The Ukraine war is driving rapid innovation in drone technology
understandingai.org
understandingai.org
NATO armed forces have comparatively small amounts of armoured ground vehicles and artillery.
They need to and want to learn from the current war, but still keep in mind that their circumstances are different.
But it doesn't really matter: collective defense is the whole point of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
I am not certain US will enter war with Russia in case of some escalation with European countries, especially if Trump will be elected.
A superior air force and air superiority are different concepts. The latter refers to a conflict-time status in a particular theatre.
That's too strong an assumption. The USAF 's bread and butter is supersonic stealth jets that can enter a territory, fire RF missiles to take out anti-aircraft radar, and leave faster than anything can catch it. Repeated hit and run attacks that wear down ground defenses until they can fly unchallenged. That's on top of the massive arsenal of precision guided missiles that will take out any static installation identified by constant global satellite surveillance.
NATO doctrine has always been geared towards countering the Sovet Union/Russia, despite the counter-terrorism detour the US took.
F-35 can't super-sonic cruise. The choice was to be slow but stealthy.
Even MANPADs, which are extremely cheap (relative to an aircraft) pose a major threat. For instance the now somewhat dated FIM-92 [2] can hit mach 2.2. This is why even though Ukraine's air defenses are overall somewhat limited, Russian aircraft rarely if ever go for deep missions. Air superiority is probably just impossible in modern times against a peer adversary.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
It is unclear if the US will prevail against a peer adversary in an air war, but if anybody is able to achieve air supremacy, it would be the US and their allies.
MANPADs like the FIM-92 have an effective firing range that is a small fraction of the flight ceiling of jets, regardless of the missile's max velocity. They're not a threat unless a jet is flying very low for close air support or when lacking precision munitions, and the operator gets very lucky.
As for the numbers stuff, all modern air defense systems have independent integrated radar of at least their engagement range, and do not rely on external radar systems, though of course everything works much better with layering and cooperation. An F35 at max speed (which it is only capable of reach at high altitude for very brief periods of time) is hitting about 1975 km/h. An S-400's engagement and radar range is about 400km. That's an engagement radius of more than 12 minutes at max speed. The engagement window would be smaller with a low & slow approach, but then you start running into various other risks, even going back to MANPADs.
One could try a long-range stand-off but that's unlikely to prove effective without getting into the primary way to disable anti-air defenses - overwhelm them. But that's extremely non-trivial even if the systems are in relative isolation, let alone if they're part of a comprehensive anti-air system. And all of this for one system. Again I would appeal to Ukraine. Their anti-air defenses are relatively limited yet it's been more than enough to greatly limit the engagement capabilities of Russia's Su-57s.
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Actually I also completely failed to mention another major factor. If this sort of war breaks out, satellites are going boom shortly thereafter, the global internet would follow in short order. This will further reduce the chances of any sort of effective elimination of anti-air.
The Swedish air force could routinely (16% of the time) get a fighter jet based missile lock on a frigging SR-71 in the 80s! 40 years later, altitude and speed do not help as much as you think. And radars are networked.
And that's not counting the rest of NATO.
I would not say that they will succeed in a peer to peer war, but NATO have the greatest chance to achieve air supremacy against any peer opponent.
In fact a study came out in 2022 that made the Pentagon panic because it's estimated in a war with China, the US will deplete its entire anti-ship missile stockpile in only a week.
At least, if somebody doesn't take Putin out.
Russia doesn't have nearly the amount of nukes they used to. Apart from the dismantling, all signs point to many of them being unusable due to lack of maintenance (due to corruption). What they have left are smaller bombs.
The fear is overblown.
The reason strategic weapons are generally tracked is largely because these are the massive weapons, both literally and in terms of capacity. For instance a modern strategic nuke on the smaller end would generally be around 500kt of yield. The largest bomb ever detonated, Czar Bomba, was 50,000kt of yield. For contrast, the nuke dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15kt. Even if our estimate is wrong by 90% in the happy direction, that's enough power to effectively destroy any country countless times over, including the US. Furthermore, those 4000 'rando' warheads are indeed going to be small relative to strategic nukes - but "small" in this case again means sizes of up to ~100kt, once again several times the power of Hiroshima.
I find the propaganda gradually trending towards 'nuclear war wouldn't be so bad' to be quite disconcerting. Let's at least wait until we're a multiplanetary species before we decide to start offing ourselves on a massive scale. Or even better, never do it in the first place. The Fermi Paradox is a real thing, and could be easily explained by people's inability to escape their own self delusions.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_des...
It costs a king's ransom to maintain a nuclear arsenal, as Ukraine well understood when they made the decision to give their own weapons up. The people charged with maintaining Russia's nuclear weapons since the fall of the USSR had absolutely no incentive to do anything but divert the funds for their own purposes. That's just how the Russians roll.
Meanwhile, ours will most likely work as intended. The question is, does Putin feel lucky? Well, does he? (Don't answer that, please -- I don't actually want to know.)
You tell me: what should I think of Russia, given the evidence at hand? They are still powerful enough to cause immense pain and suffering outside their borders as well as inside. If they were content with the latter, that would be one thing, but we have Putin's word that they are not.
Western attack helicopters are just one prong in the meat grinder that would grind up enemy infantry formations and entrenchments far quicker than they can be replenished.
NATO vs Russia in a conventional war is basically the West hitting the delete button. Nuclear blackmail is about the only thing sparing Russian forces from that fate.
A war with China is more of a defensive situation. If large-scale infantry combat even had the opportunity to take place I'd be surprised.
That said it's always prudent to plan for the worst contingencies however remote.
What's the plan, btw, if the west does not have air superiority due to Russians, or Iranians, having drones, and the west running out of smart rockets before they run out of drones, and the denial of communications works about as well for the West as it worked for Russia? (meaning, drone communications can be disrupted at 5 meters, which means the drone explodes 10 cm from your ass as opposed to directly in your face)
NATO forces are very, very good at combined arms actions in conventional wars. Assets aren't used unless there's a fairly high assurance of surviving and accomplishing the mission.
>What's the plan, btw ...
Western military planners have been watching the Ukraine conflict closely and are aware of the threat that cheap commercial drones pose, seeing as they're partly responsible for the phenomenon.
>meaning, drone communications can be disrupted at 5 meters, which means the drone explodes 10 cm from your ass as opposed to directly in your face)
The US in particular excels at dominating the EM spectrum. I wouldn't be surprised if enemy drones wholesale fall out of the sky en masse or are otherwise rendered totally ineffective.
And how likely are NATO forces to run out of combined arms ammo after 2 weeks?
Vks has superiority at least along the front line since this spring maybe winter. What they dont have is supremacy
The drones are too small, cheap and numerous to use a modern fighter jet's weapons against.
As far as drone defense, we already have KuRFS/Ku-720(mobile version)[0,1] radar to track drones/etc that works with a phalanx, 50-caliber guns, 30mm cannon, and coyote drones. We're also deploying a 50kw palletized laser (w/ KuRFS) with the DE MSHORAD program[2].
All of these programs predate the 2022 Ukraine invasion. The Coyote (designed at the start to take out small drones) first took flight in 2007[3].
0. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m...
1. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/news/2021/10/11/rmd-proves-coun...
2. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m...
I don't think it's necessary true that the war devolves into a lot of loss of life and trench warfare. That's mostly the result of a stalemate. The Russians expected Ukraine to be a pushover. That didn't happen.
It is the other way around. Ukraine has a GDP per capita that is (prewar) 3 times that of Russia's.
Russia's oil does a lot. Using oil/gas fuels supports Russia's war economy by creating demand and raising their prices in the commodities markets, in addition to contributing to the climate disaster.
A snip from the post
The Analyst....
By this stage the Russians had lost most of their APC’s and tanks were standing well back acting more as artillery. The Russians then started the widespread use of what looks like golf carts and ATV’s to reinforce their infantry. Later they started using motorbikes.
With their armor gone the infantry were sent in meatwaves. *This lead the Ukrainians to mount their Octocopter heavy lift drones (which the Russians are generally very afraid of), with light machine guns to bring down the infantry attacks. While experimental these drones proved very effective, their only problem being recoil issues firing the gun. It’s planned to solve the recoil quite quickly, but using machine learning and thermal optical sights shows huge promise. This makes the drones less susceptible to having their control link severed - even if they do they can operate alone and return themselves to base. The day of the gun armed autonomous AI drone it seems, is here.*
The Russians continue infantry attacks but they have now stopped supporting them with any armor and have turned north instead, trying to find a weaker spot.
An outstanding and imaginative Ukrainian defense with limited resources yet again, blunts the relentless hammer blows of meatwave attacks backed by dwindling armor.
I remember I mentioned that this the future of drones few years ago and everyone in the seminar laughed about it, but it’s a reality now. The next one is AI deciding what to target, which I believe is already in place as Israel is using it already, and apparently failing miserably with all the civilians casualties.
I don't think we have the data to reliably determine the impact of Israel's AI usage on civilian casualties. Sam Harris this week had an expert for urban and subterranean warfare from West Point on. He explained that it's impossible to get accurate numbers this quickly. In Mosul we apparently didn't have any numbers till a year after the battle ended. The ones we eventually got had huge error margins. This is before we even talk about ability to trust the source of the numbers. He further makes the point that the reported numbers we have right now are astonishingly low given we are talking about a war in a dense urban area, especially once we consider that Hamas has dug a huge tunnel system under civilian infrastructure to which civilians don't get access for shelter.
The expert's explanations on the show are worth every minute of it.
Sauce: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/366...
The article makes an assumption that Ukraine has out-innovated Russia in terms of drones. That used to be true (in 2022-2023), with Ukraine's adapting low cost high availability commercial drones as weapons. However since the war has entered the long term Russia's industrial sector has outsupplied Ukraine in terms of quantity of drones, and has reached parity in terms of quality. The realities of the battlefield has seen the cheap and available commercial drones ineffective against mitigations (electronic warfare, surveillance and counter-battery, out-ranging and out-timing). Therefore the contest around drones has moved from quantity of commercial drones to cost-effective quality of drones in the face of countermeasures. This has even pushed some areas of the front to stop using FPV drones (on both sides) in favor of more traditional military drones.
The point of this is actually one of cost. Drones are effective weapons in large part due to their cost-effectiveness. As frequency-hopping modems, larger processors, and multi-frequency antennas are added to cheap drones they start getting expensive - to the point the cost-effectiveness suffers and their drawbacks start becoming more serious.
The article lists drone missions: mine clearing, evacuation, aerial drones, land drones, demining drones, ... . These are mainly overstretches. In terms of how drones have actually been employed in the war, there are naval drones which have been effective at holding Russia's Black Sea Fleet at risk, there are FPV drones which have been used primarily to stall the frontline defensively, and there are long range drones (not mentioned) that are used as an alternative to e.g. ballistic and cruise missiles.
There are R&D projects, many of them failed at employing drones for many missions. There are some partial successes in using them to lay mines (and fake mines). But there isn't as much success in using them for de-mining. Lifting a person for evac is very challenging to do with a drone, especially an autonomous one. Somehow "surveillance" doesn't make the list, but probably the #1 contribution/mission of drones is battlefield visibility.
The article compares taking 200 artillery shells to kill a building, vs 1 drone to kill a soldier. This is not only inaccurate, but it's apples-to-oranges.
Drones have not replaced artillery in the Russo-Ukraine war and they aren't going to. Drones cannot be massed because they interfere with one another in the electromagnetic spectrum. They also require a significant number of people to operate compared to artillery. The munitions on drones are far less powerful than artillery (e.g. drones have trouble destroying armor, artillery doesn't). Simple means (mesh, nets, smoke) can shut down drones - but have nothing on artillery. There's so much to say here but it's not even comparable and the article bases its primary takeaways from this incorrect assumption.
The article discusses that drones can fly "up to 22km". It doesn't mention that these require re-transmitter drones, which need separate pilots, separate modems, logistics coordination and ultimately - a much higher price tag. It can be worth it for certain missions, but it's hardly true that innovation has somehow created drones that are just better units. It's more that the employment of drones in warfare has gotten better - the command and control has gotten better.
The artificial intelligence aspect of drones is typically a "terminal flight system", one that can take over to seek non-moving targets once EW has shut down communications. While its true that Russia and Ukraine both use terminal flight guidance systems to deal with the "last mile" of EW cover, its nearly impossible to use this to hit moving targets or to hit vehicles with armor in the areas that are needed to achieve disablement or a kill.
The DoD has applied Project Maven to solve the problem the article discusses: automatically identifying targets to strike (which honestly applies to more than just drones - can be used for artillery, etc). Unfortunately Project Maven has been disappointingly significantly less accurate than human analysts at identifying battlefield targets on the same imagery.
I could go on, but I think the article is kind of stuck in 2022?
There's a certain pitch one can make for drones, and Ukraine is making that pitch. But I suspect the author might have too narrow a set of sources or some kind of biased interest, for what they are writing about.
I think we've all seen these drone shows, where a large swarm maneuvers to make shapes in the sky, right? We're not far at all from one operator controlling a swarm, capable of pre-programmed formations and maneuvers.
The economies of scale work overwhelmingly in favour of drones -- small, light, disposable.
There's some far-flung future in which drones are fully autonomous and in fact don't even need antennas. At that point it's possible they can be massed. But it's a bit of a science fiction. At least, there isn't any such product available (commercial or military) and this isn't how drones are being used in war.
For economies of scale - true also of artillery and other equipment! The more you can scale production the more cost-effective the weapon. As mentioned, drones in the Russo-Ukraine war are starting to see their cost-effectiveness wane due to having to become larger (larger munitions, large antennas, etc), heaver (bigger batteries, larger munitions, etc), and non-disposable (high cost frequency hopping gear, difficult to find munitions, difficult to source batteries, etc).
Giant technological leaps could happen, but it's nerve wracking to bet the outcome of a war on something like that.
(Sure, you could make a cluster of GPUs do that, in a test. It's completely different to do it in war.)
Small and medium drones are much more precise than artillery and remain incredibly effective at surveillance, spotting and at attacking the poorly operated, low survivability armor that Russians have, despite countermeasures. Ukraine is now domestically mass-producing bomber UAVs able to deliver multiple mortar rounds semi-autonomously on a target. While ECMs (jammers) have undoubtedly reduced drone effectiveness, ECMs come at a cost. A small ECM will have a very localized effect, while a large ECM can be taken out with anti-radiation missiles, as the Ukrainians have been doing.
Everyone is also recognizing the huge psychological effect of drones in the battlefield now. Any kind of massing is getting increasingly risky, communications, autonomy and mobility become critical.
The main point of the article is that the war is driving innovation in drones, which is pretty self-evident and doesn't seem overstated at all.
So while you may see videos of drones taking out tanks, they are often tanks that have already been killed and drones come in on an immobile target, etc.
You would also think that Ukraine is using more drones than Russia - based on the videos. But Russian Armed Forces don't need to fundraise for their equipment on Telegram, and what videos of Russian drone attacks that are published don't make it to trending in American social media (because "disinformation").
What's happening on the battlefield and what you see in those drone videos are very different due to selection bias.
Drones have less of a psychological effect than, say, glide bombs or artillery. This is due to the size of the munitions.
The broad thesis that war is driving innovation in drones isn't incorrect. But the supporting material in the article is (I've listed some of them above, and you seem to agree with them, point by point?). The article is overstating the case for drones, even calling them the successors of artillery. That's all my comment is addressing - let's right size and calibrate this: drones are being innovated on, however they are less effective at higher expense than they used to be, they very well may continue to trend in that direction, and they aren't a replacement for conventional weapons.
I guess another way to put it is the title of the article isn't wrong. But if you read the article, the content clearly is.
I think its hard to call a whole article "correct" or "incorrect." This article makes many assumptions, states many things as facts, and yes - makes judgements. For the reasons states above I think the article overstates its case. It's behind the newest reporting by around two years. It misses or completely excludes important details (e.g. range requirements for retransmitter drones).
That doesn't make the article wholey incorrect or worthless. But yeah I think if someone is reading that article they should be aware of its inaccuracy, factual deficits, etc...
Happy to dive into any of the one-by-one points in the GP comment if there's questions or skepticism.
Those tanks are immobilized by other drones or mines.
> You would also think that Ukraine is using more drones than Russia - based on the videos.
Yep, Ukraine uses more drones than RF in both absolute and relative terms, because Ukraine uses 10x less artillery shells.
The Ukrainian government doesn’t pre-pay for orders, leaving manufacturers to come up with the capital to produce their drones. Without more funds, they’re unable to make more than a few thousand a month. This lack of upfront money is a problem, Mykhailo said. "
10's of billions were given to Ukraine. How come there is not enough money to pay for what seems to be very cheap and effective weapon?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Le...
On the other hand Russia has addopted the same tactic and now have flow of drones estimated to be atleast 2x more drones than ukraine.
Ukraine doesn't have many better alternatives. They can strike some energy infrastructure (which they've done) in an effort to affect Russian willpower. It can also try to hit airfields (which they've done) hoping to take out equipment, but Russia has been pretty good at moving equipment out of the way.
The strike campaign itself has been moderately effective but definitely short of a war-winning enterprise. Estimates on the actual damage on production and exports has ranged between the fantastical (28%) to the banal (6%). It looks like domestic petrol supply has been hit the hardest in terms of tangible economic costs, since oil prices have remained reasonable with lessened seasonal demand and lower OPEC supply targets. Russia has additionally made deals with Kazakhstan and Belarus to attempt to mitigate some of the economic effects, has been able to repair oil refinery damage, and has experimented with a range of mitigations.
The strike campaign has been further complicated by the US election year. The Biden Administration has asked Ukraine to stop targeting oil refineries, because global oil instability could cause a crisis that ultimately causes global issues, rising prices, and Biden a second term. Such strikes are expected to uptick after November. And with the possibility of long range missiles from military sponsors, plus winter-time difficulties, this might be a good window to see what Ukraine can really do.
Either way I think the article is not about the long range drones you are alluding to here, but the small commercial sized drones and mid-cost military drones that are based on them.
But they surely need more effective ways to take out Russian military airplanes, especially those which are bombing the front line and cities. Not sure why allies can't supply them with needed technology to do it - they should possess some.
Not sure F-16s would help here in patrolling closer to launch points and intercepting the aircraft prior to dropping their payloads; or whether they would be too vulnerable. But, it does seem like a job for stealth interceptors, and certainly makes the case for air superiority.
Seems to imply a job for stealth, or otherwise establishing air superiority. But, even with the latter the outcome might be variable—especially for eastern / northern Ukranian targets—without incursion into hostile (Russian or Belarusian) airspace.
Agree 100% on Western support. Seems we've been fighting to "not escalate" versus fighting to win. But, it's already a war with Ukrainian cities being pounded. In this context, "not escalating" seems to be a euphemism for "losing".
Macron surprisingly was very on point about using the uncertainty tactic as a deterrent method, instead of "we won't do this / we won't do that in order not to escalate". It's good he finally got to that point, though it should have been clear from the start.
Other allies should also remove all restrictions for Ukraine on using weapons to hit targets directly in Russia.
What also works as a deterrent is Russia knowing that for any hit, they'll be hit by Ukraine in return, and not just on the front lines, but anywhere inside their territory.
They need to have more downside risk, which doesn't come from the West constantly reassuring them that we won't "escalate". Hitting targets in Russia would definitely change the calculus. As would enforcing a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine.
I was glad to hear Macron and others turn the corner there. But, I hope they're willing to back it up, else the bluster would do more harm than good.
I have a feeling it will be tested.
I heard an interesting idea to blockade their oil by hitting empty tankers sailing into Russia to pick up oil. That would create a major headache for them without actually killing many people.
And, falling for the gambit that Putin was a madman who would readily use nukes even if it meant mutually assured destruction was dumb from the start. If he was an irrational madman, so ready to destroy the world, then he could have done that from the start.
He can't be this crafty authoritarian, executing on a set of well-understood geopolitical strategic goals AND an irrational madman who doesn't care whether the world exists at all. You have to pick one.
I agree that lack of weapons for direct assault limits some of the upside benefits as in "you cannot directly win a war on defensive moves" but you can force a better, safer, more advantageous outcome. In effect, Russia is losing a war of attrition on it's economy and materiel side. It does have massive manpower and stocks. It doesn't have infinite supply of economic resilience and home front tolerance for a failing economy undermines Kremlin myths.
Sometimes, not losing is the best you can get pending more help.
Ukraine is not losing.
Russia is not winning.
But I agree that they should continue the strike campaign. They can't do much else on the battlefield right now. It's the right thing for them to look at areas they can raise cost and complexity for the Russians. I just wouldn't round it up too much...
I disagree that Russia is losing a war of attrition on economy (look at Russia's economy vs Ukraine's!). On a materiel side, maybe, Russia is using a lot of its stockpiles and those will eventually dwindle. But Russia is not somehow out of the fight when those stockpiles get low. On the other side of attrition, Ukraine is low on military aged men, artillery, fortifications, air defense. There's a strong argument to be made that Russia is the one winning the war of attrition, at least for the foreseeable future.
Russia is winning right now. But that doesn't mean it will win. The future isn't determined. I agree with you that a prolonged war won't necessarily go Russia's way, and that it may eventually lose the will to continue.
However if these shills would fail to stall the allies, Russia would surely lose in the long run. I.e. Russia can't sustain long war of attrition, despite smokescreen of having supposedly infinite supplies.
It's not really clear that Russia would surely lose the war of attrition. A realistic scenario, assuming Ukraine's sponsors sustain its support: Ukraine and Russia continue sustaining losses as they are, Russia ramps up equipment production to offset what its needing to take out of storage, still the war slows down into more static trench warfare, Russia is able to maintain the willpower to stay in the fight, and Ukraine runs of out military aged men before Russia does.
I'm not saying the above will happen. I'm just saying that the above isn't a contrived, unrealistic scenario. No matter how much Ukraine's sponsors supply it with equipment, unless they themselves enter directly into the war there's no way to offset that huge attritional asymmetry.
I think there's a lot of variables in terms of how the timeline could progress: how Russia is able to draw on other sources (trade) for equipment, how global economic winds enable Russia to deal with its labor shortages, how deep those stockpiles really go (already Western observers have significantly underestimated them), how much materiel is needed to sustain a war of attrition (in which Russia isn't advancing), how much Russian air power plays into a future timeline and how and whether Ukraine can mitigate Russian air power starting from its current air defense deficit.
When I look at these, and other variables and unknown quantities, it's hard for me to draw out that Russia is destined/doomed to lose a war of attrition, if supply just continues a little bit longer. We've witnessed Russia adapting significantly during the war - even avoiding (so far) a general mobilization. Furthermore I can think of several more ways in which Russia could win the war with sustained sponsorship of Ukraine (that never test scalability of equipment manufacture). In short, I respect that you've got that view, just uncomfortable of making the assumptions to get there myself.
Isn't that the point, though? Hit refineries, forcing Russia to sell more crude oil to the world, and have less refined oil internally to turn into gas, etc?
None of that is to say Ukraine shouldn't try, or that it doesn't have some "annoying" affect that increases costs and complexity for Russia. It does. Just want to be accurate about the level of affect and its potential.
And again, I think November after the election is going to be the best show of what Ukraine can do.
As a hypothetical:
If the attacker invests approximately zero resources, the defender invests crazy amounts of resources, then even approximately zero actual damage is a great outcome for the attacker. The real damage is in the resources wasted on defense.
Btw, this is pretty close to what our societies did to our own civilian air travel in response to terrorist threats in the 2000s.
(I have no special insight into the numbers for the current war. But I wouldn't sneeze at 6% reduction.)
I see your point but I don't think the hypothetical as stated is a fair depiction of the dynamic.
I've had fantasies of doing another 1-3 years COVID style, but putting all 2 trillion dollars into cancer research instead of a vaccine that saves 1% of old, obese, and sick people. (or swap it with global warming cures, whatever you want to mobilize the world on)
It was never about saving lives.
That's a good idea, you should do that.
> instead of a vaccine that saves 1% of old, obese, and sick people
So... you're not going to use any mRNA vaccine research?