I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck
212 comments
·June 26, 2025markandrewj
ashoeafoot
The is also a sort of autonomous targetting for jammers available ? The grandfather of the shaheed was intended to guide itself towardsrrrussian radar aka em sources, so i guess a modern drone should be similar capable on connection loss to rech the disturbing em source.
originalvichy
FPV drones for combat are a hot flash in the pan. They have had a major effect for now, but naturally as these countermeasures evolve, so weakens their effect.
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.
aftbit
The big thing that FPV drones have going for them is that they're ludicrously cheap and easily constructed from relatively basic parts by moderately skilled people.
It's literally cheaper to strap a grenade to an FPV drone and fly it into a tank hatch than it is to fire a single non-precision artillery round, let alone tens or hundreds of them.
Plus, you can deploy your drones remotely from the top of a trunk deep behind enemy lines and fly them into irreplaceable strategic aviation assets with a shot exchange factor better than 1000x.
codedokode
Artillery carries more explosive and is good for destroying buildings and fortifications though.
Nicook
Did you not read the article? One of his major points is that a mortar is significantly cheaper and faster.
UncleEntity
Assuming you have good gun bunnies (term of affection, I assure you) and a spotter on the ground or in the air.
The mortar guys in my old company could put a round into a trashcan with line-of-sight but when someone else is calling in fire then they are more of an area weapon. Assuming that a fire mission is going to involve more than one or two rounds to bracket the target now you're talking more dollars and the people on the ground probably aren't going to stand there and wonder how long it's going to take to hit them.
The way I (and most other people I've heard talk about it) see it is drones are an area denial weapon.
thebruce87m
> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
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.
abracadaniel
I watched the video of one navigating a series of nets to weave its way inside and into the open hatch of a tank. It’s ridiculously impressive.
dizhn
I watched a video of one being destroyed by cutting the trailing fiber optic cable with a pair of scissors. Also impressive.
dinfinity
> I’ve watched way too much footage from the front.
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.
Reubachi
Your linked video is interesting, but I fail to see how this at all differentiates/promotes drone usage versus artillery, indirect fire.
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.
esseph
Think of the fpv drone like a smol guided TOW missile at extremely low cost.
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.
dinfinity
Drone 1 (or any other means) destroys the canopy. Drones 2-10 are no longer hindered by said canopy and deliver their payload with extreme and dynamic precision.
Remember that the argument was basically that drones can do nothing useful in (heavily) forested terrain. They can with a little bit of creativity.
originalvichy
Did you miss the part about signals jamming in the article? The reason the attack on airfields worked is precisely because they operate inland and not on the frontline. Cellular networks not only can be jammed but towers are a priority target. That’s why Starlink is/was so crucial. Even GPS is jammed so independent flight can be impossible with cheap components.
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.
fellowniusmonk
I wonder what the tech gap is to using circular polarized light from the sun as a point of reference for dead reckoning. If Bees use it why not camera systems?
dinfinity
> Did you miss the part about signals jamming in the article?
"Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components)."
The currently used FPV drones use consumer level ass communication methods. Do you also think that current military-grade communication methods can be easily jammed on the battlefield?
Using the consumer level stuff as a reference point and thinking it is somehow SOTA is not going to lead to good conclusions.
> Cellular networks not only can be jammed but towers are a priority target.
The point was that there are plenty of radio signals that work fine and with high bandwidth in the 'problematic' terrain types you mentioned. Having said that, you can't rely on the cellular towers of the enemies of course. You need relay drones to create your own ad hoc cellular network.
> You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.
At what coordinate? The whole point of FPV drones is that the operator can fly close to the target area and only then decide what the best place to strike is. A shell that is 20m off target is just a waste.
The point of destroying the canopy is reducing the attenuation of the signal for other drones to go in and be able to be precise.
general1726
Since fiber optics being used signal jamming is stopping to be a thing. You can fly with a drone into basement and have 4k video.
edm0nd
All of the good footage is in /r/CombatFootage
(for anyone curious)
morkalork
Isn't the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running around the response to artillery in the first place? Any concentration of manpower attracts artillery and if it's significant, HIMARS gets called in. Naturally, the response is to disperse men and make artillery less effective. The response to that is FPVs chasing down the individuals instead. They're a counter to a counter and can't be judged in isolation.
originalvichy
My point is that it is difficult to imagine another peer conflict in a similar geographical type reaching such a level that budgets should be diverted in a major way to develop these devices in the hope that they are some miracle weapon. Layperson politicians read headlines and think they are a first-level counter and not a counter-to-a-counter as you said :)
morkalork
That is true, although I think a lot of what can be invested in, is transferable. Control software, targeting, AI could be adapted to larger or smaller scale drones. Manufacturing capabilities can be as well. ISR drones are pervasive and it used to be uneconomical to shoot down a relatively cheap one, like an Orlan, with something that cost as much or more. Now there's cheap counter-ISR FPVs. I don't think the future is manually guided at all though.
inglor_cz
"Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx."
This is true, but flat open fields are precisely the places where major mechanized battles usually took place. For the very reason that manoeuvering other equipment in complicated terrain is hard.
Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)
potato3732842
>Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)
Fighting through some portion of the Ardennes has been a fairly recurrent theme in central European land warfare since vikings did it in the 800s.
I'm sure if one digs they can find a reference to a roman general doing it too.
inglor_cz
I haven't claimed that there were zero such instances, but my guess is that such battles in difficult terrain may be ~ 5 per cent of the total, if not less. People and animals get exhausted easily in bad terrain, and it is hard to supply the troops. Even mechanical equipment becomes less reliable and more prone to malfunction.
Notably, the German operation Sichelschnitt in 1940 was very successful because the French command considered it unlikely that German Panzers would be able to cross the Ardennes in force, even though the French command was probably well aware of their own military history.
originalvichy
I made the error of emphasizing that I was thinking in a generalized manner of major nations with military tensions with shared borders. A lot of thought should be put towards if simple geography could make this cheap dispenable warfare more expensive than initially due to requirements for repeaters, shielded high-end comms chips or other assistive tech.
aaron695
[dead]
alphabettsy
> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.
Citation needed.
speeder
I saw some fascinating videos explaining that the terrain caused the war in first place.
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.
wltr
>NATO tank invasion
Invasion? Oh my, are you delusional? NATO is a defence alliance, stop consuming Russian propaganda maybe.
null
kjkjadksj
Well if they didn’t bother their neighbors they wouldn’t have to worry about NATO. Seems like a self imposed wound there.
tguvot
3 days after russian invasion or main russian news agency was auto-published article that was supposed to be a victory lap, and promptly removed. it was very briefly mentioned only in few western publications and not many people who speak russian know about it
it gives some insights about reasons for russian invasion. this is english translation . not sure how accurate (don't feel like checking few pages of text), but close enough
https://www.aalep.eu/advent-russia-and-new-world
origin in russian. you can right-click translate it https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...
inglor_cz
I would say that the events of Russo-Ukrainian war have shown that even a lot of tanks (and NATO does not have anywhere near as many as Russia did, the former Soviet stockpile was absolutely massive) aren't the crushing force that they used to be in Manstein's and Guderian's time. Of course Putin is a bit old and may think in old patterns...
On the other hand, I believe Russia made itself very vulnerable by letting its cosmic sector drown in corruption. Nowadays they have fallen so behind the US in launch capabilities that it isn't even funny. Try hiding anything from the fleet of satellites that the US has, or can have if it wishes to.
Starlink may be the single most dangerous technologic development of the 21st century to Russia.
originalvichy
Travel the world or check out your favorite map software, snd look at current hot conflicts and recent ones in the past. You have Iraq and Ukraine/Russia which are relatively flat, then you have Afghanistan or Iran on the opposite side of the spectrum. Even a flat country can have forests too thick for flying wirelessly or with fiber optics.
aqsalose
Many of the issues sound like issues coming from using improvised civilian hobbyist tech and doctrine being in its infancy.
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?
pjc50
Western militaries have things like this: https://greydynamics.com/switchblade-drone-small-spring-load...
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.
daemontus
Ah, the age old question of "1 horse-sized duck vs. 100 duck-sized horses"...
0cf8612b2e1e
This is a Zerg vs Protoss debate.
fennecbutt
Switchblade 2 is $80k usd per unit.
And the only reason for that is that as per usual private companies are making a killing.
You and I could build a similarly functioning device in 6 months with a small team. They're not that smart/advanced, imo.
I think most of the money for these things isn't paid for research/engineering but goes into MBA/investor pockets.
LorenPechtel
There is also the problem that the military tends to go for the best. In some cases that's a good idea (the cost of getting that laser-guided bomb to the release point is well above the cost of the bomb), but when dealing with unmanned units the zerg approach is very often the winner.
Look at Iron Dome. By comparison to other modern SAMs it's abysmal. But that's by design, Israel wasn't looking for a good SAM. They were looking for the cheapest SAM that could hit a sitting duck. But that's what it's facing--ballistic inbounds that have no countermeasures and no ability to evade.
thatguy0900
I was under the impression that while there is a lot of grift, a lot of that was supply chain cost as well. You or I could build one but it would all be sourced in China without vetted supply chain parts or firmware. These Ukraine drones are all off the shelf parts and running who knows what firmware everywhere.
sensanaty
Slightly unrelated, but reading the "product" page is crazy to me. So much about lethal radii, kill zones and stuff like that. Wild, couldn't ever picture myself working on something like this and sleeping well at night
fennecbutt
I would. But I would be hesitant to if I got wind that it was being sold to a bad government, or that my government was a bad government/intended then for misuse.
As a quiet gay nerd I'd love for there to be no war, no bullies. But unfortunately we live in a world where our species evolved from monkeys and we still often act like it. If my usually peaceful tribe needs weapons to defend itself when attacked then I'm all for it. But using those weapons to attack another for any reason other than defense is a nono in my books.
palata
> Many of the issues sound like issues coming from using improvised civilian hobbyist tech
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?
LorenPechtel
And the reusable drone has a serious battlefield limitation that it's extremely vulnerable while positioning to drop it's munition. Very good against something that can't defend itself (we have a lot of video of them dropping stuff into tanks that the crew bailed out of for some reason), but the cost mounts quickly if a soldier with a shotgun can engage it.
bluGill
$10,000 can be cheap for a one way drone. Bombs often cost for more than that. The real question is value, if hitting the target is worth more than the cost of what you hit it with then you have a good value. Taking out a $1000 drone with a $100,000 missile is a good value if that drone is headed for a $1,000,000 building, but if the drone is headed for a cow probably not worth it.
palata
Sure. But isn't that the point of the article? That the author is not sure if they bring as much value as advertised?
oersted
I don’t understand why the author has such a narrow definition of FPV drones.
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.
palata
> Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20%
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?
oersted
Indeed that’s what I meant, it’s a good question. It sounds like the author only saw the cases where mortars or reusable drones had been successful. But I cannot imagine a mortar being more efficient even if one shot is 5x cheaper. Perhaps they are more effective at suppression, but I would be surprised if they really hit anything meaningful more than 5% of the time, similar with most artillery or bombing, or just plain infantry.
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.
throwawayffffas
A hit does not equal a kill. Killing a tank or an apc, takes a lot of hits from an FPV drone due to the small payload. I have heard quoted an average of 16 hits.
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.
LorenPechtel
You realize that a lot of stuff they were sticking on tanks was to defeat the Javelin?
You simply can't put a big enough warhead on a man portable missile to defeat the main armor of a modern tank. Thus you do not actually want to hit the tank--the purpose of the Javelin is to fly *over* the target tank, when it's overhead it's warhead detonates, firing an explosively formed projectile down into the *top* armor of the tank. Those cages were meant to keep the Javelin from getting to the right spot to do that.
bjourne
Ofc but javelin launchers and missiles cost $250k a piece. You get a lot of drones for that price.
oersted
It's a good point, I'm wondering though what the ROI of a Javelin is throughout its lifetime, including training costs. It's not obvious that you end up better off, perhaps.
CapricornNoble
> 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.
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...
inglor_cz
I think we should not discount the psychological effect.
From what I have read from Ukraine vets, ubiquitous drones make you crazy in a way that tank attacks don't. The difference is in their ubiquity. You are likely to encounter a tank relatively infrequently, and have enough time to recuperate between those encounters. But with a sky full of drones 24/7, or close to that, your nerves will give way sooner or later.
This alone may cripple the forward units.
smcameron
> If this type of pre-aborted mission is included in the total, the success rate drops to between 20 and 30 percent. On the face of it, this success rate is bad ...
I disagree with this premise. I suspect that 20 to 30% success rate is not at all bad, but rather excellent. Compare to artillery with shells costing a few thousand each on the low end, to $100k+ for more advanced rounds, with 100s or 1000s fired per casualty.
fdye
Interesting read. Curious how the author feels re: the attack on airbases using shipping containers/drones that was so successful?
Seems to be a unique case that worked especially well for (higher end I'm sure) FPV drones. Getting artillery in on shipping containers would have a higher likelihood of detection. Similarly, the ability to 'guide' in the drones with munitions seemed to allow for greater flexibility during the attack and its effectiveness.
I imagine eventually these cheap FPV's will be augmented with low-cost GPU's allowing for running smallish models and self-guided autonomy. This would seem the next evolution where a commander deploys them in bulk and overwhelms the enemy in a way that can't be jammed like radio-communication. Similarly, horrifying when you consider their eventual use in terrorism scenarios...
literalAardvark
That didn't use FPV drones, they're rather difficult to control at 6000km and they didn't have operators nearby.
Most likely it's the first major deployment of their semi autonomous drone tech, driven "declaratively". They've shown that stuff recently, they probably used it before showing it.
LorenPechtel
The report said they were guided remotely.
I suspect reality is a combination--think RTS game. You give orders to your units but you don't babysit them.
time0ut
I assume this is like a pilot in WW1 reporting how finicky and hard to use bi-planes were. No doubt a bunch of weapons manufacturers have seen this and the special operations Ukraine did in Russia and Israel did in Iran and the wheels of progress are turning and the result will be terrifying.
dingaling
Likewise, ysterday I was reading about Chuck Yeager's first jet flight, in a P-80, and how most of his time was spent manually juggling the fuel flow to prevent the engine either overheating or flaming out. He barely had time to think about actually achieving anything.
A decade later, automated fuel flow was standardised and aircraft were flying twice as fast and high.
palata
What terrifies me is that the next step may be AI swarms, where one side sends thousands of drones at the same time and let each of them autonomously choose what they want to target.
It's all technically feasible up to "choosing wisely".
koonsolo
In a sense it's already happening with the Shahed drones. Maybe not smart AI, but the end result is still the same: you have no clue where they will end up.
FridayoLeary
What's eye opening about the recent iran israel conflict is how drones were used. Iran fired about 1000 drones and israel easily destroyed all but one of them. On the other hand israel used drones to devastating effect.
I'm not sure what to make of that, but it's clear that drones as a primary means of warfare is simply not effective. hamas and hezbolla have no notable successes with drones, except for on october 7 where they used them to great effect to destroy specific machine gun emplacements and a couple of tanks. They will be part of the future, but never the future itself.
lawn
Allegedly there's lots of field tests of these swarms in the war already.
varjag
This tracks with the earlier ~12% drone kill efficiency estimates. However drone is a mass deployment weapon. Ukraine did about 2 million frontline sorties in 2024 and aims for 5 million this year. This 1 out of 9 ratio translates into absolutely devastating damage, that artillery and airstrikes (which are also hardly "easy to use") can only dream of.
Neil44
This is true, but the author also talks about cost e.g. $500 for a drone vs $100 for an artillery shell with far more effect. Surely at the point where the drone has visual on the target you can fire 5 x shells over for massively greater effect on target, and keep the drone flying for the next target, and the next.
varjag
$100 is a cost of a 60mm mortar shell. It is a hand grenade sized munition lobbed from a Pringles can sized weapon to the range of 1-2km. This is generally not the thing that comes to mind when you think of artillery strike.
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.
bluGill
A M107 155mm round weights 95lbs when launched. Assuming that is pure lead (this is false, but lead is very cheap and it gives us numbers to work with) I can buy lead ignots for $2.89/lbs. Which puts us at $293 per rounds in just materials. Since we assume the other materials cost money too, plus there is the energy used to turn ignots into a round, it seems unlikely you can get the cost to much under $1000 no matter how good your mass production is.
hnaccount_rng
Then again the payload of an FPV is much more comparable to the mortar round than to the 155mm one
Neil44
That's interesting thankyou. It's a good google rabbit hole. Apparently we're in surge pricing right now because of Ukraine, and Russian shells are only costing them $1000. It seems they caught us sleeping, manufacturing wise.
glitchc
Mortar is notoriously inaccurate, while a drone is precision guided weapon. To compare apples to apples, a drone needs to be compared to other precision guided weapons. Think Stinger or other TOW missiles instead. Those are at least two orders more expensive.
dfedbeef
This is kind of a 'Muskets are cool but they take too long to reload' vibe.
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.
throwawayffffas
> 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.
_joel
> TOW's are a thing from the 70s. They are essentially the same thing
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.
neilv
> During my time in [...], I collected statistics on the success of our drone operations. I found that [...]
Assuming the writer and their allegiances are what they say, is any of the info valuable to any of their adversaries?
originalvichy
None of what he is saying is that valuable. All of these problems are something a hobbyist fpv drone pilot can share. Add to that, it’s quite old info. If the author didn’t get a chance to see fiber optic drones, they left the fray a long time ago in terms of advancement.
echoangle
> They are controlled by an operator wearing virtual-reality goggles
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
Basically its just screen yes. It's just convenient and more portable to do it this way. Small desktop screen also exist and are used to peek on what the FPV operator is seeing.
wkat4242
Yeah I'd much rather use an xreal air or something. You can still see if someone (or an enemy drone) comes to kill you. AR is much better for this.
palata
Probably you want the pilot to be 100% focused on the piloting. Someone else can look around and try to keep the pilot safe.
Also it's not like the pilot has to be exposed.
Ancapistani
No, the latency is too high.
There are dedicated devices for this - much lighter, external battery (same as the drones use), etc. I use a Skyzone 04X.
originalvichy
They hide in bunkers and have other infantrycwith them if that’s not the case.
TheChaplain
The article talks about signal jammers, but as far as I know most drones there are remote controlled using fiber for exactly that reason?
bluGill
From what I understand Ukraine is not using many fiber drones because there are other disadvantages. They can have them, but they mostly choose to use radio anyway. Russia is using a lot of fiber drones.
8note
> Today, some Ukrainian and Russian units are also using drones controlled by fiber-optic cable, rather than radio, though I had no personal experience with this type of drone in my unit
rich_sasha
There are... I think they aren't unproblematic - the fibre can get caught on things etc. Also I read of instances where the opposition can follow the fibre back to find the drone operators.
empiko
Tracing the fiber back is possible only in extremely favorable conditions. The light must hit the cable just right and there cannot be too many cables from previous runs on the battlefield.
dizhn
It's not too bad when they see the drone passing by. I have no idea how often this can happen without being seen though.
FirmwareBurner
Sounds like for fiber optic strikes you gotta do a "shoot and scoot".
orthoxerox
The operators usually use a cordless drill to wind back as much cable as they can after the drone is used.
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jansan
Yes, he writes that after he left the battlefield they became more common.
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.
ataru
I've always wondered if the burning batteries and electronics in the drones have any significant environmental impact when compared to conventional weapons.
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ta1243
I'd rather have old fibre cables and lithium batteries than old unexploded ordinance
(If wishes were horses I'd rather Russia hadn't invaded a sovereign country in the first place, but we are where we are)
troupo
He talks about that in the article
CapricornNoble
There's a really good interview with a Russian drone manufacturer where he talks about how you need to use both.
The fiber-optic drones have small warheads/payloads. They are used to hunt the enemy's EW transmitters. Once the jammers have been suppressed, then the radio-controlled drones with bigger payloads go to work and do the bulk of the damage.
It is interesting hearing feedback from the frontline. Even with the issues, I think it is clear drones are changing modern warfare when you have companies like Anduril. What most people think is coming next is autonomous drones, although I don't morally agree with it. Sorry you had to have this experience, I wish this war would end, too many lives have been lost and it is senseless.