FPV drones for combat are a hot flash in the pan. They have had a major effect for now, but naturally as these countermeasures evolve, so weakens their effect.
I keep telling people that the terrain and the strategies that Russians use is the primary reason for the effectiveness. Mortars and artillery already handle the same requirements as the author says. The reason they are effective in 2024-25 is that the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running over vast fields / unarmoed vehicles driving over known routes is the only way Russians make progress. For a moving target they are great, but multiple moving targets would get shredded by competent artillery anyway.
Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
By far the best use of drones still is as battlefield recon/fire correction to adjust existing artillery/mortar capabilities.
Source: I’m one such drone hobbyist and I’ve watched way too much footage from the front. None of what i’m writing is in absolute terms. I just don’t see the same way as commenters in the public who think they are a checkmate for any combat situation. The incompetence of the Russian forces caught everyone by surprise, but they have learned. My country’s border with Russia is heavily forested and not as flat as Russia. The drones are not able to go through the canopy. Infrared recon is a way better choice than FPV suicide drones.
thebruce87m · 4h ago
> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
The drones now are using fibre optic cables with the reel mounted on the drone. Having the reel on the drone avoids snagging issues and the fibre itself avoids EW jamming and line of sight issues.
abracadaniel · 3h ago
I watched the video of one navigating a series of nets to weave its way inside and into the open hatch of a tank. It’s ridiculously impressive.
dizhn · 3h ago
I watched a video of one being destroyed by cutting the trailing fiber optic cable with a pair of scissors. Also impressive.
Zanfa · 28m ago
Out of all the possible failure modes of fiber optic drones, scissors are pretty much the least likeliest issue you’ll encounter.
Fokamul · 3h ago
Yes, def. possible. But right now in UA's regions where drones are used the most, there are so many used fiber-optic cables laying on the fields, that you have basically zero chance to cut them all, because you would be cutting already discarded ones.
Provided that you catch it in time ... the window for doing that is short (several minutes) and you also likely need to expose yourself to potential other drones patroling in your proximity.
aftbit · 3h ago
The big thing that FPV drones have going for them is that they're ludicrously cheap and easily constructed from relatively basic parts by moderately skilled people.
It's literally cheaper to strap a grenade to an FPV drone and fly it into a tank hatch than it is to fire a single non-precision artillery round, let alone tens or hundreds of them.
Plus, you can deploy your drones remotely from the top of a trunk deep behind enemy lines and fly them into irreplaceable strategic aviation assets with a shot exchange factor better than 1000x.
codedokode · 3h ago
Artillery carries more explosive and is good for destroying buildings and fortifications though.
Nicook · 2h ago
Did you not read the article? One of his major points is that a mortar is significantly cheaper and faster.
UncleEntity · 1h ago
Assuming you have good gun bunnies (term of affection, I assure you) and a spotter on the ground or in the air.
The mortar guys in my old company could put a round into a trashcan with line-of-sight but when someone else is calling in fire then they are more of an area weapon. Assuming that a fire mission is going to involve more than one or two rounds to bracket the target now you're talking more dollars and the people on the ground probably aren't going to stand there and wonder how long it's going to take to hit them.
The way I (and most other people I've heard talk about it) see it is drones are an area denial weapon.
dinfinity · 5h ago
> I’ve watched way too much footage from the front.
Did you see the videos of a drone dropping a shitload of thermite on a forest canopy? [0]
> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
Most nations have cellular networks that penetrate buildings and forests just fine. In fact, Ukraine used the Russian cellular network for their recent attack deep behind enemy lines.
I'm not saying this will always be possible, but it's not hard to see that line of sight communication is not the end of the line for military drone control. There are many routes for providing an ad hoc line of communication if you don't just use consumer-level tech.
Your linked video is interesting, but I fail to see how this at all differentiates/promotes drone usage versus artillery, indirect fire.
Your video shows something that an artillery corps could accomplish just as easily and not at all be prone to EW.
Granted, moving indirect fire is probably more expensive than a single fpv drone dropping a thermite bomb, but at scale indirect fire is far cheaper, more effective, and critically not prone to EW.
esseph · 3h ago
Think of the fpv drone like a smol guided TOW missile at extremely low cost.
The artillery, while destructive, is not going to be nearly as accurate. If you want artillery to hit something on the move accurately you want something like a laser adjusted Excalibur round.
The drone is actually extremely efficient.
CapricornNoble · 3h ago
Laser-guided artillery rounds have been around a while. The Soviets were using laser-guided 240mm heavy mortar rounds in Afghanistan.
I was one of the first non special operations troops to use a modern infantry-company sized drone (small, low cost) to guide conventional and guided artillery in 2008-9 for the US.
Laser guided Excalibur rounds didn't come out until much later, same for the laser guided jdams. And the cost of those is much higher, plus logistical an deployment cost, than a FPV drone.
Edit: I also don't know anybody that ever fired a copperhead round in anger. That was very much a product of 80s and 90s doctrine to counter Russian armor.
tguvot · 2h ago
there are now laser/gps guided mortars. probably still more expensive than drone but easier to deploy
esseph · 26m ago
Yep, 120mms I think.
You won't find them with light infantry, but you will with Cav / Mech units.
dinfinity · 3h ago
Drone 1 (or any other means) destroys the canopy. Drones 2-10 are no longer hindered by said canopy and deliver their payload with extreme and dynamic precision.
Remember that the argument was basically that drones can do nothing useful in (heavily) forested terrain. They can with a little bit of creativity.
originalvichy · 1h ago
I guess we live in different regions. Everything north of Estonia/Denmark is thick spruce and pine forest. I’ve seen what artillery does to these trees, but I’d be hesitant to say a drone could lift something heavy enough to serve like Vietnam war era ”daisy cutters”. Artillery explodes closer to the forest floor.
Did you miss the part about signals jamming in the article? The reason the attack on airfields worked is precisely because they operate inland and not on the frontline. Cellular networks not only can be jammed but towers are a priority target. That’s why Starlink is/was so crucial. Even GPS is jammed so independent flight can be impossible with cheap components.
The thermite drones do attack forested areas on the farmlands, but the forests I talk about are tens or hundreds of kilometers wide. You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.
fellowniusmonk · 3h ago
I wonder what the tech gap is to using circular polarized light from the sun as a point of reference for dead reckoning. If Bees use it why not camera systems?
LorenPechtel · 1h ago
That will give facing. Not range, nor actual bearing (your drone is moving relative to the local air, not to the ground.)
general1726 · 3h ago
Since fiber optics being used signal jamming is stopping to be a thing. You can fly with a drone into basement and have 4k video.
dinfinity · 2h ago
> Did you miss the part about signals jamming in the article?
"Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components)."
The currently used FPV drones use consumer level ass communication methods. Do you also think that current military-grade communication methods can be easily jammed on the battlefield?
Using the consumer level stuff as a reference point and thinking it is somehow SOTA is not going to lead to good conclusions.
> Cellular networks not only can be jammed but towers are a priority target.
The point was that there are plenty of radio signals that work fine and with high bandwidth in the 'problematic' terrain types you mentioned. Having said that, you can't rely on the cellular towers of the enemies of course. You need relay drones to create your own ad hoc cellular network.
> You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.
At what coordinate? The whole point of FPV drones is that the operator can fly close to the target area and only then decide what the best place to strike is. A shell that is 20m off target is just a waste.
The point of destroying the canopy is reducing the attenuation of the signal for other drones to go in and be able to be precise.
edm0nd · 4h ago
All of the good footage is in /r/CombatFootage
(for anyone curious)
morkalork · 3h ago
Isn't the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running around the response to artillery in the first place? Any concentration of manpower attracts artillery and if it's significant, HIMARS gets called in. Naturally, the response is to disperse men and make artillery less effective. The response to that is FPVs chasing down the individuals instead. They're a counter to a counter and can't be judged in isolation.
originalvichy · 1h ago
My point is that it is difficult to imagine another peer conflict in a similar geographical type reaching such a level that budgets should be diverted in a major way to develop these devices in the hope that they are some miracle weapon. Layperson politicians read headlines and think they are a first-level counter and not a counter-to-a-counter as you said :)
morkalork · 1h ago
That is true, although I think a lot of what can be invested in, is transferable. Control software, targeting, AI could be adapted to larger or smaller scale drones. Manufacturing capabilities can be as well. ISR drones are pervasive and it used to be uneconomical to shoot down a relatively cheap one, like an Orlan, with something that cost as much or more. Now there's cheap counter-ISR FPVs. I don't think the future is manually guided at all though.
ashoeafoot · 32m ago
Drones could be manufactured from standardized components, LEGO so to speak, allowing for add hoc redesign and automated manufacturing . Foilwrapped fuelcokecans with a primer and a bus are where its at .
inglor_cz · 3h ago
"Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx."
This is true, but flat open fields are precisely the places where major mechanized battles usually took place. For the very reason that manoeuvering other equipment in complicated terrain is hard.
Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)
potato3732842 · 1h ago
>Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)
Fighting through some portion of the Ardennes has been a fairly recurrent theme in central European land warfare since vikings did it in the 800s.
I'm sure if one digs they can find a reference to a roman general doing it too.
inglor_cz · 31m ago
I haven't claimed that there were zero such instances, but my guess is that such battles in difficult terrain may be ~ 5 per cent of the total, if not less. People and animals get exhausted easily in bad terrain, and it is hard to supply the troops. Even mechanical equipment becomes less reliable and more prone to malfunction.
Notably, the German operation Sichelschnitt in 1940 was very successful because the French command considered it unlikely that German Panzers would be able to cross the Ardennes in force, even though the French command was probably well aware of their own military history.
originalvichy · 1h ago
I made the error of emphasizing that I was thinking in a generalized manner of major nations with military tensions with shared borders. A lot of thought should be put towards if simple geography could make this cheap dispenable warfare more expensive than initially due to requirements for repeaters, shielded high-end comms chips or other assistive tech.
alphabettsy · 5h ago
> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
Citation needed.
speeder · 3h ago
I saw some fascinating videos explaining that the terrain caused the war in first place.
The huge border between Russia and Ukraine is completely flat grassland. This means that to Russia, Ukraine joining NATO is an unacceptable risk because that border is impossible to defend against NATO tank invasion, and the flatness go all the way to Moscow.
A lot of people on internet keep poking fun at Russia inadequate tanks as "proof" Russia is stupid for invading with such crappy gear. Russia is very well aware of this, and is why they invaded in first place, they know of Ukraine joins NATO any military exchange with NATO (like what happened between Iran and Israel) would need to immediately become nuclear because their existing army can't defend the huge open flat terrain against NATO equipment.
ashoeafoot · 27m ago
That same NATO that has problems getting artillery ammo because they decommissioned the plants? Is this dangerous alliance in the room right now?
kjkjadksj · 2h ago
Well if they didn’t bother their neighbors they wouldn’t have to worry about NATO. Seems like a self imposed wound there.
tguvot · 2h ago
3 days after russian invasion or main russian news agency was auto-published article that was supposed to be a victory lap, and promptly removed. it was very briefly mentioned only in few western publications and not many people who speak russian know about it
it gives some insights about reasons for russian invasion. this is english translation . not sure how accurate (don't feel like checking few pages of text), but close enough
Invasion? Oh my, are you delusional? NATO is a defence alliance, stop consuming Russian propaganda maybe.
inglor_cz · 3h ago
I would say that the events of Russo-Ukrainian war have shown that even a lot of tanks (and NATO does not have anywhere near as many as Russia did, the former Soviet stockpile was absolutely massive) aren't the crushing force that they used to be in Manstein's and Guderian's time. Of course Putin is a bit old and may think in old patterns...
On the other hand, I believe Russia made itself very vulnerable by letting its cosmic sector drown in corruption. Nowadays they have fallen so behind the US in launch capabilities that it isn't even funny. Try hiding anything from the fleet of satellites that the US has, or can have if it wishes to.
Starlink may be the single most dangerous technologic development of the 21st century to Russia.
No comments yet
originalvichy · 5h ago
Travel the world or check out your favorite map software, snd look at current hot conflicts and recent ones in the past. You have Iraq and Ukraine/Russia which are relatively flat, then you have Afghanistan or Iran on the opposite side of the spectrum. Even a flat country can have forests too thick for flying wirelessly or with fiber optics.
markandrewj · 52m ago
It is interesting hearing feedback from the frontline. Even with the issues, I think it is clear drones are changing modern warfare when you have companies like Anduril. What most people think is coming next is autonomous drones, although I don't morally agree with it. Sorry you had to have this experience, I wish this war would end, too many lives have been lost and it is senseless.
ashoeafoot · 38m ago
The is also a sort of autonomous targetting for jammers available ? The grandfather of the shaheed was intended to guide itself towardsrrrussian radar aka em sources, so i guess a modern drone should be similar capable on connection loss to rech the disturbing em source.
aqsalose · 7h ago
Many of the issues sound like issues coming from using improvised civilian hobbyist tech and doctrine being in its infancy.
If current FPV drones are bit lackluster, it doesn't preclude 'next generation' that are purposefully developed for military use won't be useful. Also it sounds like the designation of "FPV drone" is specific to particular family of drones specific in current day and time, which may be something quite else next year. Like, obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone or loitering munition author complains of (capability to hover easily)? Or "reusable" drone with FPV camera?
More autonomy, but MUCH more expensive. Thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per use. The issue is indeed using mass-produced consumer drones. It's a bit like the widespread use of "technicals" in some conflicts: yes, a pickup truck with a .50cal in the back is inferior to tanks or armored cars, but it's also much, much cheaper.
There's a bit of a "Sherman vs. Tiger" thing that's been going on since the dawn of industrialised warfare. Is it better to have a more effective weapon that you can only afford a few of, or lots of cheaper ones?
The US doctrine approach to the problem would simply be a set of B2 bunker buster decapitation strikes on Russian military HQs, but of course that option is not available to Ukraine. They can't even manage Iraq-war-style wave of SEAD strikes followed by unit level CAS. The air war has kind of stalemated with neither side having conventional air superiority and both being vulnerable to the other's anti-air.
fennecbutt · 1h ago
Switchblade 2 is $80k usd per unit.
And the only reason for that is that as per usual private companies are making a killing.
You and I could build a similarly functioning device in 6 months with a small team. They're not that smart/advanced, imo.
I think most of the money for these things isn't paid for research/engineering but goes into MBA/investor pockets.
LorenPechtel · 54m ago
There is also the problem that the military tends to go for the best. In some cases that's a good idea (the cost of getting that laser-guided bomb to the release point is well above the cost of the bomb), but when dealing with unmanned units the zerg approach is very often the winner.
Look at Iron Dome. By comparison to other modern SAMs it's abysmal. But that's by design, Israel wasn't looking for a good SAM. They were looking for the cheapest SAM that could hit a sitting duck. But that's what it's facing--ballistic inbounds that have no countermeasures and no ability to evade.
thatguy0900 · 1h ago
I was under the impression that while there is a lot of grift, a lot of that was supply chain cost as well. You or I could build one but it would all be sourced in China without vetted supply chain parts or firmware. These Ukraine drones are all off the shelf parts and running who knows what firmware everywhere.
daemontus · 3h ago
Ah, the age old question of "1 horse-sized duck vs. 100 duck-sized horses"...
0cf8612b2e1e · 1h ago
This is a Zerg vs Protoss debate.
sensanaty · 2h ago
Slightly unrelated, but reading the "product" page is crazy to me. So much about lethal radii, kill zones and stuff like that. Wild, couldn't ever picture myself working on something like this and sleeping well at night
fennecbutt · 1h ago
I would. But I would be hesitant to if I got wind that it was being sold to a bad government, or that my government was a bad government/intended then for misuse.
As a quiet gay nerd I'd love for there to be no war, no bullies. But unfortunately we live in a world where our species evolved from monkeys and we still often act like it. If my usually peaceful tribe needs weapons to defend itself when attacked then I'm all for it. But using those weapons to attack another for any reason other than defense is a nono in my books.
palata · 6h ago
> Many of the issues sound like issues coming from using improvised civilian hobbyist tech
I don't think it's improvised civilian hobbyist tech. They run autopilots that also fly professional drones and can fly planes.
I think it's mostly that it has to be super cheap, otherwise it doesn't bring value (because other weapons are more efficient if you have more money). If your one-way drone costs 10k dollars, maybe it's too expensive even though it can fly during the night.
And then there are fundamental limitations, like flying in bad weather.
> obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone
But a reusable drone won't go inside a hangar (because at this point it probably won't come out). If your drone can go somewhere, drop something and come back, doesn't it mean that another class of weapons could do this job?
bluGill · 3h ago
$10,000 can be cheap for a one way drone. Bombs often cost for more than that. The real question is value, if hitting the target is worth more than the cost of what you hit it with then you have a good value. Taking out a $1000 drone with a $100,000 missile is a good value if that drone is headed for a $1,000,000 building, but if the drone is headed for a cow probably not worth it.
palata · 3h ago
Sure. But isn't that the point of the article? That the author is not sure if they bring as much value as advertised?
LorenPechtel · 41m ago
And the reusable drone has a serious battlefield limitation that it's extremely vulnerable while positioning to drop it's munition. Very good against something that can't defend itself (we have a lot of video of them dropping stuff into tanks that the crew bailed out of for some reason), but the cost mounts quickly if a soldier with a shotgun can engage it.
spwa4 · 5h ago
Sadly I think that AI will make a very large difference here. And AI hardware that can control weapons is already hundreds of dollars and dropping fast, because a cell phone can do it.
Nicook · 2h ago
AI AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAI
ashoeafoot · 25m ago
Also, the tech hurdles can easy be overcome with motherships as relays?
oersted · 6h ago
I don’t understand why the author has such a narrow definition of FPV drones.
He talks as if reusable drones are a completely different category, that they are all toys designed for enthusiast racers… Generally he implies that a myriad arbitrary technical details are fundamental limitations of this paradigm, it’s a strange mindset.
Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20% accounting for environmental factors and faults in manufacturing. How likely is it that a mortar does anything? Or a soldier with a rifle? Or anything else?
> When I joined the team, I was excited to work with a cutting-edge tool.
It sounds like he was imagining some kind of scifi adventure, but it’s always been clear that they are using cheap drones with tech that has been commonplace for a decade. And that’s completely fine, it’s intentional.
palata · 6h ago
> Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20%
That's the whole question, and that's kind of the point that the article raises: the success rate does not matter. What matters is the cost. At the same cost, can you do more damage with other weapons or not?
oersted · 6h ago
Indeed that’s what I meant, it’s a good question. It sounds like the author only saw the cases where mortars or reusable drones had been successful. But I cannot imagine a mortar being more efficient even if one shot is 5x cheaper. Perhaps they are more effective at suppression, but I would be surprised if they really hit anything meaningful more than 5% of the time, similar with most artillery or bombing, or just plain infantry.
What even comes close to the success rate of a drone to hit a particular moving target? And you can do it while hidden 10km away with a lightly trained operator. And manufactured cheaply, safely and quickly by unskilled labor, and easily transported to the front and hand-carried by troops.
Any kind of alternative, like precision bombing or sniping, or just getting close and shooting at it, must be much more costly, particularly when you also account for the cost of the equipment used, even if it is reusable, and the training, risk and human cost.
throwawayffffas · 6h ago
A hit does not equal a kill. Killing a tank or an apc, takes a lot of hits from an FPV drone due to the small payload. I have heard quoted an average of 16 hits.
That's why you see videos trying to go in open hatches and the like. And that's why you are seeing cope cages. It doesnt matter how many chains or steel plates you weld on to your tank if you are hit by a TOW or a Javelin, it's still going to get you. They can penetrate more than a meter of steel.
But the FPV is carrying a DPCIM or a small RPG it's much less likely to penetrate a tanks or an apc armor.
> What matters is the cost.
Logistics matter too. How many FPVs can a company carry? How many fit in a pickup? Do you need a truck load to kill a tank? If you need like 10 to kill a tank, you need to do 10 attacks, either 10 people attacking the same target in quick succession or one guy 10 times.
A Javelin is pretty much one hit one kill, and the hit rate is supposedly at about 89%. So you need like one or two to kill a tank.
From what I have heard, bigger heavier reusable drones, that release their bigger payload are more effective than FPVs.
LorenPechtel · 45m ago
You realize that a lot of stuff they were sticking on tanks was to defeat the Javelin?
You simply can't put a big enough warhead on a man portable missile to defeat the main armor of a modern tank. Thus you do not actually want to hit the tank--the purpose of the Javelin is to fly *over* the target tank, when it's overhead it's warhead detonates, firing an explosively formed projectile down into the *top* armor of the tank. Those cages were meant to keep the Javelin from getting to the right spot to do that.
oersted · 5h ago
It's a good point, I'm wondering though what the ROI of a Javelin is throughout its lifetime, including training costs. It's not obvious that you end up better off, perhaps.
bluGill · 3h ago
ROI also depends on availability. Ukraine knows everything about the article and likely agrees (though they will dispute some details) - Ukraine was trained on the old Soviet Artillery doctrine and knows it well. However Ukraine cannot get nearly enough of the supposedly cheaper mortar rounds at any price while they can make drones quickly. In theory I could make 155mm rounds for Ukraine in my garage, but my metal lathe (most people don't have one but I do) isn't the right tool for the job and so I'd be making dozens a month at best, what Ukraine really needs is a modern factory than can make thousands or even millions per month - it would take me years to create that factory.
throwawayffffas · 5h ago
The way I see it, it's probably worth it. You probably want a layered approach, you have a few high end, very expensive very effective weapons for maximum effect at the beginning of a conflict to take out the enemies high end, tip of the spear forces. And then you want to have a deep reserve of cheaper, legacy stuff to deal with volume and attrition.
davedx · 5h ago
Of course. That's combined arms doctrine
bjourne · 3h ago
Ofc but javelin launchers and missiles cost $250k a piece. You get a lot of drones for that price.
codedokode · 3h ago
And you need to be in a line of sight close to the target and not get hit by an enemy drone. And it requires some time to boot if I am not mistaken.
CapricornNoble · 3h ago
> A Javelin is pretty much one hit one kill, and the hit rate is supposedly at about 89%. So you need like one or two to kill a tank.
Take those extremely high kill rates with a massive grain of salt.
ukrainians were blowing up with javelins and nlaw everything that is moving and had wheels
inglor_cz · 3h ago
I think we should not discount the psychological effect.
From what I have read from Ukraine vets, ubiquitous drones make you crazy in a way that tank attacks don't. The difference is in their ubiquity. You are likely to encounter a tank relatively infrequently, and have enough time to recuperate between those encounters. But with a sky full of drones 24/7, or close to that, your nerves will give way sooner or later.
This alone may cripple the forward units.
time0ut · 6h ago
I assume this is like a pilot in WW1 reporting how finicky and hard to use bi-planes were. No doubt a bunch of weapons manufacturers have seen this and the special operations Ukraine did in Russia and Israel did in Iran and the wheels of progress are turning and the result will be terrifying.
dingaling · 3h ago
Likewise, ysterday I was reading about Chuck Yeager's first jet flight, in a P-80, and how most of his time was spent manually juggling the fuel flow to prevent the engine either overheating or flaming out. He barely had time to think about actually achieving anything.
A decade later, automated fuel flow was standardised and aircraft were flying twice as fast and high.
palata · 6h ago
What terrifies me is that the next step may be AI swarms, where one side sends thousands of drones at the same time and let each of them autonomously choose what they want to target.
It's all technically feasible up to "choosing wisely".
koonsolo · 5h ago
In a sense it's already happening with the Shahed drones. Maybe not smart AI, but the end result is still the same: you have no clue where they will end up.
FridayoLeary · 53m ago
What's eye opening about the recent iran israel conflict is how drones were used. Iran fired about 1000 drones and israel easily destroyed all but one of them. On the other hand israel used drones to devastating effect.
I'm not sure what to make of that, but it's clear that drones as a primary means of warfare is simply not effective. hamas and hezbolla have no notable successes with drones, except for on october 7 where they used them to great effect to destroy specific machine gun emplacements and a couple of tanks. They will be part of the future, but never the future itself.
LorenPechtel · 38m ago
Israel has been serious about defending against simple weapons for a long time. And expect them to have doubled down on this since 10/7. As far as I know they are the only modern power to have done so.
lawn · 3h ago
Allegedly there's lots of field tests of these swarms in the war already.
fdye · 2h ago
Interesting read. Curious how the author feels re: the attack on airbases using shipping containers/drones that was so successful?
Seems to be a unique case that worked especially well for (higher end I'm sure) FPV drones. Getting artillery in on shipping containers would have a higher likelihood of detection. Similarly, the ability to 'guide' in the drones with munitions seemed to allow for greater flexibility during the attack and its effectiveness.
I imagine eventually these cheap FPV's will be augmented with low-cost GPU's allowing for running smallish models and self-guided autonomy. This would seem the next evolution where a commander deploys them in bulk and overwhelms the enemy in a way that can't be jammed like radio-communication. Similarly, horrifying when you consider their eventual use in terrorism scenarios...
literalAardvark · 1h ago
That didn't use FPV drones, they're rather difficult to control at 6000km and they didn't have operators nearby.
Most likely it's the first major deployment of their semi autonomous drone tech, driven "declaratively". They've shown that stuff recently, they probably used it before showing it.
kilimounjaro · 21m ago
Ukraine’s drones were primarily LTE/4G-connected for remote operation
LorenPechtel · 36m ago
The report said they were guided remotely.
I suspect reality is a combination--think RTS game. You give orders to your units but you don't babysit them.
smcameron · 1h ago
> If this type of pre-aborted mission is included in the total, the success rate drops to between 20 and 30 percent. On the face of it, this success rate is bad ...
I disagree with this premise. I suspect that 20 to 30% success rate is not at all bad, but rather excellent. Compare to artillery with shells costing a few thousand each on the low end, to $100k+ for more advanced rounds, with 100s or 1000s fired per casualty.
varjag · 7h ago
This tracks with the earlier ~12% drone kill efficiency estimates. However drone is a mass deployment weapon. Ukraine did about 2 million frontline sorties in 2024 and aims for 5 million this year. This 1 out of 9 ratio translates into absolutely devastating damage, that artillery and airstrikes (which are also hardly "easy to use") can only dream of.
Neil44 · 6h ago
This is true, but the author also talks about cost e.g. $500 for a drone vs $100 for an artillery shell with far more effect. Surely at the point where the drone has visual on the target you can fire 5 x shells over for massively greater effect on target, and keep the drone flying for the next target, and the next.
varjag · 6h ago
$100 is a cost of a 60mm mortar shell. It is a hand grenade sized munition lobbed from a Pringles can sized weapon to the range of 1-2km. This is generally not the thing that comes to mind when you think of artillery strike.
A 155mm (dumb, unguided) shell would set you back 5-8K USD. That's before the propellant charge, fuse and amortization of the artillery piece and its 5 man crew.
bluGill · 3h ago
A M107 155mm round weights 95lbs when launched. Assuming that is pure lead (this is false, but lead is very cheap and it gives us numbers to work with) I can buy lead ignots for $2.89/lbs. Which puts us at $293 per rounds in just materials. Since we assume the other materials cost money too, plus there is the energy used to turn ignots into a round, it seems unlikely you can get the cost to much under $1000 no matter how good your mass production is.
beAbU · 3h ago
And then you need to add that 5-10x government contract price multiplier to the cost as well.
hnaccount_rng · 3h ago
Then again the payload of an FPV is much more comparable to the mortar round than to the 155mm one
tclancy · 3h ago
But theoretically much better aimed. Don’t know if there’s enough data here to do the math. Plus that it’s a bit gauche to do math about human lives, but here we are.
Nicook · 1h ago
don't need to aim a large shell as accurately though.
varjag · 2h ago
An FPV drone can take out a tank, missile erector-launcher or a dugout. Kinda hard with 60mm mortar.
Neil44 · 5h ago
That's interesting thankyou. It's a good google rabbit hole. Apparently we're in surge pricing right now because of Ukraine, and Russian shells are only costing them $1000. It seems they caught us sleeping, manufacturing wise.
varjag · 5h ago
The heavy Soivet calibre used by Russia is 152mm which translates to a slightly cheaper shell (though not 5x for sure). Russia also uses 122mm arty which is substantially cheaper: the costs follow to the cube volume. Another factor is that a lot of supplies are Iranian and North Korean old stock with what we can assume reasonable prices. Ukraine was getting Vietnam war era 155mm stock relatively cheap too, while it lasted.
glitchc · 1h ago
Mortar is notoriously inaccurate, while a drone is a precision guided weapon. To compare apples to apples, a drone needs to be compared to other precision guided weapons. Think Stinger or other TOW missiles instead. Those are at least two orders more expensive.
dfedbeef · 6h ago
This is kind of a 'Muskets are cool but they take too long to reload' vibe.
Yeah Ukraine isn't working with the best tech; it's a doctrine of desperation rather than preparation. But they discovered something effective and it will change the way wars are fought in the future.
throwawayffffas · 5h ago
> But they discovered something effective and it will change the way wars are fought in the future.
They didn't really. TOW's are a thing from the 70s. They are essentially the same thing, but instead of electric rotors they are using a rocket motor. Switchblades existed before this conflict too, if loitering is the measure we are going with.
It's a hacked together solution to a real problem they are having, lack of artillery shells and more reliable munitions. And well done to them.
But a country with the benefit of time and deep pockets is going to come up with more reliable, more effective solutions.
We are seeing the Russians turn to drones as well, but they also burnt their stockpiles of other weapons and are in an emergency too. And additionally they have also doubled their artillery shell production.
_joel · 3h ago
> TOW's are a thing from the 70s. They are essentially the same thing
That's just not true. I've not seen a TOW chase around a guy in a field, well not on r/UkraineWarVideoReport at least.
neilv · 7h ago
> During my time in [...], I collected statistics on the success of our drone operations. I found that [...]
Assuming the writer and their allegiances are what they say, is any of the info valuable to any of their adversaries?
None of what he is saying is that valuable. All of these problems are something a hobbyist fpv drone pilot can share. Add to that, it’s quite old info. If the author didn’t get a chance to see fiber optic drones, they left the fray a long time ago in terms of advancement.
renmillar · 6h ago
The Russians likely already have similar operational data from their own drone programs and intelligence gathering.
ChrisRR · 6h ago
Still feels like why help them just in case they don't
echoangle · 7h ago
> They are controlled by an operator wearing virtual-reality goggles
They aren't really using VR headsets, right? The FPV goggles I know are just a screen showing the camera image without any virtual reality.
mog_dev · 7h ago
Basically its just screen yes. It's just convenient and more portable to do it
this way.
Small desktop screen also exist and are used to peek on what the FPV operator is seeing.
wkat4242 · 7h ago
Yeah I'd much rather use an xreal air or something. You can still see if someone (or an enemy drone) comes to kill you. AR is much better for this.
palata · 7h ago
Probably you want the pilot to be 100% focused on the piloting. Someone else can look around and try to keep the pilot safe.
Also it's not like the pilot has to be exposed.
Ancapistani · 1h ago
No, the latency is too high.
There are dedicated devices for this - much lighter, external battery (same as the drones use), etc. I use a Skyzone 04X.
originalvichy · 5h ago
They hide in bunkers and have other infantrycwith them if that’s not the case.
TheChaplain · 7h ago
The article talks about signal jammers, but as far as I know most drones there are remote controlled using fiber for exactly that reason?
bluGill · 3h ago
From what I understand Ukraine is not using many fiber drones because there are other disadvantages. They can have them, but they mostly choose to use radio anyway. Russia is using a lot of fiber drones.
8note · 7h ago
> Today, some Ukrainian and Russian units are also using drones controlled by fiber-optic cable, rather than radio, though I had no personal experience with this type of drone in my unit
paganel · 6h ago
Because it is mostly the Russians that are using those, the Ukrainians have also started using them but in less fewer numbers.
No comments yet
rich_sasha · 7h ago
There are... I think they aren't unproblematic - the fibre can get caught on things etc. Also I read of instances where the opposition can follow the fibre back to find the drone operators.
empiko · 6h ago
Tracing the fiber back is possible only in extremely favorable conditions. The light must hit the cable just right and there cannot be too many cables from previous runs on the battlefield.
dizhn · 3h ago
It's not too bad when they see the drone passing by. I have no idea how often this can happen without being seen though.
bluGill · 3h ago
Those cables are 10km long. You can trade a couple hundred meters when the drone is flying by, but there are several KM that you cannot even see at the same time as you can see the drone.
FirmwareBurner · 7h ago
Sounds like for fiber optic strikes you gotta do a "shoot and scoot".
orthoxerox · 6h ago
The operators usually use a cordless drill to wind back as much cable as they can after the drone is used.
sorcerer-mar · 6h ago
This is why it's so fascinating to read about this conflict. The back and forth innovations (some obvious, some rudimentary, some very much not) is just incredible to follow.
Early on: Drones in war!
Then: Ahh EW makes them useless!
Then: Fiber optics defeat EW!
Then: But you can follow the cable!
Then: But you can try to respool the cable with a power drill!
Every week it seems is a new move.
throwawayffffas · 5h ago
Next up: Autonomous targeting.
Next Next up: Decoys.
jansan · 7h ago
Yes, he writes that after he left the battlefield they became more common.
There was a video of a soldier wading through massive amounts of fiber near the front line. Just imagine that for each drone attack there will be 10-50km of fiber dropped on the landscape. It will not rot and stay there until someone cleans it up.
ataru · 7h ago
I've always wondered if the burning batteries and electronics in the drones have any significant environmental impact when compared to conventional weapons.
ta1243 · 6h ago
I'd rather have old fibre cables and lithium batteries than old unexploded ordinance
(If wishes were horses I'd rather Russia hadn't invaded a sovereign country in the first place, but we are where we are)
lordnacho · 6h ago
According to the article, you will get BOTH of those, no? Some of the bombs on the drones don't explode.
troupo · 7h ago
He talks about that in the article
CapricornNoble · 3h ago
There's a really good interview with a Russian drone manufacturer where he talks about how you need to use both.
The fiber-optic drones have small warheads/payloads. They are used to hunt the enemy's EW transmitters. Once the jammers have been suppressed, then the radio-controlled drones with bigger payloads go to work and do the bulk of the damage.
palata · 6h ago
I see a lot of comments saying that "but the technology will improve".
Sure, maybe. Or maybe it will be like Musk announcing what Teslas will be capable of in 6 months. We don't know, and the author doesn't pretend that they do. Don't forget that drones have been used in this war for years, and the vast majority of the drone industry has already pivoted to the military because it's easier to make money there. So it's not exactly "brand new technology".
But my point is that the author just says "from what I've seen, here is how it looks". And it seems like it has value.
dinfinity · 5h ago
> Don't forget that drones have been used in this war for years
3 years of usage is brand new. Neither Ukraine nor Russia have been designing and producing purpose-built FPV drones since the beginning (I assume things are well underway now). It's a bunch of consumer shit thrown together, which makes it kind of incredible that they work as well as they do.
An equivalent would be something like taping an assault rifle to a small Cessna and dominating with that. And then you saying that "maybe the technology will not improve".
palata · 4h ago
> 3 years of usage is brand new.
Usage, sure. But the technology is not. Those drones are flying smartphones. We have already had mass-produced consumer drones for more than a decade. We don't use them because they are new, we use them because they are cheap and accessible.
I am not sure what you call "consumer shit" here. They go for cheap FPV drones precisely because they are cheap. But the autopilot running in them can fly a Cessna. We can make them fly longer (they will be bigger), we can use better radios, we can add thermal cameras and bigger payloads. We can add GPUs and AI capabilities. All that we have, but then it doesn't cost 500$ anymore.
> An equivalent would be something like taping an assault rifle to a small Cessna and dominating with that.
Or maybe you see an assault rifle and say "Look at this rifle; it's only the beginning! In a couple years it will have wings and it will drop heavy bombs before returning to base, because it will be reusable". And I'm saying: we already have fighter jets; they are just more expensive.
dinfinity · 3h ago
You based your doubt for whether the technology would improve on consumer shit thrown together for a few years as opposed to military technology purposely designed and built over a long period. That is bad reasoning. There is nothing more to it and it is thus far more likely that the technology will improve than not.
palata · 3h ago
> That is bad reasoning.
From where I stand, you're calling "consumer shit thrown together" something you apparently don't really know, and then you make predictions from it.
dinfinity · 2h ago
I believe your prediction was "Or maybe it will be like Musk announcing what Teslas will be capable of in 6 months."
You seem to think that this ragtag level of warfare between Russia and Ukraine is somehow indicative of what the limit of NATO-level militaries is. I'd say "we'll see", but hopefully we never have to find out.
originalvichy · 5h ago
I agree, and I also raised more points in my comment. The terrain of the flatlands between Ukraine and Russia is the main reason for their success. The same could be said for vast parts of the Middle-East. It’s easy to operate these on farmlands that go for kilometers.
avoutos · 6h ago
Even if the technology improves and the economics of scale reduces the cost, I still don't buy the narrative that swarms of tiny kamikaze drones will radically change warfare.
Aside from radio jamming, I have not seen an actual defense against a strong EMP.
To defend against an EMP wiping out your drone swarm, you would have to invest in shielding etc which would remove them from the class of small cheap drones.
Idk if anyone can speak about this, but to me this doesn't seem like a problem that these types of drones can overcome.
general1726 · 3h ago
Usually the initial attack (From Ukrainian perspective) is stopped by regular military weapons like AT, Artillery, Mines and drones are used to mop up the battlefield - Burn out abandoned vehicles and hunt scattered soldiers
throwawayffffas · 5h ago
EMP weapons are expensive, and one shot. I can see the future of drone swarms, but we are a long way out.
CapricornNoble · 3h ago
I think you are overstating the ease of employing an EMP.
Maybe you should watch the countless videos DAILY, where soldiers are crippled for life.
ggm · 7h ago
You need to compare this to hit rate with mortars and attrition by counter battery fire on mortar teams. Not to detract from a sober assessment but it's hard to judge without the other parts of the story.
Thr tldr would be "temper expectations"
gpderetta · 7h ago
Yes, even a 20% success rate seems quite high.
palata · 6h ago
> The vast majority of first-person view drone missions can be completed more cheaply, effectively, or reliably by other assets.
At this point, the question becomes the price.
throwawayffffas · 6h ago
I think you need to compare it to other man portable guided weapons like the FGM-148 Javelin. The Javelin is much much better in all respects, except perhaps range. But is about 100 - 200 times more expensive.
If you can afford* the Javelins and the TOW's of the world that's what you are going to use otherwise, you are stuck with FPVs.
Afford means not only fiscally, but production capacity wise as well.
sottol · 4h ago
Doesn't a single javelin missile cost almost 200k? The drones I've seen I'd budget at 150-300$ plus explosives. I think that puts the javelin more at 500-1000x as expensive imo.
bluGill · 3h ago
You need 15 drones to do what a javelin can do though, and that is at best. If the tank armor is good a small drone cannot do any damage (that is why drones try to fly in open hatches - bypass the armor), while a javelin can go through modern armor.
vasac · 2h ago
Tank armor can be good as it gets, the problem is you can't have good armor everywhere on the tank otherwise it would weight hundreds of tons. So a small drone doesn't need to penetrate tank where it's best protected but to disable it (hit APU, tracks, engine...).
risyachka · 7h ago
This.
Mortar may be 5 times cheaper but 100x easier to destroy it and its crew.
Also half of the problems described are purely technical and can be easily solved with some budget. In Ukraine most drones are assembled by volunteers. So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA.
throwawayffffas · 6h ago
As noted if you have the budget the end product is a FGM Javelin or a Spike NLOS or as the article mentions a switchblade.
These things are pretty much the same thing (a thing that can be carried by a man that accurately puts a warhead on a target) just better and more expensive.
edit: Actually the NLOS might not be man portable, but there are other smaller Spike missiles that are.
No comments yet
FirmwareBurner · 7h ago
>So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA
Imagine what China can pull off here in case they're in a war.
bboygravity · 6h ago
China's fertility rate is 1.
Even if they win the war, they still eventually will have lost.
FirmwareBurner · 5h ago
Fertility rate is a problem for the future, that you can also solve via better polices and incentives if you want to, meanwhile dying or being enslaved in a war is a problem for right now that you can't escape via policies.
Which one you think is worse?
Also, most wealthy industrialized western nations have the same fertility issues, some are only compensating by huge legal and ilegal immigration which can be causing bigger domestic economic and societal issues than being involved in a war abroad. The west and its values, as we used to know it, is also dying.
bluGill · 3h ago
Fertility rate in China has been less than one for decades. They have a lot of people, but they are heavily weighted to old.
pzo · 2h ago
in japan it was even for many decades and its a problem but not tragedy, japan today still doing strong. Even if population in china shrink by 50% they will still have more pole than europe or us. And lets face it shrinking 50% this will really take decades and unlikely to happen since this will correct itself eventually.
LexGray · 5h ago
China can set the fertility rate to whatever they like. It is tied to taxes and penalties. They can move the slider to make it fiscally impossible to be childless.
103e · 7h ago
Don't drones have another advantage not mentioned here -- counter-battery against operators being more challenging?
originalvichy · 5h ago
Drone pilots regularly die due to the source of wireless signals being found. Especially in the built up areas where they cannot operate from a trench or bunker. It is a challenge but there have been methods for this for a while now and it has shown. Even recently there’s been reporting that priorities of some drone teams are now purely anti-pilot activities compared to other targets.
103e · 5h ago
True - and I hope I didn't give the impression that drone operators aren't taking significant personal risk, but compared to the alternatives for short range indirect fire (mortars) it seems like these systems should be less vulnerable?
throwawayffffas · 5h ago
Fiber wires are now the standard for most low flying drones.
throwawayffffas · 6h ago
More challenging than what?
orthoxerox · 6h ago
More challenging than counter-battery fire against artillery, which is basically a solved problem in warfare.
throwawayffffas · 5h ago
But not more challenging than counter battery against teams firing Javelins or other portable anti tank weapons.Or teams using Switchblades.
FPVs are man portable guided munitions, not artillery. Pretty much all existing man portable guided anti tank weapons are better than FPVs at their job.
And artillery is better than any of them at it's job. While FPVs can score kills they have minimal suppression effects, when an FPV hits a friendly, everyone else is going to keep moving, because stopping will offer them no benefit from the next one, and the next one might be minutes out. When an artillery round lands everyone hits the deck.
103e · 5h ago
FPVs don't seem anti-tank replacement -- they do seem to have a role against soft targets ie against massing infantry, c2 nodes or suppression of enemy mortars. In this role, from a distance, they seem harder to suppress than the alternative, ie mortars.
Also these are immature tech... I suspect at least some of the issues identified will be mitigated in time.
koonsolo · 5h ago
> Pretty much all existing man portable guided anti tank weapons are better than FPVs at their job.
Sure, but a Javelin missile costs more than $200K. You can have 200 fpv drones for that price.
Cockbrand · 6h ago
I guess I'm missing something, but why isn't the problem of finicky steering solved by adding auto-stabilizing software? Would that take away too much of the maneuverability?
koonsolo · 5h ago
My first reaction was the same. I have a small indoor quadcopter with 2 main modes: freestyle (like a helicopter), and an easier mode that keeps the drone hovering.
My first thought was, why not use the easier mode (press forward to go forward, back to go back, etc.)? But looking at those war videos, these drones always come at an angle towards the target. And in that sense, it's easier to use the more difficult helicopter mode. What I mean is, once you know the helicopter mode, it's easier to do this kind of maneuver than using the "easy mode".
tguvot · 2h ago
i saw ukrainian footage of drones where they switch to/from auto hover mode
randomNumber7 · 3h ago
It is only a matter of time until those drones fly into their target fully autonomously with machine learning.
Heck, I could build that with hugginface (I will never do that) in a few evenings if you are ok to blow up the wrong target with a single digit percentage.
paganel · 6h ago
> I would, first of all, recommend ensuring that troops in the field have well-trained organic mortar support with an ample supply of ammunition.
That would not be possible because it has become basically impossible to bring in vehicles close to 5-10 kms of the front-lines because of the, well, drones. And you need to carry ammunition to those mortars with something, preferably not how the Vietnamese did it in the jungle (i.e. using brute human force).
Just check this snippet from a recent article in the FT:
> “'At this point, you’re a lucky man if you drive 5km from the front line and your car is still operational,' a Ukrainian drone unit commander deployed in eastern Donetsk region told the Financial Times. He said his men now sometimes had to walk up to 15km at night to reach their positions...
> In the past weeks, Ukrainian supply trucks have reportedly been hit by Russian drones on the road linking Kramatorsk to Dobropillia, some 30km from the fighting. On both sides of the front line, roads are being covered with anti-drone nets in an attempt to stop fibre optic drones."
This comes from Ukrainian guys still fighting this war, not from a Western war-tourist like the guy who wrote this article.
The author writes that he was not there for the fiber optic evolution. They have changed the game when it comes to these flat open terrains with heavy jamming. The quality control and cheap components issues won’t go away unless they are improved, which brings costs to a ”cheap” alternative. As I wrote in my comment above, walking/driving moving targets are still on the table, just not as feasible as in the early days without signals jamming.
paganel · 4h ago
> As I wrote in my comment above, walking/driving moving targets are still on the table
This seems to directly contradict this direct quote from the recent FT article I linked to:
> At this point, you’re a lucky man if you drive 5km from the front line and your car is still operational
originalvichy · 1h ago
I’m not saying it’s impossible to hit them, just that it’s more difficult than in the early days. Even fiber optics have cons like harder maneuverability, but the driveway attacks are probably in the category of ”loitering” drones that sit on the ground waiting for targets before taking flight again.
GiorgioG · 7h ago
FPV drones don’t suck if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t have proper training, you’re going to suck at it.
dewey · 6h ago
Sometimes you don’t have time and resources to train everyone to be great. Good enough will have to do.
> As a result, training a highly proficient operator can take months. A standard, base-level course for Ukrainian drone pilots takes about five weeks
GiorgioG · 4h ago
No disagreement there, but the title states "FPV Drones Kind of Suck".
msgodel · 7h ago
Soon they'll be using CV and won't need FPV.
palata · 6h ago
You still want someone to get the drone to a place where it can see the target, and someone to select this target.
Only then can CV do the last part ("terminal engagement"). But that also means it won't go inside a hangar and find the target there.
bluGill · 3h ago
IF you tell it go into the hanger and find a target CV can do that. It might not be the best target in the hanger, but that doesn't matter too much if you can get in.
palata · 2h ago
If you add enough "if's", then surely everything is possible :-).
I don't think we're anywhere near having drones that happily fly above a war zone, detect an interesting hangar, find a way to get inside and select a target inside.
Currently they mostly fly FPV drones manually. The next basic step is to have "terminal engagement", where at some point they can select a target and the drone will fly autonomously to it using CV. But in order to do that, the drone will need processing power, and therefore it won't cost 500$ anymore.
Would you rather go for a drone that costs 5k and can use CV for terminal engagement, or 10 drones that cost 500 and simply stay on their latest vector if no command arrives?
bluGill · 1h ago
I was trying to state you fly it manually to the hanger. Once it locks onto the hanger (that is not your own hanger) it can fly - even if cv messes up we are at a target so anything destroyd is okay even if not what you want.
msgodel · 2h ago
How much are the controllers they're using now? It's not like computers and cameras needed to do interesting CV are all that expensive.
pzo · 2h ago
some mid-range iphones or android would even do the trick. especially iphones have tone of processing power nad strong NPU/GPU and lots of cameras, lidar, depth sensor, and plenty of other sensors. second hand phone 13 mini would do the trick and you can get it for less than $500
The author offers no major new insights on the effectiveness of drones. His counter argument is against the maximalists who claim quadcopters are revolutionising warfare and render armour and artillery obsolete. But nobody serious ever suggested that. The same way tanks are relevant despite rpgs. They simply represent a new element in the battlefield, and a useful one as well. The fact that they are not ideally suited for dropping bombs doesn't matter. They are great for surveillance and giving units situational awareness, and the fact that they can occasionally be used to attack targets that otherwise would be impossible simply augments their usefulness. The article is interesting,
but it's attacking a straw man. I have a great respect for the ukrainian armed forces
but to be perfectly honest their combat effectiveness is not exactly world beating. The suggestion that NATO should be taking lessons from how Ukraine is fighting Russia is odd.
amai · 7h ago
A guy from Slovakia is fighting for Ukraine? Don't tell that your prime minister and supporter of Russia Robert Fico.
cosmicgadget · 19m ago
Are you calling him a hypocrite for disagreeing with a politician from his country?
codedokode · 2h ago
Almost all Europe supports Russia by buying oil and natural gas.
_joel · 2h ago
Through the pipeline they shut down or thorugh the shadow fleet they've sanctioned? As it stand, Europe is moving in the right direction, not quickly enough for some, but still.
Ban on new Russian gas contracts starting January 1, 2026
End of short-term contracts by June 2026
Complete phase-out by end of 2027.
gadders · 7h ago
I've seen some of these FPV videos of kills of unarmed Russian soldiers. I honestly don't know why the pilots are not prosecuted for war crimes.
(and I'm sure Russia does the same to Ukraine, I just haven't seen those videos).
gooseus · 6h ago
It's because killing unarmed soldiers during war is not a war crime.
Rule 3. All members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict are combatants, except medical and religious personnel.
Rule 47. Attacking persons who are recognized as hors de combat is prohibited. A person hors de combat is:
(a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party;
(b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or
(c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender;
provided he or she abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape
A surprise drone attack on any Russian combatant that isn't a medic or chaplain is "lawful", even if they aren't holding a weapon at the time.
gadders · 6h ago
Pretty sure I've seen some that fall under Rule 47.
originalvichy · 5h ago
There’s regularly uploaded footage of clearly surrendering soldiers directed towards a safe zone to give up. Propaganda is propaganda, but it happens more often than we might think.
gadders · 4h ago
Glad to hear it.
I wonder if some "Surrendering to a Drone" protocol couldn't be codified under the Geneva Convention EG "Visibly disassemble your gun, throw the bits in several directions" etc.
nkrisc · 6h ago
So if artillery is fired at an enemy position, and they’re unarmed, is that a war crime?
Catching an enemy soldier unarmed doesn’t mean you’re a war criminal, it means they made a big mistake.
This is war, not a gentleman’s duel.
adolfojp · 6h ago
So if I see a drone I just drop my rifle and give it the middle finger and wait for it to go away and then resume when it's gone?
cosmicgadget · 21m ago
People defending their homeland hate this one trick!
troupo · 7h ago
> I've seen some of these FPV videos of kills of unarmed Russian soldiers. I honestly don't know why the pilots are not prosecuted for war crimes.
An enemy combatant doesn't stop being an enemy combatant just because he dropped his weapons.
War crime is executing prisoners. And there are a few videos were Russians gleefully murder prisoners
exe34 · 6h ago
Under what law?
TiredOfLife · 4h ago
Russia literally executes prisoners of war - those who have already surrendered. Russia castrates, tortures and cuts off heads of live prisoners of war. Russia targets and executes civilians.
I keep telling people that the terrain and the strategies that Russians use is the primary reason for the effectiveness. Mortars and artillery already handle the same requirements as the author says. The reason they are effective in 2024-25 is that the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running over vast fields / unarmoed vehicles driving over known routes is the only way Russians make progress. For a moving target they are great, but multiple moving targets would get shredded by competent artillery anyway.
Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
By far the best use of drones still is as battlefield recon/fire correction to adjust existing artillery/mortar capabilities.
Source: I’m one such drone hobbyist and I’ve watched way too much footage from the front. None of what i’m writing is in absolute terms. I just don’t see the same way as commenters in the public who think they are a checkmate for any combat situation. The incompetence of the Russian forces caught everyone by surprise, but they have learned. My country’s border with Russia is heavily forested and not as flat as Russia. The drones are not able to go through the canopy. Infrared recon is a way better choice than FPV suicide drones.
The drones now are using fibre optic cables with the reel mounted on the drone. Having the reel on the drone avoids snagging issues and the fibre itself avoids EW jamming and line of sight issues.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wcMZWRJL_m4
It's literally cheaper to strap a grenade to an FPV drone and fly it into a tank hatch than it is to fire a single non-precision artillery round, let alone tens or hundreds of them.
Plus, you can deploy your drones remotely from the top of a trunk deep behind enemy lines and fly them into irreplaceable strategic aviation assets with a shot exchange factor better than 1000x.
The mortar guys in my old company could put a round into a trashcan with line-of-sight but when someone else is calling in fire then they are more of an area weapon. Assuming that a fire mission is going to involve more than one or two rounds to bracket the target now you're talking more dollars and the people on the ground probably aren't going to stand there and wonder how long it's going to take to hit them.
The way I (and most other people I've heard talk about it) see it is drones are an area denial weapon.
Did you see the videos of a drone dropping a shitload of thermite on a forest canopy? [0]
> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
Most nations have cellular networks that penetrate buildings and forests just fine. In fact, Ukraine used the Russian cellular network for their recent attack deep behind enemy lines.
I'm not saying this will always be possible, but it's not hard to see that line of sight communication is not the end of the line for military drone control. There are many routes for providing an ad hoc line of communication if you don't just use consumer-level tech.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00-ngEj5Q9k
Your video shows something that an artillery corps could accomplish just as easily and not at all be prone to EW.
Granted, moving indirect fire is probably more expensive than a single fpv drone dropping a thermite bomb, but at scale indirect fire is far cheaper, more effective, and critically not prone to EW.
The artillery, while destructive, is not going to be nearly as accurate. If you want artillery to hit something on the move accurately you want something like a laser adjusted Excalibur round.
The drone is actually extremely efficient.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1351804050035499...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M712_Copperhead
Laser guided Excalibur rounds didn't come out until much later, same for the laser guided jdams. And the cost of those is much higher, plus logistical an deployment cost, than a FPV drone.
Edit: I also don't know anybody that ever fired a copperhead round in anger. That was very much a product of 80s and 90s doctrine to counter Russian armor.
You won't find them with light infantry, but you will with Cav / Mech units.
Remember that the argument was basically that drones can do nothing useful in (heavily) forested terrain. They can with a little bit of creativity.
The thermite drones do attack forested areas on the farmlands, but the forests I talk about are tens or hundreds of kilometers wide. You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.
"Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components)."
The currently used FPV drones use consumer level ass communication methods. Do you also think that current military-grade communication methods can be easily jammed on the battlefield?
Using the consumer level stuff as a reference point and thinking it is somehow SOTA is not going to lead to good conclusions.
> Cellular networks not only can be jammed but towers are a priority target.
The point was that there are plenty of radio signals that work fine and with high bandwidth in the 'problematic' terrain types you mentioned. Having said that, you can't rely on the cellular towers of the enemies of course. You need relay drones to create your own ad hoc cellular network.
> You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.
At what coordinate? The whole point of FPV drones is that the operator can fly close to the target area and only then decide what the best place to strike is. A shell that is 20m off target is just a waste.
The point of destroying the canopy is reducing the attenuation of the signal for other drones to go in and be able to be precise.
(for anyone curious)
This is true, but flat open fields are precisely the places where major mechanized battles usually took place. For the very reason that manoeuvering other equipment in complicated terrain is hard.
Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)
Fighting through some portion of the Ardennes has been a fairly recurrent theme in central European land warfare since vikings did it in the 800s.
I'm sure if one digs they can find a reference to a roman general doing it too.
Notably, the German operation Sichelschnitt in 1940 was very successful because the French command considered it unlikely that German Panzers would be able to cross the Ardennes in force, even though the French command was probably well aware of their own military history.
Citation needed.
The huge border between Russia and Ukraine is completely flat grassland. This means that to Russia, Ukraine joining NATO is an unacceptable risk because that border is impossible to defend against NATO tank invasion, and the flatness go all the way to Moscow.
A lot of people on internet keep poking fun at Russia inadequate tanks as "proof" Russia is stupid for invading with such crappy gear. Russia is very well aware of this, and is why they invaded in first place, they know of Ukraine joins NATO any military exchange with NATO (like what happened between Iran and Israel) would need to immediately become nuclear because their existing army can't defend the huge open flat terrain against NATO equipment.
it gives some insights about reasons for russian invasion. this is english translation . not sure how accurate (don't feel like checking few pages of text), but close enough
https://www.aalep.eu/advent-russia-and-new-world
origin in russian. you can right-click translate it https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...
Invasion? Oh my, are you delusional? NATO is a defence alliance, stop consuming Russian propaganda maybe.
On the other hand, I believe Russia made itself very vulnerable by letting its cosmic sector drown in corruption. Nowadays they have fallen so behind the US in launch capabilities that it isn't even funny. Try hiding anything from the fleet of satellites that the US has, or can have if it wishes to.
Starlink may be the single most dangerous technologic development of the 21st century to Russia.
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If current FPV drones are bit lackluster, it doesn't preclude 'next generation' that are purposefully developed for military use won't be useful. Also it sounds like the designation of "FPV drone" is specific to particular family of drones specific in current day and time, which may be something quite else next year. Like, obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone or loitering munition author complains of (capability to hover easily)? Or "reusable" drone with FPV camera?
More autonomy, but MUCH more expensive. Thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per use. The issue is indeed using mass-produced consumer drones. It's a bit like the widespread use of "technicals" in some conflicts: yes, a pickup truck with a .50cal in the back is inferior to tanks or armored cars, but it's also much, much cheaper.
There's a bit of a "Sherman vs. Tiger" thing that's been going on since the dawn of industrialised warfare. Is it better to have a more effective weapon that you can only afford a few of, or lots of cheaper ones?
The US doctrine approach to the problem would simply be a set of B2 bunker buster decapitation strikes on Russian military HQs, but of course that option is not available to Ukraine. They can't even manage Iraq-war-style wave of SEAD strikes followed by unit level CAS. The air war has kind of stalemated with neither side having conventional air superiority and both being vulnerable to the other's anti-air.
And the only reason for that is that as per usual private companies are making a killing.
You and I could build a similarly functioning device in 6 months with a small team. They're not that smart/advanced, imo.
I think most of the money for these things isn't paid for research/engineering but goes into MBA/investor pockets.
Look at Iron Dome. By comparison to other modern SAMs it's abysmal. But that's by design, Israel wasn't looking for a good SAM. They were looking for the cheapest SAM that could hit a sitting duck. But that's what it's facing--ballistic inbounds that have no countermeasures and no ability to evade.
As a quiet gay nerd I'd love for there to be no war, no bullies. But unfortunately we live in a world where our species evolved from monkeys and we still often act like it. If my usually peaceful tribe needs weapons to defend itself when attacked then I'm all for it. But using those weapons to attack another for any reason other than defense is a nono in my books.
I don't think it's improvised civilian hobbyist tech. They run autopilots that also fly professional drones and can fly planes.
I think it's mostly that it has to be super cheap, otherwise it doesn't bring value (because other weapons are more efficient if you have more money). If your one-way drone costs 10k dollars, maybe it's too expensive even though it can fly during the night.
And then there are fundamental limitations, like flying in bad weather.
> obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone
But a reusable drone won't go inside a hangar (because at this point it probably won't come out). If your drone can go somewhere, drop something and come back, doesn't it mean that another class of weapons could do this job?
He talks as if reusable drones are a completely different category, that they are all toys designed for enthusiast racers… Generally he implies that a myriad arbitrary technical details are fundamental limitations of this paradigm, it’s a strange mindset.
Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20% accounting for environmental factors and faults in manufacturing. How likely is it that a mortar does anything? Or a soldier with a rifle? Or anything else?
> When I joined the team, I was excited to work with a cutting-edge tool.
It sounds like he was imagining some kind of scifi adventure, but it’s always been clear that they are using cheap drones with tech that has been commonplace for a decade. And that’s completely fine, it’s intentional.
That's the whole question, and that's kind of the point that the article raises: the success rate does not matter. What matters is the cost. At the same cost, can you do more damage with other weapons or not?
What even comes close to the success rate of a drone to hit a particular moving target? And you can do it while hidden 10km away with a lightly trained operator. And manufactured cheaply, safely and quickly by unskilled labor, and easily transported to the front and hand-carried by troops.
Any kind of alternative, like precision bombing or sniping, or just getting close and shooting at it, must be much more costly, particularly when you also account for the cost of the equipment used, even if it is reusable, and the training, risk and human cost.
That's why you see videos trying to go in open hatches and the like. And that's why you are seeing cope cages. It doesnt matter how many chains or steel plates you weld on to your tank if you are hit by a TOW or a Javelin, it's still going to get you. They can penetrate more than a meter of steel.
But the FPV is carrying a DPCIM or a small RPG it's much less likely to penetrate a tanks or an apc armor.
> What matters is the cost.
Logistics matter too. How many FPVs can a company carry? How many fit in a pickup? Do you need a truck load to kill a tank? If you need like 10 to kill a tank, you need to do 10 attacks, either 10 people attacking the same target in quick succession or one guy 10 times.
A Javelin is pretty much one hit one kill, and the hit rate is supposedly at about 89%. So you need like one or two to kill a tank.
From what I have heard, bigger heavier reusable drones, that release their bigger payload are more effective than FPVs.
You simply can't put a big enough warhead on a man portable missile to defeat the main armor of a modern tank. Thus you do not actually want to hit the tank--the purpose of the Javelin is to fly *over* the target tank, when it's overhead it's warhead detonates, firing an explosively formed projectile down into the *top* armor of the tank. Those cages were meant to keep the Javelin from getting to the right spot to do that.
Take those extremely high kill rates with a massive grain of salt.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/08/re-ass...
Javelin consumption rates early in the war (500/day) do not match Russian loss rates if the system was ~90% effective. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ukraine-us-reque...
From what I have read from Ukraine vets, ubiquitous drones make you crazy in a way that tank attacks don't. The difference is in their ubiquity. You are likely to encounter a tank relatively infrequently, and have enough time to recuperate between those encounters. But with a sky full of drones 24/7, or close to that, your nerves will give way sooner or later.
This alone may cripple the forward units.
A decade later, automated fuel flow was standardised and aircraft were flying twice as fast and high.
It's all technically feasible up to "choosing wisely".
I'm not sure what to make of that, but it's clear that drones as a primary means of warfare is simply not effective. hamas and hezbolla have no notable successes with drones, except for on october 7 where they used them to great effect to destroy specific machine gun emplacements and a couple of tanks. They will be part of the future, but never the future itself.
Seems to be a unique case that worked especially well for (higher end I'm sure) FPV drones. Getting artillery in on shipping containers would have a higher likelihood of detection. Similarly, the ability to 'guide' in the drones with munitions seemed to allow for greater flexibility during the attack and its effectiveness.
I imagine eventually these cheap FPV's will be augmented with low-cost GPU's allowing for running smallish models and self-guided autonomy. This would seem the next evolution where a commander deploys them in bulk and overwhelms the enemy in a way that can't be jammed like radio-communication. Similarly, horrifying when you consider their eventual use in terrorism scenarios...
Most likely it's the first major deployment of their semi autonomous drone tech, driven "declaratively". They've shown that stuff recently, they probably used it before showing it.
I suspect reality is a combination--think RTS game. You give orders to your units but you don't babysit them.
I disagree with this premise. I suspect that 20 to 30% success rate is not at all bad, but rather excellent. Compare to artillery with shells costing a few thousand each on the low end, to $100k+ for more advanced rounds, with 100s or 1000s fired per casualty.
A 155mm (dumb, unguided) shell would set you back 5-8K USD. That's before the propellant charge, fuse and amortization of the artillery piece and its 5 man crew.
Yeah Ukraine isn't working with the best tech; it's a doctrine of desperation rather than preparation. But they discovered something effective and it will change the way wars are fought in the future.
They didn't really. TOW's are a thing from the 70s. They are essentially the same thing, but instead of electric rotors they are using a rocket motor. Switchblades existed before this conflict too, if loitering is the measure we are going with.
It's a hacked together solution to a real problem they are having, lack of artillery shells and more reliable munitions. And well done to them.
But a country with the benefit of time and deep pockets is going to come up with more reliable, more effective solutions.
We are seeing the Russians turn to drones as well, but they also burnt their stockpiles of other weapons and are in an emergency too. And additionally they have also doubled their artillery shell production.
That's just not true. I've not seen a TOW chase around a guy in a field, well not on r/UkraineWarVideoReport at least.
Assuming the writer and their allegiances are what they say, is any of the info valuable to any of their adversaries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_lips_sink_ships
They aren't really using VR headsets, right? The FPV goggles I know are just a screen showing the camera image without any virtual reality.
Also it's not like the pilot has to be exposed.
There are dedicated devices for this - much lighter, external battery (same as the drones use), etc. I use a Skyzone 04X.
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Early on: Drones in war!
Then: Ahh EW makes them useless!
Then: Fiber optics defeat EW!
Then: But you can follow the cable!
Then: But you can try to respool the cable with a power drill!
Every week it seems is a new move.
Next Next up: Decoys.
There was a video of a soldier wading through massive amounts of fiber near the front line. Just imagine that for each drone attack there will be 10-50km of fiber dropped on the landscape. It will not rot and stay there until someone cleans it up.
(If wishes were horses I'd rather Russia hadn't invaded a sovereign country in the first place, but we are where we are)
The fiber-optic drones have small warheads/payloads. They are used to hunt the enemy's EW transmitters. Once the jammers have been suppressed, then the radio-controlled drones with bigger payloads go to work and do the bulk of the damage.
Sure, maybe. Or maybe it will be like Musk announcing what Teslas will be capable of in 6 months. We don't know, and the author doesn't pretend that they do. Don't forget that drones have been used in this war for years, and the vast majority of the drone industry has already pivoted to the military because it's easier to make money there. So it's not exactly "brand new technology".
But my point is that the author just says "from what I've seen, here is how it looks". And it seems like it has value.
3 years of usage is brand new. Neither Ukraine nor Russia have been designing and producing purpose-built FPV drones since the beginning (I assume things are well underway now). It's a bunch of consumer shit thrown together, which makes it kind of incredible that they work as well as they do.
An equivalent would be something like taping an assault rifle to a small Cessna and dominating with that. And then you saying that "maybe the technology will not improve".
Usage, sure. But the technology is not. Those drones are flying smartphones. We have already had mass-produced consumer drones for more than a decade. We don't use them because they are new, we use them because they are cheap and accessible.
I am not sure what you call "consumer shit" here. They go for cheap FPV drones precisely because they are cheap. But the autopilot running in them can fly a Cessna. We can make them fly longer (they will be bigger), we can use better radios, we can add thermal cameras and bigger payloads. We can add GPUs and AI capabilities. All that we have, but then it doesn't cost 500$ anymore.
> An equivalent would be something like taping an assault rifle to a small Cessna and dominating with that.
Or maybe you see an assault rifle and say "Look at this rifle; it's only the beginning! In a couple years it will have wings and it will drop heavy bombs before returning to base, because it will be reusable". And I'm saying: we already have fighter jets; they are just more expensive.
From where I stand, you're calling "consumer shit thrown together" something you apparently don't really know, and then you make predictions from it.
You seem to think that this ragtag level of warfare between Russia and Ukraine is somehow indicative of what the limit of NATO-level militaries is. I'd say "we'll see", but hopefully we never have to find out.
Aside from radio jamming, I have not seen an actual defense against a strong EMP.
To defend against an EMP wiping out your drone swarm, you would have to invest in shielding etc which would remove them from the class of small cheap drones.
Idk if anyone can speak about this, but to me this doesn't seem like a problem that these types of drones can overcome.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/world-wont-end-danger...
Thr tldr would be "temper expectations"
At this point, the question becomes the price.
If you can afford* the Javelins and the TOW's of the world that's what you are going to use otherwise, you are stuck with FPVs.
Afford means not only fiscally, but production capacity wise as well.
Mortar may be 5 times cheaper but 100x easier to destroy it and its crew.
Also half of the problems described are purely technical and can be easily solved with some budget. In Ukraine most drones are assembled by volunteers. So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA.
These things are pretty much the same thing (a thing that can be carried by a man that accurately puts a warhead on a target) just better and more expensive.
edit: Actually the NLOS might not be man portable, but there are other smaller Spike missiles that are.
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Imagine what China can pull off here in case they're in a war.
Even if they win the war, they still eventually will have lost.
Which one you think is worse?
Also, most wealthy industrialized western nations have the same fertility issues, some are only compensating by huge legal and ilegal immigration which can be causing bigger domestic economic and societal issues than being involved in a war abroad. The west and its values, as we used to know it, is also dying.
FPVs are man portable guided munitions, not artillery. Pretty much all existing man portable guided anti tank weapons are better than FPVs at their job.
And artillery is better than any of them at it's job. While FPVs can score kills they have minimal suppression effects, when an FPV hits a friendly, everyone else is going to keep moving, because stopping will offer them no benefit from the next one, and the next one might be minutes out. When an artillery round lands everyone hits the deck.
Also these are immature tech... I suspect at least some of the issues identified will be mitigated in time.
Sure, but a Javelin missile costs more than $200K. You can have 200 fpv drones for that price.
My first thought was, why not use the easier mode (press forward to go forward, back to go back, etc.)? But looking at those war videos, these drones always come at an angle towards the target. And in that sense, it's easier to use the more difficult helicopter mode. What I mean is, once you know the helicopter mode, it's easier to do this kind of maneuver than using the "easy mode".
Heck, I could build that with hugginface (I will never do that) in a few evenings if you are ok to blow up the wrong target with a single digit percentage.
That would not be possible because it has become basically impossible to bring in vehicles close to 5-10 kms of the front-lines because of the, well, drones. And you need to carry ammunition to those mortars with something, preferably not how the Vietnamese did it in the jungle (i.e. using brute human force).
Just check this snippet from a recent article in the FT:
> “'At this point, you’re a lucky man if you drive 5km from the front line and your car is still operational,' a Ukrainian drone unit commander deployed in eastern Donetsk region told the Financial Times. He said his men now sometimes had to walk up to 15km at night to reach their positions...
> In the past weeks, Ukrainian supply trucks have reportedly been hit by Russian drones on the road linking Kramatorsk to Dobropillia, some 30km from the fighting. On both sides of the front line, roads are being covered with anti-drone nets in an attempt to stop fibre optic drones."
This comes from Ukrainian guys still fighting this war, not from a Western war-tourist like the guy who wrote this article.
[1] https://x.com/RALee85/status/1937816538439991310
This seems to directly contradict this direct quote from the recent FT article I linked to:
> At this point, you’re a lucky man if you drive 5km from the front line and your car is still operational
> As a result, training a highly proficient operator can take months. A standard, base-level course for Ukrainian drone pilots takes about five weeks
Only then can CV do the last part ("terminal engagement"). But that also means it won't go inside a hangar and find the target there.
I don't think we're anywhere near having drones that happily fly above a war zone, detect an interesting hangar, find a way to get inside and select a target inside.
Currently they mostly fly FPV drones manually. The next basic step is to have "terminal engagement", where at some point they can select a target and the drone will fly autonomously to it using CV. But in order to do that, the drone will need processing power, and therefore it won't cost 500$ anymore.
Would you rather go for a drone that costs 5k and can use CV for terminal engagement, or 10 drones that cost 500 and simply stay on their latest vector if no command arrives?
Ban on new Russian gas contracts starting January 1, 2026 End of short-term contracts by June 2026 Complete phase-out by end of 2027.
(and I'm sure Russia does the same to Ukraine, I just haven't seen those videos).
Rule 3. All members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict are combatants, except medical and religious personnel.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule3
Rule 47. Attacking persons who are recognized as hors de combat is prohibited. A person hors de combat is: (a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party; (b) anyone who is defenceless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or (c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender; provided he or she abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule47
A surprise drone attack on any Russian combatant that isn't a medic or chaplain is "lawful", even if they aren't holding a weapon at the time.
I wonder if some "Surrendering to a Drone" protocol couldn't be codified under the Geneva Convention EG "Visibly disassemble your gun, throw the bits in several directions" etc.
Catching an enemy soldier unarmed doesn’t mean you’re a war criminal, it means they made a big mistake.
This is war, not a gentleman’s duel.
An enemy combatant doesn't stop being an enemy combatant just because he dropped his weapons.
War crime is executing prisoners. And there are a few videos were Russians gleefully murder prisoners