Drone Tactics: The State Of Modern Warfare

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Days after the war in Ukraine began, a friend of mine posted a dream on another forum that suggested drone use would be the defining factor of the war. Likening the Russians to bullies in the dream, the narrative went as follows:

There were little cartoon girls and little boys, in real like settings. It was a huge building with an upstairs and downstairs. The little girls' area was downstairs and was all forest/woods. Upstairs looked more like a military base. The boys were up there. They had this long box in the middle of their play area with a lot of missiles inside. They were taking the missiles out and bombing the girls' play area. The girls were smart though. They had this flat looking drone and sent it carrying a missile up the stairs. It seemed to be invisible to the boys. The drone dropped a missile the same size, into the box of missiles, and the entire play area exploded upstairs. One of the boys looked seared, but was excited/happily telling what looked like the leader of the girls downstairs about it.

Though seemingly a "childish" analogy, the above has played out in the past several months that have passed. The huge building represented the entire theatre war, i.e. the nation of Ukraine, with the "girls area" of forest and woods being a reference to the countryside, most of which was and still is controlled by Ukraine. The boys area (the "upstairs") was "more like a military base," and this is clearly a reference to Russia in that the Russians have a much bigger military.

As I stated when this dream was published, the Russians were depicted as bullies in this dream because the whole plan of Vladimir Putin from the outset was to bully Zelensky and his government into capitulating, only as the dream suggested, it did not go that way. Instead, through better use of technology (drone use specifically), the "special operation" backfired and led to a full scale war in which Russia has now lost a vast amount of both men and equipment, by their own admission.

There are other elements in this dream that were confirmed, such as the suggestion that there would be spies embedded in Russian intelligence who would be secretly working for the Ukrainians, and report back to them about the effect their tactics and attacks were having on the enemy. And it was reported not long into the war that Putin had several of the war-planners in his military intelligence agency placed under house arrest. There is also the suggestion that despite the Russians initially being the "bullies" in this conflict, they actually held the moral and spiritual high ground in the conflict, as depicted by their being "upstairs," which is consistently used in dreams to symbolize being on a higher level spiritually, and a closer look at how the two governments view Christian morality makes this apparent. But what I have found most interesting is the dream's focus on drone use being the deciding factor in the war, and how much this has already played out on the battlefield.

The following thread will be dedicated to posting videos on how important a role drones now play in modern warfare, and the effect they have been having on the Russian-Ukraine war. I will be including videos on the current state of the art in drone warfare, but I will start here with one on how drone use escalated quickly at the beginning of the war.

 
Some articles on current drone use:

The use of these drones en masse creates an offense-defense imbalance where the attacker has a distinct advantage in terms of cost and risk. And the more drones that an attacker can employ simultaneously, the harder this becomes for the defender. Despite soothing assurances that short-range air defense systems are on their way, even the most sophisticated of such systems are unlikely to keep pace to counter the proliferation of expendable but increasingly sophisticated drones...

The TB2 is a “blue collar drone”: inexpensive enough for mass production and thus expendable. Mass production gives it the capability to be employed in swarms designed to overwhelm the target acquisition process of any adversary. And yet, the TB2 is also remarkably sophisticated. In addition to providing identification and targeting data from high-resolution onboard systems that can include a signal’s intelligence capability, the platform carries smart, micro-guided munitions that kill multiple targets autonomously and simultaneously...

In engagements over Syria and Libya, as well as the one in Nagorno-Karabakh, the TB2 alone demonstrated the ability to successfully challenge the most advanced IADS that nations can muster. Systems such as the S-300PS, Buk-M2, Tor-M2, and Pantsir-S1 — used in conjunction with electronic warfare systems such as the Avtobaza-M, Repellent-1, Borisoglebsk 2, and Groza-S — are designed to deny airspace to the latest generation of Western strike aircraft. None of these systems proved capable of stopping the TB2 — a revelation that Russian manufacturers still try to deny, even when their claims are refuted by high-resolution full-motion video from no less than three conflicts. The fact that a relatively light and inexpensive drone can not only evade but actively search out and destroy such systems while incurring few losses represents an evolutionary leap in the employment of air power and a tectonic shift in the conduct of modern war.


The New Face of War: Devastating Drone Attacks in Ukraine Have Implications for the US Military in the Middle East

Ukraine's army is using a nimble 'game-changing' drone called The Punisher that has completed scores of successful missions against the Russians, say reports

Ukraine's small combat drone "The Punisher" destroys Russian supply lines
 
The real threat behind drones is that they are what's called "loitering munitions," which means they can hover over a target or series of specific targets for an extended period of time before striking at the best moment possible. In other words, they inflict precision strikes that are extremely efficient.

The following video makes this apparent:


While the use of smaller drones is effective on a smaller scale, some are designed to take out heavy armor as well, and this is where the Russians can get hit the hardest. The US has been sending Switchblade 600 "kamikaze" drones to the Ukraine, along with hundreds of Switchblade 300s. This is in part why there has been a higher than average number of generals and commanders in the Russian army getting killed, and why Russian operations have gotten bogged down in many instances. When used in combination with drones equipped with communication intercepting technology (IMSI catchers), by matching unit to unit communication with how units are reacting to orders, the operators of heavy duty tank-killers can figure out who the unit commanders are based on unit movement, and take out generals and unit commanders with devastating precision. Most frontline commanders are now in tanks rather than lighter armored vehicles, in part because the smaller drone systems cannot pierce heavy armor. But the latest 600 models the Pentagon is now sending can cover twice the distance, hover over target three times longer, and are specifically designed to be tank destroyers. It presents immense problems militarily, in particular for the Russians, because their military structure is so top-down. When their command structure is taken out, it takes them longer to regroup, making it possible to take out entire columns before they know what hit them.

As the following report states regarding the development of drone warfare currently going on in Ukraine, "What we are watching is no less than the real time evolution of warfare."


A recent kill through use of a Kamikaze 600.

 
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Now we get to more of what is going on now. Because the conflict has transitioned to more open field warfare, heavy artillery is being used, and drones are being used to spot for artillery units, making them much more effective. While these videos contain footage of Ukrainian drone-guided artillery attacks, it should be kept in mind that the Russians are using drones for the exact same purposes.



So what is the cutting edge right now? I believe it is this drone right here, made by a Ukrainian company exclusively for the Ukrainian army. It can only take out lighter armored targets and strategic targets as of yet, but it is virtually silent in the air, virtually impossible to see (especially with cloud cover overhead), inexpensive to build, it's reusable, and easy to assemble, disassemble and transport. If the Ukrainians can develop this technology to the place where they can effectively take out armored vehicles with it, the game will then be over, IMO. It will simply be a matter of if and when they can produce enough of them to end the war.

 
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This was in the works two decades ago. It's an ada thing.

Uav
 
Air defense artillery. Uav goes back to the late 60s

The predator drone concept is old. Those are big and fly low, and can carry nukes.

We trained to engage these things but those were the size of a RCA not a drone.

What's an ADA thing? :)

I'd respond to your posts more often, btw, but you remind me of a friend I have elsewhere. He doesn't always explain himself and what he is saying very clearly either, Lol.
 
Air defense artillery. Uav goes back to the late 60s


The predator drone concept as old .those are not small and fly low and can carry nukes.

We trained to engage these things but those were the size of a rca not a drone .

I see what you were talking about now. Yeah, but one of the biggest differences is in the affordability. A Predator is similar to the Bayraktar TB2s they're using, but both those systems are extremely expensive compared to the smaller stuff the Ukrainians are building. As I was stating in Post #4 and as shown in the first video in Post #3, they are using stuff that costs $200,000 a piece, which is a lot cheaper to reproduce than systems that cost $100,000,000 a piece to make.
 
I see what you were talking about now. Yeah, but the big difference is in the affordability. A Predator is similar to the Bayraktar TB2s they're using, but both those systems are extremely expensive compared to the smaller stuff the Ukrainians are building. As was stating in Post #4 and as shown in the first video in Post #3, they are using stuff that costs $200,000 a piece, which is a lot cheaper to reproduce than systems that cost $100,000,000 a piece to make.

Nothing in war is static and what was used in the prior wars often won't work in the next .

Cell phones made into detonators or bombs, garage door or fobs as triggers .
 
nothing in war is static and what was used in the prior wars often won't work in the next .

This I agree with. It just struck me as running a parallel with what happened during WWII when the world was getting a wake up call (in action) to the fact that the Battleship was no longer the capital ship of advanced navies. In fact, they were largely becoming irrelevant. The aircraft carriers were what mattered.

Not that it's quite there yet. I think drone technology has a ways to go yet, but it's kind of amazing to watch armies rolling this expensive hardware out on to the battlefield only to have it get blown to bits by stuff a teenage kid could deploy from the comfort of his living room couch, or groups of trained soldiers getting taken out by stuff that could be picked up at your local hobby shop.
 
This I agree with. It just struck me as running a parallel with what happened during WWII when the world was getting a wake up call (in action) to the fact that the Battleship was no longer the capital ship of advanced navies. In fact, they were largely becoming irrelevant. The aircraft carriers were what mattered.

Not that it's quite there yet. I think drone technology has a ways to go yet, but it's kind of amazing to watch armies rolling this expensive hardware out on to the battlefield only to have it get blown to bits by stuff a teenage kid could deploy from the comfort of his living room couch, or groups of trained soldiers getting taken out by stuff that could be picked up at your local hobby shop.

Not new. I have served overseas.

We dealt with IEDs.
 
Not new. I have served overseas.

We dealt with IEDs

Yes. One of the videos was talking about that. Understand, I'm not arguing that drone use in warfare is somehow "new." The argument being put forth in this thread is that the continued development of drone technology is at the cutting edge of how conventional warfare is now being conducted.
 
Yes. One of the videos was talking about that. Understand, I'm not arguing that drone use in warfare is somehow "new." The argument being put forth in this thread is that the continued development of drone technology is at the cutting edge of how conventional warfare is now being conducted.
As WW1 with it's aviation and tank warfare ,naval battles ,chemical warfare
As ww2 with it's improvement on that and the a bomb

Korea ,with the first use of jet fighters.

Nam with irregular warfare. Not that the earlier wars didn't have it. They did, just not as much.
 
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