The War in the Ukraine

[plawolf]

Focusing on point defence is already giving up 90% of your interception opportunities, that’s equivalent to thinking beefing up the defences of warships is to just spam more CIWS turrets.

The biggest issue with Russia is its huge size and massive land boarders with hostile forces. They also lack investment in internal security. China doesn’t spend more on internal security than the PLA budget for no reason.

But both of those are massive systematic issues that cannot be easily solved even in the medium term, if ever. So the best way to deal the risks of such attacks isn’t to play purely defence but to go on the offensive at source and impose unacceptable costs on the attackers such that they are forced to show restraint.

On the tactical level, bare minimum additional security features should be implemented at a minimum can include:
- banning large commercial vehicles from coming within 20km of sensitive military sites, with strict police enforcement of that rule.
- imposing cell signal blackout of 5-10km around such sites with jammers operating 24/7.
- routine randomised repositioning of aircraft and other mobile high value assets.
- point defences (laser, microwave, hard rounds and missiles, maybe even interceptor drones) installed to cover the whole perimeter of such sites, with a zero tolerance, shoot first ask questions later approach to any unidentified flying objects that comes within 1km of the perimeter.
- space aimed satellite signal jammers to disrupt starlink based C&C of drones. Potentially airship based persistent medium altitude jammers designed to further disrupt satellite comms with low altitude drones
- install rapid deploying helium barrage balloon anchored net networks around the base perimeter and maybe also tactically within the base such that if alerted of a drone swarm attack, the balloons will deploy within seconds to erect anti-drone nets dozens of metres high around the base and inside. The nets should be fine enough to be functionally invisible to drone based sensors. With signal disruption preventing man-in-the-loop command, it should prove very effective at stopping drones en mass.

But even with all of that, you cannot guarantee to be able to stop drone swarm attacks.

 

[doggydogdo]

Jokes on Russian incompetence aside, you got to admit this is a pretty clever operation and if the same thing were done to US or China I'm afraid the result may not differ that much.

Though in China's case at least we have way more robust border control and way less corruption, it should be extremely difficult to smuggle explosives arround

The drones would have been stopped if Russia had anti air guns, drones are not that hard to stop.

Imo distance is the main factor here, laser light scatter off has power density decay according to inverse square law, citizens a couple hundred meters away should be safe

Lasers don't decay like normal lights and the drop off is quite small, the biggest problem for lasers is air absorbing its energy not distance.

 

[gelgoog]

Russia already beefed up internal security by creating Rosgvardiya. They put the regional MVD troops under a single unified command. Rosgvardiya is directly under the control of the Russian President.

 

[Tam]

Russia is doing plenty with drones, the problem is Ukraine doesn't have anything important enough that destroying with drones will make headlines.

It's more like the Russians hit the big targets far too often that it's no longer news worthy.

For example, in the same day, an Iskander hit a Ukrainian training camp with cluster munitions. It must have killed a boat load of people because the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Mikhail Drapaty tendered his resignation. The site was scouted by a Russian UAV and the hit observed.

The site is the 239th Training Camp in Dnepropetrovosk. Given Ukraine has been recruiting 18 to 24 year olds, it's a sad possibility that there's likely young ones among them.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Iskander strikes are occurring at nearly a daily rate. These strikes are often drone scouted. FAB strikes occur several times daily as much as a hundred according to Zelensky. These are also drone scouted, observed and verified. They look for agglomerations of people and equipment.

The frontlines are so close to the Dnepropetrovosk border that a small winged recon UAV that can be carried with both hands can be launched and scout the region for high quality targets such as this.

It's also a reminder that when the Russians target capturing a place, it's not about gaining more territory or news eyeballs. The site could potentially be as a forward operating base used to launch drones to observe and attack targets at the enemy rear. You take the location in the map, and you start to draw a radii of 10km, 20km, 30km, 40km and 50km from the site and see which cities, towns, settlements and highways the radii would reach. This gives you an idea what could potentially be hit. Chances are you are going to see FPV drones hitting targets along those highways, hangers, and camps launched from this point. This is where the Ukrainians are supposed to concentrate their efforts to take back the salient or it's going to cost them huge later. However that's not often heeded.

 

[enroger]

The drones would have been stopped if Russia had anti air guns, drones are not that hard to stop.

Lasers don't decay like normal lights and the drop off is quite small, the biggest problem for lasers is air absorbing its energy not distance.

Well the biggest difficulty is the surprise factor I guess, you have to deploy your AA guns near all your important sites and be on constant vigilance ,depending on numbers of drones and their proximity your AA guns can be overwhelmed.

Tomcat was worried about ppl staring into the scattered light, the laser light we're talking about is laser scattering off a target, not the beam itself. The scattered light does decay over distance pretty quick.

 

[Soldier30]

Details of the Ukrainian operation Spider Web, an attack by FPV drones on Russian military airfields, have become known. The operation was prepared for 1.5 years, it was planned to attack the airfields "Belaya" - Irkutsk region, "Olenya" - Murmansk region, "Ukrainka" - Amur region, "Dyagilevo" - Ryazan region, "Ivanovo" - Ivanovo region. As a result, 2 airfields were attacked, "Belaya" - Irkutsk region and "Olenya" - Murmansk region. It is worth noting that the operation was truly large-scale. To carry out the operation, a warehouse was rented in Chelyabinsk, hundreds of FPV drones were delivered there, and later "mobile wooden houses". It is possible that the FPV drones were assembled on site. These houses were placed on trucks, and FPV drones were hidden under their roofs. The wooden structures were designed in such a way that their upper part could be opened remotely. From this warehouse, trucks were then sent to other cities, one of the truck drivers was later found dead. The drones were controlled on non-standard frequencies, so electronic warfare had no effect on them. Presumably, cellular communications were used to communicate with the drones, some sources reported on Starlink terminals located in the forests. Trucks with containers stopped on roads and parking lots, after which drones took off from there. One truck was blocked by drivers in the parking lot, in the video people throw stones at the top of the container with drones, it is worth noting that there is a police car nearby. It can be said that thanks to the drivers, many planes were saved. Several containers caught fire and exploded on the highway on the way to the airfields, presumably the drones overheated in the containers. The video shows a truck in the Amur Region, if it and other trucks had arrived, there would have been more destroyed planes. How this could have been prevented, first of all, this is the work of the special services, but they are now overloaded with identifying sabotage and terrorist attacks. It would be possible to reduce losses if the aircraft were placed in hangars, they have been talking about them for 3 years, but so far only projects have been shown. Also, we need anti-FPV groups. Cellular communications, including "Starlink", should be jammed at airfields. Electronic warfare and air defense systems are already present at some airfields, but no one expected threats from FPV. Also, we need anti-FPV groups now. It is worth noting that no air defense systems or air defense systems in the world can confidently hit FPV drones. Satellite images have already confirmed the destruction of three Tu-95MS and damage to one aircraft at the Belaya airfield, and four Tu-22M3s were destroyed. We also saw a burning An-12 on video, but it is not in the pictures. There is no video about the Olenya airfield, the SBU of Ukraine did not show anything, but there was a fire there. Thus, the loss of 40 aircraft is not confirmed at the moment, but videos may appear later. It turned out to be a fake that the drones had artificial intelligence, and in the video they were controlled by operators.

 

[siegecrossbow]

IMO, I'm wondering how dangerous laser-based drone defense are going to be as very powerful beams of laser could blind or serious visual impairment to someone even if they aren't being directly illuminated by the laser(eg. class IV lasers could cause permanent damage from indirect viewing of the laser beam and class IV's lower limit is a measly 500mW now compared to these drone defense laser that could output up to a few dozen kW continuously). I don't think deploying these in densely populated areas would be a good idea especially if airfields and some military installations are located very near population centers.

You are not really shooting at ground level are we? It is a lot safer than shooting missiles or shells.

In other news. I’ve visited several English language Russian forums and the meltdown is unbelievable… some of them are calling for massive casualty events against Ukraine…

 

[Overbom]

You are not really shooting at ground level are we? It is a lot safer than shooting missiles or shells.

In other news. I’ve visited several English language Russian forums and the meltdown is unbelievable… some of them are calling for massive casualty events against Ukraine…

Meltdown should be directed to their own leaders. Ukraine does what it can to win, that's how all wars work

That Russia fights like a drunkard, is solely because of the you-know-who. But I bet you they don't have the guts to criticize him

 

[siegecrossbow]

Meltdown should be directed to their own leaders. Ukraine does what it can to win, that's how all wars work

That Russia fights like a drunkard, is solely because of the you-know-who. But I bet you they don't have the guts to criticize him

Oh the ones who are abroad definitely do. But ones still in Russia probably don’t want to involuntarily fly out of windows, I agree.

Goes to show that despite the negative propaganda against China as a brutal police state how dissidents are handled is way more humane than it is in Russia and the U.S.

 

[snake65]

You are not really shooting at ground level are we? It is a lot safer than shooting missiles or shells.

In other news. I’ve visited several English language Russian forums and the meltdown is unbelievable… some of them are calling for massive casualty events against Ukraine…

Of course they do. In Russian media anything Ukraine does is labeled "Terrorism". At the same time Russia claims to be attacking only military targets. No big surprise that after 3 years of such "propaganda" Russian society and public opinion has degraded to Nazi Germany of WW2.