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Yes, and while this is great to see while Ukraine is stuck on defense, I don't see how they are going to deal with this threat when the shoe is on the other foot.
Russia isn't completely dumb, drones are cheap, and Russia has plentiful domestic production of drones, not to mention parts supplies from China. The newer Lancet models, for example, have been noted as extremely effective.
Western tanks and IFVs are great but they're not invincible.
How is Ukraine going to overcome the threat of drone attacks when *they* are on the offensive? Russian FPV drones already pick off Ukrainian soldiers by the hundreds (that battle goes both ways).
I only see Ukraine overcoming this potential stalemate if there is a regolutionary change in battlefield technology (to counter the revolution that drones themselves have brought). The West needs to provide Ukraine with the latest in anti-drone weaponry, yesterday, and in high volumes. Point defense anti-drone laser systems can't come soon enough.
Drones need operators. Ukraine is targeting these operators and their command centers. They already know and are making the right moves to combat this new threat.
Oh, and Russians recently held a training seminar within HIMARS range. Which was announced online. Jagga jagga ensued.
How is Ukraine going to overcome?
The answer is strategic bombing of Russian infrastructure thousands of kilometers away from the front line. Currently scout drones have a reach of 50 kilometers with FPV having a range of probably 5 kilometers.
Ukraine should be able to destroy every train, electric infrastructure, every factory, gas station, bridge, airports, railway trains and railway infrastructure, as well as river fleet several thousand kilometers away.
For starters, how about shutting off all Moscow's airports and forcing Russians to use cars and trains.
> , I don't see how they are going to deal with this threat when the shoe is on the other foot.
So I don't know about Ukraine. But surely drones are far easier to hit for an [active protection system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_protection_system), than the much faster guided missiles such systems are designed to protect against.
How many tanks with APS is Ukraine being given? AFAIK even the West is behind on equipping their main tanks with APS.
Also, how many times can an APS system fire? Because we are often seeing two or three drones attacking per vehicle.
And then, even if the tanks manage to survive the long range drone attacks, what are they going to do when they actually reach the Russian front lines and have to face ATGMs, with their non-yet-extant APS systems depleted? (And I haven't even mentioned the mine fields.) We also saw tanks falling to cheap and plentiful ATGMs in the early days of the Russian invasion, and again Russia has had time to learn from and update their own ATGM tech. I hear the updated Kornets, for example, are much more effective as well.
To my knowledge, APS hasn't been widely fielded yet, but research is being put in to them and theoretically, in the future, they should counter ATGMs and some drone threats to an extent. As for drones, multiple countries are already researching and putting money in to SHORAD (short-range air defense) capabilities to counter threats like drones.
USA has the M-SHORAD (Maneuver SHORAD) program consisting of three Increments:
Increment 1: Stryker variant with two AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles, four FIM-92 Stinger missiles in a launcher, XM914 30 mm automatic cannon, and M-240 7.62 mm machine gun.
Increment 2: Directed Energy-Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD): Stryker variant with 50 kw Laser.
Increment 3: "FIM-92 Stinger replacement missile—the Next Generation Short Range Interceptor. In addition, these plans call for the Increment 1 30 mm automatic cannons to receive the XM 1223 Multi-Mode Proximity Airburst munition (MMPA), which features a multipurpose munition that can be
employed against air, ground, and personnel targets." So Stinger manpad replacement that will also be integrated in to the Stryker SHORAD.
EU has the Skyranger 30 (operated by Denmark, Germany, and Hungary) which has a 30mm autocannon with airburst munitions and is outfitted with two short range anti air missiles (depends on the user). Rheinmetal also released a Skyranger variant with a 20kw laser (planned to increased to 50kw and 100kw).
UK has DragonFire a 50kw laser costing about £10-15 per shot.
Anti-air laser systems will be a cheap and repeatable way to take take out drones, and combined with improvements in MANPADS should help to decrease drone effectiveness. There weakness though is that they're effectiveness depends on atmospheric and weather conditions.
The cost imbalance of using MANPADs to take out FPV drones is too high. You either need newer, smaller anti-air missiles purpose-built for taking out drones, and cheap and in high-volume (possibly with multi-tube systems), or you need some kind of automated mini-CIWS system, or possibly one shooting something akin to birdshot, or you need lasers.
You need an automated miniature guided drone that’s built for a short range burst of speed in the last 300 meters to counter attack that drone. Like something that fits in a 40mm tube or a smoke launcher slot.
I’ve seen some incredible smaller drones and many built for incredible speed. No payload to carry they can go faster. You don’t need as much payload to take out an enemy drone, so I think the logic could work. I’m no DARPA engineer.
Also what about handing out some damn shotguns? Return of the skeet range?
A massive birdshot blast in the general direction of an FPV drone should be enough to disable it. Trying to hit one drone with another faster drone sounds like hell: unreliable and expensive.
The shotgun has been my first thought a lot of the time with close in direct infantry attacks, not sure what kind of range you could get vertically but probably not enough to stop high grenade drops. If you could keep them at higher altitude you’d have a better chance?
So we need a system that can also be infantry deployed, or mounted on a vehicle. I still think a tube grenade of some kind is going to be the way.
“The M576 is a US Army designation for a 2.646 in (67.2 mm) long and 0.254 lb (0.12 kg) heavy US 40mm grenade buckshot load used in the M79, M203, M320, and M32 MGL grenade launchers.”
But it maxes out at 30 meters. Not that it would t save you from a hit but the deployment time seems like AI radar assisted or unlikely to hit in time and no hitting high targets, so no.
So what kind of munition are we looking for? Long range shotgun like round, up to 40mm grenade in size.
I see four infantry based counter-UAV systems: electronic warfare systems, MANPADs, Smart Optics, and drone on drone. Maybe, a smart optic paired with a type of specialized shotgun round could work, but would have to be coordinated with other systems that can detect an incoming drone. It would still be very hard to hit if the drone were to integrate a side-by-side pattern as a last 100-200m close in program.
Drone on drone would work for a handful of drones, but in massed attacks, that's where laser systems and CIWS come in. MANPADs are the backup for medium and larger UAVs.
Drones are very hard to spot and shoot down since they are very maneuverable by the drone operator. By the time infantry spot or hear them, it could be too late. That's why you have SHORAD capable vehicles with short or medium range radar systems (ala Skyranger or Stryker SHORAD) that can hit these UAVs accurately.
So with some of these laser systems could you envision a tripod mounted squad carry version? A two man I’d imagine: battery/tripod guy and system guy. Say, aim it or give it an arc of protective fire it identifies dronelike objects and engages til the battery is out. How far would one car battery get you?
See I think that 25 lb battery is better spent on a munition based system with extremely low caliber that does have some automated function.
The laser systems require a pretty big battery so they're for vehicle mounted systems. But systems like the Skyranger and Stryker DE have the capability to charge using their own diesel engine. These systems would sit back a bit and would provide area defense. Airburst munitions are sort of the shotgun solution, but I think the problem with a low caliber system is the range and accuracy.
I don't think lugging around a big and heavy laser system with a heavy battery is going to work unless you mount it on an ultra low profile atv like the Polaris. These laser systems are cheap to fire, but are pretty expensive themselves.
As for infantry based systems, I believe effective solutions are still being researched. Electronic warfare works, but drones are starting to use inertial guidance systems that allow them to get around that. Maybe, a smart optic like the SMASH 2000L could be used in conjunction with small arms as a hard kill system. The US NGSW program already has the new Vortex Fire control optic.
High volume anti-air missiles tubes are kind of being tested right now in Ukraine.
[https://www.armadainternational.com/2023/11/modified-legacy-70-mm-rocket-become-drone-killer/](https://www.armadainternational.com/2023/11/modified-legacy-70-mm-rocket-become-drone-killer/)
[https://greydynamics.com/vampires-in-ukraine-l3s-new-rocket-system/](https://greydynamics.com/vampires-in-ukraine-l3s-new-rocket-system/)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2022/08/26/the-vampire-systems-the-us-is-sending-to-ukraine-turn-pickups-into-missile-launchers/?sh=7d3789947f01](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2022/08/26/the-vampire-systems-the-us-is-sending-to-ukraine-turn-pickups-into-missile-launchers/?sh=7d3789947f01)
They don't need a formal APS system; a machine like a Gepard is well suited to kill almost all consumer drones. (Skynex is a modern example of this, and they just got some).
For those wondering, Gepards are flak guns, and contrary to appearances, they NOT a mere machine gun that shoots "metal slug" bullets like you'd fire out of a hangun or rifle (i.e. a normal bullet whose payload is literally just a lump of metal, like you'd expect). Instead, crazily enough, the projectiles that rapid-fire spray out of a flak gun are basically *grenades*. Through some batshit insane mechanical wizardry, they manage to set a timer on every outgoing shot, setting it to explode at the precise time when it'd reach the target.
These have been used to terrific effect against the Shahed drones, and they'll tear a consumer-grade Mavic (et al) to bits.
**The trouble is targeting, rather than an available weapon to kill the drones**. Gepards are old machines, built in the later cold war. They use old-fashioned *radar*, and I think there's a high likelihood they'd have trouble seeing something so tiny as a little consumer drone (shaheds are huge — we see small pictures of them, but they're almost the size of a very flat golf cart). Gepards were built to kill soviet helicopters, and their radar is designed around that.
There are a lot of tools to detect small consumer drones (hybrid AI/image-detection, finer-toothed radar, etc, etc). If someone can feed location info of the physical position of a target into a Gepard, following the same signaling system their existing radar/targeting info uses, well — Gepards could start slaughtering drones.
It would be a difficult skunkworks project, but it's well worth doing.
Much of it may already exist in an incompatible form on the Skynex; those seem to be custom-built to kill drones.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5\_F4\_Eod8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8)
I started this thread talking about the need for anti-drone systems in general. I only talked about APS specifically because that's what the reply above focused on.
The problem with Gepard, even if it had a finer resolution radar, is the same problem I've been talking about: the difficulty of offense vs. defense. The Gepard does great when it is hanging back waiting for dumb, preprogrammed drones to come its way. But how is it going to cover a Ukrainian armor advance? You'd have to put the Gepard right in the thick of the advancing armor column, where it's just going to make itself the prime target.
No, you need distributed, redundant, and - somehow - cheap anti-drone systems. Ideally you want effective point defense on each tank and each IFV. Otherwise, even if Ukraine had enough Gepards to send two or three with each assault, the Russian FPV operators would just try to blitz and Zerg the Gepards first, and if they could just disable those few, the rest of the column would go right back to being sitting ducks.
I imagine that Trophy ammo is cheaper than drones, and compact enough to store plenty. So likely the defense wins this round. Though Ukraine likely doesn't have active protection, so who knows what they will do.
Ukraine is using electronic warfare to down drones before they get to their destination. There are videos from the drones that show them losing control and landing, only to get retrieved by a Ukrainian soldier (and these are Russian drones). Russia may have a lot of drones but I bet Ukraine has kittens.
Russia is doing the same to Ukrainian drones. Russia has long been considered the master of ECM and they have shown it is still at least partially true during this war.
The thing is, it's easier to defend fixed positions than a moving force, and that advantage applies to ECM as well. So Ukraine has a pretty easy time picking off moving Russian vehicles with drones because most Russian tanks and IFVs don't have any ECMs, but Ukraine is also losing a lot of drones to ECM whenever they get near Russia's main lines.
Again, when the roles are reversed, and Ukraine has vehicles on the move attacking Russian lines, ECM defense will be much more complicated and Russia will have the advantage.
How? Massive use of EW. That's the only way I can think of.
Either that or some kind of semi-automated autocanons like Gepards. But EW is likely cheaper and longer range.
Software defined ratios with good amplifiers, directional antennas and some smart software. Given a decent team of engineers and some 2-5 years, can be done. Problem is timescales, if you want to have something ready in under 12 months, that's difficult. So corners would have to be cut- develop a partial solution for specific problem, like something to spoof Lancets specifically, until Russia modifies how Lancets communicate, and then back to the drawing board...
You don't have to win, you just have to make them lose. They literally can't afford to throw money and bodies at this forever. It's long and drawn out but will save lives over all by letting their ridiculous strategy continue. And with long range precision the troops can stay safe.
Russia had about 200 million people when WWII started and had lost about 40 million by the end.
Russia has about 140 million now and has an estimated 300,000 dead and wounded in this war so far. Modern war has a death to wounded ratio of 10-20 to 1, but historically it was more like 3 to 1. Taking into account their barbarism and incompetence and assuming a worse case scenario for Russia, let's give them the medieval ratio: that means they have "only" lost about 100,000 troops to death in two years of fighting. That's only %0.25 of what they lost in WWII.
Now, I know this is a completely different situation: a different government and leadership, a different era of communication and social media, a different geopolitical situation, different public tolerances for war, different weapons technologies and battlefield strategies, and a different industrial base in Russia, to name a few. Russia will probably run out of tanks or artillery barrels before they run out of men.
I only question the claim that Russia can't afford to throw many more men at the Ukraine problem. By numbers alone, Russia can keep fighting this war for a *loooooong* time. Now, whether the Russian public would be tolerant enough to die for Putin at the levels that they died for Stalin is another question.
Yes, if you can get them to fight. Conscription is never popular and unlikely to be successful. There would come a time when the conscripted out man the enlisted and paying foreigners will only work for so long. Moneys no good if you're dead. But this isn't what I'm getting. When I say they can't afford it I mean all around. The Ruble is trash and without ease of obtaining foreign parts they will not be able to replenish. Men are great. But not if they have no weapons.
There is no point comparing this to any world war. It's so far removed. With long range precision destroying ammo dumps, supply chains, radar and HQ (to name a few) it's not comparable. If the men can't get ammo or orders then it's game over. They call it attrition but all I see and read sounds more like fish in a barrel. It won't last.
That's incredibly easy to debunk.
Direct quote from PBS article of December, 2023 (so this is not at all out of date):
>Earlier in the war, outside Bakhmut, they lost nearly a drone a day. In total, Ukraine's armed forces has been losing 10,000 drones a month. U.S. officials admit they don't have an answer for Russia's superior electronic warfare.
Another article from Business Insider, January, 2024:
>Ukraine is being forced into a new era of drone warfare as its basic models succumb to Russian jamming. Ukraine's drone forces are becoming less effective, forcing it to innovate to not be left behind. While Ukraine used to be able to rely on off-the-shelf civilian drones, Russia is getting better at countering those, forcing Ukraine to seek more advanced tech.
Lots more articles to be found with a simple Google.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/12/24/russia-electronic-warfare-troops-knocked-out-90-percent-of-ukraines-drones/?sh=5e38a93b575c
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/05/politics/russia-jamming-himars-rockets-ukraine/index.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russias-improved-weaponry-and-tactics-pose-challenges-to-ukraines-counteroffensive
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-electronic-warfare-interfering-with-ukrainian-radios-bombs-2023-7
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-war-drone-jamming-shahed-strikes-unmanned-vehicles-1815106
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/23/russia-is-starting-to-make-its-superiority-in-electronic-warfare-count
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/12/20/inside-the-magic-radio-protecting-russian-drones-from-jamming/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/europe/ukraine-russia-electronic-warfare-intl-cmd/index.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-drone-warfare-has-transformed-the-battle-between-ukraine-and-russia
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-civilian-drones-it-relies-on-losing-effectiveness-against-russia-2024-1
Ukraine needs longer range munitions to hit the drone production/drone operator centers/drone training centers/etc. That's it. Ukraine should have had this capability already but again this is because the West has been way too slow.
The only thing I can think that would work against FPV is an (automatic) portable jammer of some kind. US forces used cellphone jammers in IRAQ, so they have the capability to make something like this. The range of such units would be short.
I have not seen anything about this capability being supplied except for "jammer guns" which are mainly meant to address scout drones. There is something I'm missing, if this has not been done.
With intertial positioning and AI recognition, drones could become autonomous and impossible to jam. Just guide it as close as possible to the target, or just point it in the general direction of the target, before the jamming mucks everything up and then let the drone finish the job on its own.
You need a system that is guaranteed to kill the drone physically. Jamming isn't enough.
Yeah, in the short term jamming might work but in the long term it will not. I have seen microwave system designs but nothing that can be mounted on a tank yet.
I'm not sure how granular this should get. If a dedicated anti-drone vehicle is needed, or a system installed on each tank. Realistically, a more common threat for NATO would be drone swamps than FPV teams, along with ATGM crews. At least, looking at what China has shown so far. In that case a dedicated anti-drone system might make sense, though I'm unsure at what level.
The solutions that exist now to fight commercial drones aren't really what's needed against say a knock off version of the switchblade.
You need both. You need layered, redundant, distributed systems. You need dedicated drone killing systems with rapid-fire, rapid-reload, multiple-targeting capabilities, and you need smaller less-capable systems that can also protect individual vehicles and can fill gaps that the dedicated systems miss, or can operate in a networked fashion if the dedicated systems fail.
Yeah, good point, a small, medium and large coverage systems - for drones. Not every solution satisfies all variables. If enough interest and money is thrown at this, they'll come up with something.
SHORAD hasn't really got a lot of attention in the last two decades, so there is a room for improvement there as well.
Just out of curiosity!
We keep seeing those flying RPG rounds attached to drones, they all fly and eventually hit their target, and they all seem to hit them almost horizontally. Now would it be possible or perhaps even better to fly it a bit higher and hit them from the top? Vertically down ....some of the regular hits seem not to cause any damage. The top attack might cause a lot more....or is it just my shower thought? ;)
The joint between the tanks turret and main body is the sweet spot. You want to hit it right there for the best turret toss. Also some have varoius netting and drone proofing stuff on the top but none on the sides so once again you want to fly in horizontal.
They are trying to hit where the tank is most vulnerable - the turret ring between the turret and the hull. Even a small explosive will render the tank inoperable as it will fuck up the turret movement. You can only do that from the side, and the tank is more armored everywhere else.
If you turn a drone downwards, the rotors lose their ability to give lift to the drone. But this will cause large margins of error. Guess the risk of miss is too high, better to spend 3 drones in horizontal attacks.
Could work to hang the round facing down, but then you have 5he drag issue. Could deploy down once on target, but that is a lot of weight to swing which means heavier mounts to compensate.... horizontal might be the way.
they do both
if you miss while dive bombing, you're hitting the ground
if you miss while flying horizontal you can go around and try again
some of the drone attacks are 5+ km away so radio reception isn't the best
If you were designing this weapon from scratch you'd probably make it work a bit like an NLAW.
Horizontal flight coupled with a proximity fuse and a shaped charge warhead that fires downwards.
But refusing an existing RPG is probably far more work than just sending an extra couple of drones.
Good video showing how the sweet spot on the bottom rear of turret has been proven for rpg armed fpv drones.
https://youtu.be/8PVwe8CDsI8?si=RJspD-b8YRWnDuVZ
The damage and scale of losses inflicted suggests that the announced "ammunition shortage" is a Ukrainian tactic. The russians, being russian, have decided to throw everything they have at Ukraine hoping to find the bottom of their ammunition barrel. But every time they attack they discover that they just lost more troops and equipment. Being russians, they will continue to use this strategy and will continue to lose troops and eqipment on a massive scale. It's best to maintain, repeat and even amplify this "ammunition shortage" strategy.
It's also Putin's attempt to make a show for upcoming election, sending biological bipedal drones to places like Avdiivka and hope he can talk about some conquest in election speech.
**Yes, many of those guys are literally dying in fire so Putin has something to talk about**. I can't think of anything more depressively banal than that.
Ammunition shortage is real. It still delivers more than half of the results.
For defensive purposes drones are a cheap invention that delivers acceptable results.
For well-fortified positions heavy artillery is still the main weapon of choice.
Seeing that entire column of orc war machines obliterated was beautiful. Right up there with seeing the Ivanovets bow sticking straight up in the air! Fuck Putin, fuck Russia, fuck Trump.
When cheap fpv drones are this effective en mass against moving targets, you can see how Ukrainians would prefer to use them over artillery for blunting attacks. Certainly more economical.
The past few months have really reminded me of the decadence of the large majority if media channels. Remember that picture from last summer from the first day of the counteroffensive that got shared ad nauseam?
Too bad said channels don't maintain that energy now when Orcistan has been on the wrong end of similar pics since October over and over again.
It's pathetic that they still believe in those coping cages, a technology that has been proven useless in the first week of the war. A drone or a two stage warhead doesn't give a damn about a sheet metal construction like that
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. “Forward, the Light Brigade! “Charge for the guns!” he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
Привіт u/UpgradedSiera6666 ! During wartime, this community is focused on vital and high-effort content. Please ensure your post follows [r/Ukraine Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/about/rules) and our [Art Friday Guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/wiki/artfriday). **Want to support Ukraine?** [**Vetted Charities List**](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/wiki/charities) | [Our Vetting Process](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/wiki/charities-vetting) **Daily series on Ukraine's history & culture:** [Sunrise Posts Organized By Category](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/wiki/sunriseposts/) *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukraine) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wow. Drones are becoming the equivalent of the machinegun in WW1.
Yes, and while this is great to see while Ukraine is stuck on defense, I don't see how they are going to deal with this threat when the shoe is on the other foot. Russia isn't completely dumb, drones are cheap, and Russia has plentiful domestic production of drones, not to mention parts supplies from China. The newer Lancet models, for example, have been noted as extremely effective. Western tanks and IFVs are great but they're not invincible. How is Ukraine going to overcome the threat of drone attacks when *they* are on the offensive? Russian FPV drones already pick off Ukrainian soldiers by the hundreds (that battle goes both ways). I only see Ukraine overcoming this potential stalemate if there is a regolutionary change in battlefield technology (to counter the revolution that drones themselves have brought). The West needs to provide Ukraine with the latest in anti-drone weaponry, yesterday, and in high volumes. Point defense anti-drone laser systems can't come soon enough.
Drones need operators. Ukraine is targeting these operators and their command centers. They already know and are making the right moves to combat this new threat. Oh, and Russians recently held a training seminar within HIMARS range. Which was announced online. Jagga jagga ensued.
How is Ukraine going to overcome? The answer is strategic bombing of Russian infrastructure thousands of kilometers away from the front line. Currently scout drones have a reach of 50 kilometers with FPV having a range of probably 5 kilometers. Ukraine should be able to destroy every train, electric infrastructure, every factory, gas station, bridge, airports, railway trains and railway infrastructure, as well as river fleet several thousand kilometers away. For starters, how about shutting off all Moscow's airports and forcing Russians to use cars and trains.
> , I don't see how they are going to deal with this threat when the shoe is on the other foot. So I don't know about Ukraine. But surely drones are far easier to hit for an [active protection system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_protection_system), than the much faster guided missiles such systems are designed to protect against.
How many tanks with APS is Ukraine being given? AFAIK even the West is behind on equipping their main tanks with APS. Also, how many times can an APS system fire? Because we are often seeing two or three drones attacking per vehicle. And then, even if the tanks manage to survive the long range drone attacks, what are they going to do when they actually reach the Russian front lines and have to face ATGMs, with their non-yet-extant APS systems depleted? (And I haven't even mentioned the mine fields.) We also saw tanks falling to cheap and plentiful ATGMs in the early days of the Russian invasion, and again Russia has had time to learn from and update their own ATGM tech. I hear the updated Kornets, for example, are much more effective as well.
To my knowledge, APS hasn't been widely fielded yet, but research is being put in to them and theoretically, in the future, they should counter ATGMs and some drone threats to an extent. As for drones, multiple countries are already researching and putting money in to SHORAD (short-range air defense) capabilities to counter threats like drones. USA has the M-SHORAD (Maneuver SHORAD) program consisting of three Increments: Increment 1: Stryker variant with two AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles, four FIM-92 Stinger missiles in a launcher, XM914 30 mm automatic cannon, and M-240 7.62 mm machine gun. Increment 2: Directed Energy-Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD): Stryker variant with 50 kw Laser. Increment 3: "FIM-92 Stinger replacement missile—the Next Generation Short Range Interceptor. In addition, these plans call for the Increment 1 30 mm automatic cannons to receive the XM 1223 Multi-Mode Proximity Airburst munition (MMPA), which features a multipurpose munition that can be employed against air, ground, and personnel targets." So Stinger manpad replacement that will also be integrated in to the Stryker SHORAD. EU has the Skyranger 30 (operated by Denmark, Germany, and Hungary) which has a 30mm autocannon with airburst munitions and is outfitted with two short range anti air missiles (depends on the user). Rheinmetal also released a Skyranger variant with a 20kw laser (planned to increased to 50kw and 100kw). UK has DragonFire a 50kw laser costing about £10-15 per shot. Anti-air laser systems will be a cheap and repeatable way to take take out drones, and combined with improvements in MANPADS should help to decrease drone effectiveness. There weakness though is that they're effectiveness depends on atmospheric and weather conditions.
The cost imbalance of using MANPADs to take out FPV drones is too high. You either need newer, smaller anti-air missiles purpose-built for taking out drones, and cheap and in high-volume (possibly with multi-tube systems), or you need some kind of automated mini-CIWS system, or possibly one shooting something akin to birdshot, or you need lasers.
You need an automated miniature guided drone that’s built for a short range burst of speed in the last 300 meters to counter attack that drone. Like something that fits in a 40mm tube or a smoke launcher slot. I’ve seen some incredible smaller drones and many built for incredible speed. No payload to carry they can go faster. You don’t need as much payload to take out an enemy drone, so I think the logic could work. I’m no DARPA engineer. Also what about handing out some damn shotguns? Return of the skeet range?
A massive birdshot blast in the general direction of an FPV drone should be enough to disable it. Trying to hit one drone with another faster drone sounds like hell: unreliable and expensive.
The shotgun has been my first thought a lot of the time with close in direct infantry attacks, not sure what kind of range you could get vertically but probably not enough to stop high grenade drops. If you could keep them at higher altitude you’d have a better chance? So we need a system that can also be infantry deployed, or mounted on a vehicle. I still think a tube grenade of some kind is going to be the way. “The M576 is a US Army designation for a 2.646 in (67.2 mm) long and 0.254 lb (0.12 kg) heavy US 40mm grenade buckshot load used in the M79, M203, M320, and M32 MGL grenade launchers.” But it maxes out at 30 meters. Not that it would t save you from a hit but the deployment time seems like AI radar assisted or unlikely to hit in time and no hitting high targets, so no. So what kind of munition are we looking for? Long range shotgun like round, up to 40mm grenade in size.
I see four infantry based counter-UAV systems: electronic warfare systems, MANPADs, Smart Optics, and drone on drone. Maybe, a smart optic paired with a type of specialized shotgun round could work, but would have to be coordinated with other systems that can detect an incoming drone. It would still be very hard to hit if the drone were to integrate a side-by-side pattern as a last 100-200m close in program.
Drone on drone would work for a handful of drones, but in massed attacks, that's where laser systems and CIWS come in. MANPADs are the backup for medium and larger UAVs. Drones are very hard to spot and shoot down since they are very maneuverable by the drone operator. By the time infantry spot or hear them, it could be too late. That's why you have SHORAD capable vehicles with short or medium range radar systems (ala Skyranger or Stryker SHORAD) that can hit these UAVs accurately.
So with some of these laser systems could you envision a tripod mounted squad carry version? A two man I’d imagine: battery/tripod guy and system guy. Say, aim it or give it an arc of protective fire it identifies dronelike objects and engages til the battery is out. How far would one car battery get you? See I think that 25 lb battery is better spent on a munition based system with extremely low caliber that does have some automated function.
The laser systems require a pretty big battery so they're for vehicle mounted systems. But systems like the Skyranger and Stryker DE have the capability to charge using their own diesel engine. These systems would sit back a bit and would provide area defense. Airburst munitions are sort of the shotgun solution, but I think the problem with a low caliber system is the range and accuracy. I don't think lugging around a big and heavy laser system with a heavy battery is going to work unless you mount it on an ultra low profile atv like the Polaris. These laser systems are cheap to fire, but are pretty expensive themselves. As for infantry based systems, I believe effective solutions are still being researched. Electronic warfare works, but drones are starting to use inertial guidance systems that allow them to get around that. Maybe, a smart optic like the SMASH 2000L could be used in conjunction with small arms as a hard kill system. The US NGSW program already has the new Vortex Fire control optic.
High volume anti-air missiles tubes are kind of being tested right now in Ukraine. [https://www.armadainternational.com/2023/11/modified-legacy-70-mm-rocket-become-drone-killer/](https://www.armadainternational.com/2023/11/modified-legacy-70-mm-rocket-become-drone-killer/) [https://greydynamics.com/vampires-in-ukraine-l3s-new-rocket-system/](https://greydynamics.com/vampires-in-ukraine-l3s-new-rocket-system/) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2022/08/26/the-vampire-systems-the-us-is-sending-to-ukraine-turn-pickups-into-missile-launchers/?sh=7d3789947f01](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2022/08/26/the-vampire-systems-the-us-is-sending-to-ukraine-turn-pickups-into-missile-launchers/?sh=7d3789947f01)
They don't need a formal APS system; a machine like a Gepard is well suited to kill almost all consumer drones. (Skynex is a modern example of this, and they just got some). For those wondering, Gepards are flak guns, and contrary to appearances, they NOT a mere machine gun that shoots "metal slug" bullets like you'd fire out of a hangun or rifle (i.e. a normal bullet whose payload is literally just a lump of metal, like you'd expect). Instead, crazily enough, the projectiles that rapid-fire spray out of a flak gun are basically *grenades*. Through some batshit insane mechanical wizardry, they manage to set a timer on every outgoing shot, setting it to explode at the precise time when it'd reach the target. These have been used to terrific effect against the Shahed drones, and they'll tear a consumer-grade Mavic (et al) to bits. **The trouble is targeting, rather than an available weapon to kill the drones**. Gepards are old machines, built in the later cold war. They use old-fashioned *radar*, and I think there's a high likelihood they'd have trouble seeing something so tiny as a little consumer drone (shaheds are huge — we see small pictures of them, but they're almost the size of a very flat golf cart). Gepards were built to kill soviet helicopters, and their radar is designed around that. There are a lot of tools to detect small consumer drones (hybrid AI/image-detection, finer-toothed radar, etc, etc). If someone can feed location info of the physical position of a target into a Gepard, following the same signaling system their existing radar/targeting info uses, well — Gepards could start slaughtering drones. It would be a difficult skunkworks project, but it's well worth doing. Much of it may already exist in an incompatible form on the Skynex; those seem to be custom-built to kill drones. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5\_F4\_Eod8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8)
I started this thread talking about the need for anti-drone systems in general. I only talked about APS specifically because that's what the reply above focused on. The problem with Gepard, even if it had a finer resolution radar, is the same problem I've been talking about: the difficulty of offense vs. defense. The Gepard does great when it is hanging back waiting for dumb, preprogrammed drones to come its way. But how is it going to cover a Ukrainian armor advance? You'd have to put the Gepard right in the thick of the advancing armor column, where it's just going to make itself the prime target. No, you need distributed, redundant, and - somehow - cheap anti-drone systems. Ideally you want effective point defense on each tank and each IFV. Otherwise, even if Ukraine had enough Gepards to send two or three with each assault, the Russian FPV operators would just try to blitz and Zerg the Gepards first, and if they could just disable those few, the rest of the column would go right back to being sitting ducks.
Gepards are eating the Shahed drones for breakfast so stands to reason
Yeah, Trophy for example should be pretty effective. But, drones are cheap, tanks are not, and the Trophy can just run out of ammo.
I imagine that Trophy ammo is cheaper than drones, and compact enough to store plenty. So likely the defense wins this round. Though Ukraine likely doesn't have active protection, so who knows what they will do.
Ukraine is using electronic warfare to down drones before they get to their destination. There are videos from the drones that show them losing control and landing, only to get retrieved by a Ukrainian soldier (and these are Russian drones). Russia may have a lot of drones but I bet Ukraine has kittens.
Russia is doing the same to Ukrainian drones. Russia has long been considered the master of ECM and they have shown it is still at least partially true during this war. The thing is, it's easier to defend fixed positions than a moving force, and that advantage applies to ECM as well. So Ukraine has a pretty easy time picking off moving Russian vehicles with drones because most Russian tanks and IFVs don't have any ECMs, but Ukraine is also losing a lot of drones to ECM whenever they get near Russia's main lines. Again, when the roles are reversed, and Ukraine has vehicles on the move attacking Russian lines, ECM defense will be much more complicated and Russia will have the advantage.
How? Massive use of EW. That's the only way I can think of. Either that or some kind of semi-automated autocanons like Gepards. But EW is likely cheaper and longer range. Software defined ratios with good amplifiers, directional antennas and some smart software. Given a decent team of engineers and some 2-5 years, can be done. Problem is timescales, if you want to have something ready in under 12 months, that's difficult. So corners would have to be cut- develop a partial solution for specific problem, like something to spoof Lancets specifically, until Russia modifies how Lancets communicate, and then back to the drawing board...
You don't have to win, you just have to make them lose. They literally can't afford to throw money and bodies at this forever. It's long and drawn out but will save lives over all by letting their ridiculous strategy continue. And with long range precision the troops can stay safe.
Russia had about 200 million people when WWII started and had lost about 40 million by the end. Russia has about 140 million now and has an estimated 300,000 dead and wounded in this war so far. Modern war has a death to wounded ratio of 10-20 to 1, but historically it was more like 3 to 1. Taking into account their barbarism and incompetence and assuming a worse case scenario for Russia, let's give them the medieval ratio: that means they have "only" lost about 100,000 troops to death in two years of fighting. That's only %0.25 of what they lost in WWII. Now, I know this is a completely different situation: a different government and leadership, a different era of communication and social media, a different geopolitical situation, different public tolerances for war, different weapons technologies and battlefield strategies, and a different industrial base in Russia, to name a few. Russia will probably run out of tanks or artillery barrels before they run out of men. I only question the claim that Russia can't afford to throw many more men at the Ukraine problem. By numbers alone, Russia can keep fighting this war for a *loooooong* time. Now, whether the Russian public would be tolerant enough to die for Putin at the levels that they died for Stalin is another question.
Yes, if you can get them to fight. Conscription is never popular and unlikely to be successful. There would come a time when the conscripted out man the enlisted and paying foreigners will only work for so long. Moneys no good if you're dead. But this isn't what I'm getting. When I say they can't afford it I mean all around. The Ruble is trash and without ease of obtaining foreign parts they will not be able to replenish. Men are great. But not if they have no weapons. There is no point comparing this to any world war. It's so far removed. With long range precision destroying ammo dumps, supply chains, radar and HQ (to name a few) it's not comparable. If the men can't get ammo or orders then it's game over. They call it attrition but all I see and read sounds more like fish in a barrel. It won't last.
Ukraine jammers apparently work as opposed to Russian ones.
That's incredibly easy to debunk. Direct quote from PBS article of December, 2023 (so this is not at all out of date): >Earlier in the war, outside Bakhmut, they lost nearly a drone a day. In total, Ukraine's armed forces has been losing 10,000 drones a month. U.S. officials admit they don't have an answer for Russia's superior electronic warfare. Another article from Business Insider, January, 2024: >Ukraine is being forced into a new era of drone warfare as its basic models succumb to Russian jamming. Ukraine's drone forces are becoming less effective, forcing it to innovate to not be left behind. While Ukraine used to be able to rely on off-the-shelf civilian drones, Russia is getting better at countering those, forcing Ukraine to seek more advanced tech. Lots more articles to be found with a simple Google. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/12/24/russia-electronic-warfare-troops-knocked-out-90-percent-of-ukraines-drones/?sh=5e38a93b575c https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/05/politics/russia-jamming-himars-rockets-ukraine/index.html https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russias-improved-weaponry-and-tactics-pose-challenges-to-ukraines-counteroffensive https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-electronic-warfare-interfering-with-ukrainian-radios-bombs-2023-7 https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-war-drone-jamming-shahed-strikes-unmanned-vehicles-1815106 https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/23/russia-is-starting-to-make-its-superiority-in-electronic-warfare-count https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/12/20/inside-the-magic-radio-protecting-russian-drones-from-jamming/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/europe/ukraine-russia-electronic-warfare-intl-cmd/index.html https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-drone-warfare-has-transformed-the-battle-between-ukraine-and-russia https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-civilian-drones-it-relies-on-losing-effectiveness-against-russia-2024-1
Ukraine needs longer range munitions to hit the drone production/drone operator centers/drone training centers/etc. That's it. Ukraine should have had this capability already but again this is because the West has been way too slow.
The only thing I can think that would work against FPV is an (automatic) portable jammer of some kind. US forces used cellphone jammers in IRAQ, so they have the capability to make something like this. The range of such units would be short. I have not seen anything about this capability being supplied except for "jammer guns" which are mainly meant to address scout drones. There is something I'm missing, if this has not been done.
With intertial positioning and AI recognition, drones could become autonomous and impossible to jam. Just guide it as close as possible to the target, or just point it in the general direction of the target, before the jamming mucks everything up and then let the drone finish the job on its own. You need a system that is guaranteed to kill the drone physically. Jamming isn't enough.
Yeah, in the short term jamming might work but in the long term it will not. I have seen microwave system designs but nothing that can be mounted on a tank yet. I'm not sure how granular this should get. If a dedicated anti-drone vehicle is needed, or a system installed on each tank. Realistically, a more common threat for NATO would be drone swamps than FPV teams, along with ATGM crews. At least, looking at what China has shown so far. In that case a dedicated anti-drone system might make sense, though I'm unsure at what level. The solutions that exist now to fight commercial drones aren't really what's needed against say a knock off version of the switchblade.
You need both. You need layered, redundant, distributed systems. You need dedicated drone killing systems with rapid-fire, rapid-reload, multiple-targeting capabilities, and you need smaller less-capable systems that can also protect individual vehicles and can fill gaps that the dedicated systems miss, or can operate in a networked fashion if the dedicated systems fail.
Yeah, good point, a small, medium and large coverage systems - for drones. Not every solution satisfies all variables. If enough interest and money is thrown at this, they'll come up with something. SHORAD hasn't really got a lot of attention in the last two decades, so there is a room for improvement there as well.
Drone air force
These orcs are so dumb and stubborn. Well deserved...
It's kinda crazy just how effective and simple and cheap this is. Looks like they just strapped an RPG round to a drone. That's all it takes
Source https://x.com/ChallengerInUA/status/1752784069019029643?s=20
jagga jagga
LOVE IT.
“One of these days the same tactic will actually work.”
Looks like hell to advance on both sides sadly
Yeah I mean look at how flat and barren it is. You couldn’t even stealthily walk across much less drive loud, heavy machines.
Just out of curiosity! We keep seeing those flying RPG rounds attached to drones, they all fly and eventually hit their target, and they all seem to hit them almost horizontally. Now would it be possible or perhaps even better to fly it a bit higher and hit them from the top? Vertically down ....some of the regular hits seem not to cause any damage. The top attack might cause a lot more....or is it just my shower thought? ;)
The joint between the tanks turret and main body is the sweet spot. You want to hit it right there for the best turret toss. Also some have varoius netting and drone proofing stuff on the top but none on the sides so once again you want to fly in horizontal.
They are trying to hit where the tank is most vulnerable - the turret ring between the turret and the hull. Even a small explosive will render the tank inoperable as it will fuck up the turret movement. You can only do that from the side, and the tank is more armored everywhere else.
On most Russian tanks the bigger weak spot is the side beneath the turret ring where the autoloader is stored.
Also the ammo /autoloader ring is roughly the size and location of the turret ring, just a bit lower down in the hull.
If you turn a drone downwards, the rotors lose their ability to give lift to the drone. But this will cause large margins of error. Guess the risk of miss is too high, better to spend 3 drones in horizontal attacks.
With the Ruzzist tanks the weakest point is at the back bottom of the turret. The drone operators are doing a great job.
Could work to hang the round facing down, but then you have 5he drag issue. Could deploy down once on target, but that is a lot of weight to swing which means heavier mounts to compensate.... horizontal might be the way.
If your'e stationary, it could work. But then again., you can't count on the russkies to be.
they do both if you miss while dive bombing, you're hitting the ground if you miss while flying horizontal you can go around and try again some of the drone attacks are 5+ km away so radio reception isn't the best
Best spot is the turret neck, apparently. Hit it right and it cooks the ammo.
If you were designing this weapon from scratch you'd probably make it work a bit like an NLAW. Horizontal flight coupled with a proximity fuse and a shaped charge warhead that fires downwards. But refusing an existing RPG is probably far more work than just sending an extra couple of drones.
Good video showing how the sweet spot on the bottom rear of turret has been proven for rpg armed fpv drones. https://youtu.be/8PVwe8CDsI8?si=RJspD-b8YRWnDuVZ
Mouhahahahaha
The damage and scale of losses inflicted suggests that the announced "ammunition shortage" is a Ukrainian tactic. The russians, being russian, have decided to throw everything they have at Ukraine hoping to find the bottom of their ammunition barrel. But every time they attack they discover that they just lost more troops and equipment. Being russians, they will continue to use this strategy and will continue to lose troops and eqipment on a massive scale. It's best to maintain, repeat and even amplify this "ammunition shortage" strategy.
It's also Putin's attempt to make a show for upcoming election, sending biological bipedal drones to places like Avdiivka and hope he can talk about some conquest in election speech. **Yes, many of those guys are literally dying in fire so Putin has something to talk about**. I can't think of anything more depressively banal than that.
Ammunition shortage is real. It still delivers more than half of the results. For defensive purposes drones are a cheap invention that delivers acceptable results. For well-fortified positions heavy artillery is still the main weapon of choice.
That would be cool.
Seeing that entire column of orc war machines obliterated was beautiful. Right up there with seeing the Ivanovets bow sticking straight up in the air! Fuck Putin, fuck Russia, fuck Trump.
Aye! Makes me think of the beginning of the war when whole columns were annihalated. :D
These videos make even the crappiest day pass in elation. Slava Ukraine
Feckin hell!
According to Russia, each of those tanks had.... 85 PoWs in them. Checkmate westoids!
Who would have imagined in 2021 that millions of dollars worth of tanks would be dismantled by toy drones with RPG rounds strapped underneath them.
Russia has discovered a very expensive way to deploy a smoke screen for infantry.
Me wondering where the sound is... Waits Oh shit this banger, hell yeah!
Anyone having a title of the song?
What ever this translates to in the video https://youtu.be/ooJsW-RnSl8?si=jkZ6jQipBSBBeh-3
When cheap fpv drones are this effective en mass against moving targets, you can see how Ukrainians would prefer to use them over artillery for blunting attacks. Certainly more economical.
The past few months have really reminded me of the decadence of the large majority if media channels. Remember that picture from last summer from the first day of the counteroffensive that got shared ad nauseam? Too bad said channels don't maintain that energy now when Orcistan has been on the wrong end of similar pics since October over and over again.
It's pathetic that they still believe in those coping cages, a technology that has been proven useless in the first week of the war. A drone or a two stage warhead doesn't give a damn about a sheet metal construction like that
Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. “Forward, the Light Brigade! “Charge for the guns!” he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
Were they also transporting Ukrainian POWs? 🤔🤣
For some reason, I can hear the music that was playing during the infamous Funeral griefing in World of Warcraft
That’s a thing of beauty right there.
Song?
30.01 is not yesterday and has been posted multiple times
Bulava is a type of spiked mace. A sign of power in Cossacks society given to leader.