[gonzo41]

Counterpoint, the US has better other systems. Such as the 1st,2nd,3rd largest air forces in the world.

Lots of Ukrainian commanders would happily trade FPV drones with grenades attached for mortar teams with lots of ammo and effective aircover.

Modern militaries need drones, but the swarms that everyone gushes over aren't that effective when a 1000 pound gorilla like the US Army turns up to play.

[kragen]

Both Ukraine and Russia have more combat aircraft than the US, if you count drones. Of course the US has a far larger air force if you count by dollars rather than by airframe count, but if that's because they're buying US$10k milspec chips when US$1 parking meter chips would work just as well, that and a fiver will get you a cup of coffee.

An F-16 costs US$200 million and can be destroyed by a US$500 FPV drone with a grenade attached, as Operation Spiderweb demonstrated with Russia's strategic bomber force.

Surely you are correct that commanders would happily trade one FPV drone for one properly equipped F-16, even without the mortars. But it isn't clear that they would trade 400,000 FPV drones for the F-16, and that's the trade actually on offer.

The US Army has never fought drone swarms, because they have never been fielded in any war, probably because they don't work very well yet; that's why the Ukrainians are dinking around with FPV. The US Army has never faced even the kind of FPV drone war we're seeing in Ukraine. Their materiel has, though, since they shipped a lot of it to the Ukrainians, and it doesn't seem to be doing very well. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are trying to keep their tanks off the front lines when they can, and the vast majority of casualties on both sides are from drones.

[gonzo41]

Think about mortars more. If you can be close enough for a drone 1-2km, then mortars should be what you're thinking about.

Mix a targeting drone with a vehicle mounted mortar team and they can have faster rounds on target and get of the X quicker than drone teams. And nets don't stop mortars.

200M will by a lot of that and can be fielded in a very flexible way.

[kragen]

Mortars miss; suicide drones don't. And even the crappiest combat FPVs outrange mortars at 10+ km. The second drone gets through the net. And I wouldn't be surprised if US mortar rounds cost more than Ukrainian drones. But certainly they are synergistic, and tanks and IFVs are also widely fielded on both sides of the war.

The obvious thing to do is to guide your mortar rounds with canards mounted slightly forward of the center of gravity, but the distance between "obvious" and done has a lot of rotting corpses in it.

[gonzo41]

Mortars have a 30m kill radius and you can hang rounds very quickly. There are guidable versions (expensive) but the regular rounds a cheap as chips (in military terms)

[kragen]

Mortars do not have a 30m kill radius against tanks and trenches.

[gonzo41]

Yes, but you can suppress a trench with mortars and do a combined arms attack against it. As for Tanks, there's other munitions better suited, the only reason the UAF aren't use them is scarcity.

[meheleventyone]

> Mortars miss; suicide drones don't.

TBF based on Ukraines own statistics drones miss a lot as well.

[kragen]

I guess getting shot down is just as good as missing.

[meheleventyone]

Anything where you don't hit the target is a miss so yes. Non-exhaustively and off the top of my head; running out of battery, electrical fault, losing signal/break in the fibre optic cable, shot down and operator error are all potential causes of a miss.

[jacquesm]

No, they miss a lot. ~5:1. But that still makes them cheaper than artillery rounds and they do a lot of damage and can do both recon and the subsequent attack with the same package, and without delay.

[mrguyorama]

>Both Ukraine and Russia have more combat aircraft than the US, if you count drones.

That's just absurd. There is almost no mission a real aircraft can do with ease that a drone can replace.

>and the vast majority of casualties on both sides are from drones.

Who told you that?

>Operation Spiderweb demonstrated with Russia's strategic bomber force.

The one that took out max 10 planes from a year long endeavor that occupied significant special forces? Russia seems to continue sending cruise missiles. They are closer to running out of planes, and cannot replace a single loss, but that operation was far more of a propaganda victory than a tactical one. Maybe it caused Russia to have to be more careful about the border and tie up some troops in that?

>The US Army has never fought drone swarms, because they have never been fielded in any war,

The US military has fought skies filled with thousands of targets though. The UK did it before computers, and the US navy invented a brand new networked and automated battlespace management system for their fleet to handle hundreds of Russian cruise missiles launched at a surface group. In the 60s. The same Navy invented a mechanical gyro system for inertial navigation that modern ring laser gyros do not even come close to touching.

People have this weird idea that the US military industrial complex is incompetent and it's just radically misinformed and silly. The F35 had teething problems, same as every craft. The Switchblade is overpriced and underpowered, because it was a tiny experiment for mostly "Special forces" and thus had a special forces price tag. It's also dramatically more electronically sophisticated. The military refuses to build a new self propelled artillery system for.... reasons?

But the US military has a looooong history of fixing those teething problems and creating incredible equipment. Air to Air missiles started with a dud rate of like 60%. But the people who called them a fad were wrong. The people who said the US should invest into more cheap air power that had no bells and whistles (like ejection seats or radar warning systems) and that burning money on expensive SOTA aircraft using cutting edge electronics would be a boondoggle and would fail, and they were so fucking wrong. Literally those exact people were the ones crying about the F35 being crap and not living up to expectations, and they should ask Iran, who had plenty of Russian and homegrown anti-air weapon radars and SAM systems how well they fared against the F35, and the B2 which is an older Stealth system.

Meanwhile the biggest issue with the B21 raider is that Lockhead might lose money on it due to inflation.

The Navy definitely has trouble, but they've always been prima donnas when it comes to procurement, insisting on changing off the shelf stuff with custom requirements and asking for absurdities like the Zumwalt's original cannon, but the Aircraft Carriers are still insane and we can buy frigates from someone else.

Like, you people know that "The Pentagon Wars" about the Bradley was an absolute fiction, right? And that the claims Colonel Burton made in that book are wrong? And if you ask the Ukrainians, the Bradley (an old version at that!) is not only very effective, but an outright lifesaver. Something like 80% and above survivability for crew and passengers when it is destroyed. BMPs have radically worse survivability.

The US military has already adapted, with for example slapping a laser tracker on dirt cheap Hydra rockets as a way to reliably take down cheap munitions like Shaheds. That system has been a great success, and is super scalable. Beating that would require much faster munitions (at that point you are a pricier cruise missile) or being launched from so close you might as well use an artillery piece.

The single most powerful thing that small, cheap drones provide is small group ISR, allowing individual soldiers to have the kind of battlefield awareness in trench fighting as your average CoD protagonist. Maybe we are close to emulating the "Enemy, front, 300 feet" from Arma.

[kragen]

> > and the vast majority of casualties on both sides are from drones.

> Who told you that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmfNUM2CbbM #video from May 19: #interview with #drones developer Sergey Tovkach from #Russia on how #weaponry from #Ukraine is far better than what the US and even China have, and now 70% of fatalities on the battlefield are from drones.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/... “#Drones, not the big, heavy artillery that the war was once known for, inflict about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, said Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in #Ukraine’s Parliament. In some battles, they cause even more — up to 80 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say. (...) drones rule the battlefield. They have far surpassed conventional arms as the war’s most lethal #weaponry. (...) The war has killed and wounded more than a million soldiers in all, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates. But drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined, including sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers and mortars, Ukrainian commanders and officials say. (...) Of the 31 highly sophisticated Abrams tanks that the United States provided Ukraine in 2023, 19 have been destroyed, disabled or captured, with many incapacitated by drones, senior Ukrainian officials said. Nearly all of the others have been taken off the front lines, they added. (...) Ukrainian officials said they had made more than one million first-person-view, or FPV, drones in 2024. Russia claims it can churn out 4,000 every day. Both countries say they are still scaling up production, with each aiming to make three to four million drones in 2025. (...) Ukraine has followed suit, firing more drones last year than the most common type of large-caliber artillery shells. The commander of Ukraine’s drone force, Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, says Ukraine is now pursuing a “robots first” military strategy. ¶ However effective they may be, the drones fall far short of meeting all of Ukraine’s war needs and cannot simply replace the demand for conventional weapons, commanders warn. Heavy artillery and other long-range weapons remain essential for many reasons, they say, including protecting troops and targeting command-and-control outposts or air-defense systems. ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-88Z-xqImI #video on #Ukraine #drones #weaponry, which it said is largely made by Vyriy and the Vampire’s maker Skyfall. Says dropping 10kg TM62 anti-tank mines onto tanks, and also dropping heavy bombs from drones, is a “warfare first”. The Vampire (Baba Yaga) can carry them 10km. Says the Donetsk battlefield is “dominated by FPV drones on both sides”. The most popular ground drone is Ratel’s 35kg-capacity Ratel S or “Honey Badger”.

> > Operation Spiderweb demonstrated with Russia's strategic bomber force.

> The one that took out max 10 planes from a year long endeavor that occupied significant special forces?

Yes, but that's only the beginning. Don't be like the people who dismissed covid as unimportant because it had only caused 2000 deaths.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-destroyed-t... #Israel #drones destroy two F-14 airplanes in #Iran. #weaponry #politics

> dirt cheap Hydra rockets as a way to reliably take down cheap munitions like Shaheds. That system has been a great success, and is super scalable. Beating that would require much faster munitions (at that point you are a pricier cruise missile) or being launched from so close you might as well use an artillery piece.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_70 a Hydra rocket costs US$2799, the cost of five Ukrainian FPV drones (though still a twentieth of the cost of the Shahed), and Operation Spiderweb found ways to launch their drones from nearly that close, ways that wouldn't have worked for an artillery piece. And you can beat laser targeting by humans simply by launching more simultaneous drones than there are defenders, or by flying below treetop level, or by flying outside the troposphere.

> The US military has fought skies filled with thousands of targets though.

The US military just lost a war against Afghan shepherds, and the people in the US military who "fought skies filled with thousands of targets" retired decades ago. And they weren't paying for thousand-dollar toilet seats at the time.

Also, and this is crucial, thousands of targets is very different from millions of targets, and you are going to be seeing wars with skies filled with millions of targets within five years. More accurately, millions of weapons; the humans are their targets.

It is not going to look like a video game. Those are rigged to be winnable.

[alex43578]

Agreed. The military will certainly need smaller drones to support squads or platoons, and to perform a variety of functions on the battlefield. But, I think drawing too many and too specific of lessons from Ukraine/Russia is bad.

It's tough to imagine a scenario where the US is so bogged down on a front line that a few miles of range on a Ukraine style FPV drone is going to be a critical weapon, especially if this scenario also requires that the US not be able to perform SEAD, destroy GPS jamming, or hit the target with JDAM/Hellfires/ETC.

Having a Mavic or Mini drone that can perform recon, a small drone capable of delivering a grenade sized payload to hit entrenched targets, a larger drone that can offer BDA and recon for artillery/MLRS, or the "Loyal Wingman" airforce drones are all reasonable ideas. But I just don't see the US standing up a dedicated FPV regiment - it doesn't align with the rest of the force's composition or likely missions.

Essentially it's this dichotomy: If we need to project force overseas, it's existing at the end of a massive chain of logistics, air/sea power and lift capability, and a lot of dollars. Whether the drone costs 500, 1000, or 10,000 doesn't really matter at that point because the soldier operating it and the logistics to get him there has already cost hundreds of thousands, and even a $50K drone-bomb is cheaper than the cost of the JDAM, F-35 flight time, pilot, and carrier that would otherwise be used to hit the target.

If instead we are fighting on the homefront, battling over tens of miles of heartland and building drones from parts scavenged from a bombed out Best Buy or imported from some imaginary, untouched part of the world (because what would the world's supply chain look like in this scenario??), all assumptions go out the window and the idea of mass-producing any armament at all is impossible.

[BLKNSLVR]

Ultimately I think this is true, but you can't overlook any aspect, and it seems the US overlooked drone potential. Thus far it hasn't cost them.

A disparate drone swarm taking out power distribution stations (I don't know what they're officially called) all over the country would be devastating. Lessons from https://cybersquirrel1.com/.

(I think there's an 'imagination' and/or 'perspective' limitation when you're already the gorilla. You think like a gorilla, you're unable to think like a parasite)

[walletdrainer]

> A disparate drone swarm taking out power distribution stations (I don't know what they're officially called) all over the country would be devastating

I believe the military term of art for this would be a “nothingburger”.

This kind of stuff is not expected to have a meaningful impact on your ability to fight.

Yes, it’s inconvenient for civilians. Has next to nothing to do with winning wars, much of WW2 was fought in much worse circumstances than “the electricity doesn’t work”.

Focusing on things like this results in diverting resources from fighting wars, and results in losing them (or at least hinders your ability to win). The goal isn’t to preserve quality of life for civilians, but to at the very least preserve the integrity of the nation.

[radicalShrimpl]

This is exactly correct.

It's the same reason why US military doctrine worries very little about jamming.

If something is jamming, the tactical response is to destroy the jammer.

If someone is drone attacking you, the tactical response is to destroy the drone launches.

[cyberax]

Russia is dominating Ukraine in air forces by about 10-to-1. Yet Russia is using aviation only to lob guided bombs from far beyond the front line.

Apparently, air defense is good enough to make the aviation use too expensive too quickly. It's possible that the US can saturate the air defense by the sheer number of airplanes, accepting heavy casualties in return. But what if it fails?

[postingawayonhn]

Yeah, I think it will be important to continue improving drone technology and have a plan to scale manufacturing in the event of a major conflict, but the lack of conventional air superiority is what has really brought this war to a stalemate.

[defrost]

A swarm of dirt cheap drones flying through the jet engines of a 10,000,000 dollar gorilla is an asymmetric answer.

[gonzo41]

Flak cannons are also really cheap to produce and use. But downing a modern fast jet with one is still hard to do. Especially when they can fire over the horizon.

The war in Ukraine looks like it does because Ukraine has had to fight with constant equipment shortages. It's not really the future of warfare that modern militaries are prepping for.

[brandensilva]

Yeah I think people are underestimating drones here.

There is a reason this administration is fast tracking drone production and easing up on procurement. Some stuff doesn't need super sophisticated systems with traditional processes to get off the ground quickly with a cheap swarm approach.

It's probably the only thing I can agree with this administration on.

With that said America would be doing both drone swarms and advanced missile systems where they are most effective.

[aviatobrainded]

Huh? Do you know how high and fast modern jets fly?

[ceejayoz]

Which is why you do what the Ukranians did with the Russian bomber fleet - hit them at/near their bases.

[defrost]

Yes.

[SanjayMehta]

> 1000 pound gorilla like the US Army turns up to play.

Afghanistan proves your point.

[pas]

> the swarms that everyone gushes over aren't that effective when a 1000 pound gorilla like the US Army turns up to play

... maybe. maybe not. the same army lost against stubborn Afghan shepherds. and before that against Vietnamese farmers.

[alex43578]

The US military didn't lose. They had overwhelming tactical and technological superiority, 20:1 kill ratios, and consistently inflicted heavy casualties whenever they engaged the enemy directly.

Now that didn't translate into accomplishing the political war goals of nation-building, changing cultures, and counter-insurgency without massive troop presence; but that wasn't a failure of the armed forces.

What's that line: the US doesn't lose wars, it gets tired of them?

[rcxdude]

What is the point of a war if not to achieve the political outcome of the war? No-one starts a war to get a high K/D ratio, so it's only relevant to the extent that it helps with the political outcome, and on that front the US failed to achieve its goals. And I don't think this was something the armed forces had no part in: the manner in which they went about trying to achieve this goal certainly has an affect on the outcome, even if it was a lot more difficult than just applying their sheer technological superiority and direct combat capability.

[alex43578]

My point was a narrow rebuttal against the idea that the military lost against shepherds. They defeated them soundly, inflicting heavy losses while operating under a comparatively restrained ROE.

In the broader context of the discussion, the post I was replying to made it sound like US military might would be rendered ineffective against drones, just the same as it supposedly would against IEDs. That isn’t the case.

While IEDs accounted for losses, the US didn’t fail to accomplish war goals in Afghanistan because of technology, power, or IEDs, but just because of simple politics.

How would you propose the armed forces act differently in Afghanistan to change “hearts and minds” among a people that quite clearly support Taliban values and the existing way of life?

[Libidinalecon]

I don't totally disagree but there is large part of the US military machine that the point of war is to deplete the weapons inventory so that we need to replenish the inventory.

If you take that as a large variable then all the US wars of a last 50 years were mission accomplished.

I don't see the point in judging the wars from the obvious sideshows of "spreading democracy" or something of that nature.

[lisdexan]

That's still losing. The enemy's simple and concise objective of "GTFO of my country" was achieved, and the U.S.'s vague idea of "something something stop commies/terrorists" wasn't.

It's like the opposite of a Pyrrhic victory: you lost and squandered trillions while tarnishing your reputation, but your sheer economic and geopolitical power made it so you didn't feel pretty much anything, nor did you learn much.

That might be okay if the national hobby is airlifting a BK to some forsaken land every 30 years. What happens when the technological gap is smaller and your opponents have access to a substantially higher manufacturing capacity? What happens when you have multiple conflicts and coincidentally suffer an economic slowdown? Being able to casually outspend your enemy is a nice luxury, not an advantage.

I suppose in a sense you are right: superpowers never lose; they just get tired, and more tired until they become Russia or the UK.

[SanjayMehta]

> What's that line: the US doesn't lose wars, it gets tired of them?

"They declare victory and run away."

[pas]

It's not enough to win all battles, if you still lose the war of attrition (and logistics, and politics, and hearts and minds, and so on).

[hollerith]

By that logic, Britain never lost the American revolution.