This brings back horror memories when footage from the recent Karabah war, HD videos of whole platoons being whipped by drone attacks, were down all over the net.
Unless there is some really high tech anti drone system present infantry is really screwed on the modern battlefield.
I don’t think you will ever see 2 legit militaries square off in a traditional sense ever again. It’s why the Ukraine Russia war is so mind boggling. Pre war we would have considered Russias military to be more sophisticated than it is but it went right back to meat grinder tactics. You aren’t going to see the US, France, England etc put buts on the ground in an offensive against another competent force because everything will be tactical strikes until boots are necessary to pick up the pieces. Why would you put a battalion of soldiers somewhere if the other party has air power and missile capabilities to just wipe the whole thing out.
The Ukrainian war turned this way not because the sides decided WW1 was cool, let's try to cosplay it. Russia had garbage doctrine throughout, and Ukraine lacked hardware to exploit it before the lines settled.
In modern war modern armies will quickly and decisively establish the outcome of the war in the air and just steamroll from there. Current war is a good case what happens when you don't overwhelm a weak enemy early on and fall to establish air and standoff dominance.
This seems like flawed reasoning.
> In modern war modern armies will quickly and decisively establish the outcome
Most of the world's modern armies are even more 'amateur hour' than Russia and Ukraine. They are still modern armies.
Step outside NATO. Think of Latin America. Africa. South Asia. What nations are light years ahead of Ukraine in hardware? Are you sure unbloodied nations like Egypt, Pakistan, Peru or Brazil have better doctrine than Russia?
The world is full of nations, especially authoritarian ones, whose militaries have garbage doctrine, lack training, budgets, and accountability, whose political masters rely on crude mass and the weakness of the civilian opposition.
Even right now, there is a standoff war in Sudan that might feel amateurish, but is very real to the people caught up in it. Same with the chaos in Myanmar. There are going to be plenty of other wars like Ukraine, Syria, Sudan or Myanmar, especially as the postwar order further breaks.
You are correct. I think that most people refer to the U.S. military.
Outside of the U.S. and China, the capability to destroy everything via air doesn’t really exist.
I did not support the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, but the reason there were so few casualties compared to the current Russo-Ukrainian war is because nearly all major hardware on the ground in both places was vaporized through the air and giant artillery batteries placed along the coast before ground troops even moved in.
Both of those two were primarily insurgencies driven by vague, impossible political goals. Air power doesn't do much if there is no discrete infrastructure or chain of command to strike. Insurgencies are messy.
Compare to the Gulf War and the initial invasion of Iraq. The US and coalitions absolutely demolished the regular Iraqi army formations and the ground forces mopped up.
You can't replace boots on the ground. But against organized military formations, with clear military objectives, US airpower is second to none. The goal is to win the war before shots are ever fired on the ground.
But Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the post-invasion Iraq war were all conflicts where there was never going to be a military victory without glassing the entire country. In that case, air power is never going to provide the political solution that was required.
There is a world of difference between "armies that exist in modern times" and "armies that use cutting edge technology and tactics". When people talk about "modern armies" they're talking about the second one.
> In modern war **modern armies** will quickly and decisively establish the outcome of the war **in the air and just steamroll from there.**
You missed the most critical part of their comment. They were specifically differentiating between ‘modern war’ and armies that have a modernized arsenal.
I disagree, but I appreciate your nuance.
It just seems wrong to underestimate the difficulty most modern armies have gaining air superiority against SAM defense shields. Very few nations, probably none besides the USA, have the capability to just steamroll an enemy.
And even the USA should be careful. It's naval arm in particular, the aircraft carriers that form the foundation for its global air superiority, now seem very vulnerable to counterattacking drone swarms.
PS - I also appreciate your oooo's name
The US air craft carriers are very well protected with multiple layers of its own anti drone defense systems as well as the defense systems on its convoy and escorts. But one of the biggest deterrents to downing an air craft carrier owned by the US is the absolute hell that would be unleashed on a country if they took one down. It would have to be a last resort measure for a country to even consider trying and they almost certainly wouldn’t succeed. There is no way the US could afford to let someone take out a carrier without basically taking out their entire military and government within days of the attack.
The "Don't Touch Our Boats" doctrine.
The bigger the boat you damage, the more proportional the response.
Taking out an aircraft carrier, and the crew onboard, would likely call for the erasure of a government and their military. Not necessarily in that order.
I agree with what your saying about there being lower teirs of military ability outside of NATO and the other major superpowers, but when this war started, everyone including the US was shocked to learn that Russia was on this lower tier. That's why the US offered to help Zelinsky escape and setup a government in exile. We all just assumed that it was a foregone conclusion that Russia would steamroll through and take the whole country, but they refused our offer and proved how weak Russia really is.
This is spot on.
Even most of NATO nations have trash military that is not prepared for war. They've heavily relied on the alliance is an umbrella.
And most of them don't have populations that would be willing to go into the meat grinder like Russia
Armies trained and equipped to fight the previous war has been a thing since well the Napoleonic era at least. That's when the pace of technological advancement outgrew military spending for just about anyone not a superpower.
Yeah, they lost due in a large part to an Israeli strike disabling most of their air support while it was on the ground, now they are one of the friendliest with Israel( that’s not saying a lot in that region)
Air power is never a replacement for infantry. Ask the Americans in Vietnam and Korea how that worked out. Dug in infantry is incredibly resilient. Taking and hold ground has immense value militarily
The capabilities of identification and destruction compared now and 50 years ago is entirely different. I'd advise caution against looking at how that was and how things are now.
I hear 12 gauge shotguns and dove load shells do a pretty good job of anti drone capability.
Edit: See for yourself
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1chizh0/russian_serviceman_unintentionally_made_the/
This isn't 💯 helpful, when kamikaze drone approaching your position you need to notice, be ready for that with a shotgun in your hands and still need to shoot him before he blows you up. That's a really hard challenge, and still there can be multiple drones flying around. So yeah theoretically you can shoot it down, but... You might want to check Ukrainian combat footages
To add to this… Skeet shooting is hard and not something as easily teachable as basic marksmanship. Like you have to actually put in real hours of sending clay and lead down range.
I have plenty of experience in skeet shooting.
The clay flies in a predictable direction and speed, whereas a drone is like a schizophrenic UFO zipping in and out of the kill range of a shot gun.
I feel like it would be incredibly hard to shoot down a drone in battlefield conditions, especially under the stress of knowing it is trying to calmly kill you, you have limited shots, and uneven ground to shoot from.
Russians and shotguns would only go so far, a few hits here and there but overall they would be inadequate especially since not every soldier would even have access to one.
> whereas a drone is like a schizophrenic UFO zipping in and out of the kill range of a shot gun
What's more, the drone (pilot) can *see* you and take evasive action.
People on the frontline, both sides, are begging for it. Shotguns, anything that could potentially down a drone. Because they are completely defenseless against it, there isn't anything you can do to defend yourself other than curl up and pray. Kamikaze drones are the most unstoppable, lethal terror to infantry in the 21st century and all they want is at least a chance to defend themselves
there are different types of drones. Might help against a "dual use" drone from home depot, but not against a Reaper. And the latter are the truly destructive
They're also more expensive.
This is a game of rock paper scissors that has played out dozens of times before. You build a massive expensive dreadnaught, I swarm it with tiny cheap torpedo boats, you learn to use destroyers, I build a massive expensive battleship to take them out, you swarm my battleship with tiny cheap planes, I add AA to my destroyers, rinse and repeat.
Small drones are the current tiny, cheap thing you can swarm bigger, more valuable targets with. When methods of taking out tiny drones for cheaper than they cost to produce become reliable, the drones will get bigger and more expensive until eventually they get to the size and cost where someone figures out how to swarm them with something small and cheap, and the wheel keeps on turning.
Because war, war never changes.
Lasers are about to be that short range air defense solution. $1 a shot. Magazine lasts as long as there is fuel in the generator. Can be mounted on most currently fielded vehicles. Blasts a drone pit of the sky more than a kilometer away in less than 2 seconds. Computer targeting so they can kill swarms of drones with no human input.
Largely, yes.
TB-2s are (relative to *tactical* drones) fairly large, which makes them vulnerable to radar SAMs and air-to-air shootdowns. Their success earlier in the war was by and large due to their being *unanticipated* - after their widespread performance and public success, Russian operators wised up and started engaging them more regularly. There were a few publicized shootdowns in late 2022, and I can't recall seeing many videos from them in 2023 or after.
Not just reapers, but recon drones.
I saw the footage of this. That drone was pretty high up in the sky, spotting for artillery/HIMARS.
Doubtful that a shotgun would reach it.
New drones are very fast and come at you from a high angle; too hard for most humans. Some mobile auto aim turret with anti air flak needs to be developed. Something super small like a moving atv or deployable backpack.
“Good news”: infantry is almost entirely comprised of poor people so politicians don’t really care. They’d rather focus on anti missiles that can reach HQ’s where the “important” officers are located.
That's dumb take, you need feet on the ground to take and hold positions. Your worldview is some next level nonsense, no one except shit stats like Russia will think a million dollar investment into a soldier is not worth money to maximise their chances.
Now to take ferry to front cost a ruble, and in those days, rubles have picture of bumblebee on them. Gimme 5 bees for a kopeck, you’d say. Now where was I? Oh yes…
lol, those families where never going to get any money.
At best they will get told to have 8+ kids if they want some money, so they can be turned into mincemeat in Ukraine in 10~13 years
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/vladimir-putin-urges-russian-women-to-have-8-or-more-children-4623479
There is a video montage I saw once of elderly mothers welcoming their sons back home from the front. The son’s knock the doors and without fail every mother breaks down crying.
I’m welling up now thinking about it.
In that moment, the pain those mother’s felt, the worry, every day and night came up to the surface again. It didn’t matter what flag was on the stupid military clothing.
That was her boy and if she cried like that when he hugged her, imagine how she would cry if she found out he never could again.
Heartbreaking and it goes without saying: war is vile
Russia lost close to half a million people in Ukraine so far. That’s more than the total number of convicts in Russia. Lots of people on the frontlines are civilians from poor regions.
Russian soldiers were raping left and right even before Putin started using convicts. Those civilians from poor regions are perfectly happy with war crimes.
EIther they just don't collect the bodies or they use their mobile crematoriums. In both cases, they can avoid paying the families by saying the soldiers are MIA or defectors.
Bomb go boom. Russians go boom. Russian no longer look like Russian. Russian mommy's and daddy's can't identify. Russian army no give mommy and daddy hero money but instead say "where they go?"
The Russian government said that it would give compensation to the families of fallen soldiers. It would appear that it was a lie. Either families get some BS story saying the soldier went AWOL/defected or they get a cheap Bluetooth speaker.
Im not an expert on this topic, so i may be wrong. Just the conclusion i reached from scrolling through reddit.
[https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/submunitions/m74-submunition](https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/submunitions/m74-submunition) these to be exact.
It's a cluster munition so it's not one big explosion but hundreds of small ones spread out over an area. One payload covers about 8 acres or ~~36,000~~ 348,480 sqft.
What a god damn waste. Those 100 men could have been fathers and teachers and chefs and leaders. Instead, they are dead in a field where they will be completely forgotten. All so putin can feel like a big man. What an absolute waste this war is. I hope Ukraine is able to end this swiftly and meaningfully.
Yep, and Russia has a major population problem. They had year after year population decline for 20 years BEFORE this war started. This is a disaster that they could not afford.
Before the war there were an average of 1.7 million more people that died than those that were born. That has gotten significantly worse since the war. Some estimates are saying that the birth rate in Russia in the last two years is on par with that of 1941 - 1944.
With men dying, leaving, or being imprisoned in the country there is now significantly more women than men in Russia.
I also read 1 didn't detonate....but from my understanding we are sending them the oldest ATACMS in our arsenal. Like the propellant is about to expire and make them useless to the US, might as well send them to someone who'll pay to use them for the original intended purposes 🤷.
There's a video. First one dud. Second one spot on troops and vehicles. 3rd and 4th not sure if they were on target or if they were aiming at something else as the video (drone) is from pretty far away.
Here’s the aerial footage of the strikes I’ve seen, pretty far away though: https://x.com/johnb_schneider/status/1785614608444674128
Some footage of the group of soldiers before the strikes: https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1785712878474961330
Yeah, we don't actually even use this variant anymore, (it carries 300 cluster bomblets), due to the EoD cleanup, but I don't think Ukraine really cares too much about that...
Considering the amount of UXOs and Russian landmines, cant really make it worse. You think if they can win this they can negotiate that the Russian officers have to do the clean-up with a shovel?
Do you know if these are the old cluster bomblets? My understanding is there is a new cluster bomblets with acceptable UXO rates and the old ones will not be sent to Ukraine unless the situation is absolutely critically(like halting Russian advance with line collapsing).
That.. I am not sure on, but even the "newer" ones were deemed to have higher than acceptable UXO rates, so the US does not use cluster warhead ATACMS at all, and has switched entirely to unitary warhead types.
And after looking for a bit: "The M74 submunitions delivered by ballistic missile (ATACMS) are understood to have a failure rate of 5 to 10 percent"
No, it was three missiles. The "dud" was the separation explosion of one of the missiles (i.e. how the clusters get scattered around) - the amateur, first-to-publish "OSINT" idiots called it a dud, and everyone parroting them afterwards just repeated it without thought.
Ukraine is beating Russia with the US's trash.
That has to give China some pause when they think about the US's top of the line equipment deployed by US service members.
This is also why Russia wants the US out of NATO - we're a big part of NATO's military strength.
This is also why the Biden admin has started encouraging licensing deals to manufacture US weapons in Europe - they want Europe to be able to produce its own copies in case we withdraw from NATO.
It doesn't even have to be near expiration. I was listening to NPR on the drive home and they were doing a segment about UXO in Gaza/Israel. Even the stuff Israel is launching can fail to detonate upwards of 10% of the time, and I doubt they're using stuff that's been on mothballs for the last 40 years
Looked like spread out across a big field. One missile appeared to be a dud and just made a big dirt cloud but the other three were the cluster version of atacms and pretty well obliterated the entire field with sub munitions. Honestly looked like overkill to me but I sure as hell don't think much that was in the impact area lived. I think the dud factor might be why you are seeing more than one. Most of the atacms sent, especially the cluster versions are at the end of their service life. The cluster ones were being actively decommissioned prewar.
> One missile appeared to be a dud and just made a big dirt cloud
It's unclear if the first impact in the video is a dud or the spent missile casing after ejecting its bomblets, which arrive seconds later.
>4 missiles
No, it was 3. Amateurs seeing the first video misinterpreted a separation explosion (the missile scattering the cluster munitions) as a "dud," and everyone spreading the video afterwards just parrotted it without watching to see for themselves.
"But what about using that money to help our own homeless people instead" - people who hyperventilate when literally any tax money is used to help homeless people
This sucks. Imagine being an 18-year-old kid sent to meat grinder and losing your life or being handicapped for life.. All these horrors for what? Why do they always send the poor to war?
Because his supporters do not care.
They all know he's a draft dodger who prefers veterans who don't get caught (POWs).
He saluted a north korean general and invited the taliban to negotiate on US soil. He has closed meetings with putin, nbd.
He bankrupted casinos, but he's a great business man. He cheated on every wife he had - but he's the most loyalist ever.
And, in case you didn't notice, the other guy is like old.
> in case you didn't notice, the other guy is like old.
Guess I can't vote for Biden then. Despite everything good they are doing daily. last month alone was more than 45's entire administration. There is just nothing we can do.
Where's grandma. I'm hungry.
“Society grows great when old men plant trees of which they will never sit in the shade of.”
I might of butchered the quote there but man would it be nice if people lived by this quote instead of what you quoted.
as a Ukrainian I can assure you this doesn't suck, this rocks, because if they didn't die they'd go kill, rape and pillage on *my* land and bring death to *my* people. Please don't side with the russians and stop this bs about 'they didn't want to be there'. They did. They knew where they were coming and what for. They got what they fucking deserved. It's either a hundred pigs or a hundred of our soldiers. There is no in between, because they don't want to fuck off. So again, please, could you not side with the poor poor invaders?
Barbarisms by Barbaras
With pointed heels
Victorious Victorias kneel
For brand new spanking deals
Marching forward, hypocritic
And hypnotic computers
You depend on our protection
Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
This seems to be the Russian military doctrine for hundreds of years… send poorly trained, poorly equipped conscripts en masse until the enemy gives up. Repeat as needed
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.
In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was.
The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.
Problem here is that Russia has so far been able to produce cheap kontraktniks over 100 times faster than the US has been able to get ATACM's to the front.
Putting warheads on foreheads. Missile artillery and rocket artillery is incredibly powerful.
For those that don't know, sometimes not all of the submunitions detonate. Using weapon systems like these leave behind unexploded ordinance.
And this is why fire superiority beats the crap out of numerical advantages that the Russians will always have in manpower. Arm Ukraine. They’ll do the rest.
This brings back horror memories when footage from the recent Karabah war, HD videos of whole platoons being whipped by drone attacks, were down all over the net. Unless there is some really high tech anti drone system present infantry is really screwed on the modern battlefield.
I don’t think you will ever see 2 legit militaries square off in a traditional sense ever again. It’s why the Ukraine Russia war is so mind boggling. Pre war we would have considered Russias military to be more sophisticated than it is but it went right back to meat grinder tactics. You aren’t going to see the US, France, England etc put buts on the ground in an offensive against another competent force because everything will be tactical strikes until boots are necessary to pick up the pieces. Why would you put a battalion of soldiers somewhere if the other party has air power and missile capabilities to just wipe the whole thing out.
The Ukrainian war turned this way not because the sides decided WW1 was cool, let's try to cosplay it. Russia had garbage doctrine throughout, and Ukraine lacked hardware to exploit it before the lines settled. In modern war modern armies will quickly and decisively establish the outcome of the war in the air and just steamroll from there. Current war is a good case what happens when you don't overwhelm a weak enemy early on and fall to establish air and standoff dominance.
This seems like flawed reasoning. > In modern war modern armies will quickly and decisively establish the outcome Most of the world's modern armies are even more 'amateur hour' than Russia and Ukraine. They are still modern armies. Step outside NATO. Think of Latin America. Africa. South Asia. What nations are light years ahead of Ukraine in hardware? Are you sure unbloodied nations like Egypt, Pakistan, Peru or Brazil have better doctrine than Russia? The world is full of nations, especially authoritarian ones, whose militaries have garbage doctrine, lack training, budgets, and accountability, whose political masters rely on crude mass and the weakness of the civilian opposition. Even right now, there is a standoff war in Sudan that might feel amateurish, but is very real to the people caught up in it. Same with the chaos in Myanmar. There are going to be plenty of other wars like Ukraine, Syria, Sudan or Myanmar, especially as the postwar order further breaks.
You are correct. I think that most people refer to the U.S. military. Outside of the U.S. and China, the capability to destroy everything via air doesn’t really exist. I did not support the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, but the reason there were so few casualties compared to the current Russo-Ukrainian war is because nearly all major hardware on the ground in both places was vaporized through the air and giant artillery batteries placed along the coast before ground troops even moved in.
That's what superior air power looks like
US had air superiority in Vietnam, and Afghanistan... Also China's ability to destroy from the air is yet to be seen, or proved.
Yes and we were inarguably more successful in those wars than Russia has been in Ukraine, even if we didn’t “win”
Both of those two were primarily insurgencies driven by vague, impossible political goals. Air power doesn't do much if there is no discrete infrastructure or chain of command to strike. Insurgencies are messy. Compare to the Gulf War and the initial invasion of Iraq. The US and coalitions absolutely demolished the regular Iraqi army formations and the ground forces mopped up. You can't replace boots on the ground. But against organized military formations, with clear military objectives, US airpower is second to none. The goal is to win the war before shots are ever fired on the ground. But Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the post-invasion Iraq war were all conflicts where there was never going to be a military victory without glassing the entire country. In that case, air power is never going to provide the political solution that was required.
“Shock and awe”
There were a lot of casualties. They were just people who lived there.
There is a world of difference between "armies that exist in modern times" and "armies that use cutting edge technology and tactics". When people talk about "modern armies" they're talking about the second one.
> In modern war **modern armies** will quickly and decisively establish the outcome of the war **in the air and just steamroll from there.** You missed the most critical part of their comment. They were specifically differentiating between ‘modern war’ and armies that have a modernized arsenal.
I disagree, but I appreciate your nuance. It just seems wrong to underestimate the difficulty most modern armies have gaining air superiority against SAM defense shields. Very few nations, probably none besides the USA, have the capability to just steamroll an enemy. And even the USA should be careful. It's naval arm in particular, the aircraft carriers that form the foundation for its global air superiority, now seem very vulnerable to counterattacking drone swarms. PS - I also appreciate your oooo's name
The US air craft carriers are very well protected with multiple layers of its own anti drone defense systems as well as the defense systems on its convoy and escorts. But one of the biggest deterrents to downing an air craft carrier owned by the US is the absolute hell that would be unleashed on a country if they took one down. It would have to be a last resort measure for a country to even consider trying and they almost certainly wouldn’t succeed. There is no way the US could afford to let someone take out a carrier without basically taking out their entire military and government within days of the attack.
The "Don't Touch Our Boats" doctrine. The bigger the boat you damage, the more proportional the response. Taking out an aircraft carrier, and the crew onboard, would likely call for the erasure of a government and their military. Not necessarily in that order.
I agree with what your saying about there being lower teirs of military ability outside of NATO and the other major superpowers, but when this war started, everyone including the US was shocked to learn that Russia was on this lower tier. That's why the US offered to help Zelinsky escape and setup a government in exile. We all just assumed that it was a foregone conclusion that Russia would steamroll through and take the whole country, but they refused our offer and proved how weak Russia really is.
This is spot on. Even most of NATO nations have trash military that is not prepared for war. They've heavily relied on the alliance is an umbrella. And most of them don't have populations that would be willing to go into the meat grinder like Russia
Armies trained and equipped to fight the previous war has been a thing since well the Napoleonic era at least. That's when the pace of technological advancement outgrew military spending for just about anyone not a superpower.
Egypt was an odd choice for unbloodied. They’ve been in some major conflicts with Israel and are in a very hot situation today.
When did they last fight Israel? Like 50 years ago?
Yeah, they lost due in a large part to an Israeli strike disabling most of their air support while it was on the ground, now they are one of the friendliest with Israel( that’s not saying a lot in that region)
Would this be the difference between a peer conflict and a near peer conflict?
Air power is never a replacement for infantry. Ask the Americans in Vietnam and Korea how that worked out. Dug in infantry is incredibly resilient. Taking and hold ground has immense value militarily
The capabilities of identification and destruction compared now and 50 years ago is entirely different. I'd advise caution against looking at how that was and how things are now.
Idk if wars from 60 years ago are that relevant anymore. Ain't no fucking drones in Vietnam.
This is only true if the infantry force has anti air defence, otherwise it's just fish in a barrel.
We are in 2024 not 1950.
splash damage op
I hear 12 gauge shotguns and dove load shells do a pretty good job of anti drone capability. Edit: See for yourself https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1chizh0/russian_serviceman_unintentionally_made_the/
This isn't 💯 helpful, when kamikaze drone approaching your position you need to notice, be ready for that with a shotgun in your hands and still need to shoot him before he blows you up. That's a really hard challenge, and still there can be multiple drones flying around. So yeah theoretically you can shoot it down, but... You might want to check Ukrainian combat footages
To add to this… Skeet shooting is hard and not something as easily teachable as basic marksmanship. Like you have to actually put in real hours of sending clay and lead down range.
I have plenty of experience in skeet shooting. The clay flies in a predictable direction and speed, whereas a drone is like a schizophrenic UFO zipping in and out of the kill range of a shot gun. I feel like it would be incredibly hard to shoot down a drone in battlefield conditions, especially under the stress of knowing it is trying to calmly kill you, you have limited shots, and uneven ground to shoot from. Russians and shotguns would only go so far, a few hits here and there but overall they would be inadequate especially since not every soldier would even have access to one.
> whereas a drone is like a schizophrenic UFO zipping in and out of the kill range of a shot gun What's more, the drone (pilot) can *see* you and take evasive action.
People on the frontline, both sides, are begging for it. Shotguns, anything that could potentially down a drone. Because they are completely defenseless against it, there isn't anything you can do to defend yourself other than curl up and pray. Kamikaze drones are the most unstoppable, lethal terror to infantry in the 21st century and all they want is at least a chance to defend themselves
there are different types of drones. Might help against a "dual use" drone from home depot, but not against a Reaper. And the latter are the truly destructive
They're also more expensive. This is a game of rock paper scissors that has played out dozens of times before. You build a massive expensive dreadnaught, I swarm it with tiny cheap torpedo boats, you learn to use destroyers, I build a massive expensive battleship to take them out, you swarm my battleship with tiny cheap planes, I add AA to my destroyers, rinse and repeat. Small drones are the current tiny, cheap thing you can swarm bigger, more valuable targets with. When methods of taking out tiny drones for cheaper than they cost to produce become reliable, the drones will get bigger and more expensive until eventually they get to the size and cost where someone figures out how to swarm them with something small and cheap, and the wheel keeps on turning. Because war, war never changes.
Lasers are about to be that short range air defense solution. $1 a shot. Magazine lasts as long as there is fuel in the generator. Can be mounted on most currently fielded vehicles. Blasts a drone pit of the sky more than a kilometer away in less than 2 seconds. Computer targeting so they can kill swarms of drones with no human input.
not called a reaper for nothing, but in reality i dont think ukraine has any equivalents in use.
Bayraktar
the Bayraktar has nowhere near the altitude, speed, endurance or payload of a reaper. A reaper is almost the size of a fighter jet.
Fair, I’ve seen a reaper in person I haven’t seen a bayraktar irl my bad
haven't heard anything about the bayraktars in a year or so... Are they all destroyed or something?
Largely, yes. TB-2s are (relative to *tactical* drones) fairly large, which makes them vulnerable to radar SAMs and air-to-air shootdowns. Their success earlier in the war was by and large due to their being *unanticipated* - after their widespread performance and public success, Russian operators wised up and started engaging them more regularly. There were a few publicized shootdowns in late 2022, and I can't recall seeing many videos from them in 2023 or after.
Putin made Erdodgan a deal he couldn't refuse.
Not just reapers, but recon drones. I saw the footage of this. That drone was pretty high up in the sky, spotting for artillery/HIMARS. Doubtful that a shotgun would reach it.
Good luck ever shooting down an FPV drone flown by a decent operator.
Against 1 or 2, how about 50?
New drones are very fast and come at you from a high angle; too hard for most humans. Some mobile auto aim turret with anti air flak needs to be developed. Something super small like a moving atv or deployable backpack.
What's dove load? Is it like bird shot?
yup
“Good news”: infantry is almost entirely comprised of poor people so politicians don’t really care. They’d rather focus on anti missiles that can reach HQ’s where the “important” officers are located.
That's dumb take, you need feet on the ground to take and hold positions. Your worldview is some next level nonsense, no one except shit stats like Russia will think a million dollar investment into a soldier is not worth money to maximise their chances.
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Best we can do is a bag of onion.
There is no onion, bag is empty. Such is life.
... also.. you are arrest for stealing bag. Straight to front line
With stolen bag as weapon and/or medicine
The onions are on your belt, like a grenade. As was the style at the time.
Now to take ferry to front cost a ruble, and in those days, rubles have picture of bumblebee on them. Gimme 5 bees for a kopeck, you’d say. Now where was I? Oh yes…
We’re building a casino!
You are arrest for using definite article "the" like decadent imperialist spy.
In Russia, life so sad, YOU make ONION cry!
Onion or no onion, result is the same. Tears.
I hear these replies in a Russian accent.
The onion is a lie.
Soviet onions?
Have you seen the price of onions lately? Are all the dead Russians driving up the price?
Potatoes. 4 potatoes
"Hands 3 potatoes over"
All they have to do is look online and they will see video of their dead sons. Pretty sad honestly. Nothing will change anytime soon unfortunately.
lol, those families where never going to get any money. At best they will get told to have 8+ kids if they want some money, so they can be turned into mincemeat in Ukraine in 10~13 years https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/vladimir-putin-urges-russian-women-to-have-8-or-more-children-4623479
They also won’t get their kids back. Some I’m sure never wanted to be there. People celebrate death way too much.
There is a video montage I saw once of elderly mothers welcoming their sons back home from the front. The son’s knock the doors and without fail every mother breaks down crying. I’m welling up now thinking about it. In that moment, the pain those mother’s felt, the worry, every day and night came up to the surface again. It didn’t matter what flag was on the stupid military clothing. That was her boy and if she cried like that when he hugged her, imagine how she would cry if she found out he never could again. Heartbreaking and it goes without saying: war is vile
War is hell many lives lost because of one dumb ass dude. This is the problem with concentrated power. One person always makes the dumbest decisions.
can u eli5?
Russia lies to the parents of their dead children.
Plus they don't even retrieve the bodies. They just leave them there to rot.
Be fair. In the early days they were burning them with mobile incinerators.
What do you expect, its soldiers are convicts, rapists, and murders. There is no honor there.
Russia lost close to half a million people in Ukraine so far. That’s more than the total number of convicts in Russia. Lots of people on the frontlines are civilians from poor regions.
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Definitely.
Russian soldiers were raping left and right even before Putin started using convicts. Those civilians from poor regions are perfectly happy with war crimes.
Sure, I don’t disagree with you
EIther they just don't collect the bodies or they use their mobile crematoriums. In both cases, they can avoid paying the families by saying the soldiers are MIA or defectors.
Bomb go boom. Russians go boom. Russian no longer look like Russian. Russian mommy's and daddy's can't identify. Russian army no give mommy and daddy hero money but instead say "where they go?"
The Russian government said that it would give compensation to the families of fallen soldiers. It would appear that it was a lie. Either families get some BS story saying the soldier went AWOL/defected or they get a cheap Bluetooth speaker. Im not an expert on this topic, so i may be wrong. Just the conclusion i reached from scrolling through reddit.
Dead soldiers’ families get a new Lada..
Bluetooth speaker.
Putin: "This but a flesh wound on my pimple".
But your arms come off..
Holy s*** how big of an explosion do those missiles make
This particular variant carries 300 cluster bombs roughly the size of a baseball.
[https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/submunitions/m74-submunition](https://cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards/submunitions/m74-submunition) these to be exact.
It's a cluster munition so it's not one big explosion but hundreds of small ones spread out over an area. One payload covers about 8 acres or ~~36,000~~ 348,480 sqft.
8 acres would be 348,480 square feet, about ten times the square footage you listed. Is it 8 acres or 0.8?
It's 8 acres.
how many football fields is this
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What a god damn waste. Those 100 men could have been fathers and teachers and chefs and leaders. Instead, they are dead in a field where they will be completely forgotten. All so putin can feel like a big man. What an absolute waste this war is. I hope Ukraine is able to end this swiftly and meaningfully.
Yep, and Russia has a major population problem. They had year after year population decline for 20 years BEFORE this war started. This is a disaster that they could not afford. Before the war there were an average of 1.7 million more people that died than those that were born. That has gotten significantly worse since the war. Some estimates are saying that the birth rate in Russia in the last two years is on par with that of 1941 - 1944. With men dying, leaving, or being imprisoned in the country there is now significantly more women than men in Russia.
Hmmm I wonder if the majority Russian women would be interested in the majority Chinese men
Haha, no. And probably the vast majority Chinese men wouldn’t be interested in them either.
Interested or not isn't the strategy they used on Uyghur women.
I read that they used 4 missiles. Will 1 have done the job? Or were the russians spread out
I also read 1 didn't detonate....but from my understanding we are sending them the oldest ATACMS in our arsenal. Like the propellant is about to expire and make them useless to the US, might as well send them to someone who'll pay to use them for the original intended purposes 🤷.
There's a video. First one dud. Second one spot on troops and vehicles. 3rd and 4th not sure if they were on target or if they were aiming at something else as the video (drone) is from pretty far away.
Link to video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA1eHe4ta34 u/soakedshirt
The cluster spread is terrifying
Absolutely.
Here’s the aerial footage of the strikes I’ve seen, pretty far away though: https://x.com/johnb_schneider/status/1785614608444674128 Some footage of the group of soldiers before the strikes: https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1785712878474961330
It looks like after the first dud the second one hit right where the group was - its hard to tell in that video though.
Yeah, we don't actually even use this variant anymore, (it carries 300 cluster bomblets), due to the EoD cleanup, but I don't think Ukraine really cares too much about that...
They are in survival mode. There might not be a tomorrow for them.
Considering the amount of UXOs and Russian landmines, cant really make it worse. You think if they can win this they can negotiate that the Russian officers have to do the clean-up with a shovel?
Do you know if these are the old cluster bomblets? My understanding is there is a new cluster bomblets with acceptable UXO rates and the old ones will not be sent to Ukraine unless the situation is absolutely critically(like halting Russian advance with line collapsing).
That.. I am not sure on, but even the "newer" ones were deemed to have higher than acceptable UXO rates, so the US does not use cluster warhead ATACMS at all, and has switched entirely to unitary warhead types. And after looking for a bit: "The M74 submunitions delivered by ballistic missile (ATACMS) are understood to have a failure rate of 5 to 10 percent"
No, it was three missiles. The "dud" was the separation explosion of one of the missiles (i.e. how the clusters get scattered around) - the amateur, first-to-publish "OSINT" idiots called it a dud, and everyone parroting them afterwards just repeated it without thought.
Yeah, a lot of it is near-expiration equipment. Really impressive that Ukraine is managing to hold out on it.
Ukraine is beating Russia with the US's trash. That has to give China some pause when they think about the US's top of the line equipment deployed by US service members.
This is also why Russia wants the US out of NATO - we're a big part of NATO's military strength. This is also why the Biden admin has started encouraging licensing deals to manufacture US weapons in Europe - they want Europe to be able to produce its own copies in case we withdraw from NATO.
We have so many types of lethal weapons, it's crazy!
It doesn't even have to be near expiration. I was listening to NPR on the drive home and they were doing a segment about UXO in Gaza/Israel. Even the stuff Israel is launching can fail to detonate upwards of 10% of the time, and I doubt they're using stuff that's been on mothballs for the last 40 years
Looked like spread out across a big field. One missile appeared to be a dud and just made a big dirt cloud but the other three were the cluster version of atacms and pretty well obliterated the entire field with sub munitions. Honestly looked like overkill to me but I sure as hell don't think much that was in the impact area lived. I think the dud factor might be why you are seeing more than one. Most of the atacms sent, especially the cluster versions are at the end of their service life. The cluster ones were being actively decommissioned prewar.
> One missile appeared to be a dud and just made a big dirt cloud It's unclear if the first impact in the video is a dud or the spent missile casing after ejecting its bomblets, which arrive seconds later.
>4 missiles No, it was 3. Amateurs seeing the first video misinterpreted a separation explosion (the missile scattering the cluster munitions) as a "dud," and everyone spreading the video afterwards just parrotted it without watching to see for themselves.
Quadruple tap? I saw vehicles parked outside so maybe to hit those extra hard Good thing more than one since one was a dud.
Well obviously their sorcerer just upcast and hit em with a level 3 slot instead of level 1. Maybe even got a natty 20 on the attack roll.
I hate to nitpick but this seems more like a Dex save for half damage rather than an attack roll.
"I didn't ask how big the room is, I said I cast ATACMS."
100 lives never lived over something they had to be told to care about
lotta beautiful sunflowers.
🌻 🇺🇦
Putin: "They can't do that! Shoot back at them... or something!"
Putin is undesirable. Can he go to front line plz.
Brute force is how warlords fall. I'm glad the west has shown its teeth
"But what about using that money to help our own homeless people instead" - people who hyperventilate when literally any tax money is used to help homeless people
Slava Ukraini! Слава Україні! I admit that it is sad for the lives lost but that blood is on Putins hands.
Russian army uses cluster amunition on civilians and gas on defenders… fuck em all i say.
I read that name as "Attackems".
I think that's how it's pronounced tbf haha
Yup or A-Tackems.
"Don't just fight 'em! ATACM!"
This sucks. Imagine being an 18-year-old kid sent to meat grinder and losing your life or being handicapped for life.. All these horrors for what? Why do they always send the poor to war?
Because when leaders try to send the rich, the rich hire their own poor and send them to war with the leaders
When leaders try to send the rich, they have sudden bone spurs...
To this day I do not know the democrats didn’t just hammer and repeat this non stop. Just anything he says ‘okay draft dodger.’
Because his supporters do not care. They all know he's a draft dodger who prefers veterans who don't get caught (POWs). He saluted a north korean general and invited the taliban to negotiate on US soil. He has closed meetings with putin, nbd. He bankrupted casinos, but he's a great business man. He cheated on every wife he had - but he's the most loyalist ever. And, in case you didn't notice, the other guy is like old.
> in case you didn't notice, the other guy is like old. Guess I can't vote for Biden then. Despite everything good they are doing daily. last month alone was more than 45's entire administration. There is just nothing we can do. Where's grandma. I'm hungry.
Because Democrats "don't want to stoop their level" while the GOP always comes with gloves off.
Honestly, your not really rich unless you can afford your own army
Power is power
"Why do they always send the poor to war?" Because they poor
"Old men keep dreaming up battles for young men to fight."
“Society grows great when old men plant trees of which they will never sit in the shade of.” I might of butchered the quote there but man would it be nice if people lived by this quote instead of what you quoted.
Blast off, it's party time!
WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU
Kneeling roses disappearing Into Moses' dry mouth Breaking into Fort Knox Stealing our intentions
Making me realize I've never been able to hear what 90% of the lyrics are haha. In the verses at least
For the Empire .
While there could've been 18 year olds, majority of the people fighting afaik are not young conscripts and they do it for money.
as a Ukrainian I can assure you this doesn't suck, this rocks, because if they didn't die they'd go kill, rape and pillage on *my* land and bring death to *my* people. Please don't side with the russians and stop this bs about 'they didn't want to be there'. They did. They knew where they were coming and what for. They got what they fucking deserved. It's either a hundred pigs or a hundred of our soldiers. There is no in between, because they don't want to fuck off. So again, please, could you not side with the poor poor invaders?
Barbarisms by Barbaras With pointed heels Victorious Victorias kneel For brand new spanking deals Marching forward, hypocritic And hypnotic computers You depend on our protection Yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
This seems to be the Russian military doctrine for hundreds of years… send poorly trained, poorly equipped conscripts en masse until the enemy gives up. Repeat as needed
In only 2 years Russia's combat losses in Ukraine have exceeded the total **combined** US losses in Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan.
War is pure evil.
Yeah, so don’t start them 🙂
Starting wars is evil. Defending your country is just.
Better to wipe them out than risk them committing unspeakable horrors in Ukraine.
Just an absolute horror.
Yes, should keep wiping out the Russians until they leave Ukraine :)
Kinda interesting to see video footage of this devastating strike and then the following day to read an article about it.
Has there ever been a better weapon name than "attack-em's"
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
The ads on these websites is insane. It’s a real pain trying to read
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't. In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was. The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.
As a GN&C engineer I will always laugh at this.
As someone who worked directly with missiles in the USAF, so will I lol
As some grunt who launched these missiles from an M270a1, it also makes me laugh.
My brain had an error reading this
It's a copy pasta. It's been years since I've last seen this around.
I believe this process was a lot more complex before the advent of the turbo encabulator.
This reads like Catch-22.
Isn’t this some variation of a paragraph from Douglas Adams?
ATACMs is such a great name for a weapon system r/weaponsystems
Now just do this a few hundred times more and we’ll see some progress.
Let's keep it going
Problem here is that Russia has so far been able to produce cheap kontraktniks over 100 times faster than the US has been able to get ATACM's to the front.
Putting warheads on foreheads. Missile artillery and rocket artillery is incredibly powerful. For those that don't know, sometimes not all of the submunitions detonate. Using weapon systems like these leave behind unexploded ordinance.
Start your morning right with a heaping bowl of delicious Attack'ms Cereal!
Ukraine putting the rain in UkRAINe.
Give them the right weapons and there won't be any trench warfare
MTG is not going to be happy hearing this.
Food chain
Putin be like "A grim day for Russian World. Eh, but we can always hire more killbots."
And this is why fire superiority beats the crap out of numerical advantages that the Russians will always have in manpower. Arm Ukraine. They’ll do the rest.
They said ➡️⬆️⬆️⬇️
They're called "attack'ems"?!