-WiscoDave
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future
Precision-guided weapons first appeared in their modern form on the battlefield in Vietnam a little over 50 years ago. As armed forces have strived ever since for accuracy and destructiveness, the cost of such weapons has soared. America’s gps-guided artillery shells cost $100,000 a time. Because smart weapons are expensive, they are scarce. That is why European countries ran out of them in Libya in 2011. Israel, more eager to conserve its stockpiles than avoid collateral damage, has rained dumb bombs on Gaza. What, though, if you could combine precision and abundance?
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ReplyDeleteFor those that haven't seen what is happening on the front lines, you need to see it.
ReplyDeleteWarning: Some of the scenes are emotionally horrific.
https://voenhronika.ru/
Translate the page, or just click any of the 'headings' on the main page to be taken to that group of videos. Scroll passed the text, click the play button. You can watch the drone-operators feed as they drop grenades on troops trying to hide in trenches.
Horrific...
Infantry skills become less and less relevant, until shoulder-fired EMP hits the scene. Armor is becoming outmoded. Tanks will need active defense, or accompaniment by EMP defense-equipped infantry. Armored Infantry units will begin to resemble miniature versions of carrier battle groups.
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ReplyDeleteFor those not doing the math here... a FPV drone ready to go may cost, say, $1,000. That same drone can take out a several million-dollar tank. This is asymmetric warfare. It is working both ways and has become a driver in a war of attrition. Plenty of vids over at catbox.moe, no you will have to find that on your own. If you must, go right ahead. I 10/10 do not recommend, because that stuff will haunt you.
ReplyDeleteI will break it down here for you - imagine a drone operator, hunting down a terrified individual with a drone. Another drone hovers nearby to capture the action for the sake of propaganda. It is immensely sad, and you start not to care whose side they are on, they are fellow humans and the suffering is immense. If you must see it, BEAR WITNESS. There are things to learn from this that are both obvious as well as not. This is the future, like it or not.
Vietnam was the first television war, what we are seeing here is a bizarre singularity of Moore's Law applied to guided munitions. This is far, FAR more personal than anything humanity has seen at scale - very sobering. You see the faces of men at the moment before death as they realize and react (sometimes) to what is happening.
Is it the end of tanks and armor? Infantry? No. It just amps up the butcher bill on the cheap.
Grift and excessive required/mandated (you >shall<) "testing" adds significantly to the cost
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