Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking.
A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. Also, these can be life-savers for an outpost when weather conditions ground all drones.
This is a fluff piece, but these machines might become very real very soon. They're already used for resupply and dropping mines. We have plenty of videos of that from both sides. A few months ago we had a video of one of these taking out an infantry carrier. This is not vaporware. It's a bad approach at worst, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows exponentially for many years to come.
From the video with one of these robots (maybe the one in the story?)
>We prepared for the combat use of these modules for a very long time. It was a very difficult sector on which the enemy was constantly conducting assault actions. That's why the infantry needed reinforcements. But the robot drone didn't just drive onto the position for a day. Instead of real fighters, an iron one held the line for a month and a half and actually fooled the Russians because they didn't even think about something like this. (https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw?t=226)
"Very difficult" and constants assaults doesn't sound like what you describe.
I have to say if I was defending against Russians trying to kill me I'd much rather operate the gun remotely from behind a hill than sit there in range.
This is the second comment that says that I'm downplaying these situations, so I guess I really wasn't very clear.
Small assault groups of untrained men can still be "very difficult". The defending outposts are similarly small groups. The defenders experience very long, exhausting rotations: a month is considered good: supplies are dropped by drones. This is because as of ~2025 the most dangerous part of a rotation is the infil/outfil. The record for a frontline rotation is close to 500 days (they had to dig their own well underground). Both sides are backed by drones. As someone pointed out, the "expendable" assault groups, in part, serve to draw defenders out for drones. Further, you often hear of anecdata that a defensive position was overrun, because Russians sent bodies after bodies until defenders ran out of ammo. 5:1 death rate (Russian:Ukrainian) is considered good for Russia, 10:1 is something they probably can maintain. Ukraine has to aim for 15:1. Russian personnel losses average around 30k per month since early 2025, which, I hear, is very close to how much they can regenerate at the moment. I've watched an interview on Lindybeige where someone involved with drone pilots said that pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon, kills in the hundreds is normal.
It's not easy to talk about the Ukraine war, because it changes so radically every N months.
>5:1 death rate (Russian:Ukrainian) is considered good for Russia
>pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon, kills in the hundreds is normal.
I am strongly pro-Ukraine in this conflict, but this sounds over the top and unbelievable. Are you sure this is not Ukrainian propaganda? Are there any reliable public sources about this?
I think Ukrainian propaganda would go "we can generate N times more manpower than Russia", which is the opposite of what these figures suggest. These figure are about the fact that force generation in Ukraine is a huge problem.
Edit: I first heard of these numbers from Peter Zeihan. I've since heard ballpark-similar estimates from other people. I think of it this way: Russia has a huge manpower pool. Further, their ability to extract actual manpower from it is higher (due to poverty, largely). So Ukraine likewise requires a huge battlefield advantage to break even. Further, Ukraine needs another huge advantage on top of that, so that it's painfully obvious that not only the war is unsustainable, but that it's only unsustainable to Russia: only then will Russia sue for peace. At the moment, it seems like the war is unsustainable for both, which means noone has the advantage.
Incredible. I wonder what the most kills is for a single individual through direct action? There’s always the nuclear bombshell but that’s more of a team effort. These kills are through individual action.
You are being dishonest. Those squads usually have SOME degree of drone, artillery and aviation support behind them. They are basically there to find out where the defenders are. Sure they are expendable, but they are just a part of the attack. I bet 24 hours sitting in a trench with FPVs, 152mms, and FABs exploding all over your position would change your mind as to the danger posed by those attacks you make fun of. Being at exactly this location vs kilometers away while remotely controlling a mobile gun turret makes ALL the difference
I am not making fun. If it seems that way, I misspoke. I think that any war is terrifying and this one more than any other I know of.
The way I imagine the attacks this UGV defended against is small groups of men deemed expendable knowingly going to their very likely deaths. Yes, this is part of a bigger Russian strategy which is very dangerous and unfortunately, so far, too effective.
> 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death
Yeah, excepts apparently these good for nothing oldtimers are taking 5 to 10 square kilometers per day against entrenched integrated force, capable of launching dozens of killer drones per target at a moment notice. Do you feel the inconsistency here? I do.
I do not suggest that the Russian tactic I described doesn't work. I'm saying that these machines are a viable approach to explore. Further, I'm not saying that the Russian strategy is to just repeat this tactic ad nauseam: it's part of a bigger play where they probe for weaknesses across very long lengths of the frontline, stretching Ukrainians thin, and, when weakpoints are found, they do proper, hyper-concentrated assaults with war-hardened veterans.
A big backdrop of this UGV story is that Ukraine is spread very thin. Rumour has it that brigades across the front are 20-40% strong.
At that rate Russia will have conquered Ukraine in about a century. The war is clearly going to be decided by attrition, not the current rate of land capture.
This wasn't immediately obvious to me, but it's important to note this unit is remotely controlled. The article made it sound autonomous. Further, the unit went back to base nightly (for maintenance / battery swaps I assume).
Reading between the lines of the article it seems advanced but not too surprising.
I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc.
The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means but it sounds like, "if you see anything moving in this arc, take a few shots at them". Presumably there's some AI to prevent it from wasting ammo on really dumb decoys.
A "simple" mobile automated turret has been around for a while. The novelty they would be demonstrating is essentially battlefield robustness. They aren't claiming that this machine can operate completely autonomously for 6 weeks but the incremental pieces are still hard.
At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?
In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.
If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.
So it is NOT like before. And the logical conclusion, as those drones get better and more widely adopted, is that war will be nothing more a video game with real economics and supply chain. So we basically made the cost of genocide or colonization too high to absorb. Previous wars, people got away with it.
The majority of nations? majority of people on earth? We are going to a multilateral world and to win a war you need secure the appeal of majority. If the majority think your war is illegal they can cut you off from the world economy.
It is a distributed consensus-based algorithm, and the young people who are writing those algorithms will shape the future of governance.
You are arguing today. This is the first kind of wars we are seeing of this nature.
But Iran is hitting exactly where it hurts, global supply chain, and now the US will be pressured by the global economy to either retreat or commit a genocide.
And if all the war was drones and anti-drones today (which is not) we would have saved many lives. Look at UAE/Iran, UAE lost no live despite being hammered with drones/missiles, this is an example of drones/anti-drones future. The reason why we don't have this with the US, is because the US needs a defeat for the legacy system to die, and it seems they will get that defeat soon. Actually they are already defeated, Trump said he is retreating in 3 weeks while achieving nothing but destruction.
What this had to with with my arguments regarding the nature of future warfare, the emerging world economical order?
There is no point in history where we had such connected economies and this kind of autonomous war technology. All previous wars were fought by human bodies. We are witnessing the first generation of wars that becoming completely autonomous.
Where is the assumptions? it is not just world. It is a world ruled by constrains and for better or worse human nature.
There is no people involved at all, in fact my argument is that there will be no people involved in wars..I'm just extrapolating on the what we are seeing today. Also nobody really understands reality fully not predict the future. We are just speculating here on what might happen. You surely don't understand reality and you said you can't imagine anything else.
Alright, so in your mind the world and future war will stay the same, regardless of drones, robotics and AI. Frankly, I don't understand what your argument is other than saying fantasy and doesn't match the reality that somehow you know more.
Of course the goal of the war is to make others to submit by force and pain. That's obvious
But you missing my point.
If in the near future multilateral system, governed by AI, drones and robotics. A war is nothing more than a war of attrition between economies, then in a global interconnected economy with scarce energy, it will become an absurd proposition because one nation can't cause significant bleed in other without bleeding itself.
Without human involvement and other players forces energy leakage in the global economy, it's not hard to see how. In fact we are seeing right now. It's why Trump is pulling back.
"Trump started the war to distract everyone" that is your opinion.
The war in middle east will not end soon, I agree with that. The question is whether the US will stay or not and how it will be rearranged. Trump is telling people he is will end it soon, but he will leave troops there. But the issue is Iran will keep hunting the economy, and he is now throwing the problem at the European. But what what will the European do? They have no option but to listen to Iran, and what does Iran want? end of the US bases to the region. So basically the US will retreat.
But with regards to the nature of the war itself. It is turning to drone vs drone wars, it is happens as we speak, and this is the first two wars of this scale we witnessing. I'm not sure why you think it is not happening? this is exactly what is happening. And the only reason why Iran is able to pull this off is because of the drones and guided missiles which is allowing them to bleed the globe economically, and an interconnected world, an AI driven speedboat hits a tankers near the shore of Iran, causes the tomato prices to raise at grocery store in California. And people will say, this has always been the case with war, and my argument is that we never had that level of interconnectedness before, we seen weapons that be produced cheaply at scale and can keep inflicting pressure on the other side and we have never lived in a multilateral global world order before. This is truly a new era in human history.
It is interesting that people give downvoting, so either they enjoy having the current wars continue and people physically killed, or they basically gave up on seeing a better future.
Ukrainian invasion was attempt at genocide and colonization. Israel did anoyher genocide last year. And then there is yemen which may not be genocide, I dunno, but has super high unchecked amount of victims. Saudi made sure no one is watching.
But my argument is for the future that we are starting to get a glimpses of. I'm not negating the currently genocides, I'm hoping for a future in which we don't have war at all due to the absurdly of it. And I'm arguing that there is a path forward and it is very realistic.
You missed my point, please read my other comments.
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.
This has always been the case.
It's very common for a war to be lost by the side that runs out of resources first -- whether soldiers, oil, missiles, or whatever the limiting factor is. Right now a major question in the Iran war is how many drones and missiles Iran has left.
What you describe as "playing strategy video game and call it day" is essentially democracy, and why democracies generally don't declare war on each other. Mostly, they trade goods and play football (soccer) against each other instead.
You are missing the point again. That has not always been case.
Read my other comments why it's the same. But basically with AI/Drones + Global Interconnected Economy + Multilateral world order + Global Information = new system.
We never had anything like that, and the argument that this has always been the case is missing my point entirely. But if you don't get, well, you won't get it.
"Again"? When did I miss the "point" the first time?
I don't get it because you haven't explained what is different now. Writing out some equation isn't an explanation. If you don't explain something clearly, and then try to blame people for not understanding, you're not going to have a good time.
You're proposing that wars being decided based on who runs out of resources first is something new. I'm telling you, this has been a major factor in warfare for millenia.
Orignal Star Trek did an episode on this - "A Taste of Armageddon". The war was a video game - fought on a computer. But if the virtual bombs hit your area, you were declared dead and had to a report to a disintegration chamber. If you can get past the dated special effects - the concept is the same.
This is like the future after the scenario I describe happens. But I diff, is that we keep the game, but change the medium. Humans are war oriented by nature, like chimps, but I think as the world becomes more connected, the cost of destroying one place is causing impact on other..yet there is a desire to resolve conflict in violent way.
Unfortunately, diplomatic conflict resolution is prone to failures and the cost of failure is really really high.
What Iran is doing is telling the empire that their war has a cost on their economy and reputation. And the only reason they are able to do so is because of drones/missiles (basically automated Kamikaze pilots) and I would also argue GenAI since they producing a lot of PR videos which used be expensive to make. If Iran had to fight the war with their people, US would have won due to the imbalance of destructive power.
In other words, we are witnessing a new kind of system for conflict resolution. Not war and not diplomacy. More of drones/AI/robotics systems hitting economies while trying to avoid human life losses in order to win the narrative war. This no where similar to any war of the past. The key change is waging wars without people, i.e the automation of warfare. Which is closer to a video game than traditional wars.
But people think of my statement as reductionist to the current causalities, which is not my point, obviously we are far from having fully automated warfare but we are seeing the first generation. The closest example is the fight between Iran/UAE basically a network of digital systems defending against another.
And if my reasoning hold, we might end up in a more peaceful earth.
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
This has been the assumption for over a decade now.
> those who can't produce any more drones, lose
Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].
> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat
This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.
The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.
Yes, but what you are missing the cost of total elimination of the other side.
For example, in Iraq, Saddam was able to use chemical weapons and wipe out the resistance, this is no longer an accepted solution by majority of people on earth.
So there is no real way to actually win a war. If you can't kill or enslave the other population, and the world is not accepting refugees, if you hit one economy completely you might the global economy. So what do you do? there is actually no real way to win a war as those constraints become strong and stronger. You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down and hope they would resign, by better co-ordinating your drones and managing your economy, which is a video game in the real world.
> You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down
How do you (detest this phrasing, it very glib) null the other side?
Most weapon systems aren't developed in entirely separate supply chains - they use off-the-shelf components that are available for commercial usecases as well.
To successfully take out an opponents operational capacity when they are using dual use technology means the barrier between "civilian" and "military" is nonexistent.
It basically means the return to total war doctrine.
My point is that this assertion is wrong - "they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat".
It is predicated on the assumption that the new (but in reality old) iteration of war would lead to less civilian casualties.
How is it really old when we have completely new AI/Robotics enabled warfare that would allow nations in the not distance future (not today) to engage in a war without human involvement? We never had anything like this before?
How would a war like this look like? what does winning really mean? and if your entire drone army depends on a global economy of suppliers, then you can easily cut off.
How is it that old? we never had wars like this..sorry, this is very stupid argument.
Yes exactly. Like an arm wrestle, those who can demonstrate they have the better swarms, better AI, better supply chain, better innovation, win the war. And the other nation surrender. There is for resolving extreme national conflicts. If one side decides to go further and use drones to commit a genocide or completely destroy the other side economy/resources. Then other major players will join the game by using more drones and overwhelm the aggressive nation production and end it.
6 weeks equates 84 average sized US highschools worth of people dying on the Russian side and twice as many coming back with life altering injuries. I'm not sure how a country can survive that.
It seems to me that the Russian attitude is that life is a cruel joke, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The country has had terrible government and an oppressed population for hundreds of years. Russian influence operations are using their intimate knowledge of destructive attitudes to drag down the competition to their level.
The difference is you can appeal or ignore a game result. If Ukraine lost a strategy game tournament, would they give up their territory? Or fight to hold it still?
Vladimir Putin doesn't dare to indirectly strike through Iran at the sources of fire power production powering suicide drones and targeteering data at Russia. He is too weak.
> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
> Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?
But then how will you gain new territory for oligarchs and billionaires? Are you really ready for the sacrifice that their next yacht will be smaller instead of larger? Do you really want them to withdraw from London's real estate market?
US MIC graft and corruption has created a woefully obsolete, dinosaur military force adept at only fighting symmetric wars of 1995. Infantry meat assaults, paratroopers, tanks, and all expensive big kinetic systems are all largely obsolete like castles and mounted knights. What needs to happen is automated factories of highly-integrated, standardized, cheap, fast, disposable drone/rocket/loiter and small, light, fast ground and marine systems that can be rapidly deployed in great numbers via standardized containers (20'/40' ISO perhaps) by unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles. The hand-building of fragile, commodity, bespoke, hobby-grade drones isn't scalable or optimized even though it technically works so far, but it's obviously not the best way to sustain and automate production on an industrial scale for lowest cost and most efficient use of human effort. The company/s|country/ies that can produce orders-of-magnitude more drones and drone supervisors/pilots "wins".
“It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.”
― Richard Jordan Gatling, 1877
But imagine the efficiencies to be gained if you swapped out the direct human operator with an automated operator. Then, you can have teams of automated operators being operated by a single human!
I haven’t heard “dead man zone” (although I don’t really engage much with military stuff so maybe it is just an expression I’m not familiar with).
I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language?
I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or something maybe it reflects an even bleaker WW1 experience.
It's the space between trenches. I've been watching a WW1 chronological documentary where they use it, but it's also been said in various ways, as you say.
Probably because currently they cause more collateral damage than is useful. Your own equipment will be damaged too leaving a bunch of unguided soldiers with just their guns and rations that are still an obstacle an enemy can't walk through, and it will piss off anybody within 1000 miles when you start disrupting their telecommunications with random noise if not cause actual damage. If they are powerful enough you could potentially cause some mistaken nuclear blast warnings too, although perhaps without a gamma ray component it would still be rightfully ignored.
They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.
Only if one understands the different failure modes, but either way the average HN reader shouldn't try this at home or you'll get in trouble with radio spectrum pollution.
This is surely the future. At some point we will eventually have battles fought entirely by pilot(less) drones? And then war becomes purely economical.
I think you could just ship generic robot dogs in a container and have local contractors straw-purchase firearms, 3d-print cradles, and combine them. None of the contractors would need to know what they were doing.
It is a drone. But "drone" by itself is primarily used to refer to aircraft. I thought the title referred to some sort of ultra-endurance aircraft.
Merriam-Webster defines drone as "uncrewed aircraft or vessel"; Cambridge limits it to "aircraft". When the drone is not an aircraft, it's often preceded with its type: for example, "underwater drone" or "ground drone".
This smells more like military propagand, i.e., bullshit.
There is no way this is honest or real, i.e., it somehow fought off a tactical unit trying to take the frontline that this drone was holding? Or was it just parked in some area where there was no tactical point of even taking the territory?
Just by virtue of its nature, a single drone and/or a well placed dumb grenade, not even to mention likely a smoke grenade could have easily defeated this thing within seconds of deployment if there was any interest in taking the area this toy was "controlling".
Someone is doing a literal con job to get military graft and fraud contracts.
Perhaps it would be helpful to view the claims of this article through a cost/benefit analysis?
Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have.
That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders.
This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.
That too is a bunch of nonsense. The cost of this rather comical robo-gun is far greater than the $600 quadcopter or $30 grenade or two, whose shrapnel can make quick work of the unshielded mechanics and electronics. And that’s witty even going into all the other obvious limitations off its design.
Sorry to piss in your corrupt government/military contract punch bowl.
You mindless drones really love that peasant slop.
You probably don’t even know why I said that and are just offended because you think you’re not a mindless drone that does not understand what is actually happening beyond the propanganda that has your mindless drone mind trained like any other AI.
You are literal AI. You merely lack the self-awareness to understand that to it confuses and angers you to have read what I just told you, because it conflicts with your programming.
AIUI, a current common tactic for the Russians is sending many small groups of untrained "solders" out probe the front lines and try to penetrate undefended spots. They take a ton of casualties, but some make it through, and they gradually build up, and then try to take action.
There are real videos, even months old of exactly these 'land drones', equipped with good ol' .50 cal. In certain situations, they fought extremely well given no risk for crew. I mean killing off entire bmp-something transport including all crew with AP rounds, typically during night since it has night vision, zoom and so on. Verified also by drone flying nearby.
Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.
Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying.
I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.
The murderbot is remotely operated, so it did not held the ground by itself, though it is claimed that it might be able to do some things autonomously.
Nice marketing pitch. In reality it was probably parked at an empty crossroads 10 miles behind the frontline, taking potshots at "suspected" enemy positions.
Why are talking about something you have no idea about? There are multiple videos of this system engaging in combat missions. There are first-person videos from them accompanied by footage of recon drones flying above them. And some of those videos are from last year already.
The article calls this a "Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle armed with a machine gun" and the headline calls it a "Ukrainian Combat Robot". Not a "drone" like the submitter's title has.
Edit: it seems like the creator calls it a "droid". Is that just them, or is that becoming standard terminology for a kind of ground-based "soldier-robot"? See:
The <title> tag is "Ukrainian Drone Holds Position for 6 Weeks". OP probably hit the "fetch title" button or copy-pasted from a chat app embed when submitting.
Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking.
A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. Also, these can be life-savers for an outpost when weather conditions ground all drones.
This is a fluff piece, but these machines might become very real very soon. They're already used for resupply and dropping mines. We have plenty of videos of that from both sides. A few months ago we had a video of one of these taking out an infantry carrier. This is not vaporware. It's a bad approach at worst, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows exponentially for many years to come.
From the video with one of these robots (maybe the one in the story?)
>We prepared for the combat use of these modules for a very long time. It was a very difficult sector on which the enemy was constantly conducting assault actions. That's why the infantry needed reinforcements. But the robot drone didn't just drive onto the position for a day. Instead of real fighters, an iron one held the line for a month and a half and actually fooled the Russians because they didn't even think about something like this. (https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw?t=226)
"Very difficult" and constants assaults doesn't sound like what you describe.
I have to say if I was defending against Russians trying to kill me I'd much rather operate the gun remotely from behind a hill than sit there in range.
This is the second comment that says that I'm downplaying these situations, so I guess I really wasn't very clear.
Small assault groups of untrained men can still be "very difficult". The defending outposts are similarly small groups. The defenders experience very long, exhausting rotations: a month is considered good: supplies are dropped by drones. This is because as of ~2025 the most dangerous part of a rotation is the infil/outfil. The record for a frontline rotation is close to 500 days (they had to dig their own well underground). Both sides are backed by drones. As someone pointed out, the "expendable" assault groups, in part, serve to draw defenders out for drones. Further, you often hear of anecdata that a defensive position was overrun, because Russians sent bodies after bodies until defenders ran out of ammo. 5:1 death rate (Russian:Ukrainian) is considered good for Russia, 10:1 is something they probably can maintain. Ukraine has to aim for 15:1. Russian personnel losses average around 30k per month since early 2025, which, I hear, is very close to how much they can regenerate at the moment. I've watched an interview on Lindybeige where someone involved with drone pilots said that pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon, kills in the hundreds is normal.
It's not easy to talk about the Ukraine war, because it changes so radically every N months.
>5:1 death rate (Russian:Ukrainian) is considered good for Russia
>pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon, kills in the hundreds is normal.
I am strongly pro-Ukraine in this conflict, but this sounds over the top and unbelievable. Are you sure this is not Ukrainian propaganda? Are there any reliable public sources about this?
I think Ukrainian propaganda would go "we can generate N times more manpower than Russia", which is the opposite of what these figures suggest. These figure are about the fact that force generation in Ukraine is a huge problem.
Edit: I first heard of these numbers from Peter Zeihan. I've since heard ballpark-similar estimates from other people. I think of it this way: Russia has a huge manpower pool. Further, their ability to extract actual manpower from it is higher (due to poverty, largely). So Ukraine likewise requires a huge battlefield advantage to break even. Further, Ukraine needs another huge advantage on top of that, so that it's painfully obvious that not only the war is unsustainable, but that it's only unsustainable to Russia: only then will Russia sue for peace. At the moment, it seems like the war is unsustainable for both, which means noone has the advantage.
> pilots with 1k+ kills is not uncommon
Incredible. I wonder what the most kills is for a single individual through direct action? There’s always the nuclear bombshell but that’s more of a team effort. These kills are through individual action.
You are being dishonest. Those squads usually have SOME degree of drone, artillery and aviation support behind them. They are basically there to find out where the defenders are. Sure they are expendable, but they are just a part of the attack. I bet 24 hours sitting in a trench with FPVs, 152mms, and FABs exploding all over your position would change your mind as to the danger posed by those attacks you make fun of. Being at exactly this location vs kilometers away while remotely controlling a mobile gun turret makes ALL the difference
I am not making fun. If it seems that way, I misspoke. I think that any war is terrifying and this one more than any other I know of.
The way I imagine the attacks this UGV defended against is small groups of men deemed expendable knowingly going to their very likely deaths. Yes, this is part of a bigger Russian strategy which is very dangerous and unfortunately, so far, too effective.
When you don’t value humanity, the ugly fact is that people grow faster than trees.
Considering Russian demographics I kinda doubt it.
The reality is that Russia is not gaining anything in this war- it just keeps Putin in power.
Can we name them The Dinochrome Brigade?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome...
> 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death
Yeah, excepts apparently these good for nothing oldtimers are taking 5 to 10 square kilometers per day against entrenched integrated force, capable of launching dozens of killer drones per target at a moment notice. Do you feel the inconsistency here? I do.
I do not suggest that the Russian tactic I described doesn't work. I'm saying that these machines are a viable approach to explore. Further, I'm not saying that the Russian strategy is to just repeat this tactic ad nauseam: it's part of a bigger play where they probe for weaknesses across very long lengths of the frontline, stretching Ukrainians thin, and, when weakpoints are found, they do proper, hyper-concentrated assaults with war-hardened veterans.
A big backdrop of this UGV story is that Ukraine is spread very thin. Rumour has it that brigades across the front are 20-40% strong.
At that rate Russia will have conquered Ukraine in about a century. The war is clearly going to be decided by attrition, not the current rate of land capture.
This is a standard unit from DevDroid.[1] Here's the marketing video.[2] It's available for pre-order. They also have a model with a grenade launcher.
[1] https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oay_-cAlLXE
This wasn't immediately obvious to me, but it's important to note this unit is remotely controlled. The article made it sound autonomous. Further, the unit went back to base nightly (for maintenance / battery swaps I assume).
https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw
Reading between the lines of the article it seems advanced but not too surprising.
I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc.
The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means but it sounds like, "if you see anything moving in this arc, take a few shots at them". Presumably there's some AI to prevent it from wasting ammo on really dumb decoys.
A "simple" mobile automated turret has been around for a while. The novelty they would be demonstrating is essentially battlefield robustness. They aren't claiming that this machine can operate completely autonomously for 6 weeks but the incremental pieces are still hard.
I believe the movie Aliens (1986) has one of the best movie uses of auto turrets.
Sourcing enough functioning GRID laptops might pose a challenge
https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/grid-os-developmen...
The name gives it away:
UA 571-C remote gun sentry
Obviously developed in Ukraine ;-)
The UGVs are manually controlled. If you follow the source link there are some shots of xbox-like controllers.
I’ve been wondering when modern battlefields would get Team Fortress 2 sentries.
When French start supplying Spies.
At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?
In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.
If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
> abstract it away and play video game?
What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked.
> they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
Your ideas are based on the idea of winning in a closed-system game. War is waged by people. Some people actually want the other people to die.
Yes, but it not like before.
We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.
So it is NOT like before. And the logical conclusion, as those drones get better and more widely adopted, is that war will be nothing more a video game with real economics and supply chain. So we basically made the cost of genocide or colonization too high to absorb. Previous wars, people got away with it.
We don't allow? Who doesn't? And what are they going to do about it?
The majority of nations? majority of people on earth? We are going to a multilateral world and to win a war you need secure the appeal of majority. If the majority think your war is illegal they can cut you off from the world economy.
It is a distributed consensus-based algorithm, and the young people who are writing those algorithms will shape the future of governance.
The majority of the world thinks the Russia-Ukraine war is illegal.
The majority of the world thinks the Israeli/US-Iran war is illegal.
You are arguing today. This is the first kind of wars we are seeing of this nature.
But Iran is hitting exactly where it hurts, global supply chain, and now the US will be pressured by the global economy to either retreat or commit a genocide.
And if all the war was drones and anti-drones today (which is not) we would have saved many lives. Look at UAE/Iran, UAE lost no live despite being hammered with drones/missiles, this is an example of drones/anti-drones future. The reason why we don't have this with the US, is because the US needs a defeat for the legacy system to die, and it seems they will get that defeat soon. Actually they are already defeated, Trump said he is retreating in 3 weeks while achieving nothing but destruction.
Hoho ho. Hardly helped anyone in Bakmut eh?
And hardly how China or India are likely to work too.
That future you seem to think is inevitable is very far from it:
What this had to with with my arguments regarding the nature of future warfare, the emerging world economical order?
There is no point in history where we had such connected economies and this kind of autonomous war technology. All previous wars were fought by human bodies. We are witnessing the first generation of wars that becoming completely autonomous.
There seems to be an assumption of ‘power to the people’, and ‘just world’, that just doesn’t seem to match reality at all.
That’s what I am responding too.
Where is the assumptions? it is not just world. It is a world ruled by constrains and for better or worse human nature.
There is no people involved at all, in fact my argument is that there will be no people involved in wars..I'm just extrapolating on the what we are seeing today. Also nobody really understands reality fully not predict the future. We are just speculating here on what might happen. You surely don't understand reality and you said you can't imagine anything else.
Alright, so in your mind the world and future war will stay the same, regardless of drones, robotics and AI. Frankly, I don't understand what your argument is other than saying fantasy and doesn't match the reality that somehow you know more.
The goal of war is to subjugate others to your will through suffering.
That will not change, and I'm not sure how you expect that to work with zero human involvement.
Again, you don't understand my argument at all.
Of course the goal of the war is to make others to submit by force and pain. That's obvious
But you missing my point.
If in the near future multilateral system, governed by AI, drones and robotics. A war is nothing more than a war of attrition between economies, then in a global interconnected economy with scarce energy, it will become an absurd proposition because one nation can't cause significant bleed in other without bleeding itself.
Without human involvement and other players forces energy leakage in the global economy, it's not hard to see how. In fact we are seeing right now. It's why Trump is pulling back.
Except that is not what is happening at all.
Trump started the war to distract everyone, and we’ll all keep dealing with the fallout while he moves on to create another distraction.
It isn’t going to actually end anytime soon.
"Trump started the war to distract everyone" that is your opinion.
The war in middle east will not end soon, I agree with that. The question is whether the US will stay or not and how it will be rearranged. Trump is telling people he is will end it soon, but he will leave troops there. But the issue is Iran will keep hunting the economy, and he is now throwing the problem at the European. But what what will the European do? They have no option but to listen to Iran, and what does Iran want? end of the US bases to the region. So basically the US will retreat.
But with regards to the nature of the war itself. It is turning to drone vs drone wars, it is happens as we speak, and this is the first two wars of this scale we witnessing. I'm not sure why you think it is not happening? this is exactly what is happening. And the only reason why Iran is able to pull this off is because of the drones and guided missiles which is allowing them to bleed the globe economically, and an interconnected world, an AI driven speedboat hits a tankers near the shore of Iran, causes the tomato prices to raise at grocery store in California. And people will say, this has always been the case with war, and my argument is that we never had that level of interconnectedness before, we seen weapons that be produced cheaply at scale and can keep inflicting pressure on the other side and we have never lived in a multilateral global world order before. This is truly a new era in human history.
Uh huh.
Thanks for the conversation and helping to refine my thinking.
> We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable
Literally all of these things are happening as we type this. What the majority of nations do or do not want is irrelevant.
Think in the future, I speak about a future, and you repeat it is happening, yes of course it is happening today, this tech is just being adopted.
So…. Fantasy?
So future = fantasy in your mind? you can not speculate anything beyond the present? well, that is limitation in your thinking.
More like the first two definitions of the word - literally. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fantasy
Again, poor argument. You can't speculate or think of the future..so if I do what you do, I say you are retarded - literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retarded.
But that is not argument, that just us name calling each other, and I was hoping you have something of substance.
Bwahahahahahaha
:D
So you want this system to stay? You are advocating for loss of life?
It is interesting that people give downvoting, so either they enjoy having the current wars continue and people physically killed, or they basically gave up on seeing a better future.
Both cases, it is sad.
Ukrainian invasion was attempt at genocide and colonization. Israel did anoyher genocide last year. And then there is yemen which may not be genocide, I dunno, but has super high unchecked amount of victims. Saudi made sure no one is watching.
And they all get away with it.
Today yes, unfortunately.
But my argument is for the future that we are starting to get a glimpses of. I'm not negating the currently genocides, I'm hoping for a future in which we don't have war at all due to the absurdly of it. And I'm arguing that there is a path forward and it is very realistic.
You missed my point, please read my other comments.
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.
This has always been the case.
It's very common for a war to be lost by the side that runs out of resources first -- whether soldiers, oil, missiles, or whatever the limiting factor is. Right now a major question in the Iran war is how many drones and missiles Iran has left.
What you describe as "playing strategy video game and call it day" is essentially democracy, and why democracies generally don't declare war on each other. Mostly, they trade goods and play football (soccer) against each other instead.
You are missing the point again. That has not always been case.
Read my other comments why it's the same. But basically with AI/Drones + Global Interconnected Economy + Multilateral world order + Global Information = new system.
We never had anything like that, and the argument that this has always been the case is missing my point entirely. But if you don't get, well, you won't get it.
"Again"? When did I miss the "point" the first time?
I don't get it because you haven't explained what is different now. Writing out some equation isn't an explanation. If you don't explain something clearly, and then try to blame people for not understanding, you're not going to have a good time.
You're proposing that wars being decided based on who runs out of resources first is something new. I'm telling you, this has been a major factor in warfare for millenia.
Finally, my years of playing Starcraft have real-world use! Also: Everyone will soon bow to S. Korea :D
Just gotta worry about the network lag
>> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
Do you agree in case your team lose to be relocated to the remote territory and also be stripped of your language, history and national identity?
Orignal Star Trek did an episode on this - "A Taste of Armageddon". The war was a video game - fought on a computer. But if the virtual bombs hit your area, you were declared dead and had to a report to a disintegration chamber. If you can get past the dated special effects - the concept is the same.
Found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8-I9nRAnDk
This is like the future after the scenario I describe happens. But I diff, is that we keep the game, but change the medium. Humans are war oriented by nature, like chimps, but I think as the world becomes more connected, the cost of destroying one place is causing impact on other..yet there is a desire to resolve conflict in violent way.
> yet there is a desire to resolve conflict in violent way.
There is a desire to resolve conflict in an incredibly violent way because there are no consequences for that violence.
There could be, but there are large emergent systems which work hard to ensure that powerful people don't face consequence for their actions.
We, as... Not powerful people can push back on that, but there's a collective action problem.
Interesting, need to watch that.
Finally!! https://youtu.be/wgKqKggYdDE?si=x6FFPqSKETIPYqiu
Ideally you'd have some sort of diplomatic solution and no war. But these things don't always pan out.
Agreed.
Unfortunately, diplomatic conflict resolution is prone to failures and the cost of failure is really really high.
What Iran is doing is telling the empire that their war has a cost on their economy and reputation. And the only reason they are able to do so is because of drones/missiles (basically automated Kamikaze pilots) and I would also argue GenAI since they producing a lot of PR videos which used be expensive to make. If Iran had to fight the war with their people, US would have won due to the imbalance of destructive power.
In other words, we are witnessing a new kind of system for conflict resolution. Not war and not diplomacy. More of drones/AI/robotics systems hitting economies while trying to avoid human life losses in order to win the narrative war. This no where similar to any war of the past. The key change is waging wars without people, i.e the automation of warfare. Which is closer to a video game than traditional wars.
But people think of my statement as reductionist to the current causalities, which is not my point, obviously we are far from having fully automated warfare but we are seeing the first generation. The closest example is the fight between Iran/UAE basically a network of digital systems defending against another.
And if my reasoning hold, we might end up in a more peaceful earth.
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
This has been the assumption for over a decade now.
> those who can't produce any more drones, lose
Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].
> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat
This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.
The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.
[0] - https://www.themiddleeastuncovered.com/p/inside-the-talibans...
[1] - https://thekhorasandiary.com/en/2026/03/13/taliban-strengthe...
Yes, but what you are missing the cost of total elimination of the other side.
For example, in Iraq, Saddam was able to use chemical weapons and wipe out the resistance, this is no longer an accepted solution by majority of people on earth.
So there is no real way to actually win a war. If you can't kill or enslave the other population, and the world is not accepting refugees, if you hit one economy completely you might the global economy. So what do you do? there is actually no real way to win a war as those constraints become strong and stronger. You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down and hope they would resign, by better co-ordinating your drones and managing your economy, which is a video game in the real world.
> You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down
How do you (detest this phrasing, it very glib) null the other side?
Most weapon systems aren't developed in entirely separate supply chains - they use off-the-shelf components that are available for commercial usecases as well.
To successfully take out an opponents operational capacity when they are using dual use technology means the barrier between "civilian" and "military" is nonexistent.
It basically means the return to total war doctrine.
And what is your point? you just re-enforced my main assertion?
My point is that this assertion is wrong - "they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat".
It is predicated on the assumption that the new (but in reality old) iteration of war would lead to less civilian casualties.
How is it really old when we have completely new AI/Robotics enabled warfare that would allow nations in the not distance future (not today) to engage in a war without human involvement? We never had anything like this before?
How would a war like this look like? what does winning really mean? and if your entire drone army depends on a global economy of suppliers, then you can easily cut off.
How is it that old? we never had wars like this..sorry, this is very stupid argument.
So like the old League of Legends lore before their Institute of War retcon?
Yes exactly. Like an arm wrestle, those who can demonstrate they have the better swarms, better AI, better supply chain, better innovation, win the war. And the other nation surrender. There is for resolving extreme national conflicts. If one side decides to go further and use drones to commit a genocide or completely destroy the other side economy/resources. Then other major players will join the game by using more drones and overwhelm the aggressive nation production and end it.
6 weeks equates 84 average sized US highschools worth of people dying on the Russian side and twice as many coming back with life altering injuries. I'm not sure how a country can survive that.
It seems to me that the Russian attitude is that life is a cruel joke, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The country has had terrible government and an oppressed population for hundreds of years. Russian influence operations are using their intimate knowledge of destructive attitudes to drag down the competition to their level.
The difference is you can appeal or ignore a game result. If Ukraine lost a strategy game tournament, would they give up their territory? Or fight to hold it still?
Yes we are not fully there yet, but we are getting there.
We are seeing the transition right in front of our eyes.
Vladimir Putin doesn't dare to indirectly strike through Iran at the sources of fire power production powering suicide drones and targeteering data at Russia. He is too weak.
> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
> Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?
But then how will you gain new territory for oligarchs and billionaires? Are you really ready for the sacrifice that their next yacht will be smaller instead of larger? Do you really want them to withdraw from London's real estate market?
> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
No.
Young men being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands.
Not a game
I know it is not.
I'm just saying in the future if all became drones war and we disallow genocide, then what do you think will happen?
Of course I acknowledge real life is lost right now, all I'm saying give politicians a video game to play instead of having drone wars.
Would you rather have politicians commit genocides and destroy real economics or play drone like video games? which side are you with?
US MIC graft and corruption has created a woefully obsolete, dinosaur military force adept at only fighting symmetric wars of 1995. Infantry meat assaults, paratroopers, tanks, and all expensive big kinetic systems are all largely obsolete like castles and mounted knights. What needs to happen is automated factories of highly-integrated, standardized, cheap, fast, disposable drone/rocket/loiter and small, light, fast ground and marine systems that can be rapidly deployed in great numbers via standardized containers (20'/40' ISO perhaps) by unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles. The hand-building of fragile, commodity, bespoke, hobby-grade drones isn't scalable or optimized even though it technically works so far, but it's obviously not the best way to sustain and automate production on an industrial scale for lowest cost and most efficient use of human effort. The company/s|country/ies that can produce orders-of-magnitude more drones and drone supervisors/pilots "wins".
We really are trying our best to make Terminator reality aren't we?
Maybe drones will make human soldiers unacceptable in the future.
“It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.” ― Richard Jordan Gatling, 1877
Should write a MIT case study on that in "Bad Hypotheses 101"
It's hard to explain without spoilers, but Isaac Asimov's The Feeling of Power (1958) is relevant to this concept of warfare.
If only wars would end when all the soldiers on one side were dead.
If the people fought before they'll keep fighting, even after their robots are gone.
They will certainly make human soldiers unviable. (I draw mostly dystopian conclusions from that prediction.)
Or it will just lead to lopsided massacres like the maxim gun did.
On the plus side there is now quite a lot of drone on drone combat saving people's lives
They are being operated by humans
But imagine the efficiencies to be gained if you swapped out the direct human operator with an automated operator. Then, you can have teams of automated operators being operated by a single human!
There was never any other option, given the direction of progress and basic human nature.
I know I know, but this and that and not me nor you, yet here we are and this is just beginning.
"It takes infantry to hold territory" is still true I guess, but now it's a single operator in a bunker.
Perhaps in the dead man zone, not sure this would work well where there is civilian population.
I haven’t heard “dead man zone” (although I don’t really engage much with military stuff so maybe it is just an expression I’m not familiar with).
I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language?
I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or something maybe it reflects an even bleaker WW1 experience.
You can call it whatever you like: kill zone, gray zone, dead zone - everyone usually understands what does it means.
Good article on what it is: https://texty.org.ua/projects/116021/20-kilometers-of-the-gr...
It seems like there could actually be a difference between them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man_zone - is related to bush fires but seems like it could apply to a battlefield?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man%27s_land
Something more akin to actually being in "measure" or strike distance vs just contested territory in between?
Edit: Sibling comment I think clears it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_zone
> I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression.
No man's land is generic and is used in other non-combat scenarios, it could appear in an HOA pamphlet.
I like "dead man's zone" or "kill zone" as it clearly communicates both the contestation and lethality very clearly.
> I haven’t heard “dead man zone”
It's the space between trenches. I've been watching a WW1 chronological documentary where they use it, but it's also been said in various ways, as you say.
Said playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2vhKMBjSxOb_127vxja...
Time Ghost makes awesome chrono documentaries for the major wars. And a ton of mini series on special topics.
Why is no one using EMP devices against drones?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nucl...
Probably because currently they cause more collateral damage than is useful. Your own equipment will be damaged too leaving a bunch of unguided soldiers with just their guns and rations that are still an obstacle an enemy can't walk through, and it will piss off anybody within 1000 miles when you start disrupting their telecommunications with random noise if not cause actual damage. If they are powerful enough you could potentially cause some mistaken nuclear blast warnings too, although perhaps without a gamma ray component it would still be rightfully ignored.
https://www.anduril.com/pulsar
Both Russia and Ukraine have directed energy rifles. 10 years ago the first examples arrived in Syria.
They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.
A magnet, a conventional explosive, and a coil on a flexible cylinder of polymer film; are power electronics truly necessary for a localized EMP?
I'll bet you could make it in a weekend.
Only if one understands the different failure modes, but either way the average HN reader shouldn't try this at home or you'll get in trouble with radio spectrum pollution.
Yes. Range, accuracy, targeting, and reducing blast radius matter.
Not sure what else I can say so I'll leave it at that, and will not engage with further comments.
The proportion of videos featuring drones taking out other drones is increasing.
There's a video with footage of a similar land drone and interviews with the operators https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw
This is surely the future. At some point we will eventually have battles fought entirely by pilot(less) drones? And then war becomes purely economical.
It would start economical and then some side would eventually resort to the meat grinder.
> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location.
Why? Isn't the advantage that it can stay in a position indefinitely? Does it not have infrared cameras, etc?
Powered by what, exactly? Neither lugging around a few tons of fuel or painting a bullseye on yourself via solar panel array sound practical.
But how it was not destroyed by flying Russian drones? Did it shot them down? Or did it have some anti-drone support unit helping it?
I have an educated guess.
Flying drones are lethal, but fairly random. Attacking a point target, which will have anti-drone support, is not what they are for.
And too cheap for a missile which is the weapon for a point target
Today I learned aerial drone is not the only type of drone there is.
Article doesn't talk about battery life.
> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location.
Interesting - why?
But what if it gets hacked by the russians?
Considering the usual behavior of the Russian military, it’ll keep firing at Russian soldiers.
This is on my 2026 bingo card of things that never happened.
Yep, until it hits you.
Maybe it's the ghost of Kiev controlling the robot army? You don't know. But they sure should get a $50 billion contract to make them
So what happens in a few years when a submarine pulls up some miles off US coast and unleashes 100 super-automated drones to terrorize the country?
Heck maybe not even a sub needed, some smaller country could have an automated tiny raft too small to be seen on radar tow in the drones
They could charge via phantom power from powerlines and will find a way around GPS jamming
I think you could just ship generic robot dogs in a container and have local contractors straw-purchase firearms, 3d-print cradles, and combine them. None of the contractors would need to know what they were doing.
Is there some sort of hybrid flying/stationary drone that flys in an sits to hold a ground position?
Common tactic is for drones to wait next to a road and ambush.
Ammunition is heavy.
looks like a treadmill
Another con job...
Not a drone...
How is it not a drone?
It is a drone. But "drone" by itself is primarily used to refer to aircraft. I thought the title referred to some sort of ultra-endurance aircraft.
Merriam-Webster defines drone as "uncrewed aircraft or vessel"; Cambridge limits it to "aircraft". When the drone is not an aircraft, it's often preceded with its type: for example, "underwater drone" or "ground drone".
Are these the ones controlled by Steam Decks?
These ones by PS5 controllers I believe
This smells more like military propagand, i.e., bullshit.
There is no way this is honest or real, i.e., it somehow fought off a tactical unit trying to take the frontline that this drone was holding? Or was it just parked in some area where there was no tactical point of even taking the territory?
Just by virtue of its nature, a single drone and/or a well placed dumb grenade, not even to mention likely a smoke grenade could have easily defeated this thing within seconds of deployment if there was any interest in taking the area this toy was "controlling".
Someone is doing a literal con job to get military graft and fraud contracts.
Perhaps it would be helpful to view the claims of this article through a cost/benefit analysis?
Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have.
That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders.
This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.
That too is a bunch of nonsense. The cost of this rather comical robo-gun is far greater than the $600 quadcopter or $30 grenade or two, whose shrapnel can make quick work of the unshielded mechanics and electronics. And that’s witty even going into all the other obvious limitations off its design.
Sorry to piss in your corrupt government/military contract punch bowl.
Yes very comical the Russians have been laughing for the last 2 years...
You mindless drones really love that peasant slop.
You probably don’t even know why I said that and are just offended because you think you’re not a mindless drone that does not understand what is actually happening beyond the propanganda that has your mindless drone mind trained like any other AI.
You are literal AI. You merely lack the self-awareness to understand that to it confuses and angers you to have read what I just told you, because it conflicts with your programming.
AIUI, a current common tactic for the Russians is sending many small groups of untrained "solders" out probe the front lines and try to penetrate undefended spots. They take a ton of casualties, but some make it through, and they gradually build up, and then try to take action.
There are real videos, even months old of exactly these 'land drones', equipped with good ol' .50 cal. In certain situations, they fought extremely well given no risk for crew. I mean killing off entire bmp-something transport including all crew with AP rounds, typically during night since it has night vision, zoom and so on. Verified also by drone flying nearby.
Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.
Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying.
I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.
The murderbot is remotely operated, so it did not held the ground by itself, though it is claimed that it might be able to do some things autonomously.
Nice marketing pitch. In reality it was probably parked at an empty crossroads 10 miles behind the frontline, taking potshots at "suspected" enemy positions.
Why are talking about something you have no idea about? There are multiple videos of this system engaging in combat missions. There are first-person videos from them accompanied by footage of recon drones flying above them. And some of those videos are from last year already.
Are these called drones? I thought drones flew.
The article calls this a "Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle armed with a machine gun" and the headline calls it a "Ukrainian Combat Robot". Not a "drone" like the submitter's title has.
Edit: it seems like the creator calls it a "droid". Is that just them, or is that becoming standard terminology for a kind of ground-based "soldier-robot"? See:
https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw
The <title> tag is "Ukrainian Drone Holds Position for 6 Weeks". OP probably hit the "fetch title" button or copy-pasted from a chat app embed when submitting.
Drone is just a generic term.
There are more specific terms for specific types of vehicles, and some of those terms have changed over the past few decades.
UGV = unmanned ground vehicle
UAS = unmanned aerial system
UAV = unmanned aerial vehicle
UUV = unmanned underwater vehicle
Etc