He was heavily mentioning drones in the Foreign Affairs piece [1] he wrote in the spring of 2023: "Innovation Power - Why Technology Will Define the Future of Geopolitics"
> Drones offer distinct advantages over traditional weapons: they are smaller and cheaper, offer unmatched surveillance capabilities, and reduce soldiers’ risk exposure. Marines in urban warfare, for example, could be accompanied by microdrones that serve as their eyes and ears. Over time, countries will improve the hardware and software powering drones to outinnovate their rivals. Eventually, autonomous weaponized drones—not just unmanned aerial vehicles but also ground-based ones—will replace soldiers and manned artillery altogether. Imagine an autonomous submarine that could quickly move supplies into contested waters or an autonomous truck that could find the optimal route to carry small missile launchers across rough terrain. Swarms of drones, networked and coordinated by AI, could overwhelm tank and infantry formations in the field.
My take on this is that lacking direct combat experience everything the Americans (and the West more generally) will come up with in terms of drones will be hugely inferior to whatever the Russians are now building, heck, it would be inferior even to what the Ukrainians have managed to build locally (one of the targets the Russians hit recently was an Ukrainian drone factory in Kiev).
> My take on this is that lacking direct combat experience everything the Americans (and the West more generally) will come up with in terms of drones will be hugely inferior to whatever the Russians are now building
So what?
As someone famous said, "Quantity is a quality on its own"
Don't think that the West will go for "quantity over quality" in its arms' race with China/Russia, it has stopped doing that for at least 30 years (since they scrapped most of the Cold War-related arms industry).
quality will have a diminishing return over time as your enemy adapts as has been shown with excalibur and even himars in this conflict. wunderwaffe don't win wars
There are so many assumptions packed in that post it feels weird to try to unpack them; eg, the implication the "local" Ukrainian equipment would be by default inferior to Russian equipment, which doesn't seem obvious at all to me.
But empirically speaking, the idea that Russian equipment will be better than OTAN equipment because of their combat experience is pretty bold considering the current domination of OTAN equipment in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Apparently it's the French term for NATO ("Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique Nord"), directly translating to "North Atlantic Treaty Organization". At least according to some random website I found after a search.
I wish there was a rule that forced people to spell out an acronym the first time they use it, regardless of how much they think the acronym is common knowledge.
Given by the confusion in this thread and it being literally the first time I have ever read of heard of the acronym “OTAN”, I’d go with not-so-common knowledge :)
One of the two official acronyms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Organisation Traité de l'Atlantique Nord), used svery proninently by the organization, both on its flag and elsewhere.
A post I submitted 85 days ago [1], an Ukrainian drone guy talking about Russian-made drones. A more recent post [2], also from an Ukrainian POV when it comes to Russian drones' capabilities.
> OTAN equipment because of their combat experience is pretty bold considering
Direct combat experience will always have the upper hand compared to militaries which are still watching from the sidelines. Seeing how you spelled NATO I highly recommend these two books by Michel Goya talking about this in connection to France's industrial-military evolution in WW1: [3] and [4]
Patriot. NASAMs. SAMP-T and IRIS. All proving themselves at least as good as any Russian SAM system.
ATACMS, GMLRS, HARM, Javelin, TOW, Gepard, PZH-2000, M-777, Paladin, SCALP/STORM, Bradley... The list goes on. Of course the Ukrainians are not being provided with enough equipment and munitions to actually win, but the equipment itself is dominating when used in even a close approximation to sound strategy.
ATACMS and GMLRS don't have Russian equivalents that are worth a damn. Same with Javelin, PZH-2000, Paladin, and the cruise missiles I listed. And hell, the ancient Bradley is knocking out the latest Russian tanks with it's 25mm chain gun...
They have not been sufficiently trained to man and maintain modern NATO equipment built for a different purpose: combined arms operations. Old Leopard 1 tanks would have been a better choice than Leopard 2.
This is a war that could be won with lots of artillery shells, combined with targeting computers and drone surveillance, highly mobile artillery.
FTA: In Mali they discovered a 10x breakdown rate compared to home in Germany. And that wasn’t even war. Also, they lack spare parts. The beauty of just-in-time logistics. Read up on how much of a typical NATO army is operational at a given (peace) time. '91 was a long time ago.
Old Leopard 1 tanks would have been a better choice
There goes “crew survived”.
built for a different purpose: combined arms operations
“Easy. Just win before the tanks break down. Just destroy the enemy before you ever get close.” Someone should have explained that to the Ukrainians.
could be won with lots of artillery shells
Shells that NATO can neither supply nor produce in sufficient quantities.
highly mobile artillery
They have (had) enough of those. Barrel wear ruins the range, Lancets ruin the paint job.
I'm not sure the issues with Leopard 2 tanks is indicative of quality, or more a reflection of how shallow the German military has become. And I agree with you that Leo 1 tanks aren't suitable. They have nice fire control systems, and good mobility, but their armor protection is terrible.
The war in Ukraine is showing that the West is woefully unprepared for a major conflict. We saw signs of this with NATO air forces running short of PGMs during the Libya intervention.
Shells won't be a problem in a year or so, and worldwide there's enough production to move enough to Ukraine if the political will is there. But Western defense contractors have been starved for so many years that expanding production won't occur rapidly. Look at the backlog for F-16s.
A year is too much for Ukraine. Russia has already bought 1M shells from North Korea that are on their way to the frontline. NK has promised to deliver another 10M in total. Let's just hope they're shit quality and that the promises are typical DPRK propaganda.
Also F16s for Ukraine is a questionable choice. Other than not being available, they need a good runway and are higher maintainance than the MiGs and Sukhois that the Ukrainians are used to. Also replacement parts need to be shipped (from the US?). The Saab Gripen is a more sensible choice for them: it can be housed in a barn and use a road to take off. No idea how many can Sweeden deliver and there are also political issues as well like Sweeden not being part of NATO yet.
Ukraine can hold out until the West gets its production (of all systems) back in line with worldwide requirements. Russia has already received the 1M shells, and they are of poor quality. But even at a 50% failure rate, they've had an impact.
The F-16 is actually the best choice. There are multiple users worldwide, so lots of training facilities, lots of spare parts depots, and almost every NATO weapon is qualified on it. The Gripen would be great if it wasn't needed for a few years; the production rate is too slow to fulfill Ukraine's needs and the Swedes have no desire to send stock from their own air force. Can't blame them really. They've been cutting back on their military like the rest of Western Europe for decades.
Back in the real world, the Russians have lost over 5000 MBTs and similar numbers of AFVs.
You have to remember that Ukraine was provided with this gear with minimal training. It's easy to pick out small issues, (yes the Panzerhaubitze is a bit of a sensitive system to operate), but the majority of NATO gear provides better protection, and is more effective assuming the equipment is supported and maintained properly.
Russian gear is tough, can survive a lot of misuse and lack of maintenance. But compared to NATO gear, it's just not as survivable.
No use, because it's complicated when propaganda-influenced talk is taking over talk based on the direct experience of real war, this is why I made my initial comment that both the Russians and the Ukrainians are now more experienced and can produce better drone-related materiel than the Western armies, but then someone responded with some propaganda piece about those funny cardboard-made drones (which never saw real combat).
It's less funny and more tragic that the Ukrainian soldiers themselves have come out and said that this type of discourse ("Western weapons are the best! Russians weapons are the worse!") does not help them at all on the front-lines, to the contrary, it makes them a lot more vulnerable and with bigger chances to, well, die.
Have you read the book Forever Peace? I think it's a foretelling of this, in part. The book doesn't have drones, but what it does have is mechs that fight wars with human remote pilots. War in the book essentially boils down to who can spend more money building more mechs. No humans get killed except by accident, or if the war happens to be against one of those impoverished nations barbaric enough to use human soldiers.
> My take on this is that lacking direct combat experience everything the Americans (and the West more generally) will come up with in terms of drones will be hugely inferior to whatever the Russians are now building
America doesn't lack direct combat experience with drone warfare, on either the side using drones or the side being targeted by drones.
Could you explain? I think we’re having a different discussion than the million dollar predator drones that shot missiles at western Asia from a mile up. And to say that defending against ISIS/Houthi/Etc. drones is in any way similar to the experience Ukraine and Russia are getting seems wrong. But I’m probably misunderstanding?
In general I’m not 100% convinced by “they use drones so they’re better with them” but it’s plausible. We’re also involved with the Ukrainian side, to say the least, so I imagine we’re getting some detailed intel on their effectiveness and shortcomings.
America doesn’t lack combat experience with small drones.
> The fighting in Ukraine has provided "reinforcement and validation" of what US troops have learned about drones in the Middle East, Gainey said at the conference, echoing Army leaders who say the drone war in Ukraine is influencing their planning — particularly for how to counter the one-way attack drones that Russia has used widely.
> "In some cases, yes, what we're sending to Ukraine are also going to fit into our future plans," Douglas Bush, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology, said at a press conference in early August.
Further:
> "There's no one silver bullet. There's no one system that we can call out and say, 'This is a system that's going to defeat every threat,'" Parent told Insider.
The truth is that there is no “drone warfare” only a new class of military tools that resemble drones and are built on drone-esque platforms. They come on the sea, they come by land and they come by air, and they can be millions of dollars or 3500-5000 bucks (which is utterly nothing for US military spending) and built of cardboard like this one:
They are using Ukraine as a providing ground for anti-drone technology for sure as there have been many reports of directed energy weapons in Ukraine and Israel as of late.
So definitely we are in the drone warfare period and those lessons are getting learned. Have been since 2013 to 2016 when we had initial reports of drones on the battlefield and reactions in military planning discussions.
With regards to the idea, that experience is the sole predictor of Battlefield success, I would urge the original poster of that comment to read a few history books.
The US has decades of intensive research, development, and operational experience with of drones at every scale and for every mission. This ranges from the multi-million dollar predator drones you are thinking of to the dirt-cheap disposable drones used by infantry units that are basically just higher quality versions of what is being used in Ukraine. US military has been preparing for this for a long time and has a lot of real-world experience with it.
I think people have already forgotten that many of the early small-format drone capabilities used in Ukraine were provided by the US. An issue is that many of these types of drone systems developed by the US are export controlled, particularly the sensors and electronics, which limits the types available to Ukraine. Much of the equipment given to Ukraine by the US is obsolete or downgraded prior to delivery.
Ukraine and Russia are speed-running drone warfare that the US has been trying to perfect for decades. The US military has solutions to particular drone warfare problems that Ukraine/Russia have not yet solved.
- Ukraine's drones capabilities were built internally using consumer grade hardware
- US tried to supply some cutting edge military grade drones(switchblade 300/600), but there is no much reports about them, and program has been canceled since then, I speculate those drones were having significant issues
My suspicion is that US small combat drones programs are weak and ineffective.
> US tried to supply some cutting edge military grade drones(switchblade 300/600)
“Tried”?
> but there is no much reports about them,
There are lots of reports about them.
> and program has been canceled since then
US acquisition of the anti-personnel Switchblade 300 was cancelled recently, the anti-armor 600 was stepped up, both for deliveries to Ukraine and for deployment with US forces on a wide scale.
And, yes, the cancellation seems largely due to experience in Ukraine and the superiority of cheaper, adapted-from-consumer-models drones for anti-personnel use, but its important to note that's not an absence of combat experience—the 300 was rush developed and deployed to combat in Afghanistan in the early 2010s, and used extrnsively there. This is just the learning that happens with different approaches guided by different constraints finding different solutions.
I am kinda following this topic, and have seen maybe 2.
> the anti-armor 600 was stepped up
my reading of the news is that army ordered 100 units for testing
but the point is that despite claims of decades of intensive research, etc, US's only visible program is some small third party company with questionable quality, no other projects are visible, while other players (Israel with spike nlos, Russia with lancet, Iran with shahed) have several gens of battle proven tech already.
Maybe it was completely unrelated, but pre-Schmidt Google was nice. Under Schmidt it started its journey towards becoming the creepy stalker it is today.
Never liked the guy, and wouldn't surprise me if he is working on landmines targeting children.
He's diddling the CEO of his main investment; Michelle Ritter of Steel Perlot.
He's a fucking creep who got lucky and was in the right place at the right time, just like most tech oligarchs we all bow to, like Musk, Larry and Sergey, Zuckerberg, or Dorsey.
I'm identifying this as whinging without an actual complaint. Some people are lucky, and putting his girlfriend in charge of something is unimpressive but also unobjectionable in the main.
I don't see it. Run me through how this is a conflict of interests; ie who is it in conflict with.
Forbes is suggesting he fronted all the money and put his girlfriend in charge. While I wouldn't call that the highest-success strategy, it doesn't seem like a conflict. Presumably she is competent enough and I don't see anyone involved complaining. Did I miss something in the article?
It isn't a conflict of interest to appoint someone close to you to be CEO. It might be nepotism (read: is), but if someone fronted $100 million to some group then they get to engage in a little nepotism if they think it is a good idea. It is like a small businessman installing his son as 2IC; it isn't a cerebral choice but it is unproblematic.
I disagree -- the original AdWords felt like it was intended to be different. It was visually subtle, ads were clearly marked as ads, and the way it worked was completely transparent.
The Google Ads I am looking at right now are visually subtle, clearly marked as ads and I run a lot of them and everything is very transparent about how it all works.
And my point is that when you decide to become an advertising company it is inevitable that you are going to want to acquire ever more data about your users.
Technically yes, but that version of Adwords was pretty small. The actual Adwords that made the company so successful was called "Adwords Select" at launch, the one with the Vickrey auction. It launched in 2002 after Schmidt was at the company and with a lot of support by him. Particularly when the AOL deal was negotiated. He was certainly part of making it an advertising-centric company but that was by no means his sole doing.
There's plenty of reasons to criticize Schmidt. His role in the collusion to suppress salaries along with Adobe, Apple Inc., Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay was a particular lowlight of his career at Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
I worked for a few years in defense and it was the most meaningful work of my career so far but it is painfully slow and entrenched. There is massive opportunity for innovation. I hope he can move the needle- he was on the Defense Innovation Board a while back so he knows.
In the US, the "defense industry" is just anything military-ish related. Or not even military related, but funded by e.g. NRL/AFRL research grants. It stems from the renaming of the Department of War to the Department of Defense after WWII.
I am well aware, and I am well aware of where the US military operates or where the US military industrial - so called defence - complex exports its weapons.
Which is precisely why I am curious what the OP found "meaningful".
After watching 1000's of Ukrainian drone videos, it's absolutely terrifying for the foot soldier these days. You almost stand zero chance and as for vehicles, it can seriously impact their usefulness. APC's,Tanks become scrap metal from a $500 drone carrying a shaped charge. The US has always depended on air superiority to fight its wars, they are completely unprepared for what facing an enemy with superior air defense can turn war on the ground into (WW1 style trench warfare). Add to that an enemy that would sacrifice millions of soldiers without an care or remorse.
The same way we halted the use of chemical weapons, which have seen rampant use in the Syrian war ?
Unfortunately these measures do not seem to work.. If even one actor is employing them, the rest need to also employ them in a lack of a better defence.
A drone is just some electric motors, batteries, RF control and a gyroscope/accelerometer. I'm not exactly sure how you could halt the progression at this point.
Ukraine couldn't use or maintain those nuclear weapons.
They had no control over their actual use. So why would Ukraine feel bad about giving them up? It was a huge benefit to get rid of them given the risks and costs associated.
They absolutely could not afford to maintain them circa 1991-2021. Not even remotely close.
Giving them up was the only thing that made any sense given their extremely low real value. If Ukraine made a mistake, it was in what they got in return for those non-functional weapons. They didn't negotiate very well.
The nation that can destroy (or otherwise severely impair) the drone manufacturing/supply/operation capabilities of the opponent, wins a war that heavily includes drones. That's assuming the drones matter that much, which hasn't been demonstrated yet. Drones have not shifted the balance of power in Ukraine v Russia for example. It's no different than blowing up any other kind of weapons supply. You stop the supply, that's how you end the mass drone threat in that kind of war. You don't just endlessly trade hits from drones. That'd be like never targeting your opponents artillery production, or tank production, or cruise missile production, or jet production, or repair facilities, et al.
Of course one side or the other will win a drone war, just like most any other war.
Drones will be the mustard gas of the mid 21st century. We haven't begun to see the massive casualties they will create. Think guided cluster munitions where every 100g payload finds a soft target and you launch 1-5k of them at a time.
The Ukraine war is already causing blowback as seen in Gaza.
How do we get China to stop? It's impossible. It's completely to their advantage to have drones get better. They can mass produce them way better than us. The CPUs don't seem to be that advanced up to now, so they can probably make them. If not they can steal/buy them illegally.
Russia is a slightly different case because they can't make many of the parts but they can cobble them together using other CPUs. So they are hurt, but possibly helped.
It's been that way basically since indirect fire took over as the big killer, IIRC around WWI, maybe somewhat earlier. Odds of seeing the thing or person that makes you a casualty plummeted some time around then. Less a series of deadly contests and more bunch of very one-sided slaughters, and you just hope you're not in the herd being slaughtered.
Soldiering has mostly been wandering and/or sitting around and then suddenly something happens that you didn't even see coming, and it either gets you or not and there isn't much you can do about it, for some time. Pitched firefights with an enemy you can at least kinda see and face and actively resist or guard against do happen, but they're not what either side is trying to do most of the time. At least in wars between somewhat-modern militaries. I think militaries/governments like to downplay the degree to which that's true, probably because it'd hurt recruitment numbers, but now we get cell phone and drone videos straight from the front.
Of course, before antibiotics and modern medicine, you were probably gonna be killed by disease before an enemy could hurt you (and if the enemy did hurt you... yeah, good chance it's still disease that strikes the killing blow). That was (one part of) the unromantic reality of war in prior centuries.
Yep. All the gun nuts with delusions of even the threat of a future armed rebellion are absolutely kidding themselves. You don't need an army or tanks or jets or helicopters to lay waste to an armed militia. You just need some bored kids with a few hours of flight sim training and enough drones to make it happen.
Israel has made some progress in shooting down drones with lasers (see Drone Dome) as well as mortar bombs and artillery shells (see Iron Beam) and IIUC both systems are mobile. Given that we don't hear about them being used right now in either Israel or Ukraine I assume they aren't actually ready for deployment, but maybe in a few years?
Thing is, the US isn't going to attack (with ground forces) until they've thoroughly destroy the enemy with a "superior air defense." Take a look at how the US handled Desert Storm. Over 100K sorties simply leveling anything slightly threatening. Now most militaries can't fight this way, they simply don't have the resources. But the US spends $800B annually on its military.
Iraq was using an air defense system from 1970(it was already outdated). They had no modern air defense or air force during the gulf war. If they had modern air defense they would have brought down a lot of US Aircraft.
The USA has never fought an adversary that possessed a modern Air Defense System.
Even today the Israeli Military has to coordinate with Russia to not get shot down over Syria by Russian S300 and possibly S400 Missile Systems.
They had an integrated AD system with centralized control through command centers connected via fiber optical cables. The French had helped them design this system. Their AD was quite extensive with French supplied ROLAND, as well as contemporary Soviet equipment. Their air force had MiG-29, MiG-25, Mirage F-1, all in large numbers. This was not a pushover military by any means, but they were simply outclassed by a USAF operating at its peak.
And when the US was fighting in Vietnam, the Vietnamese arguably had one of the best AD systems that was highly effective. The Soviets spared no expense in supplying (and often manning) their IAD.
I saw footage from a drone's body heat cam approaching a Russian trench. One of these blurry red shapes put a gun to his head and beat the drone to what was inevitable. They hear it coming and know it's over.
Another piece of footage was even worse. A kamikaze drone isolated a soldier and was intentionally taunting the soldier by flying at it, pulling back, flying at it again. Like a wasp. The ending is predictable.
All of this supplemented by a cheerful "blooper" tune. And the replies show gamer-like excitement.
How could Schmidt, kicked off the Apple Board of Directors for passing secret Apple designs to Google back when Android had a trackball, get a security clearance?
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] thread> Drones offer distinct advantages over traditional weapons: they are smaller and cheaper, offer unmatched surveillance capabilities, and reduce soldiers’ risk exposure. Marines in urban warfare, for example, could be accompanied by microdrones that serve as their eyes and ears. Over time, countries will improve the hardware and software powering drones to outinnovate their rivals. Eventually, autonomous weaponized drones—not just unmanned aerial vehicles but also ground-based ones—will replace soldiers and manned artillery altogether. Imagine an autonomous submarine that could quickly move supplies into contested waters or an autonomous truck that could find the optimal route to carry small missile launchers across rough terrain. Swarms of drones, networked and coordinated by AI, could overwhelm tank and infantry formations in the field.
My take on this is that lacking direct combat experience everything the Americans (and the West more generally) will come up with in terms of drones will be hugely inferior to whatever the Russians are now building, heck, it would be inferior even to what the Ukrainians have managed to build locally (one of the targets the Russians hit recently was an Ukrainian drone factory in Kiev).
[1] https://archive.is/wvhck
So what?
As someone famous said, "Quantity is a quality on its own"
But empirically speaking, the idea that Russian equipment will be better than OTAN equipment because of their combat experience is pretty bold considering the current domination of OTAN equipment in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord
I wish there was a rule that forced people to spell out an acronym the first time they use it, regardless of how much they think the acronym is common knowledge.
It kinda is common knowledge though, the French version is right on the official flag and displayed all the time.
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pictures/2011...
A post I submitted 85 days ago [1], an Ukrainian drone guy talking about Russian-made drones. A more recent post [2], also from an Ukrainian POV when it comes to Russian drones' capabilities.
> OTAN equipment because of their combat experience is pretty bold considering
Direct combat experience will always have the upper hand compared to militaries which are still watching from the sidelines. Seeing how you spelled NATO I highly recommend these two books by Michel Goya talking about this in connection to France's industrial-military evolution in WW1: [3] and [4]
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/178npo...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/18zyau...
[3] https://www.tallandier.com/livre/linvention-de-la-guerre-mod..., English translation here: https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-book-rev...
[4] https://www.cairn.info/revue-defense-nationale-2020-1-page-1...
Exactly which OTAN/NATO equipment is "dominating" in that conflict?
Patriot. NASAMs. SAMP-T and IRIS. All proving themselves at least as good as any Russian SAM system.
ATACMS, GMLRS, HARM, Javelin, TOW, Gepard, PZH-2000, M-777, Paladin, SCALP/STORM, Bradley... The list goes on. Of course the Ukrainians are not being provided with enough equipment and munitions to actually win, but the equipment itself is dominating when used in even a close approximation to sound strategy.
Having stats in a spreadsheet is a lot different than what the tool is actually in the field.
i.e. equipment manufacturered to code, inspected, and maintenance schedules followed.
Back in the real world:
Hangar queens: http://archive.today/2024.01.09-023929/https://www.spiegel.d...
Barrel trouble: https://x.com/DcDxii/status/1731800411965645092
Death traps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMX-10_RC#Operational_history
And so on. If anything this war is a vindication of the Soviet approach.
This is a war that could be won with lots of artillery shells, combined with targeting computers and drone surveillance, highly mobile artillery.
FTA: In Mali they discovered a 10x breakdown rate compared to home in Germany. And that wasn’t even war. Also, they lack spare parts. The beauty of just-in-time logistics. Read up on how much of a typical NATO army is operational at a given (peace) time. '91 was a long time ago.
Old Leopard 1 tanks would have been a better choice
There goes “crew survived”.
built for a different purpose: combined arms operations
“Easy. Just win before the tanks break down. Just destroy the enemy before you ever get close.” Someone should have explained that to the Ukrainians.
could be won with lots of artillery shells
Shells that NATO can neither supply nor produce in sufficient quantities.
highly mobile artillery
They have (had) enough of those. Barrel wear ruins the range, Lancets ruin the paint job.
The war in Ukraine is showing that the West is woefully unprepared for a major conflict. We saw signs of this with NATO air forces running short of PGMs during the Libya intervention.
Shells won't be a problem in a year or so, and worldwide there's enough production to move enough to Ukraine if the political will is there. But Western defense contractors have been starved for so many years that expanding production won't occur rapidly. Look at the backlog for F-16s.
Also F16s for Ukraine is a questionable choice. Other than not being available, they need a good runway and are higher maintainance than the MiGs and Sukhois that the Ukrainians are used to. Also replacement parts need to be shipped (from the US?). The Saab Gripen is a more sensible choice for them: it can be housed in a barn and use a road to take off. No idea how many can Sweeden deliver and there are also political issues as well like Sweeden not being part of NATO yet.
The F-16 is actually the best choice. There are multiple users worldwide, so lots of training facilities, lots of spare parts depots, and almost every NATO weapon is qualified on it. The Gripen would be great if it wasn't needed for a few years; the production rate is too slow to fulfill Ukraine's needs and the Swedes have no desire to send stock from their own air force. Can't blame them really. They've been cutting back on their military like the rest of Western Europe for decades.
You have to remember that Ukraine was provided with this gear with minimal training. It's easy to pick out small issues, (yes the Panzerhaubitze is a bit of a sensitive system to operate), but the majority of NATO gear provides better protection, and is more effective assuming the equipment is supported and maintained properly.
Russian gear is tough, can survive a lot of misuse and lack of maintenance. But compared to NATO gear, it's just not as survivable.
It's less funny and more tragic that the Ukrainian soldiers themselves have come out and said that this type of discourse ("Western weapons are the best! Russians weapons are the worse!") does not help them at all on the front-lines, to the contrary, it makes them a lot more vulnerable and with bigger chances to, well, die.
America doesn't lack direct combat experience with drone warfare, on either the side using drones or the side being targeted by drones.
In general I’m not 100% convinced by “they use drones so they’re better with them” but it’s plausible. We’re also involved with the Ukrainian side, to say the least, so I imagine we’re getting some detailed intel on their effectiveness and shortcomings.
> The fighting in Ukraine has provided "reinforcement and validation" of what US troops have learned about drones in the Middle East, Gainey said at the conference, echoing Army leaders who say the drone war in Ukraine is influencing their planning — particularly for how to counter the one-way attack drones that Russia has used widely.
> "In some cases, yes, what we're sending to Ukraine are also going to fit into our future plans," Douglas Bush, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology, said at a press conference in early August.
Further:
> "There's no one silver bullet. There's no one system that we can call out and say, 'This is a system that's going to defeat every threat,'" Parent told Insider.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-fighting-dron...
The truth is that there is no “drone warfare” only a new class of military tools that resemble drones and are built on drone-esque platforms. They come on the sea, they come by land and they come by air, and they can be millions of dollars or 3500-5000 bucks (which is utterly nothing for US military spending) and built of cardboard like this one:
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/09/13/cardboard-drone-v...
They are using Ukraine as a providing ground for anti-drone technology for sure as there have been many reports of directed energy weapons in Ukraine and Israel as of late.
There are also sea-based systems:
https://www.newsweek.com/taiwan-drone-sea-china-attack-laser...
So definitely we are in the drone warfare period and those lessons are getting learned. Have been since 2013 to 2016 when we had initial reports of drones on the battlefield and reactions in military planning discussions.
With regards to the idea, that experience is the sole predictor of Battlefield success, I would urge the original poster of that comment to read a few history books.
I think people have already forgotten that many of the early small-format drone capabilities used in Ukraine were provided by the US. An issue is that many of these types of drone systems developed by the US are export controlled, particularly the sensors and electronics, which limits the types available to Ukraine. Much of the equipment given to Ukraine by the US is obsolete or downgraded prior to delivery.
Ukraine and Russia are speed-running drone warfare that the US has been trying to perfect for decades. The US military has solutions to particular drone warfare problems that Ukraine/Russia have not yet solved.
- Ukraine's drones capabilities were built internally using consumer grade hardware
- US tried to supply some cutting edge military grade drones(switchblade 300/600), but there is no much reports about them, and program has been canceled since then, I speculate those drones were having significant issues
My suspicion is that US small combat drones programs are weak and ineffective.
“Tried”?
> but there is no much reports about them,
There are lots of reports about them.
> and program has been canceled since then
US acquisition of the anti-personnel Switchblade 300 was cancelled recently, the anti-armor 600 was stepped up, both for deliveries to Ukraine and for deployment with US forces on a wide scale.
And, yes, the cancellation seems largely due to experience in Ukraine and the superiority of cheaper, adapted-from-consumer-models drones for anti-personnel use, but its important to note that's not an absence of combat experience—the 300 was rush developed and deployed to combat in Afghanistan in the early 2010s, and used extrnsively there. This is just the learning that happens with different approaches guided by different constraints finding different solutions.
I am kinda following this topic, and have seen maybe 2.
> the anti-armor 600 was stepped up
my reading of the news is that army ordered 100 units for testing
but the point is that despite claims of decades of intensive research, etc, US's only visible program is some small third party company with questionable quality, no other projects are visible, while other players (Israel with spike nlos, Russia with lancet, Iran with shahed) have several gens of battle proven tech already.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade
Never liked the guy, and wouldn't surprise me if he is working on landmines targeting children.
He's a fucking creep who got lucky and was in the right place at the right time, just like most tech oligarchs we all bow to, like Musk, Larry and Sergey, Zuckerberg, or Dorsey.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2023/10/23/eric-schm...
And Google was a pretty unsafe bet.
It's easy to say in hindsight that these people were lucky but at the time most of the founders you list made bets that were pretty unorthodox.
what things have you said or done lately that will look incredibly stupid in 30 years?
Trick question. You don't know, do you?
LOL, because it's totally not gross or a conflict of interest in any way. Keep licking those billionaire boots, I bet they taste like caviar.
Forbes is suggesting he fronted all the money and put his girlfriend in charge. While I wouldn't call that the highest-success strategy, it doesn't seem like a conflict. Presumably she is competent enough and I don't see anyone involved complaining. Did I miss something in the article?
It isn't a conflict of interest to appoint someone close to you to be CEO. It might be nepotism (read: is), but if someone fronted $100 million to some group then they get to engage in a little nepotism if they think it is a good idea. It is like a small businessman installing his son as 2IC; it isn't a cerebral choice but it is unproblematic.
He's rumoured to be lover of Michelle Ritter of Steel Perlot. Steel Perlot is apparently his main investment.
Scnmidt may have been lucky enough to "be in the right place at the right time". Time will tell.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2023/10/23/eric-schm...
Shorter, factual, and easily as informative but without slurs.
And so it's unfair to blame him for what is an inevitable path once you decide to become an advertising-centric company.
Google made a choice to enshittify AdWords.
And my point is that when you decide to become an advertising company it is inevitable that you are going to want to acquire ever more data about your users.
There's plenty of reasons to criticize Schmidt. His role in the collusion to suppress salaries along with Adobe, Apple Inc., Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay was a particular lowlight of his career at Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Genuine question. I am asking because to me it does not seem like "defence" whatsoever.
Which is precisely why I am curious what the OP found "meaningful".
To make it home safe from some random overseas country the US decided it has interests in. Got it
Unfortunately these measures do not seem to work.. If even one actor is employing them, the rest need to also employ them in a lack of a better defence.
https://youtu.be/enrUBmDgeOQ?si=F3nfNjO40_v04wCu&t=17
A non sequitur with no justification. If you are being attacked with drones, and you don’t have any, you are definitely going to lose that war.
This is like how people say nobody wins a nuclear war. Ask Ukraine how they feel about the decision to give up their nukes is going.
They had no control over their actual use. So why would Ukraine feel bad about giving them up? It was a huge benefit to get rid of them given the risks and costs associated.
They absolutely could not afford to maintain them circa 1991-2021. Not even remotely close.
Giving them up was the only thing that made any sense given their extremely low real value. If Ukraine made a mistake, it was in what they got in return for those non-functional weapons. They didn't negotiate very well.
> They had no control over their actual use
Assuming they could not bypass the protection, they could still extract the radioactive material and create their own designs.
Of course one side or the other will win a drone war, just like most any other war.
Because both sides use them.
They made armored attacks impossible for both sides. A tank is detected in 1 minute and destroyed in 10.
The Ukraine war is already causing blowback as seen in Gaza.
We should make war itself illegal.
Not with that attitude they won't.
Russia is a slightly different case because they can't make many of the parts but they can cobble them together using other CPUs. So they are hurt, but possibly helped.
We just have to work on defensive measures.
Soldiering has mostly been wandering and/or sitting around and then suddenly something happens that you didn't even see coming, and it either gets you or not and there isn't much you can do about it, for some time. Pitched firefights with an enemy you can at least kinda see and face and actively resist or guard against do happen, but they're not what either side is trying to do most of the time. At least in wars between somewhat-modern militaries. I think militaries/governments like to downplay the degree to which that's true, probably because it'd hurt recruitment numbers, but now we get cell phone and drone videos straight from the front.
Of course, before antibiotics and modern medicine, you were probably gonna be killed by disease before an enemy could hurt you (and if the enemy did hurt you... yeah, good chance it's still disease that strikes the killing blow). That was (one part of) the unromantic reality of war in prior centuries.
get on Quora and follow Roland Bartetzko: https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-Bartetzko
who has actually been in combat (not in Ukraine) and is over in Ukraine right now helping with logistics.
The USA has never fought an adversary that possessed a modern Air Defense System.
Even today the Israeli Military has to coordinate with Russia to not get shot down over Syria by Russian S300 and possibly S400 Missile Systems.
And when the US was fighting in Vietnam, the Vietnamese arguably had one of the best AD systems that was highly effective. The Soviets spared no expense in supplying (and often manning) their IAD.
Another piece of footage was even worse. A kamikaze drone isolated a soldier and was intentionally taunting the soldier by flying at it, pulling back, flying at it again. Like a wasp. The ending is predictable.
All of this supplemented by a cheerful "blooper" tune. And the replies show gamer-like excitement.
Government has learnt from Ukraine war that iterating quickly on technology is vital for the future of the military.