Exactly. Air warfare has, since its inception, migrated towards more and more high-tech solutions. Modern fighters require modern AA missiles to counter, etc. Drones have flipped this in a sense by swarming in with cheap, low tech (compared to a modern fighter) weapons, that you can’t afford to shoot down with modern AA designed for those fighters. The response will have to be a cheap, low tech (again, relative) solution like flak. Flak went out of use because it didn’t have the accuracy or range to deal with modern fighters/missiles. That’s not a problem against drones. Additionally, drones are much slower and more fragile than a jet, so require far less heavy weapons to shoot down.

European armies, as a whole, need to do something absolutely massive about their production rates. We’re scaling up, but still working at an order of magnitude lower production rates than what we see is needed in Ukraine. This applies to everything from tanks and artillery to aircraft and ships, not to speak of ammunition…

Looking at the state of production today would lead you to think that the amount of equipment produced on European soil in the 40’s was simply impossible.

With the massive proliferation of drones, I see it as only a matter of time until we have this kind of system set up to fire light flak capable of shooting down small drones at ranges of a couple hundred meters. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised we haven’t seen it yet.

Conventional military doctrine is that infantry and vehicles should operate together. A couple vehicle-mounted automated flak guns capable of reliably shooting down drones at a couple hundred meters would heavily negate the absolutely debilitating threat that FPV- and dropper drones present to both infantry and mechanised columns today. If they’re able to build man-portable versions as well the drone threat will be completely changed.

Basically, the current picture of drone warfare looks to me like if people invented fighter jets but no AA. Eventually the AA is bound to catch up.

My impression of the russian military is that their strategy is to give the impression that they can keep going forever (which they obviously can’t), no matter the cost, in the hopes that Ukraine will fold before they themselves crack. With this in mind, I believe that russia will keep attacking at a high rate, even far past the tipping point. I don’t think we’re really going to see how depleted the russian army is before it suddenly can’t do anything anymore. That is, I think the collapse of the russian army will look a lot like the fall of a dictatorship: First slow and almost imperceptible, then sudden and total.

While I agree with the idea, there are practical issues to reporting “drone resistance”. Mostly that drones are used to deliver anything from small hand grenades, which even the side-armour of a light APC should handle with ease, to dropping stacks of AT mines or a heavy HEAT round, both of which should defeat an MBT if hit on the roof.

There’s also the point that you have both bomber-drones, which target the roof, and FPV drones, which typically target the sides, optics, or engine.

Basically, the most reasonable “drone resistance” metrics you can report are probably whether the vehicle can withstand standard RPG rounds, and (importantly) whether it has any form of proximity defence (like TROPHY). If anything, I’m actually a bit surprised that some form of mounted shotgun that automatically targets FPV drones hasn’t become widely used yet. TROPHY is developed to target AT rockets moving at several hundred meters per second, which is complete overkill for shooting down FPV drones coming in at < 30 m/s.

There’s been a lot of talk about how effective drones are against armour, and how cheap they are vs. what is used to target them. I’ve seen surprisingly little talk about the fact that drones should be orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to shoot down than rockets. Basically all you need is a shotgun and a targeting system that is much, much more rudimentary than what modern AA uses.

That makes sense, thanks! I’ve noticed that there have been a couple slow days lately, which backs up the explanation.

Regarding equipment, we’ve definitely seen russia dig progressively deeper into stockpiles to drag out progressively older equipment. I can’t imagine it will get better for them, as we’ve actually started seeing a decrease in the amount of destroyed artillery that could be indicating the environment isn’t as target-rich as it was a year ago.

Wow! That’s a lot more than we’ve seen for quite a while, isn’t it?

It would be interesting to see a compiled plot of how these numbers have developed over time, does anyone know where that can be found?

Really great article explaining how artillery has developed in Ukraine, the challenges around supporting a plethora of different systems, and why drones don’t make artillery obsolete. Thanks!

Yes and no: Gold has many important properties and is relatively rare, but what really makes it expensive is that enough people agree that it’s worth something.

If the only market for gold was for actual applications where gold is needed, the price would absolutely tank.

This is the midpoint og a long war

As long as Ukraine holds, russias ability to wage war will slowly dwindle, while Europe is building up its war machine as fast as it can to cut out reliance on the US. For every month that passes, Europe’s ability and willingness to send larger volumes of more advanced weapons to Ukraine increases, while russian stockpiles and production capacity are being burned down.

If this is only the midpoint of the war, and the current trajectory continues, I can only see this ending one way: With the dissolution of the russian army.

Awesome to see how they’re adapting to achieve “drone superiority”!

Exactly this. I think the rest of us need to be less afraid and start shooting russians that violate our borders instead of asking them nicely to leave.

Same goes for ships cutting cables. I would enjoy seeing one of those ships being promptly sunk. No questions asked. Essentially telling russia “We know what you’re doing, and we’re done fucking around”.

There ought to be rules of engagement

There are: When you positively identify an enemy soldier that has not surrendered and is combat capable, you are allowed to engage them. That’s what this soldier did.

There is no law stating that you need to make your presence and intent known before engaging the enemy.

It’s not a war crime to shoot an enemy after they mistake you for their own. That’s on them.

It would be a war crime if he feigned surrender (in which case they would have taken his weapon) or injury (which he clearly wasn’t), or was wearing insignia indicating that he was russian (which we cannot conclude from this video). Regarding the last point, it seems highly unlikely that a single Ukraine soldier would be sent alone behind enemy lines with russian insignia in the hope that something like this would happen.

There was a report on this: Appears the guy was part of an assault and lost contact with his unit. These russians messed up bad (the Ukrainian was likely fluent in russian) and got killed for it. That’s what happens in war. When you mess up, you’re liable to get killed for it. There’s no law of warfare preventing the enemy for exploiting your mistakes.

Not a war crime unless he was wearing russian insignia, which I see no reason to believe he was. Both sides are using a lot of the same gear, and plenty of Ukrainians speaking fluent russian.

I agree with the sentiment that this isn’t directly bad as long as they’re fighting the russians. However, if their motivation to fight is just to learn how to use UAV’s for a cartel, they’re likely to desert at the moment shit hits the fan. This hurts morale badly.

Secondly, the countries in which the cartels operate will be more inclined to actively take Ukraines side if they take this seriously.

Finally,

You can’t prosecute ppl for crimes they did not yet commit.

To be frank: Yes you can (in a sense). Planning a crime (robbery, murder, etc.) can often be prosecuted as a crime in itself, often under the condition that the person in question appears capable or near-capable of doing whatever they were planning to do.

I think we’ll see either a back line (political) collapse, that causes a massive retreat/treaty, or: Gradual degradation to the point where a small breach in the russian position causes a massive route like what we saw in Kharkiv. Unmechanised forces stretched so thin and with so low morale that just a small crack causes a massive collapse and the subsequent capture and/or elimination of massive amounts of equipment and personnel, which makes russia unable to continue the war.

Beijing denounces the sanctions as a threat to economic cooperation.

… yes. That’s exactly the point.

That looks like an awesome initiative! It was unclear to me whether they could adjust detonation range, but it seemed like they couldn’t. Perhaps that was deemed unnecessarily complex?

Regardless, with a 25 cm spread at 100 m I can imagine that an MG or a couple soldiers laying down a small barrage of these would make for an effective “flak shield”, much more effective than ordinary ammo.

I agree with everything you’re saying here, fibre optic drones are in no way perfect. If they were, they would have been used even before EW became so prevalent (as you point out).

However, they remain unjammable. That was really all I was pointing out. Despite their flaws, fibre optic drones remain highly lethal weapons, that soldiers need a means to defend against. I think tactical-level light AA seems like a good tool for the task. Of course, this kind of AA would be just as effective against radio-controlled drones, which is just a bonus.