[HN Gopher] Defending the city: An overview of defensive tactics
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Defending the city: An overview of defensive tactics
Author : jdmark
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-05-06 01:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mwi.westpoint.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (mwi.westpoint.edu)
| davidw wrote:
| We're seeing massive use of drones in the UA/RU war. I wonder how
| those change these points?
| jacoblambda wrote:
| I'd argue it's still the same, there's just a tech
| accessibility difference between defense and offense. When they
| are equal, defense still tends to win out but it'll take a bit
| for the access to catch up.
|
| The counter for drones will be the proliferation of CRAM/CIWS
| and APS. Currently there exists cheap, publicly available (and
| commonly heavily open sourced) tech stacks for drones but the
| same is not the case for CRAM/CIWS and APS. But fundamentally
| the systems that can effectively kill artillery shells, mortars
| shells, rockets, and missiles in flight will be able to kill
| drones as well. There are some differences (such as that drones
| tend to fly lower/slower) but fundamentally the tech applies
| the same.
|
| And to be entirely honest this proliferation is almost entirely
| a software problem. Of course the existence of public hardware
| designs is important as well but getting effective sensor
| integration, detection, targeting, tracking, and response at a
| low enough latency will be bottlenecked by access to high
| quality domain specific software.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I don't think we've even seen the real potential of drone
| warfare on the battlefield, yet. Right now their guidance is
| very crude, little more than the adaptation of consumer FPV
| technology. Once US/RU/CN have had time to develop the
| technology, build up the manufacturing and logistics, and
| give them AI automated target selection, it's going to
| completely change the nature of warfare IMO.
|
| Instead of dropping tons of expensive guided bombs and
| shells, attackers will drop tens of thousands of cheaper
| small anti-personnel hunter-seeker drones that can not only
| seek out human targets but wait in low power mode for a
| target to appear if it can't identify one at first. It'll
| make most kinds of static installations and defenses
| untenable. Units will have to constantly be on the move and
| camouflaged, and avoid giving up all kinds of life signs like
| sound/gunshots, thermal, RF comms, etc. The smaller drones
| will be able to help larger drones with targeting any armor
| they can't handle themselves while acting like free flying
| land mines.
|
| I agree that it's a software problem. The Slaughterbots video
| [1] is already six years old and all of the pieces to make
| killer drone swarms were already there (just not as
| miniaturized as the video). Now there's data in Ukraine about
| how well individual drones work; AI is getting better and
| better; the compute is getting cheap enough to just slap on a
| drone; SOTA single use aluminum air batteries can already
| enable drones with much longer flight times than consumer
| batteries. All the pieces are there to make a nightmarish
| weapon that changes warfare as much as the machine gun, land
| mine, or air support.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecClODh4zYk
| flawsofar wrote:
| And thus begins the serious electromagnetic weapons age
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I think/hope civilian organizations get access to this
| technology or the defensive counterparts before it is
| banned.
|
| Having guns and food and ammo is good, but if civilians
| want to have a chance against NYPD or (insert dystopian
| boot) then night vision, drones for surveillance and
| offense, as well as drone defense are needed.
|
| Having offensive drone tech in the hands of domestic law
| enforcement scares the shit out of me. I think we are one
| human generation away from the Matrix "Sentinels" being a
| reality. Swarms of autonomous disposable killer drones.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I agree and am a huge advocate for the idea that self
| defense is a human right.
|
| Civilians should have a right to access to the exact same
| technology that a government employs with its infantry.
| I'm not talking Nuclear Weapons or Stealth Bombers, if a
| 17-year-old recruit can be trusted to operate a drone to
| kill human beings in a far off foreign country, law-
| abiding citizens should have access to the same
| technology. Or, alternatively, we can ban the technology,
| as long as the police are restricted from using it the
| same as civilians.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _attackers will drop_
|
| From what will they be dropping them?
| throwup238 wrote:
| I assume US/RU/CN/etc will drop them from stealth and
| supersonic bombers. Everyone else will use basic bombers
| and cargo planes if they can punch a hole in AA defenses
| and if they cant, release them from 20ft shipping
| containers or box trucks as close to enemy lines as
| possible.
|
| They're also small enough to deploy with infantry.
| PeterisP wrote:
| You could probably fire them with special artillery
| shells, just as deploying remote minefields or cluster
| munitions.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| CRAM and CIWS are for point-defence; it would be very
| expensive to cover e.g. 100 miles of international border
| using those systems. Because drones are steerable, they can
| fly between the gatling guns and on to their target. Of
| course, if the target has point-defence, that won't work!
|
| In Ukraine, it seems that a lot of the defender's drones are
| hybrid surveillance and attack, so they don't know what their
| target is at launch. You can't point-defend a trenchline. I
| think the Russians are relying on jammers. Broadband jamming
| must require a lot of power (and presumably impairs their own
| comms); narrowband jamming requires knowledge of the
| attacker's frequency.
|
| CRAM/CIWS generally consists of several weapons systems, and
| a command centre with the radar, communicating by radio. So
| those defensive systems are also exposed to jamming, which
| could be achieved by a high-altitude drone; these systems
| aren't designed to shoot things at 20,000 ft., although many
| of them can have a SAM system strapped on.
|
| Anyway, I suspect that drone-antidrone warfare is going to
| come down to a radio arms-race; i.e. jammer vs. anti-jammer.
| And you can defeat a jammer using beamforming.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > Military theorists have long described the defense as the
| strongest form of war, and current doctrine agrees.
|
| Indeed - one of the first wars fought with modern rifling, the
| American Civil War, had General Lee learn this lesson in a very
| hard way on the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, in a failed
| infantry assault known as "Pickett's Charge."[0]
|
| Lee mistakenly attacked a position that was very easily
| defensible by Union artillery on faulty theory that it would be
| weakened due to a (failed) artillery barrage that happened
| previously. The Union correctly predicted Lee would attack there,
| and he sent over 12,000 men in a futile assault that resulted in
| 50% casualties in less than 1 hour, one of the bloodiest hours of
| the entire war.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett%27s_Charge
| runamuck wrote:
| Good point. For a counter point, the German Blitzkrieg helped
| them get France in WW2.
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| Only worked because armor was so dominant and anti armor
| wasn't there yet.
| sushibowl wrote:
| This is in my opinion an oversimplification. Generally, the
| success of blitzkrieg had more to do with speed and
| coordination than the strength of armour. A combination of
| mechanised infantry, tanks, and close air support were
| instrumental to the tactics. German tanks were the only
| ones universally equipped with radio units at the start of
| the war.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| And, counterintuitively, _lack_ of coordination.
| Blitzkrieg units were uniquely autonomous and trusted to
| meet higher level objectives how they saw fit rather than
| following a recipe book written weeks before and miles
| away from the action.
| fyt2024 wrote:
| the ghost division :-)
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| The point is that tanks at the time were faster(along
| with mechanized infantry) and virtually unstoppable past
| enemy lines. This is pretty much unprecedented which
| allowed them to basically take strategic objectives
| uncontested.
|
| This would not happen today because the exposed tanks
| would be taken out by relatively cheap anti tank
| missiles.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| There were several innovations bundled into Blitzkrieg so
| I don't think it's productive to clarify what _the_ point
| is.
|
| Virtually unstoppable armor helped, extreme local
| coordination helped, and extreme general decoupling
| helped. All of these factors are relevant to Blitzkrieg's
| success.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| The british and French assumed the germans were going to
| swing though belgium again as they had done in WW1. Also
| they spread their tanks out as infantry support the germans
| had concentrated tank units.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Even more modern example: The little green men who seized
| Ukraine.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Eh, seized a small sliver and failed with extremely high
| casualties to seize a much larger chunk.
|
| The botched invasion was _nothing like_ the German
| Blitzkrieg.
| zeteo wrote:
| Just because the defense is stronger doesn't guarantee it
| will always win. Take two sports teams with different levels
| of skill, for example. In a single game, the team considered
| weaker can pull off a surprise win. However, over a span of
| several games, the stronger team will usually pull ahead.
|
| In war, various factors, like the element of surprise, can
| allow the offense to temporarily overcome an inherently
| stronger defense. In 1940, the Germans quickly overran the
| French by catching them off guard tactically and
| strategically. The French couldn't adapt their defense
| quickly enough and suffered too many crucial losses early on.
|
| Next year, the Soviets fared even worse than the French
| initially; but due to geography they managed to survive two
| crucial years and, at Kursk in 1943, they showed how a well
| designed defense could stop cold even the best German tanks.
| The French themselves had a similar experience in WW1: after
| initially surviving for two hard years, they gave the German
| attackers a very bloody nose at Verdun.
| ninininino wrote:
| I want a tool that I can use to feed it a block of text or a URL
| to a website and it will give me an LLM and a text prompt that
| would yield said text/website.
|
| I decided to ask ChatGPT 3.5 about what a Westpoint Academy
| instructor would have to say about defending a city and defensive
| tactics beyond those commonly known and the answer was not nearly
| as interesting.
| flawsofar wrote:
| be the language model you want to see in the world
| itronitron wrote:
| or you could just visit the page
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Not updated to include drone tactics
| rossant wrote:
| (2022)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| (2022)
|
| The date is important because it was written before the Ukraine-
| Russia war's use of drones ramped up. The article doesn't mention
| drones (UAVs) afaict - how to use them in attack and defense, how
| to protect yourself - which is today a major omission.
| lambdato wrote:
| This paper is missing the new modern underdog tactic of forcing
| your own population to stay in the combat zone, publicizing the
| resulting carnage media widely, and using world-wide geopolitics
| to force the opponent to retreat.
|
| Bonus points for using hospitals as base of operations.
| Facemelters wrote:
| but it's a wall built and patrolled by the opponent that is
| preventing the population from leaving the combat zone
| webdoodle wrote:
| PSYOP's are the most powerful and most used weapon in the U.S.
| arsenal.
| petsfed wrote:
| I said as much in response to another (rightly) dead post:
|
| Human shield tactics are basically as old as permanent
| settlements, because forcing your enemy past their own ethical
| limits has always been a tactic of occasional effectiveness.
| Its basically how insurgencies work against technologically and
| numerically superior opponents, and this has been true for
| millennia.
|
| And for just as long, there have been military and political
| leaders describing it as cowardly or unsporting. But again, the
| state of the art of military tactics is a catalog of what
| _works_ , not what's _ethical_. The practice of war itself is,
| by and large, unethical. If it didn 't work, they wouldn't keep
| doing it. Speaking entirely for myself, I don't ever want to be
| in the mental state to say "its ok for the SWAT team to shoot
| through the hostages; its their fault for going to a bank that
| could be robbed in the first place".
|
| Absolutely, the party that provoked the war in the first place
| is in the wrong for the attack that provoked it. But that
| doesn't give the side prosecuting the war carte blanche to
| respond as brutally as they please.
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