Much of the US focus on precision terminal guidance is derived from this calculus in a straightforward way. It may be more expensive in a unit cost sense but significantly cheaper in terms of net expected effect on the battlefield. This "precision versus quantity" argument played out to greatly favor precision in Ukraine.
You lose range, but urbanized warfare of the 21st century seems to be a very different battlefield calculus from the strategic bombing campaigns of WW2. The vast majority of engagements these days seem to be within easy drone range, probably because they can be produced in quantities that negate the "just destroy everything within 200 miles" strategy of WW2 carrier battle groups.
There are multiple reasons to believe that drones' advantages over piloted aircraft are even greater than drones' advantages over tanks. Take the pilot away and the G-forces you can pull increase many-fold. Take the pilot away and you have no compunctions against sacrificing a drone for tactical advantage. Take the pilot away and you can field 10x or 100x as many aircraft, since pilot training is often the limiting factor in the growth of your airforce (see eg. Japanese WW2 experience from 1943 onwards, or the need for Top Gun in Vietnam). More aircraft can play airspace denial, since the presence of a bogey creates a kill zone in the area where they can bring their weapons to bear. Computer algorithms can play physics and geometry games where no matter where a piloted aircraft turns, there is always something waiting to shoot them down. Computers can run these simulations instantly, overwhelming the pilot's ability to react. The human becomes the weak link in the weapon system.
The equilibrium I see is drone designs with a range made to just out-range cheap weaponry like glide bombs and common anti-ship missiles, maybe 50-80 miles. For anything fancy (like the supersonic cruise missiles that the Russians have with 200-300 mile range), you want directed energy CIWS instead, but you need those anyway to defend against enemy drones. Then you pack these drones into shipping containers, and launch and retrieve them directly. A single container ship carries its own air force of roughly 10,000 drones, and makes the airspace around it out to ~100 miles completely inhospitable for foes. The convoy becomes its own aircraft carrier, just like the escort carriers of WW2, but the air wing follows the shipping containers and can be packed onto trucks or rail at its destination. Then you bring the convoy to where it needs to be, creating a no-go bubble around it at all times.
Yes, but the defining attribute of the Ukraine war seems to be CHEAP precision - the ability of drones to respond and attack car-sized targets in real time is what has turned this war into a slog.
The American-made stuff is great, but I've seen multiple examples of Ukrainian missile crews reacting contemptuously to the idea that they could use a Javelin/NLAW to take out an older Soviet piece of equipment; that kind of task seems to be reserved for Soviet-era weapons or (preferably) drones.
FPV drones are precise because they're remotely piloted by experienced pilots. This allows them to inflict large damage with small payloads applied at a critical point, Luke Skywalker-style.
Then you deploy the drone from some carrying vehicle, land and loiter, listening for a trigger. Trigger comes, the drone flies only gets a connection for a lineup if any and flies through the "line up" trajectory.
Pilot involvement can be optional.
Things progress at a ridiculous pace in a high-stakes environment like a war for existence.
With artillery that's certainly true. On the other hand, Ukraine moved from expensive Bayraktar drones in 2021 to primarily drones in the 1k-10k price range today. Cheaper weapon systems allow them to be deployed in more places. Getting 5000 drones for the price of 5 drones might be worse for logistics, but it also means some will always be where you need them, doing wonders for the latency between target detection and target destruction.
Only if you exclude manufacturing.
> This "precision versus quantity" argument played out to greatly favor precision in Ukraine.
Until the allies of Ukraine fell behind on artillery manufacturing — allowing Russia to gain dominance and grind down the Ukrainian military.
That mass produced artillery out sustained precision munitions is a major lesson in Ukraine’s defeat.
What event do you believe could change the outcome at this point?
And since Ukraine was defeated, we can discuss why: their inability to match artillery exchanges for most of the war.
But that you responded with rhetoric rather than pointing out where I’m wrong suggests you don’t have an answer to what would change the outcome.
Not even his allies believe in the “Victory Plan” — and several started talking about calling Putin after reading it.
If you think I’m wrong, stop engaging in empty rhetoric and explain what you think will allow Ukraine to win… because nobody seems to know, not even Zelensky.
So okay, fine: HN is a big place, and there's plenty of other people you can debate on this particular point if you want. I don't think we'll convince each other of anything anyway, which is also perfectly fine.
> caused by NATOs defeat
Defeated enemies aren’t making regular incursions into the ‘victors’ land which the ‘victor’ can’t stop, or launching attacks agains the ‘victors’ capital.
This just reads like Russian delusion/cope.
Kursk was stopped after small gains and prior to any major captures — with Ukraine losing their best units. That loss has led to cities along the line of battle being captured, including the fortress city of Vuhledar.
There’s now increased talk of Ukraine giving up territory — which is their defeat.
Edit due to rate limit:
You’re citing areas Russia withdrew from during the Istanbul talks as “lost” while ignoring that Russia posses 18% of Ukraine and is advancing.
Russia isn’t losing “more and more control” on any front, they’re forcing Ukraine back — including driving Ukraine from places like Vuhledar they’ve held for the entire war until now.
To use your Canadian analogy:
It would be like if the US seized the 20% of Canada closest to the continental US and then proceeded to shell Canadian army to dysfunction from there — which would be seen as a sane and effective strategy.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian-occupied_territories....]
Looks like Russia has lost everything but a tiny portion they gained, at immense cost - including the near total collapse of their economy.
And are going to be locked in trench warfare on land they don’t control, with uncertain supply lines, with no air superiority - going into winter.
And is losing more and more control of the little they have left.
This is Russia’s Afghanistan writ large, and will lead to the total collapse of the Russian gov’t (and society) soon.
It’s already nearly destroyed an entire generation of Russian men - in the middle of an already epic demographic collapse.
Don’t get me wrong, this has wrought terrible damage to Ukraine too. But with Russia’s economy (previously) and population being 10x larger, this whole debacle is a huge embarrassment to Russia. Even bigger than the collapse of the USSR.
It would be like if the US went to invade Canada, and couldn’t even hold Ottawa.
Edit to answer your edit: maybe if the 18% was the land near Alaska. And they’re at almost the same amount of land they had control of when this whole mess started. All the major economically productive areas of Ukraine are still under Ukraine’s control.
> including the near total collapse of their economy.
Regardless, even if 2, 3, or 4%, none of those is "near total collapse of their economy".
Agreed that comment above yours was out to lunch, of course.
As for AI features when the comms are jammed, Russian lancet drones, which have some autonomous capability, seem to be running on Nvidia Jetson boards, and those things cost like $200.
Precision in terms of "circular error probability" isn't the biggest issue now. Its the EW environment.
My point was if system A gets through defenses 30% of the time, but is 10x cheaper than system B which gets through 80% of the time. System A is generally the better choice, except for some very specific circumstances, very high value targets with limited strike opportunity.
[1] https://kyivindependent.com/us-company-aerovironment-plans-t...
Odds are there will be local adjustments made - different, more robust radio link and such to replace the fucking shit one that originally came with the switchblade.
No Western military is prepared for a ground war with hundreds of thousands of drone attacks per day, which is what near peer would mean now.
Ref: https://kyivindependent.com/deputy-minister-ukraine-can-prod...
I do think this war must be making any sufficiently advanced military rethink their ground game to include a lot of cheap FPV drones with attached explosives.
https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/03/ukraine-produce-millio...
Switchblade was designed for a different war entirely.
Sanity check: 80% success is an 80% success rate; 3 shots at 30% success is a 66% rate, which is much, much worse.
You need 5 cheap 30% drones to beat an 80% success rate, still a major savings at the prices you give, but 70% more than 3 drones.
Point is just that it seems a little silly to try to reductively do these calculations - seems meaningless to try to compare without more information…
Yes! That definitely came up while I was thinking about the problem.
I concluded that, in cases where you desire to eliminate (1) a particular target (2) under time constraints, only simultaneous attempts make sense. (And that this combination of needs is common.)
If instead your goal is to cause random deaths, you can ignore the simultaneous/sequential distinction, treat every drone as having a different target, and just say that 3 30% drones will get 0.9 kills for every 0.8 kills from 1 80% drone.
WW2 was a classic example. Every nation except the US still had bolt-action rifles as the standard infantry weapon, on the belief that giving every infantryman semi-auto was a waste of ammo/too expensive/too heavy on logistics. Also motorization was not appreciated until late in the war, even in the German army - which despite all the attention devoted to the panzer/panzergrenadier divisions, was maybe 20% motorized at its peak. Mostly their soldiers marched from place to place, or used rail.
There is kinda a reason for this, that there are counter examples were new tech wasn't all it was hyped to be. And until something is battle tested, its hard to say how it would perform. Like early in the Vietnam war, US infantrymen may have been better off with the old M1 garand, because early models of the M16 tended to jam in combat conditions.
> anyone who was ever made to look foolish saying[...]
These are common throwaway sayings people with no concept of resources and an overly active aversion to risk often use.
The reality of the situation is that nobody cares to invest in some insanely expensive and vulnerable platform to hijack drones, because 1. it will probably get taken out by a drone 2. it would cost orders of magnitude more than all of the drones and personnel it would take out.
Furthermore, nobody would care to truly protect against such a counter, because the drones cost absolutely nothing.
Saying "it's improbable but let's prepare anyway" isn't how the real world works. Look around you - the world is absolutely filled to the brim with problems, even ones quite probable, even ones inevitable, that nobody can or is willing to spare the resources to deal with. As a general rule, preparing for the improbable is a poor path to success, and worse still is preparing for the improbable, where the improbable event doesn't even impact you in any serious way.
Also, ofc you don't hear about those people. Nobody is reporting on the non-event or the people who prepared for the non-event. Pure selection bias.
[1] https://williamaarkin.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/arkins-con...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
Where did I claim nobody's ever taken out a drone with ewar? Plus this action presumably took an entire squadron with extremely powerful ewar apparatus - a complete waste of time on an 800e drone that will be replaced before the one you've dropped even hits the ground.
Trying to defend against 3x-10x as many enemies brings its own challenges, even if each one is less lethal.
Switchblade 600 is a bit better but still overpriced what civilian market can deliver at a fraction of a cost, in vast numbers, not blocked by various political negotiations etc.
[0] https://kyivindependent.com/human-safari-kherson-civilians-h...
That seems to be the explicit strategy here, and I've come to believe that they genuinely think that this is how it should be, that there can't be a different world. Perhaps some linguistic quirk that makes the difference between friendship (that's not based on a power gradient) and allegiance (unite with the strongest, even when they're monsters, in particular when they're monsters) different to express and think about, perhaps it's a long term effect of socialist ideology having co-opted all concepts of friendship based on equality for a system that never was. But the pattern seems to go all the way through society, from the infamous prison hierarchies to imbalanced spousal relationships to the KGB state to the relationship between state power and its barons (who are commonly called oligarchs, but they are the exact opposite, powerless pawns on the political floor that are allowed to hold a fief until they aren't)
For countries like the US which at least ostensibly claim to care about human life indiscriminately and to fight for "liberty and peace" and all that, there is a considerable cost to collateral damage, although of course that also depends on who the victims are and the cost can be higher for a Democrat leader than a Republican.
Putin's Russia infamously responded to a hostage crisis in Moscow by killing not only all hostage takers but also more than three times as many hostages and injuring most of the survivors. That alone should make it easy to extrapolate what the cost of collateral damage in Ukraine might be in Russia's calculations. Israel similarly seems to use a much lower cost than the US although in Palestine this is also shaped by the perception that anyone who isn't a militant or supports the militant is eventually going to turn out that way anyway (e.g. the child who died would have grown up to become a threat anyway).
20 civilians dying in Iraq to a helicopter that thought their camera was a gun was a national embarrassment. For Russia, 100 civilians dying in a mass artillery bombardment is a normal workday.
More specifically, it is a success to them. They clearly use civilian casualty and the terror it brings as a tactic to dishearten their victims.
Also during beginning of the war there were videos of russian soldiers setting up machine gun posts next to bigger roads and literally gunning every single unsuspecting civilian car that came along... not much better behavior than hamas attack last year. Bucha, civilian mass graves with people having hands tied behind their back with wire and headshot found on territories won back from them.
Shows how depraved that society is that this doesn't even cause any upheaval, instead is something to boast about back home and to whole world. Now do a simple projection for next decades.
I know China is #1 topic for US right now, but China views US rather as a competitor. Russia views whole west and US specifically as existential threat to actively fight against (and it did in asymetric subversion warfare for past 2 decades). Not whole russian population, they don't give a fuck whether whole world burns as long as they can drink vodka into desperate oblivion, but all their rulers and that's all that matters there. Now how to tackle and survive that due to all the resources required from that land I don't know but future in that regard looks bleak.
For the last twenty years in the Middle East alone, the number of civilian deaths in which the US is either directly or indirectly involved is easily in the millions
People who create studies suggesting those wars killed 5 million people include a lot of ludicrous definitions of "killed" to get numbers that big.
It's not like iraq had tanks by the USA border, ready to roll in no?
It also didn't have any of the terrible weapons that USA claimed they had.
In all cases, the US has demonstrated a level of weakness on the foreign stage, and terrible people have come to exploit that. Like it or not, those little wars in Iraq were the long arm of the Pax Americana, which is ending now, to the tune of the first land war in Europe in quite some time. And one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history.
This is what happens when you are a world-spanning empire. An empire, by the way, that Europe, India, China, and the rest of the civilized world has benefitted massively from in the form of free security and safe transport of goods. When there is no dominant empire, the world gets messy.
I could point you to literally dozens of books on the Pax Americana and its decline (google is your friend) and America's de facto empire, as well as historical studies of the Pax Brittanica and the Pax Romana. Or Chinese histories that discuss the waves of peace and prosperity following the growth of major dynasties which end exactly the same way. I suspect you won't read any of them though, since nobody who asks for a source in an online discussion really wants a source (nobody ever asks for a source when they agree with you). They just want to claim that their counterpart is uninformed.
You want to engage in a debate involving cited sources? What's good for the goose is good for the gander - write a response with a citation or two that rebuts a key point. Otherwise, asking for sources in online arguments is borderline trolling.
In the case of Pax Americana the framing is also dubious as it wasn't American dominance that kept the peace in Europe (on this side of the iron curtain) but arguably more the shared market and the necessity of cooperation to recover from the wounds of two world wars while facing the threat of annihilation in the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union.
Even in Europe this period was heavily defined by oppressive policing in both East and West Germany (culminating in the fall of the Berlin Wall in the East and the student protests and RAF terrorist attacks in the West), civil war in Northern Ireland (with terrorist attacks reaching deep into England at times), separatist movements in the Basque region, the excruciatingly slow death of fascism in Spain and Portugal, the violent suppression of striking miners in the UK, and the birth pains of neoliberalism and austerity.
The "pax" in these titles always only applies in a very narrow sense to the affluent in its imperial core, i.e. the American upper middle class of the 1950s or the British bourgeoisie of the colonial era. Even the Pax Romana is not a coherent description of life in the Roman Empire for the time frame it is often applied to and was defined by expansion (i.e. military conquest) not an absence of war.
If anything, the "prosperity" these terms often imply always only existed because of a hierarchical system of exploitation and the "peace" refers to the absence of serious challengers to disrupt this exploitation. The prosperity in Britain during the Pax Britannica specifically only existed due to the violent oppression of British colonies and the absence of powerful challengers to claim those colonies instead. Following the war economies of WW2, the 20th century saw a massive redistribution of wealth and public infrastructure to the financial elites, especially under Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK, while colonialism largely evolved from the crude brutal oppression of e.g. the British Raj to loans and privatization, aka "soft power" (promoting the production of worthless cash crops for international trade at low margins instead of vital food crops, making the economy dependent on imports to keep the local population fed, or exporting raw resources rather than building up local infrastructure to refine those resources into goods that can be sold at a higher price and thus having to import the finished goods at exorbitant prices).
So, yes, for you or I living in the imperial core - whether literally in the US or by extension in Europe - the "decline" and the rise of challengers is worrisome and can only be negative. But ultimately, especially to those living outside that core, the challengers are no worse or better than the status quo.
Much of Europe's economic policy benefits from the huge subisdy that the US covers them with its guns - a drain of 6-10% of GDP may otherwise apply to NATO countries that find themselves up against Putin (and in a hypothetical world - maybe against each other). The Marshall Plan is also a relatively visible indication of how intertwined Europe's post-WWII growth was done with America's involvement, and when you look at US foreign aid ("imperial economic stimulus"), a lot of it today goes to poorer European nations. I agree with you that the EU (post-iron-curtain project) has been, as you suggest, a solely European initiative driven more by European solidarity than US guns. However, it exists in the world of the petrodollar (not any more) and with the quiet reassurance that many of the leading nations in the EU are NATO members. As we have seen with Ukraine, sometimes that NATO membership matters.
Empires are always a lot looser than we think - the Roman empire was a great example of this, where the nation-state of Rome (in the modern idea) didn't extend beyond the Alps until the Caracalla years, where Roman citizenship was truly extended to the provinces (note: after the end of the pax Romana). Egypt and the levant were basically completely autonomous, much like the EU is today.
This happened in europe, south america, and middle east.
> I suspect you won't read any of them though
That's very unacademic of you to suspect I won't read "the books", which you didn't even bother to list.
I have read this book in the summer. Perhaps you want to give it a read and step out of your bubble? https://www.amazon.it/del-marcio-Occidente-Piergiorgio-Odifr...
> Pax Brittanica
That's now how you spell it.
But also, on an online forum, a post is written once, but read many times. When you say "look it up yourself", that doesn't tell one person to look it up, it tells 10 or 100. That's inefficient - the looking up is done multiple times rather than once.
And, I can google for why the earth is flat and find plenty of resources. The fact that I can find stuff on google that supports your position doesn't say much.
So, yeah. Maybe you could supply some resources that you think are solid, and why you think they are?
Wait is that a good thing or a bad thing?
The US goes out of its way to minimize collateral damage because it gets accused of causing all collateral damage in the first place.
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/opinion/2012-05-29/ana...
This does somehow still result in a lower ratio of dead civilians than when applying the same definitions to Russia or Israel. This shouldn't be seen as a way to excuse the behavior of the US but rather as a way to recontextualize the actions of the latter two, whether you support or oppose their military operations.
Related reading. https://chomsky.info/20210512/
What makes you think that? And which “the USA”, since Netanyahu has been in discussions with both Biden’s administration, and Trump.