The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
plawolf
Lieutenant General
This is actually a really great illustration on why AI automation is the going to be both the main bottleneck and pathway to unlocking the true potential of suicide drones.
If the Russians are building 300k FPV drones, then that’s artillery shell numbers. But unlike artillery, which can blast off a round and then immediately load the next, FPV operators need to stick with the drone from take off to impact, so there is no concept of RPM, and more like sorties per hour/day.
So that means the practical battlefield impact of the vast production differences might not be that great if both sides only have a relatively small and comparable number of FPV operators/pilots.
With automation, that operator bottleneck disappears and you can launch FPV drones by the dozen, by the hundreds or even thousands. Imagine thousands of drones coming at your position in a vast sun-block swarm, each going after individual soldiers, tanks and hard points based on need and payload. There is no defence against that. The power that can operationalise such a capability will enjoy an overwhelming battlefield dominance similar to what was achieved with the first mass introduction of PGMs.
But neither Ukraine or Russia are anywhere close to that right now or anytime soon. The only powers who might have such a capability deployed or capable of being deployed reasonably soon are China and the US.
Despite the fact that the Russian Strela-10 air defense system was developed in 1974, and in 2014 it was upgraded to the Strela-10MN version of the air defense system, as it turned out, this air defense system can operate quite effectively against small-sized targets. The air defense system can operate covertly and has 8 9M333 missiles; the complex is capable of hitting targets at a range of up to 5000 meters and an altitude of 3500 meters. The 9K35M air defense missile system is valued for its simplicity and reliability. The story of a Russian operator about the effectiveness of the Strela-10MN air defense system in Ukraine.
I guess folks in here are ignoring the old men/Russian POWs Ukraine has been capturing? I'd post the videos but it would likely get taken down but all you gotta do is search and you'll find Russia has been using a lot of "aging" men for frontline duty.
What is your point? We know Russia has a high or even very high average age in their fighting units, because their force expansions are all from earlier military veterans summoned back.
No shortage of young people in Russia, if they would actually declare mobilization.
The decline of demographics in the AFU is interesting because it is an army where every man 18+ is drafted to. And soon I guess women too. Weird how they have to do that, despite totally reliable US sources saying they barely have any losses, but maybe they just need the extra women to guard all the new territory they took back in the counteroffensive...
If you're really delusional enough to equate the higher age of Russian career soldiers as Russia running out of young people, then just watch and see I guess... Russia running out of people any moment now... Like how they ran out of kalibers.
Terminator
One the thing I've noticed Western Think-tanks/Ukraine/MSM never consider is that the Russian military is applying the Svechin long term strategy of attritional war, which influenced Gerasimov's doctrine. Albeit Zaluzny (Ukrainian chief of General Staff) did acknowledge that Putin/Russian General Staff were performing the 2nd Chechen war on them writ large in western press. The Russian general staff chief admitted after the war they focused on exterminating all combat capable people in that war in order to win the peace.
I have read enough of Svechin's book to see it play out in the Ukraine. To summarize, Svechin advocates a total defeat of the enemy with political and economic means far more important than military. Svechin was ideologically opposed to the "Deep Battle/Blitzkrieg/short war" men of the Soviet military cliches.
He advocates fighting a 'poor man's war (eg. we can see this with PMC Wagner, Separatists, Storm Z etc.) and a permanent defense, inter-cut by strategic offensives when enough force is being built up.
In the end the enemy is to be weakened in sequences until the final decisive battle against a completely exhausted enemy like Germany in 1945.
This is exactly what Russia has been doing since late 2022 after they expended their strategic offensive forces. Now in 2023 they claim to have recruited 410,000+ new personnel and raised 2 new combined arms armies, new corps hq and countless sub-formations. The MIC is claiming giant numbers (who knows if it is true?) but ultimately they are not using their resources in Ukraine.
The way the West media is talking about Ukraine is as if the whole Russian military is 'all-in' to Ukraine and it is a statemate. The pentagon John Kirby claim this which is completely the opposite of what the Russian MSM/telegram is saying.
There are Western think-tanks that provide actual non-biased views on the Ukraine War, but they don't get much air time or coverage, especially in MSM.
In Western media, it is currently politically incorrect to provide any positive coverage on Russia (and China for that matter) so the most prominent think-tanks are the individuals that tell the Western public what they want to hear.
At the end of the day, think-tanks are out to make money, their views have no impact on the outcome on the battlefield and it is just better business to go with the flow.
In Western media, it is currently politically incorrect to provide any positive coverage on Russia (and China for that matter) so the most prominent think-tanks are the individuals that tell the Western public what they want to hear.
At the end of the day, think-tanks are out to make money, their views have no impact on the outcome on the battlefield and it is just better business to go with the flow.
The noise of the zsu-23 firing is insane ! Cannot imagine how the mind state of people at the receiving end.