| Russia does not want to "integrate" (i.e. adopt Western
| "values" for the benefit of those Western countries),
| Putin has said that out in the open back in Munich, in
| 2007, I thought this global hegemonic thing that the US
| has had been left out somewhere in Iraq or/and
| Afghanistan.
|
| > and then the US buys them cheaply from other producers,
| and China keeps making products. What's the issue?
|
| Afaik the US doesn't produce as much, it's China that
| does. In case of a future proxy war between China and the
| US cutting access to mineral resources might have been
| one of the main tactics adopted by the US. It's easier to
| do that when China brings in its resources via marine
| transport (it's a well established fact that the US
| dominates the planetary oceans), way harder to do that if
| said transport of resources is carried out "inside" a
| huge landmass like Eurasia.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Russia does not want to "integrate" (i.e. adopt Western
| "values" for the benefit of those Western countries),
| Putin has said that out in the open back in Munich, in
| 2007,
|
| Then I guess I'm confused about your comment:
|
| > I still cannot understand what the US strategists think
| when they're throwing the Russians (and their huge
| mineral resources) directly into China's hands.
|
| It seems you understand yea? Russia doesn't want
| themselves or their minerals in the hands of the West.
|
| > I thought this global hegemonic thing that the US has
| had been left out somewhere in Iraq or/and Afghanistan.
|
| No, it's just continued to evolve. Moving out of
| Afghanistan for example left a mess in the backyard of
| Iran, Pakistan, and China. Iraq so far has been a flawed,
| but growing in success endeavor.
|
| > Afaik the US doesn't produce as much, it's China that
| does.
|
| Sure, but that's not a lack of ability.
|
| > In case of a future proxy war between China and the US
| cutting access to mineral resources might have been one
| of the main tactics adopted by the US. It's easier to do
| that when China brings in its resources via marine
| transport (it's a well established fact that the US
| dominates the planetary oceans), way harder to do that if
| said transport of resources is carried out "inside" a
| huge landmass like Eurasia.
|
| I think there'd be a direct war. But I'm not sure you're
| disagreeing with me? The point I made was that the US
| Navy dominates the oceans and would block marine
| transport to China. In order for China to pivot into a
| defensive mode here it would have to spend a _lot_ of
| noticeable money on infrastructure development for a
| future war that may or may not occur depending on its own
| actions. If China preemptively launched an attack and
| didn 't build out this infrastructure, then it would be
| blockaded. If it did build out this infrastructure but
| didn't attack then it spent a lot of money for no good
| reason. Certainly the option is to try and build these
| networks in case of launching an attack, but that would
| happen regardless of US action.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Currently PRC can still hit US basing in SK or JP and
| trigger US art5 tier security umbrella forcing them to
| fight within 1st island chain and range of strong PRC A2AD.
| Unless US choose to forgo commitment and obligations which
| is self defeating.
|
| There's also PRC signalling developements of their prompt
| global strike program, using ICMBs to hit any target around
| the world = sinking US naval assets in port. Keep in mind
| every USN capital asset has to dock for maintainence
| eventually and current fleets are sustained by less than a
| handful of TAEO ships that enables more than a few days of
| continuous operation, which will make even distant blockade
| unviable. Sealift command / auxiliary force has ~30 fast
| support/oiler/ammunition ships total for all of USN.
| Reality is short/medium term PRC rocketry developments has
| potential destroy not just blue water naval projection but
| also extends inland to other strategic targets (i.e.
| strategic bombers) that make entire CONUS vunerable to
| deter attacks on mainland PRC targets. Ultimate goal is
| mutual conventional vunerability, which arguably already
| exists with cyberwarfare - US can blocade PRC, but no
| telling if PRC cyberwarfare can disrupt comparable % of US
| industrial production. IMO Blockade advocates US can starve
| PRC with impunity without realizing CONUS has become
| existentially vunerable in a other domains. Like stop PRC
| food/fuel imports and don't be surprised if energy grids
| start breaking down or DRMed agri equipement stops
| functioning during harvest season.
|
| >except with the US actively fighting
|
| Historically and fundementally, PRC taking TW has always
| been an exercise in overcoming US military. The point when
| PRC chooses to take TW, it would be when PLA has eroded
| ability for US to intervene by which time defeating US
| military intervention is as significant a political
| victory. Current PRC military modernization and aquisitions
| isn't built with confronting TW in mind, but US military
| and assumed US intervention. Frankly if US can be deterred
| or defeated then taking TW would be easy simply because it
| opens many other options like blockade, quarantine, siege
| etc. Then it will be a question of whether US is foolish
| enough to defend TW and risk losing her global hegemony or
| safe face and allow it to be an domestic Chinese civil war
| matter.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Currently PRC can still hit US basing in SK or JP and
| trigger US art5 tier security umbrella forcing them to
| fight within 1st island chain and range of strong PRC
| A2AD.
|
| But this is self-defeating for a few reasons:
|
| 1. The forces in South Korea and Japan are already there,
| and now you've guaranteed a war with whoever you just
| attacked _and_ the US.
|
| 2. Attacking these forces doesn't result in territorial
| gains so now you're just lobbying missiles at countries
| which can lob them back.
|
| 3. An attack on South Korea or Japan will undoubtedly
| result in a severe backlash globally for China,
| regardless of whether or not they only attacked US bases
| (which will surely kill civilians anyway).
|
| > There's also PRC signalling developements of their
| prompt global strike program, using ICMBs to hit any
| target around the world = sinking US naval assets in port
|
| Which they won't do, because the US can't tell if these
| ICBMs are nuclear weapons nor where exactly they are
| going. So this will almost guarantee a nuclear response,
| which is probably not desirable for China.
|
| > Keep in mind ...
|
| First, US intelligence will see movement of Chinese
| forces, activation of units, missiles being prepared,
| etc, and then the ships can just leave port and/or move
| out of range. Outside of these hypersonic missiles,
| others can be shot down or avoided. Similarly to Russia's
| idiotic invasion of Ukraine, the US and allies will see
| Chinese activities coming well before they have any good
| position to attack.
|
| > Reality is short/medium term PRC rocketry developments
| has potential destroy not just blue water naval
| projection but also extends inland to other strategic
| targets (i.e. strategic bombers) that make entire CONUS
| vunerable to deter attacks on mainland PRC targets.
|
| This doesn't make sense for a few reasons. First, Chinese
| rockets can't destroy US blue water naval assets in the
| general way you are speaking. Second, the US forces in
| places like Guam would not just leave the strategic
| bombers sitting around. China _could_ launch a surprise
| attack and hit targets, but that results in a response
| against Chinese forces, and the US can reposition forces
| away from these bases to locations such as Australia or
| Hawaii.
|
| > IMO Blockade advocates US can starve PRC with impunity
| without realizing CONUS has become existentially
| vunerable in a other domains.
|
| Third, an attack on the continental United States would
| probably result in a some really crazy stuff that I don't
| think China is interested in aggravating.
|
| > Like stop PRC food/fuel imports and don't be surprised
| if energy grids start breaking down or DRMed agri
| equipement stops functioning during harvest season.
| Ultimate goal is mutual conventional vunerability, which
| arguably already exists with cyberwarfare - US can
| blocade PRC, but no telling if PRC cyberwarfare can
| disrupt comparable % of US industrial production.
|
| Eh it can be hacked. Nothing to worry about there. Also
| cyber warfare really treads the line between conventional
| and escalatory. If China shuts down US power plants, the
| US will respond in kind or may further escalate.
|
| > every USN capital asset has to dock for maintainence
|
| Yes but this is usually preventive maintenance, and they
| don't dock at the same time. These ships dock in a
| rotational program so that the US maintains a consistent
| "coverage" based on strategic interests. That's why there
| are so many ships. Also since most of this maintenance
| tends to be retrofits and such, these ships can be
| redeployed quickly in an emergency.
|
| > Historically and fundementally, PRC taking TW has
| always been an exercise in overcoming US military.
|
| Agreed, however the US has shored up allies in the region
| because of China's aggressive international policies
| which have scared smaller countries into allying with the
| US.
|
| > The point when PRC chooses to take TW, it would be when
| PLA has eroded ability for US to intervene by which time
| defeating US military intervention is as significant a
| political victory. Current PRC military modernization and
| aquisitions isn't built with confronting TW in mind, but
| US military and assumed US intervention. Frankly if US
| can be deterred or defeated then taking TW would be easy
| simply because it opens many other options like blockade,
| quarantine, siege etc. Then it will be a question of
| whether US is foolish enough to defend TW and risk losing
| her global hegemony or safe face and allow it to be an
| domestic Chinese civil war matter.
|
| I think China really screwed up and has no chance of
| reunifying now. Taiwan is going to continue to buy arms
| and the past decade or so of being lulled to sleep by
| what was a peaceful Chinese rise to power was shaken by
| poor diplomacy, backing Russia diplomatically (though not
| in practice), and seizing Hong Kong. It'll just cost too
| many lives, which is why it won't happen. The question is
| whether or not China decides that it thinks the US is
| weak (similar to Russia's miscalculation regarding
| Ukraine) and how badly the war escalates. Frankly, the
| best path forward for all parties is probably the status
| quo as China can saber-rattle over Taiwan but not
| actually fight. A war is very difficult to control.
| Anything can happen.
|
| Honestly the easiest and simplest way out of this is for
| China to just leave Taiwan alone. But egos and such will
| just drag us all into a stupid war that solves nothing
| for anyone. I would say the easiest and simplest way is
| for Taiwan to just be part of China again, but if the
| people don't want that then it's not as easy as it is for
| China to leave Taiwan alone.
| kderbyma wrote:
| Atlantic is the war mongers journal of choice after the economist
| lol
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's annoying when articles like this blindly repeat
| misinformation:
|
| > On March 9, 1862, the Union warship Monitor met its Confederate
| counterpart, Virginia. After a four-hour exchange of fire, the
| two fought to a draw. It was the first battle of ironclads. In
| one day, every wooden ship of the line of every naval power
| became immediately obsolete.
|
| Ouch, false. The ironclad ships that the US built were what
| became known as "[river] monitors"--they were at best barely
| seaworthy, since they had no freeboard worth speaking of, so any
| sea that was mildly stalled would cause the ships to founder. In
| no way were they ships-of-the-line, or capable of threatening
| ships-of-the-line, and the first ironclad ship-of-the-line would
| have been HMS Warrior, built _before_ the US ironclads.
|
| > On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. If the
| battle of the ironclads settled once and for all the wood-versus-
| iron debate, Japanese carrier-based aircraft settled the
| battleship-versus-carrier debate by sinking the cream of
| America's battleship fleet in a single morning.
|
| Even worse than the previous paragraph. Aircraft carriers did not
| render battleships obsolete at Pearl Harbor, which involved a
| fleet of _old_ battleships at a state of low readiness. If the
| Japanese thought battleships obsolete, why did they bring them to
| the Battle of Midway 6 months later?
|
| One of the things that I think is poorly comprehended by much of
| the lay public is that military technology really is "part of a
| complete package". There isn't a single technology that beats
| everything else; instead, it tends to end up closer to a rock-
| paper-scissors scenario where it turns out you need _all_ of the
| weapon systems to avoid being defeated by one of them. For
| example, in WW1-ish naval warfare, a large capital ship like a
| battleship is vulnerable to torpedoes, which means it needs a
| fleet screen of light units to avoid the torpedo threat, but
| those units are vulnerable to the powerful capabilities of
| battleships, which requires capital ships of their own to
| threaten.
|
| What makes technology obsolete isn't "this can be countered by
| something else," it's "this capability can be provided by
| something better."
| Hayvok wrote:
| The seaworthiness of _Monitor_ or _Merrimac_ was immaterial to
| the contemporary discussion around ironclads. It was a
| transformative moment. There were plenty of sea-worthy
| ironclads already in European fleets but there _had not been a
| battle yet between two ironclads_. As usual with militaries,
| there had been lots of debate around how effective the new
| weapons system would be.
|
| _Merrimac_ sailed into Hampton Roads (near Chesapeake Bay) and
| wasted two pretty good wooden Union frigates. The Union then
| sent in the _Monitor_. The two ships spent _four hours_
| pounding away at each other at _point blank range_ , and still
| managed to steam away under their own power. The cannonballs
| just bounced off the armor. Two ships that, as you said, were
| barely sea worthy. (Some contemporary writers said the same -
| not a fair test!)
|
| "News of the action at Hampton Roads took the British public,
| press, and Parliament by storm. Large wooden steamers were
| clearly helpless against smaller armour-plated foes. Ironclads
| were fighting ironclads. Perhaps most significantly, the
| Americans had produced them in far less time and expense than
| either England or France." [1]
|
| Lord Lyons (British ambassador the U.S.) wrote to Lord Russel
| (Foreign Secretary), "This is, I suppose, the severest test to
| which the system of coating vessels in iron armour has yet been
| exposed."
|
| Admiral Milne, head of the British North Atlantic Squadron was
| "agog" at the results. Commander Hewett of HMS _Rinaldo_
| actually watched the battle and had the same reaction.
|
| What was proved was that the weapons system of wooden ships-of-
| the-line was obsolete. Ironclads were now conclusively the
| future.
|
| [1] "Seagoing purposes indispensable to the defence of this
| country:" Policy Pitfalls of Great Britain's Early Ironclads
| Hayvok wrote:
| > Even worse than the previous paragraph. Aircraft carriers did
| not render battleships obsolete at Pearl Harbor, which involved
| a fleet of old battleships at a state of low readiness. If the
| Japanese thought battleships obsolete, why did they bring them
| to the Battle of Midway 6 months later?
|
| Look at the Battle of Taranto in 1940. The British sent a bunch
| of old, WW1 _biplanes_ against the Italian fleet in port. Three
| battleships, a heavy cruiser, and two destroyers were disabled.
| The British lost two planes.
|
| Three days after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese hit two of the most
| powerful battleships in the Royal Navy (Prince of Wales &
| Repulse). Both battleships sunk, at a loss of six Japanese
| planes. Those ships were _sailing_ and fighting back - they
| didn 't fair any better than the ships at Pearl Harbor or
| Taranto.
|
| Battleships were now obviously sitting ducks without
| accompanying airpower. They were obsolete in that they were no
| longer the ship around which the rest of the fleet was
| organized. The aircraft carrier was the now the most important
| ship in the fleet.
| outworlder wrote:
| There's also the sinking of the Bismarck. Largest battleship
| created by the Germans. It's fate was sealed when the rudder
| was disabled by biplane torpedo bombers launched from British
| aircraft carrier Ark Royal.
|
| It did get sunk by battleships but only after it couldn't run
| anymore.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I think the more interesting part to think about is drones which
| were involved in this sinking. This is a very rapidly evolving
| area of warfare.
|
| Right now we're using drones like we used early WW1 aircraft. As
| spotters for long range weapons and very occasionally as direct
| bombers. We haven't yet developed drones that shoot down other
| drones cheaply. So we can spot enemy formations, ships, tanks
| etc. without any cost effective way to stop the small spotter
| drones.
|
| I see this changing soon. We will soon have small cheap drones
| that will take down nearby spotter drones and the balance will
| change yet again.
|
| So don't throw away old tactics and equipment just yet. There's a
| gap where we have no reasonable way to stop drones that will soon
| be addressed.
| toss1 wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted - this entire operation
| _should_ cause a major rethink of military operations based on
| new technology.
|
| The proximal goal of any weapons system or operation is to
| deliver live ordinance to the target, preferably at minimal
| risk to those doing the delivering.
|
| From WWI to WWII, the progress seemed to be to deliver larger
| volumes of ordinance, with some increases in accuracy. Since
| then, it's been longer range and higher accuracy, to the point
| now that we often need only a pair of 'smart bombs' or JDAMs to
| take out a target that used to take multiple full bomber loads.
| With highly accurate targeting, we can even deliver non-
| explosive ordinance just to minimize collateral damage. Of
| course Javelins, Switchblades,etc. make it close to 1-shot-one-
| kill on tanks and other heavily armored vehicles that used to
| be tough to kill.
|
| Following the trend further, drones and AI recognition
| technology seem likely to make this even more effective. I'm
| sure everyone has seen the Slaughterbots video [1], but much
| loser in technology is killing swarms of small bots
| specifically targeting enemy equipment, and the loitering
| switchblade is already here - just add some recognition, maybe
| it recognizes, operator confirms, and the drone tracks it for
| the optimal strike moment. Add the swarm then seeks and
| destroys other examples of the same vehicle.... Small self-
| contained flying ordinance delivery drones being disgorged from
| larger carrier drones or aircraft - already in design & testing
| stages. This _IS_ all going to change and fast, and the smart
| militaries are taking a LOT of notes on this battle.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterbots
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Exactly. Drones only look powerful because they're a recent
| innovation (in terms of military procurement timelines).
|
| They're being shot down with air defense missiles designed for
| helicopters, because that's the cheapest option we currently
| have.
|
| Once RFPs, responses, and projects work their way to
| completion, everyone will have anti-drone air defense missiles
| that, while still expensive, will be better cost:capability
| calibrated.
|
| The real difference that drone warfare seems to make is in
| _persistence_ of ISR, which is why so much funding seems to be
| going into stealthy HALE platforms with stealthy networking and
| sensors (point to point and LPIR).
|
| The correct lesson to take away from Ukraine seems to be that
| future battlefields will have key assets (tanks, ships, supply
| stores, HQs, etc) under threat to a greater depth behind front
| lines. And not because of a capability change (i.e. a drone can
| get there with a weapon), but because of a visibility change (a
| drone can loiter and identify the asset).
|
| Creating a smoking hole in the ground at an arbitrary location
| is a capability most advanced militaries have had since the
| 1990s.
|
| What's changed is the ability to find something valuable to
| place that hole on, at all times, anywhere, at a cost you can
| organically equip smaller units with.
| datpuz wrote:
| Meanwhile, spotter drones are getting smaller and more
| stealthy. How do you detect, much less shoot down, a drone
| the size of a small bird or even an insect?
| bbarnett wrote:
| My only concern here, is a mini-nuke on board.
|
| Ever C4 inside a grasshopper (as the grasshopper also need
| space to move), is going to be tiny.
|
| Even if you made the grasshopper out of solid, but
| explosive plastic, a mini nuke would be far scarier.
|
| I wonder, what the minimal size of a nuke is. I'm sure we
| have limits, due to materials, explosive force to cause the
| compression wave, etc, but I wonder the theoretical limited
| mini size.
|
| I mean, what if an earwig could enter your ear, into your
| canal, then go boom, and turn your brain to mush?
| philipkglass wrote:
| There's a minimum critical mass for fission weapons that
| means they are never going to be earwig-size [1]. Fusion
| weapons require a fission trigger so they are no smaller
| than the smallest fission weapon. The only earwig-size
| nuclear explosive that might theoretically exist is one
| based on antimatter, but with present and currently
| foreseeable technology that is the stuff of science
| fiction.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_
| mass_of... Note that explosive compression lowers the
| critical mass, but it soon requires more than one gram of
| high explosive to trim the fissile material budget by one
| gram, so minimal-size devices are still in the range of
| kilograms.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| The most obvious use case for a grasshopper/earwig size
| explosive is as a self-assembling munition. Users dial in
| the critical mass necessary for destruction of the target
| and program the members of the munition group to
| identify, track, and assemble at the target's weak point,
| insuring that at least one of the explosive initiators
| (primers) makes it into the assembled munition and once
| their internal mesh network confirms that critical mass,
| primer, etc are in place, a detonation is initiated.
|
| The individual units could travel a circuitous route to
| the actual target without raising much suspicion and once
| in the immediate vicinity they could be programmed to
| rapidly converge on the target.
|
| That's how I see it. With self-assembling munitions you
| have less waste of resources, you can target individuals
| in a command structure or individual critical components
| of their military infrastructure and you could do it with
| things that could be made to be relatively inconspicuous
| so that an observer could see them as a normal part of
| the environment. Until they converge of course and if
| this happens fast enough it can be difficult for the
| targeted entity to unravel exactly how it all went down.
|
| Future war looks scary to me.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Futurist predictions tend to most often be wrong because
| they fail to account for easier / cheaper ways of
| obtaining the same effect. This seems like such a case.
|
| Why are you self-assembling anything when you can park a
| remotely operated machine gun along someone's driving
| route?
| doodlebugging wrote:
| >Why are you self-assembling anything...
|
| This just provides another tool in the inventory. You're
| forcing the adversary to plan for strategies to mitigate
| attacks like this. Everyone already knows about remote-
| controlled machine guns and those who feel threatened by
| the prospect of having something like this used against
| them are actively working to mitigate the threat.
|
| With a self-assembling munition you have a new, novel
| method of conducting an attack that literally forces an
| adversary to use a zero trust threat model 24 hours a day
| against every little thing that moves once the adversary
| understands how it happened.
|
| When the grass can suddenly come alive with dormant,
| self-assembling munitions that have suddenly detected
| that a target on their list is in the vicinity then it
| adds another layer of complexity to force protection
| since both human and material assets could be targeted at
| any time from any direction by something like a bug-sized
| bot that may not even register in your consciousness
| until it is too late.
|
| That's all I'm thinking.
| jeffdn wrote:
| During the Cold War, both the United States and the
| Soviet Union had nuclear artillery shells for 155mm and
| 152mm howitzers, respectively -- those would have a yield
| of about 100 tons on the low end, up to 2 kilotons on the
| high end. Higher-caliber artillery pieces, like a 203mm
| piece, could have a shell on the order of 10 to 15
| kilotons, roughly approaching the Hiroshima bomb's power.
|
| The American W82 155mm nuclear artillery shell[0] weighed
| 43kg (95lb), was 860 mm (34 in) long, and had a yield of
| 2 kilotons -- equivalent to 500 full WW2 heavy bomber
| loads.
|
| These shells (as well as bombs and warheads with similar
| yields, carried by planes and missiles, respectively) are
| called tactical nuclear weapons -- meant for use on the
| battlefield, to break up enemy formations. Their blast
| radius is relatively small. It was theorized that if the
| Cold War went hot and a conventional WW3 broke out, if
| the Soviet Union was pushing NATO forces back, then the
| Americans would authorize the use of tactical nuclear
| warheads. This would likely cause a spiral of escalation,
| up to a strategic nuclear exchange.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W82
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If a robotic earwig can make it into your ear, it can
| kill you with milligrams of simple poison.
|
| Critical mass for plutonium is 10 KG. A nuke needs to be
| supercritical, plus the mechanism of the bomb itself.
| Smallest nuke ever built is 50kg, https://en.m.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_devic...
|
| Smallest nukes were phased out by all major nations
| because there is too much risk of them getting lost,
| falling into wrong hands, being used without
| authorisation, etc. Several 'big' nukes were already lost
| and never found
| ajross wrote:
| > I see this changing soon. We will soon have small cheap
| drones that will take down nearby spotter drones and the
| balance will change yet again.
|
| That's hard to imagine. You can do the spotting job with a $400
| consumer device. No piece of autonomous weapons delivery
| hardware in the modern world exists with a price tag less than
| 100x that amount. Drones are simply too cheap.
|
| If there's a reasonable countermeasure, look to ECM (though
| frankly modern broadband wifi is remarkably resistant there
| too, given all the "jamming" present in modern coffee
| establishments!) and not drone killers.
| baq wrote:
| for quadrocopters, you want a hunter-killer drone with some
| kind of a net or tape to jam the propeller.
|
| for plane-like drones... guess something similar. gliders may
| be super hard to spot and will still be somewhat effective
| without a working propeller, so tough luck.
| Steltek wrote:
| Net or tape? In a war? Why not suicide your drone into the
| target drone? If you want something reusable or longer
| range, a shotgun-like apparatus.
|
| Gliders will be easier to spot because they won't be able
| to actively navigate through trees for cover the way the
| way a more nimble, powered drone could.
| baq wrote:
| A suicidal drone is a guided missile. There are many
| options on the market for these already. They're
| universally way more expensive than necessary to combat a
| cheap swarm. You want something that won't bankrupt you
| while you're mounting a defense.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Ramming seems the most practical and cost effective
| solution.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Have you ever tried to catch a sparrow with a drine?
| Imagine how hard it is to hit a target that is actively
| avoiding you
| robotnikman wrote:
| A good old fashioned flak cannon would do the trick, except
| now with modern targeting systems
| trashtester wrote:
| What I've imagined for the past decade or so, are spotter
| drones that are about the same size as the drones they are
| design to shoot down. These spotter drones could be built
| much like WW1/WW2 aircraft, just much smaller, with top
| speeds between 50-200knots for the smaller versions.
|
| As a weapon, they could carry weapons similar to
| submachineguns, shotguns or light marchine guns, depending on
| the size of the target. Add an AI of about the same level of
| sophistication as the "autopilots" in cars, and they should
| be able to identify and shoot down hostile drones relatively
| cost efficiently. Produced at scale, the smallest versions
| (designed to shoot down comercially available drones, for
| instance), would not have to cost all that much more than the
| drones they are designed to shoot down, if produced at scale.
|
| I'm imagining at least 3-4 size categories, lets say. 1)
| Tiny, able to shoot down most quad copters. Top speed of
| 50-100knots. Price needs to be low enough to allow tens of
| thousands to be produced. Could potentially also double as
| anti-infantry weapons by strafing. 2) Small. Able to shoot
| down switchblade-sized drones. Top speed of maybe 200 knots.
| Can be produced in numbers of thousands. 3) Medium. Sutable
| to hunt small UAV's, such as Buyraktar. Top speed of several
| hundered knots, maybe just below Mach 1. Somewhat more
| expensive than the Buyraktar, but can also carry some of the
| same ordanance, like a tiny fighter-bomber. 4) Full-sized,
| possibly supersonic. Basically the same as the Loyal Wingman
| concept. Designed to counter other full-sized drones as well
| as manned aircraft.
|
| Basically, the removal of a pilot, allows aircraft to span a
| wide range of sizes, and I would expect all sizes to be
| produced, as it is uneconomical to hunt quadcopters with full
| sized aircraft, while it is impossible to hunt supersonic
| aircraft with switchblade type aircraft.
|
| In a way, this would be analogous to naval vessels, with
| different sizes serving different roles, from corvettes,
| MTB's and attacks subs, through frigates and cruisers, to WW2
| style batlleships or carriers.
|
| Now, for the AI researchers out there, imagine the careers
| that can be built around providing AI's for these vehicles.
| To see your own AI locked in a WW2 style dogfight with a
| similar drone from another country, in a real-time feed.....
| hooande wrote:
| Human drone pilots are cheap and reasonably easy to train.
| The "AI" that you need is the targeting and guidance
| system. If I can see any enemy drone on a camera, all I
| need to do is get a lock and fire.
|
| The problem is that precision guided munitions are fairly
| expensive. Drones are cheap, but giving them any kind of
| offensive ability increases the cost significantly. A
| switchblade drone only costs about $6,000 and there still
| aren't swarms of thousands of them. Maybe once the
| economics enable massing hundreds of thousands of drones,
| autonomous control will become more reasonable.
| trashtester wrote:
| > The problem is that precision guided munitions are
| fairly expensive. Drones are cheap, but giving them any
| kind of offensive ability increases the cost
| significantly. A switchblade drone only costs about
| $6,000 and there still aren't swarms of thousands of
| them. Maybe once the economics enable massing hundreds of
| thousands of drones, autonomous control will become more
| reasonable.
|
| Exactly this. How many drones can you get for the price
| of 100 F35's?
|
| If you get that many drones, you want to have drones that
| can attack both enemy land units AND enemy drones.
| nradov wrote:
| This is just silly and unrealistic. You have completely
| neglected detection and targeting issues. What types of
| sensors would be needed? What field of view do they have?
| How much power do they consume? How much does that sensor
| suite cost?
| trashtester wrote:
| I answered a lot of this in another subthread.
|
| Here I will just provide a couple of links to a couple of
| anti-air drone systems under development:
|
| > But concepts that would fall under this class are under
| development. One relativly large example is Baykar
| Bayraktar Kizilelma:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baykar_Bayraktar_K%C4%B1z%C
| 4%B...
|
| > This one is a hybrid drone, capable of both anti-air
| and anti-ground missions. It would fall under what I
| would consider "medium" size.
|
| > Here is an early model of a Russian attempt:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcAqF5BVLU4
| rr808 wrote:
| Right now they're shooting down small drones with $100k
| manpads. I'm not convinced drones are sensitive to ECM.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Can manpads lock on 400$ DJI style drones ?
| rr808 wrote:
| I purposely left that detail out because I dont know.
| They have been hitting those junk Orlans which is what I
| meant. I guess you can bring down the mini drones with a
| rifle? Like OP says there are a bunch of radio jamming
| guns around which probably confuse DJI.
|
| This post says they downed 65 "targets" in one day so I'm
| guessing they're the cheap drones.
| https://t.me/LastBP/9398
| tazjin wrote:
| Russia said they're shooting down drones with laser
| weapons, which sounds kinda reasonable. Probably fairly
| quick to aim, and definitely very quick to deliver.
|
| Colourless, instant laser is the Star Wars we deserve, not
| the Star Wars we wanted, though ;)
| javajosh wrote:
| _> Russia said they're shooting down drones with laser
| weapons_
|
| I tend not to believe this. In part because Russia is
| very comfortable with shameless lying, and in part
| because it's really hard to deliver enough energy with a
| laser to a moving target. That said, non-moving
| (hovering) drones would be very reasonable targets as you
| can illuminate for as long as it takes for an important
| part to melt.
|
| BTW my favorite anti-drone tech are trained hunting
| hawks. Hawks are a weapon for a more...civilized time.
| trasz wrote:
| Weaponised hawks have many interesting properties. They
| don't emit radio waves, and not much infrared either, so
| are hard to locate and shoot down. They can loiter
| forever (well, limited by hawk's lifetime, whatever it
| is), are self-refueling, and, to some extent, also self-
| repairing and self-replicating.
| dTal wrote:
| Sounds like a fantastic way to rapidly maim a hawk.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I think the goal with this method could be to train the
| hawk to carry an object such as a net or dangling string
| that the hawk would drop into the propellers of the
| drone, thus disabling it.
|
| One could also use a hawk as a platform to carry
| electronic means of disabling drones.
|
| The problem with hawks and drones becomes one of teaching
| the hawk to recognize enemy drones since it is likely in
| future wars that all sides will use drones and that it
| may be difficult to identify who controls a particular
| drone without monitoring that drone to map its
| communication path.
|
| It's cool to use a bird that instinctively hunts other
| birds but we need to understand that hawks are not hard
| to see and to eliminate so their utility on a battlefield
| is limited.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >it's really hard to deliver enough energy with a laser
| to a moving target.
|
| Israel demonstrated that capability earlier this year.
| https://news.yahoo.com/video-shows-israel-testing-
| iron-13004...
| toss1 wrote:
| The problem with laser weapons so far is that they have
| insufficient power and are fighting the inverse square
| law.
|
| Heating to create sufficient damage takes multiple
| seconds in good conditions. They work great in field
| tests where the operator can keep the target aligned
| exactly for a while and the target operator isn't
| evading. Add mirror finishes, thermal shielding,
| automated detection and evasion, much of which is cheap,
| and that'll stay a demonstrator weapon for a long time.
|
| I don't think anyone is worried about the claimed Russian
| lasers against drones (particularly since Russia tends to
| tout a lot of vaporware), but I'd be worried that since
| Russia is already happy to systematically commit and even
| advertise their war crimes, that they'd start using the
| lasers as blinding weapons despite the fact that it is
| also a war crime.
| XorNot wrote:
| Mostly the use of laser blinders is uncommon because a
| laser which can blind a person will also happily do that
| to you from a reflective surface or down a military
| sighting optic.
| toss1 wrote:
| Good point - tho if you are wearing protective optical
| gear and you can expect the enemy is not wearing it...
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Lasers also suffer from easily deployed countermeasures.
| Anyone who has been passed by some truck rolling coal can
| attest to how trivial it is for anything running a
| combustion engine to be modified to foul the air around
| it to the point of zero visibility. In addition, flying
| projectiles like missiles, mortars, or ICBMs can simply
| spin such that the laser has to heat the whole
| circumference of the body rather than a single point in
| order to be effective, which they may be doing anyway for
| stabilization
| SCHiM wrote:
| Just shoot some stringy gel into the propellers. I'm sure a
| material exists that can both tangle the propellers or
| block the inlets of jets which would make it effective
| against a variety of types.
| rr808 wrote:
| Yeah you kinda expect a swarm of drones like a small
| ocean fleet. With smaller drones to protect the main
| cruiser.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the
| officers' club one night to kid with him about the new
| Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in. "What Lepage
| gun?" Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity. "The new
| three hundred and forty four millimeter Lepage glue gun,"
| Yossarian answered. "It glues a whole formation of planes
| together in mid-air."
|
| -Catch-22
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Thanks for this. Catch-22 is my all-time favorite war
| related book. There is so much in there to take in and
| enjoy. Absurdity, off-color humor, puns, social
| commentary. Heller was magnificent in this book.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You have to get the stringy gel _to_ the propellers,
| which is most of the cost of a MANPAD. The warhead doesn
| 't cost all that much, whether it's explosive or silly
| string.
| cesarb wrote:
| > No piece of autonomous weapons delivery hardware in the
| modern world exists with a price tag less than 100x that
| amount. Drones are simply too cheap.
|
| I recently found a video at
| https://twitter.com/FortemTech/status/1526925732122968067
| (source:
| https://twitter.com/TomReiner4/status/1528214932461846528)
| which shows an anti-drone drone. Unfortunately, I couldn't
| find its price tag, but looking at the images in the
| manufacturer's site, it doesn't look like it would be much
| more expensive to manufacture than an equivalent-sized DJI
| drone.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The fortunes of the front lines in WW1 varied directly with
| which side had air superiority at the moment. Not because the
| airplanes were effective at ground attack, but because of
| aerial reconnaissance. The defeat of Germany came because the
| Luftwaffe was defeated.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > The defeat of Germany came because the Luftwaffe was
| defeated.
|
| It was a lot more complex than that. Lots of factors were in
| play, including introduction of combined-arms warfare that
| included aircraft but more significantly the tank. More
| generally, see the Hundred Days Offensive [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'll stand by what I wrote, because although the airplanes
| of the day were ineffective at attack, they were
| _extremely_ effective at reconnaissance which showed where
| to put your firepower.
|
| My understanding of the WW1 tank was it showed promise but
| was not decisive.
| greedo wrote:
| Air superiority during WW1 had an almost negligible effect on
| the outcome of the war. Can you name a single battle where
| aerial reconnaissance was decisive, or provided more value
| than artillery, machine guns or proto-tanks?
|
| Even in WW2 where air power was far more powerful, it's still
| debated how much it contributed to success.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > WW1
|
| It's discussed in detail in the two volume set "Winged
| Mars" by Cuneo. The crux is being able to see where the
| enemy was weak, and you could deny the enemy seeing where
| you were strong. That's what the focus (pun intended) of
| the air war in WW1 was all about.
|
| > Even in WW2
|
| Not in the books I read about WW2. See the battle of Pearl
| Harbor, Midway, etc. Air power ended the U-Boot threat. The
| Battle of the Bulge was over for the Wehrmacht the moment
| the weather cleared and the Air Force could fly. The
| destruction of the German oil fields was decisive for the
| Allied victory. See the Battle of Britain - Hitler
| abandoned plans to invade Britain, knowing he could not do
| so without air supremacy. Eisenhower knew that D-Day would
| not work unless the Luftwaffe was suppressed. Air power
| ended Rommel's campaign in Africa (cut off the Afrika
| Korp's supplies).
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Even in WW2 where air power was far more powerful, it's
| still debated how much it contributed to success.
|
| The allies certainly had tactical air superiority in the
| last few months of the war, which hammered German Armour,
| but didn't in itself wipe out dogged resistance. The
| Luftwaffe was pretty scarce over the battlefields because
| it was occupied trying to stop the bomber offensive over
| Germany itself. The bombers themselves didn't really begin
| to properly dismantle German manufacturing until 1945. So
| air power did contribute to success in the end, but not as
| anticipated before the war.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Air power did little to destroy German industry, that is
| correct. But, and this is a big but, it was very
| successful at denying the German military gasoline,
| without which its military machine was crippled.
|
| The Air Force was very, very effective at supporting the
| ground troops. Whenever the soldiers got stuck on the
| ground, they'd call in the P-51s to wreck whatever was
| blocking them. The tanks and Wiederstanden were highly
| vulnerable to air attack, as well as getting their supply
| lines cut off.
|
| The Kriegsmarine's super battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz
| were destroyed by air attack. Japan's super battleship
| Yamato suffered a similar fate.
| greedo wrote:
| Germany ran out of gas because it didn't have a domestic
| source, and couldn't seize it in the Middle East, nor in
| the Caucasus region.
|
| The Army Air Corps was decent at interdiction missions
| (trains etc.) and hunting tanks when given free reign;
| but they were tied to escort missions for far too long.
| Considering how much money and manpower was invested in
| the 8th AF, the returns were marginal. German industry
| was accelerating production until the very end of the
| war, and proved very resilient to strategic bombing.
|
| The Bismarck, Tirpitz etc were all a waste of resources
| and never did much to influence the war other than to tie
| down the Home Fleet. The sinking of the Yamato and its
| sister ship Musahi were non-consequential to the outcome
| of the war.
| medo-bear wrote:
| what i think is concerning is that the drone will likely become
| the new ak47 and we will have a new era of guerilla warfare and
| terrorism on our hands
| trashtester wrote:
| I would say the only defense againts small, cheap drones, are
| small cheap anti-drones. These would be able to shoot down
| the cheap drones at the cost of a few bullets and a gallon of
| fuel.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I think laser systems will be used for drone defence
| trashtester wrote:
| Laser is probably good for defending high priority
| targets, especially from fast flying (including
| hypersonic) missiles and drones.
|
| For defence against swarms of quadcopters with hand
| grenades, flying low through forests, cities or trenches,
| I think anti-drones are the only way.
|
| Anti-drones can also intercept enemy drones over neutral
| or enemy territory, through valleys, or other places a
| laser cannot reach. Furthermore, while a mirrored surface
| can protect against lasers, it will not defend very well
| vs bullets.
|
| Anti-drones can also double as drones (like fighter
| bombers), ie just have a manouverable drone that has some
| kind of forward-pointing gun in addition to whatever
| ordenance, spy camers, etc it might carry.
| greedo wrote:
| Drones are hard to detect due to small IR signature, and
| they are almost invisible to radar due the use of plastics
| and composites. So how will these small, cheap anti-drones
| detect them? How will they have enough fuel and
| maneuverability to successfully engage them? How will they
| shoot bullets (I assume you're saying they'll carry machine
| guns or cannon.)
|
| I think once the detection methodology is worked out for
| ground forces (which aren't as constrained by power/weight
| issues as airborne systems), we'll see directed energy
| weapons (probably microwave) used to effectively fry these
| types of low performance drones. Whether the detection
| problem is solved is an entirely different issue than the
| weapons used once detected.
| trashtester wrote:
| > So how will these small, cheap anti-drones detect them?
|
| For the smaller ones, optics, combined with being
| produced in large numbers, to basically cover an area.
| Basically like a Tesla detects pedestrians. Additional
| information can be transmitted by radio from other drones
| (many of which can be ground based) as well as
| traditional sources, such as awacs or f35/f22.
|
| Larger ones would operate more like traditional aircraft
| with more internal sensors, including radar.
|
| > How will they have enough fuel and maneuverability to
| successfully engage them?
|
| Just assume that the anti-drone starts out basically as a
| copy of the drone it is supposed to kill. Then add 50%
| cost to make it a bit lighter an more manouverable. Their
| range doesn't need to be huge, they can be scrambled when
| needed. (Bigger ones can do in air refueling). A few can
| fly CAP missions at a time, during low threat situations.
|
| > I think once the detection methodology is worked out
| for ground forces (which aren't as constrained by
| power/weight issues as airborne systems), we'll see
| directed energy weapons (probably microwave) used to
| effectively fry these types of low performance drones.
| Whether the detection problem is solved is an entirely
| different issue than the weapons used once detected.
|
| Maybe some day energy weapons will be effective enough
| and cheap enough to distributed like that. Then we will
| see what countermeasures are effecient. (Mirrors, faraday
| cages, etc). For counter-drones, I think they should be
| within what can be done with tech available today. They
| simply have not been built due to lack of need.
|
| But concepts that would fall under this class are under
| development. One relativly large example is Baykar
| Bayraktar Kizilelma:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baykar_Bayraktar_K%C4%B1z%C
| 4%B...
|
| This one is a hybrid drone, capable of both anti-air and
| anti-ground missions. It would fall under what I would
| consider "medium" size.
|
| EDIT: Here is an early model of a Russian attempt:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcAqF5BVLU4
| greedo wrote:
| LOL, you lost me when you mentioned Tesla detecting
| pedestrians.
|
| Optically detecting something small at range is very
| difficult. When cued by other devices (radar/IR) EO
| systems like what the F-14 used to carry can zoom in and
| identify a target at range. With drones you won't have
| that cueing. Their IR/radar signature is generally too
| small unless you're talking Predator size UAVs.
|
| And the more you add to a drone, the heavier and more
| expensive it becomes. Radios, advanced sensors, etc etc.
|
| Why would I assume an anti-drone would look anything
| similar to a "normal" drone? Does a SAM (surface to air
| missile) look anything like a fighter aircraft it
| counters? Does an anti-tank mine resemble an armored
| vehicle?
|
| And you can't just hand wave and say add 50% to the cost
| to make it lighter and more maneuverable. That's just
| ridiculous. Modern aeronautics is a mature industry, and
| just throwing money at something doesn't magically
| improve flight characteristics.
|
| And range? Just hand-waving here as well. Range (what the
| experts refer to as persistence) is hugely important. If
| you don't have persistence, then to "scramble" as you so
| eloquently put it require high performance, which leads
| to higher weight and higher cost, as well as less
| maneuverability.
|
| And in-flight refueling? That's only been demonstrated on
| very high performance USN UAVs, and those are basically
| jets, not drones. The idea that these (or any drone) is
| even close to flying CAP missions is unrealistic.
|
| Currently there is no technology to build what you
| describe. None.
|
| And your link to the Kizilelma just illustrates how far
| away this is. This is a stealthy/low RCS supersonic
| aircraft with an AESA radar. This is what aerospace
| engineers call "not-cheap."
|
| And I wouldn't dignify the Russian "attempt" as more than
| someone strapping a shotgun to a hobbyist RC plane and
| calling it a weapon. It suffers from all the critiques
| I've previously outlined.
| xeromal wrote:
| I remember reading a concern of the US Navy that one of the
| few means of successfully attacking a (carrier group?) would
| be a drone swarm. Something where they're overwhelmed with
| just the sheer number of drones attacking.
| nradov wrote:
| Drones cheap enough to use in a swarm lack the range
| necessary to hit a carrier strike group operating in blue
| water.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| isn't the point that this is only true _now_
| lm28469 wrote:
| > drone will
|
| ISIS peeps have been dropping mortar rounds from DJI drones
| for a few years now, it's already a reality
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Actually... Anduril (Palmer's company) actually has one that's
| called the Anvil that does exactly what you're talking about:
| https://www.anduril.com/hardware/anvil/
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > We will soon have small cheap drones that will take down
| nearby spotter drones and the balance will change yet again.
|
| Necessary? We already have lots of cheap tech that can destroy
| drones in a naval setting.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I wonder about a future of warfare that condenses to strictly
| targeted assassinations.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Sounds like it describes current USA warfare doctrine?
|
| Seems like targeted drone strikes is our main method of
| engagement today.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| I suspect that kind of thing is prohibited by some secret
| convention among all more or less significant powers.
| otherwise, the opening act of this very war could've been a
| hundred cruise missiles wiping out the Kyiv's elites
|
| there is some Ukrainian city where the Russians had attempted
| to kill the mayor. the missile had struck the exact part of
| the building where his office was located. the mayor had
| survived because he overslept
| 100011_100001 wrote:
| I think the natural progression of war is going to be remote
| controlled systems. Drones are for flying.
|
| Remote Controlled land and water units would also work.
|
| There are multiple reasons why it's the future.
|
| 1. Cheap to make
|
| 2. Can be smaller since they don't have to have space for
| humans to sit in them, which might increase ability to carry
| things, longer range etc.
|
| 3. Because humans don't have to be inside of them they can also
| go a higher speeds, maneuver faster without human body
| limitations
|
| 4. If a drone goes down, the drone pilot can man another one.
| All that training and knowledge is retained. Human operated
| vehicles have a high probability of losing their occupants.
|
| 5. If 5,000 drones get destroyed, it's lost money. If 5,000
| military personnel gets killed it appears much worse in terms
| of optics, value of life etc.
| nradov wrote:
| Remote controlled drones only work reliably at short range.
| At longer ranges they stop working once the enemy knocks out
| your communications relays. Communications satellites are no
| longer survivable. In the future AI technology might solve
| the problem but outside of simple loitering munitions, AI
| can't do much today. In some scenarios we may see drones
| controlled by manned aircraft that are just a few miles
| behind and still within communications line of sight.
|
| Maneuverability doesn't count for a whole lot in the real
| world. For manned aircraft the trend is to de-emphasize
| maneuverability in favor of signature reduction, ECM, and
| decoys. While it's theoretically possible to design a UCAV
| that could pull >9Gs, in practice it's totally pointless.
| That would make the airframe too heavy and expensive, and
| would adversely impact other more important qualities like
| endurance and magazine depth.
| paulkrush wrote:
| And the natural progression of war will lead to the toner
| wars. The drones will become so small that they become next
| mesothelioma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age:
| "Nell's older brother, who plays an important role in the
| beginning as her protector; he obtains the Primer for his
| sister by mugging John Percival Hackworth. Harv is forced to
| leave Nell when she is accepted by the Neo-Victorians, and is
| later bedridden by asthma caused by the inhalation of dead
| nanomachines ("toner") in his childhood."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I would expect that, at the low end, a drone's maximum
| velocity and its range would be proportional to its size.
| Really small drones would be perfect for loitering (unless
| it's windy), but less good for getting to a denied location
| (unless it's downwind). That seems to me to really limit
| the usefulness of really small drones.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| 6. Killing someone by clicking a button and watching the
| explosion on a TV is much easier than pulling a trigger in
| the real-world
| Damogran6 wrote:
| The PTSD articles from people in Las Vegas driving drones
| in the Middle East seem to indicate otherwise.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/drones-airstrikes-
| ptsd...
| bozhark wrote:
| It's not the killing.
|
| It's the watching, tracking, and recording. It's the
| months of getting to know every aspect of the
| individuals.
|
| They become real, not just the 'enemy'.
| lbriner wrote:
| Isn't the difference more about collateral damage? In the
| battle, you have at least an inkling of the person you are
| shooting being an enemy, if you are ordered to bomb a house
| and find out that a load of kids were killed as well as the
| target, it becomes much more traumatic.
|
| I have zero military experience so just guessing!
| ethbr0 wrote:
| From what I hear, PTSD is pretty bad among stateside UAV
| operators. https://dronecenter.bard.edu/burdens-war-crews-
| drone-aircraf...
| XorNot wrote:
| This is a false ethical concern: it's harder in person
| because the other guy can shoot back.
| greenpresident wrote:
| This contributes another ethical quality though: if the
| other person can shoot back, you have a right to go all
| out in order to defend yourself. The same cannot be said
| for unmanned warfare, where the immediate danger is
| asymmetric.
| samatman wrote:
| I don't think it's possible to reconcile the battlefield
| with an ethics of self defense. You can pick a side that
| way, yes, but the doctrines of justifiable homicide
| simply don't hold up in battle.
| Someone wrote:
| In modern wars, especially those were one party is a lot
| stronger than the other and wants to keep the moral high
| ground, ethics does come into play.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_engagement:
|
| _"Rules of engagement (ROE) are the internal rules or
| directives afforded military forces (including
| individuals) that define the circumstances, conditions,
| degree, and manner in which the use of force, or actions
| which might be construed as provocative, may be applied.
| They provide authorization for and /or limits on, among
| other things, the use of force and the employment of
| certain specific capabilities. In some nations,
| articulated ROE have the status of guidance to military
| forces, while in other nations, ROE constitute lawful
| command. Rules of engagement do not normally dictate how
| a result is to be achieved, but will indicate what
| measures may be unacceptable."_
|
| Soldiers won't be allowed to destroy a house on the
| grounds that it _can_ be used by a sniper, for example,
| but must have reasonable certainty that it _is_ being
| used as such.
| samatman wrote:
| Yes but not the ethics of self defense, such as a
| doctrine of clear and present danger.
|
| Self defense doesn't have a concept of a combatant, only
| an immediate threat to the safety of yourself or another.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Couldn't the same be said of an artilleryman? Or a bomber
| pilot dropping ordnance on a position with no AA defense?
| Or a tanker shelling infantry with no AT gear?
| Gud wrote:
| It may or may not be easier to remotely kill someone else
| from across the world, but I suspect that drone warfare
| will evolve quickly so it's drone vs drone. I suspect few
| people would feel bad about shooting down some pieces of
| metal and plastic.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| I don't think the majority of deaths in combat have been
| from humans killing other humans that they can see with
| their eyes for a long time. Possibly well over a hundred
| years.
|
| If killing someone through a camera is action-at-a-
| distance, so is blowing up an opaque metal box that you
| know probably has four humans in it, or firing your
| artillery piece at a grid square that probably has some
| humans in it, or dropping a bomb on a glowing blob on a
| thermal sensor that's probably a human. Even in daytime
| infantry-on-infantry combat, at a lot of ranges you're not
| shooting at people, you're shooting at piece of cover you
| saw gunfire emanate from. All of these partially-removed
| actions are also mainly what we're seeing drones do well
| at.
|
| While one could design a killer robot to go inside
| buildings and shoot people while looking them in the eye,
| the complexities and timeframes of close-range combat make
| it seems like the very last place for robots to replace
| infantry.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Attended a dinner with dozens of active and retired pilots
| from three services. The highlight were two speakers who
| saw combat in the Gulf War I. Wing Commander's SiL (F-16)
| pilot and son (SAR medic).
|
| They loved the formers gun camera videos and stories. They
| squirmed and looked at their desserts when the latter
| showed up close and personal pics of the "Highway of
| Death"in Kuwait. Miles and miles of burned bodies in the
| sands.
|
| Pilots don't have to watch in 4k like the button clickers
| do.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Volunteer armies have much lower death rates, because the
| commanders cannot afford to squander their lives.
|
| Conscript armies get treated as cannon fodder.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Conscript armies get treated as cannon fodder.
|
| Counter example is the conscripted Allied armies at the end
| of WW2. In the last few months, the allies would much
| rather expend a mass of munitions rather than lose troops,
| especially front-line infantry, who were very hard to
| replace.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The marines, air force, and navy were all volunteers in
| WW2. The marines were front line. The army had a lot of
| volunteers, too, like the paratroopers.
|
| The US military is all volunteer today, and is very
| parsimonious with the lives of servicemen.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| The era of remote control won't last too long though because
| of signal jamming. Autonomous systems that don't need
| constant control by a human operator is the next logical
| progression.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| The problem with jamming is that in order to be effective
| the transponder has to be very "loud", which means it can
| be destroyed by a missile which is built to target the
| "loudest" object in front of it. Active radar can partially
| avoid these systems by turning off during inactivity, but
| jamming has to be continuous to really be effective
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| CDMA and other spread-spectrum radio tech was developed to
| counter signal jamming. If your comms is split amongst a
| range of frequencies and extractible with pseudo-random
| codes or other trunking scheme then you've raised the cost
| of jamming significantly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And jammers are always going to leave parts of the
| spectrum untouched so the owners of the jammers can still
| communicate.
| inetknght wrote:
| There are a myriad of ways to work through signal
| jamming.Something _designed_ to work in a battlefield can
| utilize one or several methods.
|
| Most civilian devices aren't designed to do that because
| it's usually more expensive. There are also nebulous
| arguments about hindering law enforcement (but also
| counter-arguments about criminals eg "if you outlaw guns
| then only outlaws will have guns").
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| The next issue to arise in this paradigm is that autonomous
| machines are most analogous to mercenaries, with no fixed
| allegiance to the nation they are fighting for. Thus this
| army of 5,000 drones could alarmingly be converted to an
| enemy force in a way a normal army could not.
| neuronic wrote:
| Maybe mercenaries without the random war crimes aspect.
| solveit wrote:
| Now we see the _actual_ DRM wars.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I can imagine a semi-disposable drone-like device being used
| for fast and cheap reconnaissance. If cost of something with
| a camera and rough lidar can be brought to $200, then why not
| turn it into a 'consumable' item that can be deployed from
| out of a briefcase?
|
| I feel like assuming that the device will be lost/destroyed
| can help optimize for short-term performance. Why not add a
| few grams of C4 to it, to make sure that it and its silicon
| are absolutely unrecoverable and in many pieces after its
| operational lifetime?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| You're almost describing the Russian Orlan-10, except
| you've got the cost off by an order of magnitude (they cost
| around $2,000 each).
|
| $200 is an incredibly ambitious target that's unlikely to
| be hit, but it's also not necessary to bring costs that
| low. Our military budget is $800B/yr and our current drones
| cost way more than $2000. Simply bringing the costs down a
| bit would get us sufficient quantity.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Oh, that's _much_ larger than I was thinking of. I was
| thinking somewhere on low-single-digit-km range, and
| probably sized to where carbon fiber + aluminum are still
| the best choices for the frame materials. Roughly, the
| size of 2 beer bottles?
| bozhark wrote:
| Nah, custom FPV drones are in that range.
|
| It's doable rn
| lsaferite wrote:
| I feel like you just described the Switchblade drones.
|
| https://www.avinc.com/tms/switchblade
| gigaflop wrote:
| The animated image is cracking me the hell up. It just
| glides out of the tube like WHOOP!
|
| But, that's actually very close to what I was thinking
| about! I was imagining something with a much shorter
| range, however. Something like 1km, compared to that
| thing's 10km.
| programd wrote:
| I suspect the cheapest option would be cameras mounted on
| artillery shells.
|
| https://www.afcea.org/content/artillery-eyes-provide-
| sight-g...
|
| The U S army worked on putting cameras in howitzer shells
| as far back as the 70's, so short-ish range (10 miles or
| so), but cheap by military standards.
|
| Though these days a cheap plastic drone might easily be
| less expensive if mass produced.
| lbriner wrote:
| I suspect this is exactly what they are going for but at
| the same time, reliability is critical if you only have a
| handful of them you can't afford for some to not work, so
| by the time you use some prime components, they start
| costing "military" money instead!
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano
| gigaflop wrote:
| You're the one replier so far to who I must say, larger,
| but not by too much. 1 or 2 beer bottles of size is what
| I was thinking of.
| akelly wrote:
| Drones are vulnerable because they have to transmit a video
| feed over many miles for a remote operator to be able to
| control them. And the enemy can easily detect that, and then
| launch a missile that homes in on that signal. That's why
| there aren't any stealth drones. Drones shouldn't work
| against a first rate 21st century military, but Russia has
| proven in this war that they are not in that group.
|
| One way to make a stealth drone is to make it operate
| autonomously, without sending back a video feed. But nobody
| is comfortable with that for obvious reasons.
|
| The approach the French have proposed for their next gen
| fighter jet is to have a stealth jet surrounded by a swarm of
| stealth drones. The pilot commands all the drones, and so any
| radio links would be short range and therefore hard for an
| adversary to detect.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| > and then launch a missile that homes in on that signal
|
| Can signal relay swarm mitigate this threat?
| Steltek wrote:
| I love the WW1 analogy!
|
| I think anti-drone drones are going to quickly move to being
| autonomous. No one's going to worry too much about
| "accidentally" taking down a simple drone and the threat of
| just one kamikaze drone getting through is too high to chance a
| delayed human reaction. Plus jamming or other measures will
| make direct control more difficult. An army will likely have a
| few circling "CAP" drones overhead at all times.
| trashtester wrote:
| I agree, the anti-drone aspect needs to be low-latency. But I
| actually expect that soon, most drones will come with some
| anti-drones aspects, and some will will be multi-purpuse,
| capable of launcing some anti ground ordenance. For that
| part, they may come with a manual mode, for a while longer.
| ttul wrote:
| "So far, in Ukraine, the signature land weapon hasn't been a tank
| but an anti-tank missile: the Javelin. The signature air weapon
| hasn't been an aircraft, but an anti-air missile: the Stinger."
|
| Weren't these the signature weapons because Ukraine doesn't have
| much of an air force? It's true that the Javelin and Stingers
| (etc.) have been remarkably effective; however, it's not like the
| US ought to ditch its expensive aircraft in favor of shoulder-
| launched weapons.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Weren't these the signature weapons because Ukraine doesn't
| have much of an air force?
|
| It's because they're cheap, easy to deploy, and effective. And
| Russian planes need to fly low because of other anti air
| weapons and a general lack of precision munitions.
| paganel wrote:
| > o far, in Ukraine, the signature land weapon hasn't been a tank
| but an anti-tank missile: the Javelin. The signature air weapon
| hasn't been an aircraft, but an anti-air missile: the Stinger.
|
| The author (a veteran US Marine) is, obviously, well more versed
| in this than me, a computer programmer, but I'd say that he's
| wrong here. The signature weapon of the war right now is
| artillery, on both sides, that's why most recently it was
| artillery pieces that the US sent to Ukraine. Artillery has been
| a mainstay of the wars on the Ukrainian-Russian steppes ever
| since Napoleon.
|
| What this war brought new to the table, a thing which might be
| the real revolutionary part of this war (at least when it comes
| to military doctrine), is the deadly artillery + cheap aerial
| drones combo, it has brought havoc to both sides. Those Russian
| convoys were not destroyed by javelines, but by targeted
| Ukrainian artillery strikes (with the help of said cheap drones).
|
| Inside of the cities (Mariupol, mostly, from where most of the
| images have come when it comes to urban combat in this war) the
| tanks have still shown their worth, as in it was mostly with
| tanks (and, again, with artillery) that the Russians managed to
| destroy (and thus conquer) most of the city (they also used some
| aviation to drop bombs on Azovstal, but that was towards the end
| of the Mariupol battle). An interesting apparition was that of
| the BTR-82 [1]
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/twraun/russi...
| orwin wrote:
| Burg. Don't talk about the Maginot if you don't know shit about
| the second World War. I swear hoi4 players have more knowledge
| than the author.
|
| I skimmed the comments and it seems the author was wrong about a
| lot. I thought the Atlantic was a better than average paper, the
| quality must have declined.
| anovikov wrote:
| Moskva sinking stands as just one of the numerous Russian
| failures in Ukraine. Just look at Belohorivka disaster where
| whole battalion tactical group was wiped out in the most stupid
| of circumstances. It doesn't mean that surface ships are outdated
| or cannot resist anti-ship missiles.
|
| U.S. Aegis-equipped destroyers faced multiple strikes of
| essentially, same missiles in the Gulf of Aden, launched by pro-
| Russian Howthi (both based on Soviet Kh-35), with no hits and no
| even close calls (as far known, CIWS was never activated).
| ckozlowski wrote:
| It was helped by the fact that they were more or less launching
| them blind. The Ukrainians had the help of intelligence telling
| them where the Moskava was and where it was going, and that's
| crucial information for an AShM strike. I doubt the Howthis had
| that sorta targeting.
| anovikov wrote:
| They had direct targeting from a ground-based radar (which
| was later bombed by a Navy plane).
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