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by koube 1064 days ago
Counter battery radar + $50k gmlrs with better range and better time on target and 182k tungsten balls seems more like a winning plan than a spotting drone and $35k drone that flies slowly, has limited range, is vulnerable to to EW, and needs to hit the target directly.

You have made a lot of points why the lancets MIGHT be very good, and certainly it's one of the most effective weapons on the Russian side today. However my central point remains the same: Ukraine is winning the artillery attrition war despite these features. In order to be a game changer you need to actually change the game, if you're losing 3:1 of your artillery pieces or even 2:1 then it calls in to question how much your weapon is changing the nature of warfare.

Some of your speculation I agree with it and some I don't but on the whole I want to avoid making affirmative statements on the direction of the war, since as I said before, I am not an expert on this. Anything I say would just be speculation.

If anyone is curious to know more, Perun on youtube does powerpoint presentations which SEEM mostly level headed:

- Focus on economics, production, and procurement

- Presents statements of multiple sources, does not take any at face value

- Is clear about what information he knows and doesn't know

- Is incredibly boring which fits my mental stereotype of people who know what they're talking about

1 comments

I've seen quite a few videos of Lancet drones taking out counter-battery radars. There are issues there (a Russian general got in big trouble for speaking out about this), but it is largely overstated.

HIMARS are basically identical in capabilities to the Russian Tornado S MLRS (which is actually a little newer than HIMARS). Turn off the GPS and the accuracy is worse than artillery.

Lancets don't generally run into EW issues because if there is EW in the area, the spotter drone is affected.

Losses are a very subjective thing and if you look through Oryx yourself, you'll see some interesting repetition. I'll leave that there.

I've watched almost every video Perun has made, but he's not always right.

If we're comparing videos, HIMARS destroyed 5 SPGs, nearly an entire battery of 6[0][1]. GPS coordinates here of all of them being in the same field[2], likely from the same battery. The ability to film drone kills is useful, but that doesn't compare to eliminating entire artillery batteries in a day in an artillery war.

Tornado S uses GLONASS just like HIMARS uses GPS. They can both be jammed. Tornado S were also already used in Ukraine but they don't use them a lot. Perhaps the supply chain of guided munitions is not great.

We can compare Ukranian vs Russian weapons all day but the proof is in the pudding. It doesn't matter how great the features of Russian weapons are if they can't match the kill rate of Ukrainian weapons.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1497511/m142...

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1497hms/dest...

[2]: https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/166895463035136409...