The Ukrainians Just Pulled Off the Most Successful Operation of the War | Hacker News Reader

The Ukrainians Just Pulled Off the Most Successful Operation of the War

phillipspobrien.substack.com

69 pointsmpweiher33 comments

Whether or not they succeeded (and their claims generally do not prove to be exaggerated, so I suspect they did) they just shook up the world's militaries. I doubt there's a base in the world that's truly secure against this sort of attack.

And I don't see any reason to suggest AI being involved here. GPS to an initial point, follow a specified bearing and do image recognition. Note the angle at which you are seeing the image, if it doesn't change as you move you're looking at an image, ignore it. This would fall for any reasonably fancy decoy, but that's not going to be enough to protect the facility.

I've been saying this for years: with pretty much everything military a bunch of cheap units will give you far more bang for your buck than the same value of expensive units. It used to be that since units required operators you would have a big problem with personnel (although we did see the Kamikazes in Japan), but now that it's a microchip running it that's no longer a factor.

> I don't see any reason to suggest AI being involved here. GPS to an initial point, follow a specified bearing and do image recognition

Is there a reason to suspect autonomous flying as opposed to remote control via the internet? Whatever deployed those drones can act as a bridge between the drone's radio link and cellular/public Wi-Fi/Starlink.

If they're not autonomous they can be jammed. Given the amount of drone warfare that has been going on I would consider jamming likely.

Also, humans controlling them means a lot of data flying back and forth. IP, bearing, search pattern and image recognition have been around in the world of anti-ship missiles for quite a while.

> they just shook up the world's militaries

For the good ones, I doubt it.

Israel today has trophy [0] which can detect if an rpg is going to hit its tank and shoot it out of the sky.

(from wiki): The system allegedly relies heavily on high-speed computational technologies. Upon detection of an incoming projectile, the system automatically computes various parameters, such as the approach vector, nature of the threat, time to impact, and angle of approach. The defensive projectiles are launched by two rotating projectile launchers positioned on the sides of the vehicle. These launchers deploy a number of small EFPs (Explosively Formed Penetrators), forming a precise and closely spaced matrix, targeting an area in front of the anti-tank projectile.

And that's one country with 10 million people and a mere $46.5 billion in military spending. And BTW allies generally share tech (we the US suck right now (sorry)) but Trophy is being integrated with multiple allies [1].

Developing automated drone shooting destroyers I think we can do.

EDIT: To add, I bet those drones can be shot down by 1 minigun or shotgun shell which aren't relatively expensive.

Edit 2, the dutch already have a badass automated minigun too [2, 3].

Edit 3: multiple countries have similar systems but they are all mainly for boats. I think we can adapt the to army bases [4].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)#Intern...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goalkeeper_CIWS

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AaUNipuygE

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system

There’s been plenty of anti missile systems deployed to Ukraine and the tank losses have still been absolutely insane.

Fundamentally it’s not about building anti-missile technology, it’s about doing it cheaply and at scale. That is a much, much tougher problem.

These drones cost less than a thousand bucks, and if each interception cost you 100k (the cost of a trophy shot) you’re going to lose a lot of equipment. It only takes one miss.

Now imagine scaling that system to protect an entire airfield. That seems next to impossible when these drones have a range of 10+ miles and are basically unjammable. You need China level surveillance across your entire county as a bare minimum.

Check out my edit 2. The Dutch already have an automated minigun. Bullets aren't that expensive relative to those shitty consumer drones which would get torn apart by them.

Also, ukraine doesn't have Trophy or any minigun/shotun defense system that I know of yet.

Having automated miniguns/shotguns near civilian areas definitely creates a challenge but I think our defense budget can handle that.

The Goalkeeper CIWS costs something like $3000 per second that it is firing. It's not a cheap system!

It could be scaled down to the size of a normal minigun, but even that is about $50 per second.

Meanwhile drone costs keep falling, Ukraine is well below $500 per drone now.

$500 for a drone including its bomb that can incapacitate a military aircraft and can survive multiple bullets?

Also, I don't think you need 30 mm bullets to take out a drone. Those bullets are for much more hardened targets.

All of these weapons fire a 1-2 second burst to make sure they hit the target. Don’t forget that the drones are moving, there’s wind, etc…

Modern CIWS will use radar to track their own outbound bullets and adjust their aim in real time to hit the target.

An increasing number of drones being used aren't the shitty consumer ones either. They are still relatively cheap, but their guidance systems and payloads are improving dramatically compared to the start of the war. Saturation attacks are still possible on automated kinetic kill systems, and for a price that is sustainable for the attacker.

> but their guidance systems and payloads are improving dramatically compared to the start of the war

But can they survive a small bullet or a shotgun hit?

These naval CIWSs are massive. ~6 tonnes with a minute of ammunition. They cost tens of millions. All of this is probably acceptable for base defense.

But all high rate fire guns have short operation limits before their barrels melt. About 15 seconds before a 10 minute cool-off, maintenance and reload cycle. It's comically easy to saturate that with waves of decoy drones.

Those CIWS are designed to take out much more hardened targets than shitty drones. I bet you a shotgun shell can easily take out one of those drones.

Upgrade your drone defenses and now your drones cost more...

I don't work in the military so take everything I say with a massive grain of salt but I bet offense and defense scale in cost similarly and NATO + allies have WAY more money than the russians.

And note a big weakness of CIWS in port: what's your backstop? When the wave of drones comes in at low altitude over the city the port is at what happens???

Trophy systems are like $2m and drones are cheap.

Trophy is designed for fast moving anti tank missiles. These cheap drones can be shot down with a shotgun. I think we can make anti drone systems a little cheaper.

That's built to kill an inbound missile. And it's almost certainly possible to bleed it for less than it's own cost.

What we need is cheap systems that can be deployed in large numbers that fire wimpy short ranged stuff so it doesn't do too much damage when it falls back. Shotguns are good at this, the smaller pellets do not fall back with lethal energy.

My speculative take is that this was not a surprise to the US military and they have been red teaming this sort of thing for years. Remember the strange civilian reported drones near bases, in the US last year (and in prior years?) Drills/Exercises... Alarm about Chinese buying land near US bases?

Previously (79 points, 8 hours ago, 50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44150789

(35 points, 6 hours ago, 27 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44151327

> "Russia bombs schools and hospitals.

> Ukraine bombs the planes that bomb schools and hospitals."

I think we're past the point of one side is better than the other.

> Ukraine targeted a train carrying civilians by blowing up the bridge it was on.

Not only this but by now both sides of the conflict have accumulated enough war crimes that it would take an eternity to prosecute them all.

> I think we're past the point of one side is better than the other.

This is just demonstrably untrue.

Russia started the war, unprovoked, on foreign soil. So, no, that’s a false assessment. Every death in this war is Russia’s fault because it is, by definition, Russia’s war.

It's a bad idea to avoid comparison with the past, particularly with the World War II, for not a good reason. Comparing this war with WWII, then both sides did a lot of things, yet the conclusion still is that the Hitler deserved to be slain.

That rail happens to be as the main military supply route hence it is a completely legitimate military target, civilian deaths are unfortunate. Russia simply blocks entire residential neighborhoods. Yeah let’s pretend it’s the same.

Big couple of years for intel organizations. The beepers in Lebanon and now this.

They wanted nothing to do with this war. Putin invaded a peaceful country that was defenseless. The West dragged its feet, and it took far too long to help with conventional weapons. It forced Ukraine to work without tanks, artillery, Fighter Jets, etc. They innovated and changed warfare forever.

What a favor they did for the USA and the West in general. We owe them eternal gratitude.

Glory to Ukraine

The sheer waste and cost of this war is astonishing.

It could have been stopped at the outset if our leaders had any wisdom and courage.

And it could have been prevented if our former leaders had any ethics and knowledge of history.

It's a failure of politics and leadership, at all levels.

The waste happed when they built the bombers. Now more waste will happen if they build replacements

Kind of inherent in full on war in general. Both sides throw what they have into destroying the other.

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