And more importantly: isn't napalm the solution? Instead of dropping them from planes you could put the stuff inside some rockets and keep the first few enemy lines burning for days.

>or is the situation in Ukraine is somehow exceptional, and we are unlikely to see it repeated elsewhere? The Russo-Ukrainian war consists of nothing but exception after exception. This is more like a civil war in how it's being fought than an international conflict, because both Russia and Ukraine are more like siblings who don't get along than true enemies. Russians spend more time capturing Ukrainian PoWs in trenches than they do shooting them during trench-clearing and the Russians are trying to minimize casualties and environmental damage (flammenwarfen of entrenched Ukrainian forest positions aside), and because of the power dynamic, Russia doesn't want to commit their full military resources to the conflict while Ukraine doesn't have military resources to commit. This gives Ukrainians the "advantage" in that trenches slow down the Russians and protect them from artillery while Russia is too chicken shit to take major losses in a war that they can take 20 years fighting if they need to anyways (and it's training up an entire generation of veteran conscripts for use in future conflicts). The second a war kicks off between two "modern" countries where neither particularly cares about "looking good" or limiting casualties is the moment a lot of what is happening in this war stops being common sense. When the guy in charge of the missile buttons doesn't care about collateral damage, or the field commander has orders to "take X position regardless of casualties," then a lot of what makes the tactics of this war effective (for both sides) goes out the window because they are free to use their weapons as intended. Drones will probably be a staple of war for the next 10-20 years because the functional military theory for the last 80 years was that drones are a one-trick pony who only fill a niche because nobody bothers filling in defenses for that niche. They aren't all that hard to counter, but you have to pour money into R&D to counter them which is a money sink that only helps you for one or two wars before becoming obsolete tech. Once they become enough of a nuisance, the money will flow into destroying them and we will be back at stage 1. Trenches will always be in style to some limited extent because they are cheap and do their job against artillery. The earth is a great shock absorber regardless of where you are and bunker buster bombs, while easy to produce, are not cost-effective for dealing with a handful of entrenched mobiks. They never really fell out of favor, it was just the wars that have been fought for the last century were either in places with natural ground cover (mountains), urban environments where trenches are annoying to build, or against "primitives" (read: intelligent farmers without access to high-tech equipment like missiles/artillery) where wire fencing and some corrugated steel walls did the job just fine.

>>55576 Napalm and other chemical agents are a solution, but they are best reserved for either when you're losing and honor becomes a meaningless word, or when you don't care about collateral damage.

How much longer until the first confirmed kill of an aircraft by an unmanned aircraft and will it be a Houthi multi-quadcopter nigger rig with an old Igla strapped on for ebin popup attacks against Saudi Apaches? Assuming air to air capable drones do emerge, could this have knockdown effects on the civilian sector in the form of unmanned fixed-wing cargo aircraft? The FAA wants to counter demografics decline by legitimizing single-pilot operation of larger aircraft so why not cut out the middleman entirely on planes that aren't carrying any passengers to begin with? Would make it easier to blame 9/11 2: Electronic Boogaloo on muh Russian h4x0rs.

>>55591 Haven't Ukrainians already rammed loitering Russian aircraft with drones and vice versa?

As for unmanned shipping planes, aircraft are basically at that point anyways. The only reason they really have a pilot is in case something goes horribly wrong and for managing traffic before the aircraft is in the air. It's more likely that drones will be remotely shut down than outright hacked. Hacking a plane to do something requires a pretty consistent connection that makes it easier to trace someone (thus accountability). Jamming it up mid-air so it just drops out of the sky is much more stealthy and easier to do.

>>55592 No there was one attempt to ram a helicopter but helis are faster. Russians are apparently also using helicopters now to intercept drones flying into russia proper.

>>55593 Do you think soon some RAND tier braintrust will convince the Pentagon that AI drones should be a thing and before we all realize it the F-35's go full Skynet? Only the retarded version.

>>55589 Pretty much everything that i want to say is already said by this guy. The only thing that can't be countered is the Drone's surveillance and reconnaissance ability. Everyone on the squad level has the ability to deploy a drone, and able to spot artillery at any time. So basically, the survivability onion got one of it's layers permanently gutted by tech. >>55601 >Muh AI I'll wait till they can do more than making wonky art and answering questions. Reminder that running ChatGPT costs $700000 every fucking day just to make an 'AI' that scrapes every search engine to answer something only to make shit up at the end for some reason. I mean really, AI right now is really just a glorified program brute forcing data by the millions and hashing up an answer. No fucking way a $20 subscription service will cover that.

>>55601 Lancet supposedly already has AI powered target recognition and autopilot for operating when jammed. Other newer drones have similiar systems. We are already there.

How much potential do submarine drones hold? I wonder if AI may one day reach the point where they can LARP as whales.

>>55652 In theory high potential. In practice water is bad for signals, and the types of signals we can send through water well are highly visible to the enemy.

>>55652 In the same way as the flying mines we've got now, there probably will be autonomous ship hunters for denying waters and I can't see it not being very cost effective

>>55657 >and the types of signals we can send through water well are highly visible to the enemy. Signals through the air aren't magically invisible. Just like with Sonar, if the enemy is looking in the right direction at the right frequencies, and has the sensitivity to see the signal, they'll see it.

>>55660 Our directional microwave transmitters are many times more effective than our directional sound transmitters.

I wonder how workable it is now. On one hand, taking out a stationary gun seems to be quite easy with all the drones and whatnot. On the other hand, even towed guns seem to work quite well in Ukraine from what I gather. >>55590 Is napalm really on the same level as mustard gas?

>>55699 It's arguably worse. Mustard gas kills surrounding foliage, but the extra sulphur in the ground acts as a fertilizer for wild plants (the ground is too contaminated for crop-growing for a while though). In comparison Napalm both creates plastic-based burn scars (prevents soil absorption of carbon) and also salts the earth because of the byproducts leading to defoliation/land erosion because nothing can grow there for a long time.

>>55589 /thread The main reason drones see so much success is because A: They are cheap enough that even shitholes can afford a dozen or two of them B. They let you monitor the enemy from the sky 24/7 and drop cheap missiles at them C. Most MALE drones' altitude is too high for current gen manpads to lock on to, and most countries only field long range AA systems (Patriot, S-300s, etc). This means that there's a hole in the air defence bubble that drones are currently exploiting. Previously almost everyone had SPAAGs. These were made for fucking up helicopters, which means they also get to fuck up drones. We see that in action in Ukraine, with TORs and Gepards being very effective at shooting drones and loitering munitions. Mind you these are outdated SPAAGs and were never equipped with anti-drone systems, yet they're still effective because drones are essentially tiny helicopters but without all the high tech systems that helicopters normally come with. Arms manufacturers knew about the threat of drones for years now. Almost every anti-drone SHORAD you see marketed today was already made years ago. It's just that countries are braindead and slow to adapt (as usual). I've said this before, arms manufacturers make for better generals than actual generals. They're always up to date with weapons technology and they know who buys what, from whom and in what quantities.

>>55699 Self-propelled howitzers killed the towed AT gun. The Soviets just refused to acknowledge this fact for 40 years, probably for ideological reasons (as your quote demonstrates, the Soviets were often more concerned with enforcing loyalty than they were with actually winning battles).

>>55589 >the field commander has orders to "take X position regardless of casualties," then a lot of what makes the tactics of this war effective (for both sides) goes out the window because they are free to use their weapons as intended. I though hohols have been trying to advance regardless of causalities for the last few months, but it doesn't seem to be very effective.

>>55750 The upper command has painted it that way, but it's implicitly understood by most Ukrainian grunts that if you dig the ditches and keep your head down, you will only get killed/maimed by RNG and the Russians will take you as a PoW if they reach your positions. Most of the ideologically driven Hohols are dead at this point outside of upper commanders who never show up on the battlefield. If the Russians acted even half like what Hohol leadership paints them out to be, the Ukrainian forces would be much more ferocious. They aren't and their deaths are largely from mines/artillery, E.G. "bad luck" or "wrong place at the wrong time."

>>55749 Many things killed towed guns. First it was weight. Then it was shaped charges. Then it was the time needed to deploy it, and the final nail in the coffin were guided munitions. There is no benefit to towed AT guns or howitzers. They belong to a bygone era. >but muh cost Cost is irrelevant if the weapon and its crew get obliterated the moment they go to the front. >Need a truck to tow the weapon and the ammunition >Need to spend a minimum of 7 - 8 minutes to deploy the weapon and start firing >No protection for the crew, or the ammunition >Spend another 7 minutes to load everything back into the truck and slowly drive away Or you could have just made an SPG with an autoloader and MRSI capability that deploys in 45 seconds, unloads an entire magazine in 1 burst and drives away. You want to see what happens to towed weapons? Go look at the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict. The Armenians got absolutely roflstomped. Their only success was destroying a couple of Azeri tanks using ATGMs because the Azeris didn't detect those in time (being portable, small and all). If they had towed guns instead of ATGMs they wouldn't even have those few kills to brag about. The least retarded "modern" towed anti-tank gun is the Russian 2A45M Sprut-B. They made it light enough to be air dropped for paratroopers and it also has it's own little engine so it can propel itself (albeit very slowly). But it's still shit, because it isn't an SPG.

>>55767 >Sprut-B The 2S25 Sprut-SD was when the planners pulled their head out of their asses. >Towed They still have a place in extremely difficult terrain like the arctic or third world shitholes with no industrial base, but at that stage it's just smalls arms fights with airstrikes. I await the day we get exoskeletons that can be modified to act as a SPAAG with a radar and a 30mm. Or three man exo teams carying a 130mm direct fire weapon.

>>55769 I have to imagine there's going to be better ways of using power armour than having a three man team running around with a massive tube.

>>55731 >with TORs and Gepards being very effective at shooting drones and loitering munitions. Not really, last time they showed Gepard it had markings of 7 Geran shotdowns, which is kind of pathetic considering the time it was operating in the theatre and how drones are spammed.

>>55767 >"I'm not even a slut for towed artillery" t. anon b-b-but you could give one a gassy little putt-putt turbine and some servos and then it could make it's own way home like one of those toy robots that falls over/into things a lot... /reads the gun bio >minimum crew required to operate: 7 >it takes Sergei, Pietr, Blyat and four MORE people just to get my little towed waifu to fire one off but I still love her anon stop breaking my heart

>>55848 I guess saying they were "very" effective was quite the stretch, but they are confirmed to be capable of shooting down drones and some loitering munitions. Ukraine is requesting more of them. Considering that these were originally made to detect and shoot big ass helicopters, these are pretty good results.

>>55775 >efficency Doesn't mean they wont try. My best guess is some sort of large caliber (120mm?) shoulder direct fire/at munution like the with extra rounds carried on the chasis.

Is it possible to CNT top armor a SPG to the point it can return fire after taking a direct hit from a 155mm shell? And on that note, wouldn't a hard-kill APS fug itself by intercepting a 155mm HE shell from the top due to the turret-mounted FC radar in current iterations?

>>55887 >Is it possible to CNT top armor a SPG to the point it can return fire after taking a direct hit from a 155mm shell? Yes >wouldn't a hard-kill APS fug itself by intercepting a 155mm HE shell from the top due to the turret-mounted FC radar in current iterations? Rheinmetall's APS has multiple radars spread around the vehicle that are protected from small arms fire and artillery shrapnel. It should be fine. It's the jewish Trophy that would knock itself out if it attempted to intercept an artillery shell.

>>55987 So a future where SPGs engage in downtrench counterbattery contests while AFC Fresh Fruits with laser APS LARP as Hans-Joachim Marseille in the skies above is indeed possible?

>>55988 >downtrench counterbattery contest There won't be contests, nor much counterbattery happening. SPGs will empty one magazine from their maximum engagement distance and quickly drive away.

>>56033 NIGGER!

>>56033 Imagine being sent to war by kikes and commanded by a nigger, it doesn't get more american than that, kek.

>Is this really the state of warfare now, or is the situation in Ukraine is somehow exceptional, and we are unlikely to see it repeated elsewhere? yeah, as long as lads have a 1-2km range simple hand-held/backpack radar (not too difficult to make in the field either if required and the operator knows what he's doing) with a shotgun with birdshot/7mm buckshot no drone will be able to resist as they fly relatively low (enough to get hit by birdshot/buckshot) if you get in a squad of 10, 2 lads with their main rifles, disposeable AT and their shotguns as their secondaries to protect against drones, you're good to go (use some ultra-light semi-auto shotguns with 6-8 shells in the mags and ggez - MP-153 as example for the ruskies) for convoys and such, use a shotgun with mags that can allow ~35 shells to protect against drone sworm attacks (at least 2 such shotguns per convoy) also, those saying that "radar systems are complex and shite" - a guy literally trained AI to radiolocate individuals accurately with a WiFi router; it ain't hard, it's just a bit of tinkering and engineering and you'd be good to go - a couple of plastics, copper, big old batteries and a reporpused old (nokia, samsung) phone and boom, you're good to go

>>56033 Why are you posting this in the drones thread, you double-nigger? We have news/meta/qtddtot/kanteen for this double-plus good malarkey.

>>56061 >drones thread This is the modern warfare thread. 'non should have made a drones thread if he wanted to strictly talk drones. Who is commanding and what their expertise is, is relevant to any (immediate) future engagements.

>>56062 If that's how you want to play it, cope.

>>56064 >How you want to play it Who drove a stick up your ass this morning? Fucking tranny.