Thr tldr would be "temper expectations"
At this point, the question becomes the price.
Mortar may be 5 times cheaper but 100x easier to destroy it and its crew.
Also half of the problems described are purely technical and can be easily solved with some budget. In Ukraine most drones are assembled by volunteers. So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA.
Imagine what China can pull off here in case they're in a war.
Even if they win the war, they still eventually will have lost.
Which one you think is worse?
Also, most wealthy industrialized western nations have the same fertility issues, some are only compensating by huge legal and ilegal immigration which can be causing bigger domestic economic and societal issues than being involved in a war abroad. The west and its values, as we used to know it, is also dying.
These things are pretty much the same thing (a thing that can be carried by a man that accurately puts a warhead on a target) just better and more expensive.
edit: Actually the NLOS might not be man portable, but there are other smaller Spike missiles that are.
If you can afford* the Javelins and the TOW's of the world that's what you are going to use otherwise, you are stuck with FPVs.
Afford means not only fiscally, but production capacity wise as well.
Early on: Drones in war!
Then: Ahh EW makes them useless!
Then: Fiber optics defeat EW!
Then: But you can follow the cable!
Then: But you can try to respool the cable with a power drill!
Every week it seems is a new move.
Next Next up: Decoys.
There was a video of a soldier wading through massive amounts of fiber near the front line. Just imagine that for each drone attack there will be 10-50km of fiber dropped on the landscape. It will not rot and stay there until someone cleans it up.
(If wishes were horses I'd rather Russia hadn't invaded a sovereign country in the first place, but we are where we are)
FPVs are man portable guided munitions, not artillery. Pretty much all existing man portable guided anti tank weapons are better than FPVs at their job.
And artillery is better than any of them at it's job. While FPVs can score kills they have minimal suppression effects, when an FPV hits a friendly, everyone else is going to keep moving, because stopping will offer them no benefit from the next one, and the next one might be minutes out. When an artillery round lands everyone hits the deck.
Also these are immature tech... I suspect at least some of the issues identified will be mitigated in time.
Sure, but a Javelin missile costs more than $200K. You can have 200 fpv drones for that price.
Only then can CV do the last part ("terminal engagement"). But that also means it won't go inside a hangar and find the target there.
Assuming the writer and their allegiances are what they say, is any of the info valuable to any of their adversaries?
If current FPV drones are bit lackluster, it doesn't preclude 'next generation' that are purposefully developed for military use won't be useful. Also it sounds like the designation of "FPV drone" is specific to particular family of drones specific in current day and time, which may be something quite else next year. Like, obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone or loitering munition author complains of (capability to hover easily)? Or "reusable" drone with FPV camera?
I don't think it's improvised civilian hobbyist tech. They run autopilots that also fly professional drones and can fly planes.
I think it's mostly that it has to be super cheap, otherwise it doesn't bring value (because other weapons are more efficient if you have more money). If your one-way drone costs 10k dollars, maybe it's too expensive even though it can fly during the night.
And then there are fundamental limitations, like flying in bad weather.
> obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone
But a reusable drone won't go inside a hangar (because at this point it probably won't come out). If your drone can go somewhere, drop something and come back, doesn't it mean that another class of weapons could do this job?
More autonomy, but MUCH more expensive. Thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per use. The issue is indeed using mass-produced consumer drones. It's a bit like the widespread use of "technicals" in some conflicts: yes, a pickup truck with a .50cal in the back is inferior to tanks or armored cars, but it's also much, much cheaper.
There's a bit of a "Sherman vs. Tiger" thing that's been going on since the dawn of industrialised warfare. Is it better to have a more effective weapon that you can only afford a few of, or lots of cheaper ones?
The US doctrine approach to the problem would simply be a set of B2 bunker buster decapitation strikes on Russian military HQs, but of course that option is not available to Ukraine. They can't even manage Iraq-war-style wave of SEAD strikes followed by unit level CAS. The air war has kind of stalemated with neither side having conventional air superiority and both being vulnerable to the other's anti-air.
> As a result, training a highly proficient operator can take months. A standard, base-level course for Ukrainian drone pilots takes about five weeks
A 155mm (dumb, unguided) shell would set you back 5-8K USD. That's before the propellant charge, fuse and amortization of the artillery piece and its 5 man crew.
That would not be possible because it has become basically impossible to bring in vehicles close to 5-10 kms of the front-lines because of the, well, drones. And you need to carry ammunition to those mortars with something, preferably not how the Vietnamese did it in the jungle (i.e. using brute human force).
Just check this snippet from a recent article in the FT:
> “'At this point, you’re a lucky man if you drive 5km from the front line and your car is still operational,' a Ukrainian drone unit commander deployed in eastern Donetsk region told the Financial Times. He said his men now sometimes had to walk up to 15km at night to reach their positions...
> In the past weeks, Ukrainian supply trucks have reportedly been hit by Russian drones on the road linking Kramatorsk to Dobropillia, some 30km from the fighting. On both sides of the front line, roads are being covered with anti-drone nets in an attempt to stop fibre optic drones."
This comes from Ukrainian guys still fighting this war, not from a Western war-tourist like the guy who wrote this article.
This seems to directly contradict this direct quote from the recent FT article I linked to:
> At this point, you’re a lucky man if you drive 5km from the front line and your car is still operational
It's all technically feasible up to "choosing wisely".
A decade later, automated fuel flow was standardised and aircraft were flying twice as fast and high.
Sure, maybe. Or maybe it will be like Musk announcing what Teslas will be capable of in 6 months. We don't know, and the author doesn't pretend that they do. Don't forget that drones have been used in this war for years, and the vast majority of the drone industry has already pivoted to the military because it's easier to make money there. So it's not exactly "brand new technology".
But my point is that the author just says "from what I've seen, here is how it looks". And it seems like it has value.
3 years of usage is brand new. Neither Ukraine nor Russia have been designing and producing purpose-built FPV drones since the beginning (I assume things are well underway now). It's a bunch of consumer shit thrown together, which makes it kind of incredible that they work as well as they do.
An equivalent would be something like taping an assault rifle to a small Cessna and dominating with that. And then you saying that "maybe the technology will not improve".
Usage, sure. But the technology is not. Those drones are flying smartphones. We have already had mass-produced consumer drones for more than a decade. We don't use them because they are new, we use them because they are cheap and accessible.
I am not sure what you call "consumer shit" here. They go for cheap FPV drones precisely because they are cheap. But the autopilot running in them can fly a Cessna. We can make them fly longer (they will be bigger), we can use better radios, we can add thermal cameras and bigger payloads. We can add GPUs and AI capabilities. All that we have, but then it doesn't cost 500$ anymore.
> An equivalent would be something like taping an assault rifle to a small Cessna and dominating with that.
Or maybe you see an assault rifle and say "Look at this rifle; it's only the beginning! In a couple years it will have wings and it will drop heavy bombs before returning to base, because it will be reusable". And I'm saying: we already have fighter jets; they are just more expensive.
He talks as if reusable drones are a completely different category, that they are all toys designed for enthusiast racers… Generally he implies that a myriad arbitrary technical details are fundamental limitations of this paradigm, it’s a strange mindset.
Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20% accounting for environmental factors and faults in manufacturing. How likely is it that a mortar does anything? Or a soldier with a rifle? Or anything else?
> When I joined the team, I was excited to work with a cutting-edge tool.
It sounds like he was imagining some kind of scifi adventure, but it’s always been clear that they are using cheap drones with tech that has been commonplace for a decade. And that’s completely fine, it’s intentional.
That's the whole question, and that's kind of the point that the article raises: the success rate does not matter. What matters is the cost. At the same cost, can you do more damage with other weapons or not?
What even comes close to the success rate of a drone to hit a particular moving target? And you can do it while hidden 10km away with a lightly trained operator. And manufactured cheaply, safely and quickly by unskilled labor, and easily transported to the front and hand-carried by troops.
Any kind of alternative, like precision bombing or sniping, or just getting close and shooting at it, must be much more costly, particularly when you also account for the cost of the equipment used, even if it is reusable, and the training, risk and human cost.
That's why you see videos trying to go in open hatches and the like. And that's why you are seeing cope cages. It doesnt matter how many chains or steel plates you weld on to your tank if you are hit by a TOW or a Javelin, it's still going to get you. They can penetrate more than a meter of steel.
But the FPV is carrying a DPCIM or a small RPG it's much less likely to penetrate a tanks or an apc armor.
> What matters is the cost.
Logistics matter too. How many FPVs can a company carry? How many fit in a pickup? Do you need a truck load to kill a tank? If you need like 10 to kill a tank, you need to do 10 attacks, either 10 people attacking the same target in quick succession or one guy 10 times.
A Javelin is pretty much one hit one kill, and the hit rate is supposedly at about 89%. So you need like one or two to kill a tank.
From what I have heard, bigger heavier reusable drones, that release their bigger payload are more effective than FPVs.
Take those extremely high kill rates with a massive grain of salt.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/08/re-ass...
Javelin consumption rates early in the war (500/day) do not match Russian loss rates if the system was ~90% effective. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ukraine-us-reque...
My first thought was, why not use the easier mode (press forward to go forward, back to go back, etc.)? But looking at those war videos, these drones always come at an angle towards the target. And in that sense, it's easier to use the more difficult helicopter mode. What I mean is, once you know the helicopter mode, it's easier to do this kind of maneuver than using the "easy mode".
Aside from radio jamming, I have not seen an actual defense against a strong EMP.
To defend against an EMP wiping out your drone swarm, you would have to invest in shielding etc which would remove them from the class of small cheap drones.
Idk if anyone can speak about this, but to me this doesn't seem like a problem that these types of drones can overcome.
Yeah Ukraine isn't working with the best tech; it's a doctrine of desperation rather than preparation. But they discovered something effective and it will change the way wars are fought in the future.
They didn't really. TOW's are a thing from the 70s. They are essentially the same thing, but instead of electric rotors they are using a rocket motor. Switchblades existed before this conflict too, if loitering is the measure we are going with.
It's a hacked together solution to a real problem they are having, lack of artillery shells and more reliable munitions. And well done to them.
But a country with the benefit of time and deep pockets is going to come up with more reliable, more effective solutions.
We are seeing the Russians turn to drones as well, but they also burnt their stockpiles of other weapons and are in an emergency too. And additionally they have also doubled their artillery shell production.
That's just not true. I've not seen a TOW chase around a guy in a field, well not on r/UkraineWarVideoReport at least.
I keep telling people that the terrain and the strategies that Russians use is the primary reason for the effectiveness. Mortars and artillery already handle the same requirements as the author says. The reason they are effective in 2024-25 is that the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running over vast fields / unarmoed vehicles driving over known routes is the only way Russians make progress. For a moving target they are great, but multiple moving targets would get shredded by competent artillery anyway.
Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
By far the best use of drones still is as battlefield recon/fire correction to adjust existing artillery/mortar capabilities.
Source: I’m one such drone hobbyist and I’ve watched way too much footage from the front. None of what i’m writing is in absolute terms. I just don’t see the same way as commenters in the public who think they are a checkmate for any combat situation. The incompetence of the Russian forces caught everyone by surprise, but they have learned. My country’s border with Russia is heavily forested and not as flat as Russia. The drones are not able to go through the canopy. Infrared recon is a way better choice than FPV suicide drones.
Citation needed.
The huge border between Russia and Ukraine is completely flat grassland. This means that to Russia, Ukraine joining NATO is an unacceptable risk because that border is impossible to defend against NATO tank invasion, and the flatness go all the way to Moscow.
A lot of people on internet keep poking fun at Russia inadequate tanks as "proof" Russia is stupid for invading with such crappy gear. Russia is very well aware of this, and is why they invaded in first place, they know of Ukraine joins NATO any military exchange with NATO (like what happened between Iran and Israel) would need to immediately become nuclear because their existing army can't defend the huge open flat terrain against NATO equipment.
Did you see the videos of a drone dropping a shitload of thermite on a forest canopy? [0]
> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
Most nations have cellular networks that penetrate buildings and forests just fine. In fact, Ukraine used the Russian cellular network for their recent attack deep behind enemy lines.
I'm not saying this will always be possible, but it's not hard to see that line of sight communication is not the end of the line for military drone control. There are many routes for providing an ad hoc line of communication if you don't just use consumer-level tech.
The thermite drones do attack forested areas on the farmlands, but the forests I talk about are tens or hundreds of kilometers wide. You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.
Your video shows something that an artillery corps could accomplish just as easily and not at all be prone to EW.
Granted, moving indirect fire is probably more expensive than a single fpv drone dropping a thermite bomb, but at scale indirect fire is far cheaper, more effective, and critically not prone to EW.
The artillery, while destructive, is not going to be nearly as accurate. If you want artillery to hit something on the move accurately you want something like a laser adjusted Excalibur round.
The drone is actually extremely efficient.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1351804050035499...
The drones now are using fibre optic cables with the reel mounted on the drone. Having the reel on the drone avoids snagging issues and the fibre itself avoids EW jamming and line of sight issues.
Heck, I could build that with hugginface (I will never do that) in a few evenings if you are ok to blow up the wrong target with a single digit percentage.
echoangle•4h ago
They aren't really using VR headsets, right? The FPV goggles I know are just a screen showing the camera image without any virtual reality.
mog_dev•3h ago
wkat4242•3h ago
palata•3h ago
Also it's not like the pilot has to be exposed.
originalvichy•2h ago