Broccoli
Senior Member
Possibly another batch of T-55's going towards Ukraine(?).
The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
Hot take: They should have done this earlier. Their armored forces have been spread thin for a year.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
FPV drones are actually pretty bad for combat use if opfor deploys even basic countermeasures like jammers. Using FPVs as suicide bombs means you need to get within literal touching distance of your target. The closer you get to a jammer, the greater it’s power and effectiveness.
Unlike conventional hoverdrones, FPV drones don’t tend to have much in the way of safety features like hover upon signal loss, so even momentary loss of signal usually means you lost the drone. And even if you do introduce such a feature (which comes as standard on the DJI FPV), a FPV drone hovering a few dozen metres from its intended target is going to be easy for any infantryman to shoot down.
If China were so inclined, in can supply Russia with enough low power, short distance jammers that they can slap one on every vehicle, thereby totally hard countering FPV drones. Such systems will probably become standard issue for military vehicles in the near future.
Unlike conventional hoverdrones, FPV drones don’t tend to have much in the way of safety features like hover upon signal loss, so even momentary loss of signal usually means you lost the drone. And even if you do introduce such a feature (which comes as standard on the DJI FPV), a FPV drone hovering a few dozen metres from its intended target is going to be easy for any infantryman to shoot down.
If China were so inclined, in can supply Russia with enough low power, short distance jammers that they can slap one on every vehicle, thereby totally hard countering FPV drones. Such systems will probably become standard issue for military vehicles in the near future.
That's the problem, having good pilots. FPV drones have very short range and pilots must be stationed close to the action in order to operate them, which exposes them to danger. In the long run it is cheaper to automate them.
I have small fpv drones and planes, I have comeback system onboard on most costly ones (over 1000$ ones). Range more than 10km for my drone plane with digital camera and it's just a 250gr plane(legislations in canada). A twice bigger plane would improve loitering and speed big time. Camera emitter block the range limits... That little plane still go 80kph if you are flying it to get range out of it.
One of my cheap quad racer models is below 500$ (bought it 250$ on ali...+ battery and upgrades) and could a grenade easy on 1km strike range with the basic crap camera and emitter at over 130kph in open fields. They are no bigger than a plate, you would see them in the last seconds...
Yeah they are probably fragile on the EW side and GPS jamming for the return capacity but to empty a trench that you need to take, a couple of these drones is way cheaper than an atgm. You can have some video data and gps position recorded if you like.
Chechens of the Akhmat brigade in battle at Kremennaya where the Russians have made some incremental gains lately. Despite the heavy battle, they took a moment to pose for the selfie camera.
Lancet taking out another M777 yet again.
Russian ATGM takes out an SUV used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. UAF has made extensive use of pickups and SUVs to deal with their vehicular shortage.
Lancet taking out another M777 yet again.
Russian ATGM takes out an SUV used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. UAF has made extensive use of pickups and SUVs to deal with their vehicular shortage.
Finally, some Chechens footage huh
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Not sure I would want a return to home feature on a suicide FPV drone, as that seems like going out of your way to help the opfor unlock rarer achievements like return to sender.
Basic DJI FPV drones clock in at $1k plus goggles, so your $1k drone is actually on the higher end of what such drones should cost since they are essentially consumables. ATGMs are the wrong comparison since those are designed to take out million dollar tanks, not line grunts.
Also, FPV drones are so fast and nimble because they have minimal weight to achieve silly TTW ratios, start strapping payload on them and they won’t fly remotely as fast or far. At extended ranges issues with lag will also become more pronounced.
For anti-personnel work, the Chinese autonomous swarm bots are the way to go. Ideally paired with a larger UAV as reusable long range dispenser. That would be basically a hard counter to the high tech trench warfare that Ukraine is stuck in, and possibly also urban combat, and it’s achievable with essentially off the shelf equipment for China.
To what purpose? Other than keyboard warriors feeling more confident in their chants of "Russia Stronk" what kind of advantage can these drones provide that could change the outcome of the conflict? Again it's armchair generals refusing to finish their lieutenant course.
Let me borrow this from @Temstar as an example. What do you really see on this clip?
There's an identified target which is a building potentially with greater number of UAF personnel inside. This assessment is based on observation provided by UAVs and other ISR assets before the strike. It's important to note that it's not the building that is the target but the UAF personnel and their field post inside. Perhaps it's a resting place. Perhaps that's where supplies are kept. Perhaps it's a low level command post for some unit holding a portion of the front. There are some people moving and then the drone flies in and the feed cuts. Cue in extatic "Russia stronk" chanting.
This clip is regular Russian propaganda which is predictably completely useless as always for any other purpose than finding excuse to shout "Russia Stronk" if you're a pro-Russian keyboard warrior.
Propaganda can be done well - which this isn't - and can be useful as OSINT - which this isn't either. You may think that you see something there but that's your imagination filling in the blanks incorrectly. Say what you want about Ukrainians but they do have better propaganda department. It's more engaging and it's more useful for outside observers who want to learn something about the conflict. And it's because it's not the Ukrainians doing it and it's part of a psy-op to present UAF as a largely competent and well-run force for western audiences who don't know any better than the keyboard warrior.
Returning to drones:
What you see on that clip is a mission that could be better executed by an arty strike or an air strike. As such it's not a display of Russian strength as it is of weakness that is only somewhat effective because of the comparative weakness of Ukrainian military. Although we don't know if this was effective at all. It's just a clip that is convenient for propaganda purposes. The fire mission may as well have been a failure.
A 2,5kg explosive warhead is not enough to damage a properly reinforced defensive position. If the Ukrainians prepared such buildings correctly with sandbags and other solid elements to shield from blasts etc. it would barely have an effect because while running into the building it would detonate at a blast barrier. Even a 5kg explosive is not enough when delivered at low velocities and with low kinetic energy. This is why trenches work against heavy artillery. A well designed trench minimizes casualties and damage even from a direct hit by 155mm. Here we may have an untrained TerObrona unit with soldiers breaking the first commandment of infantry warfare:
whenever you're not moving or shooting you are digging
Most people have no idea just how difficult it is to break through proper defenses. On the battlefield physics is not your ally but your toughest enemy. Psychology is your friend and you're hoping to deal a blow to the enemy's perception and morale. Only the you may get the bonus of the enemy putting himself in the wrong position where you can kill him. That's how it works.
As for drones as a combat system - they are useful for light units. They're self-propelled munitions that also provide ISR. They don't require an artillery unit that can be targeted by counter-battery fire. They also don't have obvious trajectories for flight which allows for better concealment. But what they really are is a very long distance and hella confusing grenade throw.
A drone swarm is a different thing but only if your enemy doesn't have EW to disable it which is really not that hard. Drones fall like flies to EW which is why they're not the wonder weapon as many people imagine them to be.
All these lancet strikes or whatnot is just propaganda for people who don't know any better. It's the same as with the Javelins and Stingers in the beginning of the invasion. What really killed Russian tanks was artillery and mines - over 80% losses. What really killed aircraft were Buks.
Drones are an additional capability that can augment existing combined arms tactics but they don't revolutionize anything because that revolution already happened a few decades ago. We're only seeing a proliferation of cheaper platforms.
So why are the Ukrainians throwing cheap drones at Russians? Is it because they're effective? No. It's because they have shortage of artillery for all types of fire missions.
For example not allowing the enemy to sleep through the night is a fire mission. Particularly if the personnel is fresh and hasn't adapted yet that can sap a lot of strength if they can't sleep through two or three nights. Fighting is not that hard. Maintaining strength and alertness for hours and days is hard. Don't eat for an entire day and go to the park to run and do the amount of physical exercise that you would do with all meals. And if you somehow manage to do it all do some extra for good measure. And then imagine going back home and not eating and having to go to work without food for the next day. That's how war actually works - by physical exhaustion of combat potential. Only then real losses occur.
But Ukraine doesn't have sufficient artillery to perform basic fire missions, let alone this. So they use drones because drones are available, while arty munitions are not. Arms industry can produce only so many propellant charges and munitions. Drones are plentiful because it's a civilian market of OTS components. There are thousands of drones available so they hang small munitions and use them as substitutes for airstrikes and arty. But they are still substitutes. The really good drones that exploit a niche? They are expensive and UAF keeps them for special missions.
Why are the Russians using drones? They figured out the same logic. Why waste munitions for something that a grenade can do if thrown far enough? And also if they can siphon off some of the components that Ukraine can use then all the better. Russians are burning through ammunition and at some point the same logic that affects Ukraine will apply. Be efficient with resources.
And while we're on drawing the wrong conclusions - this whole business about "T-55s going to Ukraine".
This from @Broccoli
Can we stop that until there's an T-55 spotted in combat in Ukraine?
None of these transports are geolocated, nobody knows where they are really going. They may be intended for the front. Or not.
They may also be training vehicles for T-62M crews since T-55 shares the same ergonomics. T-62M is ideally kept at the frontline with a rotating crew. For that you need training facilities and because in Russian army training is provided by the unit, rather than a dedicated training center, they may be simply moving them to establish a "forward training system". This is just one example. They may be for other uses as well.
Until we see T-55s used in Ukraine, in combat and in a clear context indicating that they are being used for that purpose tactically all you do is wasting everyone's time.
And if they are used in combat then so what? This is a large-scale conflict and Russia doesn't have the industrial potential to support it properly. Tanks break down quickly and wear out. After a few breakdowns they have to be sent back for overhaul. Russian/Soviet tanks have horrible reliability. They're downright awful because they were meant to be cheaply mass-produced for limited use. In Ukraine they're being used far longer than their design allows and all of that takes resources and manpower. This is why NATO changed their design to be as reliable as possible because they couldn't afford to mobilize the entire economy for war all the time (neither could the USSR but they didn't know it). Soviets went for many disposable tanks. NATO went for fewer reliable tanks.
T-55s have even worse reliability than T-72s. So it's not so much about losses in combat as losses to breakdown. Having a 100 T-55s allows 30 of them to be used on the front continuously. At some point commanders just want a gun with some armor that can move around and be used against M113 or infantry. If it's stupid and it works then it isn't stupid. But we can't know until we see it at work.
How easy is it for a fpv headset to switch drones maybe it's interesting to send 3 or 4 drones at once and then send them in one after each other to double or triple tap the enemy.