The War in the Ukraine

[Abominable]

Any suicide drone to kill other drones will need sensors and computing power that make it much more expensive than the ones it is trying to kill. How about a drone with fast speed, sensor suite and computing power. It can carry a dozen or more small self guided missiles that will have a small warhead and attach itself on to the enemy drone and explode after some delay. It is the job of the killer drone to fly very close to the enemy drone, release one of these bombs, then fly off to the next target. The bomb latch on to the enemy drone, waits a short time until the killer drone flies off, then explodes.

No need for missiles at the speeds current drones are flying at (and would probably be uneconomical). No need for expensive sensors or computing power either.

Just a small calibre machine gun and a sight camera is enough. I wonder who will be the first drone "ace".

 

[reservior dogs]

No need for missiles at the speeds current drones are flying at (and would probably be uneconomical). No need for expensive sensors or computing power either.

Just a small calibre machine gun and a sight camera is enough. I wonder who will be the first drone "ace".

To make a drone structurally suited to a mounted machine gun, you will need a lot of weight for the body of the drone. A burst of machine gun fire of say, 100 rounds can weight quite a bit. The missile does not have to be very sophisticated if the killer drone can fly at the same speed and hover over the drone it tries to kill. The missile just need to attach to the drone. Maybe a sticky substance and a certain shape which allow it to attach. Maybe a few small pallets the size of a large bullet with sticky surfaces. A small explosive device will certainly be lighter than a machine gun and a 100 rounds. For the cost of one of the drones with a machine gun, you might be able to have 2-3 drones with explosives.

 

[sheogorath]

Tu-95 and Tu-160 spotted possibly being uploaded so it is likely we will get a new wave of attacks in the coming days

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1597358834208473089

 

[plawolf]

The problem of wide area jamming is that the enemy ESM will pick up your signals and locate you, inviting a flurry of artillery.

They can pick up your jammer, which should not be placed in the middle of your troop concentrations.

The more powerful the jammer, the bigger the effective bubble and the further away you can place it from friendly forces and assets.

If you want to move up a gear, you can have a mobile jammer that moves around randomly and avoid easy targeting. You can use long cables to route the jammer emitter far from the rest of the jammer so enemy artillery will only hit a cheap and expendable emitter.

Moreover, your jammer should be working in conjunction with your own recon forces, counter battery radars, friendly artillery and aviation such that if the enemy tries to hit your jammers with artillery, they would expose their artillery positions to rapid counter battery fires as well as rapid UAV ISR recon to do damage assessment, fine tune friendly artillery and/or seek out fleeing enemy artillery units for aviation to follow up and mop up.

But this is the Russia forces, so a lot of that is probably not something they can do consistently across their forces. Which is probably another reason China is withholding direct military supplies. There is no silver bullet solution to the poor shape the Russian forces are presently in. You will need a full spectrum modernisation for them to fight like they should be able to, and that is going to require arms supplies on par with what NATO has been sending Ukraine.

Ukraine is just not remotely important enough for China to be worth that kind of investment, not even counting the diplomatic and economic costs of taking sides so decisively for China.

So if sending individual systems isn’t really going to make much difference, but incur full costs for China, it makes most sense for China to not get involved overtly.

I think this is the kind of calculations the EU has collectively just not even thought of to do before getting involved in supporting Ukraine.

As soon as you take a side, you incur full economic costs in the form of sanctions and/or loss of access to markets and key supplies.

Drip feeding arms into the conflict will only serve to prolong it, and the economic pain to yourself. Thus the logical play is to either not get involved, or to intervene decisively and with overwhelming force to utterly and irrecoverably tip the balance in the favour of your supported side.

Unless of course, you are a special case like Iran that both benefits from the current global economic earthquakes, and are also so sanctioned there isn’t much additional cost to getting involved since there isn’t anything left to sanction anyways. So it makes perfect sense for them to get involved to make a quick buck both from direct arms sales and also from prolonging the current favourable economic conditions and opportunities. This, funnily enough, also applies to the USA.

 

[tankphobia]

They can pick up your jammer, which should not be placed in the middle of your troop concentrations.

The more powerful the jammer, the bigger the effective bubble and the further away you can place it from friendly forces and assets.

If you want to move up a gear, you can have a mobile jammer that moves around randomly and avoid easy targeting. You can use long cables to route the jammer emitter far from the rest of the jammer so enemy artillery will only hit a cheap and expendable emitter.

Moreover, your jammer should be working in conjunction with your own recon forces, counter battery radars, friendly artillery and aviation such that if the enemy tries to hit your jammers with artillery, they would expose their artillery positions to rapid counter battery fires as well as rapid UAV ISR recon to do damage assessment, fine tune friendly artillery and/or seek out fleeing enemy artillery units for aviation to follow up and mop up.

Wasn't one of the main reason that RuAF have been unable to perform at full potential is due to the need for them to deploy Jammers to operate safely? That clashed with ground forces communication, which was deemed unacceptable, hence air operations was sidelined and shown as ineffective when it was not really their fault. Using jammers for Drones will just have the same issue.

 

[sheogorath]

Ukraine is just not remotely important enough for China to be worth that kind of investment, not even counting the diplomatic and economic costs of taking sides so decisively for China.

It is probably in within China's cards to play if the EU insist on bending over to the US regarding Taiwan and China in general. And it might become an option sooner rather than later if the EU at large decides to meddle in the protests.

That's part of the issue. China might not want to get dragged into it right now, but doesn't mean their hand won't be forced by European and gringo hubris.

 

[Anlsvrthng]

Currently the jamming works well because the usage of normal off the shelf drones, with WiFi .
It has a bandwith of 95 MHz, between 2400-2495MHz, and 5MHz at 863-868MHz at Europe, .

It is 100 MHz effective bandwith, so any jammer needs to operate ONLY on this frequencies.


Proper military ones not restricted by frequency allocations, means only the size of the drone restrict the used frequency.

It brings up lot of possiblity, from 10 GHz directional antennas (yaggi or phased array ) on Drones, making them practically unjammable, to use extreme wide bandwith , like 1-3 Ghz for communication.


So, long term plan needs to concentrate to destroy the drones, not to jamm them.

 

[memfisa]

Sad to see such an esteemed infrastructure destroyer comment on Russia destroying infrastructure as a method of terrorism.

Also sad that he reduces himself to just a other pundit predicting Russia can will be out of missiles within 7 weeks (or longer)

He of all people should know better. He basically invented this kind of warfare

If only there was a clown emoji on this forum

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[plawolf]

Wasn't one of the main reason that RuAF have been unable to perform at full potential is due to the need for them to deploy Jammers to operate safely? That clashed with ground forces communication, which was deemed unacceptable, hence air operations was sidelined and shown as ineffective when it was not really their fault. Using jammers for Drones will just have the same issue.

That whole jammer storyline sounded distinctly unconvincing to me.

The VKS were operating deep behind the frontlines, where were they friendly troops to jam comms with?

If they could have operated safely with jammers, why did they loose so many aircraft?

If their jamming were so powerful it crippled all comms, they could have ended the war months ago by jamming all Ukrainian comms behind the lines.

The problem was that jamming didn’t work as well as it should and the VKS were loosing too many of their best aircraft for little gains. So deep penetration missions were scrapped in favour of low altitude CAS, while VKS fighters flew CAP and the occasional SEAD/DEAD mission behind friendly lines or close to the front lines.

Jamming is far more sophisticated and powerful than just broad spectrum saturation jamming. Especially something targeted at civilian drones operating in Wi-Fi frequency bands. You can easily jam those bands while leaving comm bands clear. For fixed locations, you also have the option of running hardline cables to areas outside of the range of the jammers for transmitters and receivers.

 

[Strangelove]

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Poles killed in Ukraine to get ‘American’ burial – media​

A news outlet suggests the grim reason for the sudden concern with efficiency

File photo: Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, USA © Stefan Zaklin/ Getty Images

The controversial decision by municipal authorities in Olsztyn to create an “American-style” cemetery is due to the large number of military burials for the 1,200 Poles who have died fighting in Ukraine, according to the news outlet Niezalezny Dziennik Polityczny.

Olsztyn, in the Warmia-Masuria province, is home to Poland’s 16th Mechanized Infantry Division. Many of its current and former soldiers heeded the calls from President Andrzej Duda and Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak and enlisted in Ukraine, where over 1,200 Polish citizens have been killed in action so far, according to

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. Thousands more have been injured or disabled, the outlet reported, citing publicly available sources.

The outlet says that almost “daily” burials at the Olsztyn cemetery – including the volleys fired by the honor guard – have “irritated” the local residents and led to many inconvenient questions being asked of the city’s authorities. NDP suggested this was the true motive behind the announcement of an “American” cemetery earlier this month.

The

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calls for 1,700 plots for urns with cremated remains, with “standardized tombstones” along the line of American war cemeteries, according to municipal graveyard director Zbigniew Kot.

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Kot told Gazeta Olsztynska that there was “enough motley” in Polish cemeteries already, and that the new design aimed for a more orderly cemetery, along the minimalist lines seen in Germany and some Scandinavian countries. It is also supposed to help with the rising cost of burials, he added.

The Polish public has reacted poorly to Kot’s design, which envisions rows of 60-centimeter-square headstones surrounded by turf, with no trees, benches, or flower beds common in the mostly-Catholic nation.

NDP called the design a “disgraceful end to mercenaries who died in Ukraine,” and suggested the number of planned plots means many more are expected to perish.

Specific casualty numbers from the conflict have been hard to come by. In June, officials in Kiev admitted to

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men per day in the heavy fighting. In

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, the Russian Defense Ministry put the number of Ukrainian casualties at 61,000 dead and more than 49,000 wounded, including over 2,000 foreign mercenaries.