[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.

[kragen]

Scarcity is not some kind of minor detail; it's damned near the whole story. Logistics win wars. Scarce weapons usually lose wars against abundant weapons. That doesn't always happen—the Zulus' abundant spears and arrows were no match for the Maxim gun's somewhat less abundant cartridges, and neither a pitchfork nor a handgun will do you much good against a tank—but it does usually happen.

When scarce weapons can defeat abundant weapons, and it's not because of range, it's usually because of precision. Drones are great at precision. 3 mortar rounds falling within 30 meters of your target trench are still ten times less deadly than a single FPV drone you can pilot straight into it.

[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.

[kragen]

Hmm, I didn't realize. Do you mean ~5:1 is better than the miss ratio of artillery rounds, which makes them cheaper? Because I think a small FPV drone is about US$600 and an artillery round is about US$800, but that isn't a fact caused by the miss ratio.