At some point it looks like the road will become so congested that it becomes an issue in itself. I’ve heard that the Russians deploy very few recovery vehicles, so blowing up a couple more tanks on that road could actually cause a problem for them. With the (very delayed) mud season coming they can’t go off road to get around either.

That’s not even mentioning the morale hit it must be to constantly be driving through absolutely wrecked convoys like this on the way to the line.

Keep it up Ukraine! And get your ass moving on more supplies Europe!

That’s just not how they’re using drones. They have specialised drone units, as well as drone operators that are attached to ordinary infantry units. If every guy in your unit is operating a drone, you’re ridiculously vulnerable to people advancing on your position, if only because a drone, while being accurate, has a stupidly low “rate of fire”. See my other comment on suppressing an enemy.

If a couple dozen soldiers with or without armoured vehicles are advancing on your position, you need a certain rate of fire to keep them pinned down to prevent them from advancing. One drone hitting that group every 30 seconds does far less of a job in that regard than a single MG sending out bursts every two seconds. Of course, once you’ve pinned down the advancing enemy, drones are great, but you can’t get away from small arms being essential in combat situations where distances are < 400 m, which is a lot of them.

Even in WWII, most soldiers didn’t usually see the enemy they were firing at with small arms. Even if your sentiment that small arms combat is a negligible part of modern warfare was correct (which it isn’t), this comment would still be wrong.

Yes, most casualties are not caused by small arms but by artillery. That doesn’t means small arms are useless, they just fill a completely different role.

When fighting with small arms, the major goal is fire superiority, which essentially means firing more bullets in the general direction of your enemy than what they fire back. You will generally be firing at either known enemy locations (“A guy is in that building, let’s shoot at the building.”) or suspected enemy locations (“There might be a guy behind that bush”). This prevents the enemy from popping out and shooting at you so you can manoeuvre on them and use grenades or call in artillery or mortar fire. Sometimes you will hit people as well, because you are shooting at places it’s likely that they are (the guy in the building eventually gets hit if enough people shoot enough shots at the building). Very rarely will you see an exposed person that you shoot and observably hit.

I knew it was just a matter of time before we would see something like this, with pretty much everyone having though something along the lines of “why don’t they get a drone with a net to take out other drones?”. But HOLY SHIT we’re actually seeing air-to-air combat between drones now! I can only wonder how long it will be before we start seeing bomber / recon drones with escorting fighter drones being attacked by enemy fighter drones equipped specifically for that task.

When I see this kind of videos I honestly have a kind of hard time imagining how they’re not just punching through Russian lines left and right… I mean, I just can’t imagine anything withstanding that kind of assault short of heavy air and/or artillery support coming in. Here’s to hoping Russias artillery and air advantage deteriorate to a point where these kind of assaults can be exploited and turned in to major breaches some time soon.

I’m assuming South Korea has an impressive production capacity for 155 shells, given the nature of NK, and the kind of war they’ve been preparing for. In that case, direct support from South Korea could mean a pretty solid increase in access to 155mm, which seems to be what is determining the course of the war in Ukraine!