Russia invades Ukraine -- The regional situation

[Snarky_Kong]

Yes, but often times in conversation you have context clues. It’s very clear they’re not talking about a Global Hawk sized UAV.

[Chronos]

Yes, but it’s still not fundamental. They sent a drone with a payload capacity of one human for this mission, because that was all they needed. If they had needed something with a payload capacity of two humans, or ten, they’d have sent something else.

[Pleonast]

The word drone originally meant a remotely operated vehicle. It now gets conflated with quadcopter or autonomous. Unless the context is exceptionally clear, I assume the user probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

[Alessan]

@dtilque

Infiltrating a single soldier is not very useful,

It depends on the circumstances. One guy with a bag of C4 or a targeting laser can be very useful indeed.

[Lumpy]

Lithium batteries created the ability to have a flying vehicle that for the lifetime of its battery charge has a better power/weight ratio than internal combustion engines. This opened up a lot of possibilities.

[dtilque]

@Chronos

@dtilque

Yes, but I expect that a human body is close to the maximum load of a drone.

As I’ve said many times, we need new vocabulary here. A “drone” can be of any size. If you can make a helicopter that can carry twenty soldiers and their gear, then you can make that helicopter into a drone.

But no one’s making any that size right now. The context was of a single person vehicle. so that’s what I responded about.

As far as using a larger vehicle carrying more people for infiltration, the larger they are the easier it is for the enemy to spot and shoot down.

[ParallelLines]

Barely Moderating:

Remember, this is the Politics & Elections threads to discuss the political situation. If we want to get bogged down in Drone details or definitions (outside the ones in use) we have different threads that are probably a better fit.

Could drones make manual small arms obsolete?

Once upon a time firearms revolutionized the human condition. In particular in the context of war they eventually replaced almost all hand-to-hand fighting. Today bayonets and fighting knives are an afterthought or retained for niche situations. Firearms are so ingrained in our very assumptions about armed conflict that we imagine people in the future still using manual small arms, albeit based on beam weapon technology rather than gunpowder and bullets. But are automated drones a new paradigm,…

The Dope on Drones: For Discussions on Combat Drones on all Battlefields and civilian Use

Drones have likely become a major game changer in a number of fields. Currently, their major breakthrough has been military, but we’ve had discussions about them for last mile delivery, rescue, searches (both manhunts and S&R), as well as possible AI controlled drones. It’s become a common topic in many threads, but here’s our own thread to discuss current trends, efficacy, upcoming enhancements, speculative scenarios. Here’s a place to dig into the details without worrying about if it’s appl…

Not telling you to avoid discussion of drones, but we’ve had a half dozen posts on drones and definitions quite divorced from the actual theater, which is the discussion for this thread.

[Pardel-Lux]

Some random data from a German article:
Two hacker groups, Silent Crow and Kiberpartisany BY, breached the Russian statistical agency Rosstat’s servers in early November and, according to their own statements, stole 23 terabytes of data.
Last year, the two groups claimed responsibility for, amongst other things, a cyberattack on the Russian airline Aeroflot.
According to the hackers, 450,100 Russian soldiers lost their lives between the begin of the major offensive on 24 February 2022 and 28 August 2026. There is no way to verify this independently, but this gives an idea of when the data breach took place.
Since the start of the war, Russia has brought 73,080 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory under its control. This means that, on average, more than six Russian soldiers had to die for every square kilometre, or almost 16 per square mile.
Nationwide, the war is now the fourth leading cause of death.

[Pardel-Lux]

Copying my own post from the Iran war thread, because it fits here just as well. There, because of the perpetrators (according to the French Foreign Minister), here, because of whom I suspected:

Here is one breaking news (link in German) I did not expect:

France believes Iran is behind the recent cyber-attacks on the refrigeration systems of French supermarket chains. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the Iranian ambassador to France had been summoned “to lodge a very strong protest against this extremely serious act”.
[…]
“This is the first large-scale cyberattack carried out for the purpose of sabotage on French territory, and it constitutes a serious breach of the nation’s interests and the security of the French people,” said Barrot.
It will therefore not go unpunished. “We will impose sanctions at European level against all those responsible for this attack and take all further appropriate and necessary measures – both public or covert – to respond to this attack and deter those who might wish to repeat it.”
[…]
In early November, the French blood bank was the target of such an attack. According to US media reports, several incidents are also under investigation in the United States. The European Commission convened a crisis meeting. Until now it was not clear who was behind the attacks.

[aceplace57]

Buckle up, this could happen before New Years. Trump will need to strike his dirty deal before the new Congress is sworn in.

I’m not sure if the new Congress can stop a Trump deal. Trump will claim it’s not a treaty. Treaties require a two-thirds Senate majority to ratify.

Link Trump could be about to sell out Ukraine. Europe must get its act together, fast | Paul Taylor | The Guardian

Strip away the rhetoric and both appear to be talking about cutting a deal with Putin behind the backs of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders to carve up eastern Europe. Such a deal might hand Moscow permanent control of occupied Ukrainian territory – possibly more than it currently holds – and relief from western economic sanctions. It could also deny the countries of eastern Europe the right to choose their own security arrangements, by ruling out any further enlargement of Nato and possibly rolling back some of Nato’s eastern front deployments. In return, Trump’s family and business cronies would surely secure lucrative energy, commodity and perhaps real estate deals with Russia.
Such a carve-up may be only a few weeks away, since Trump has accepted the principle of a meeting with Putin, and a possible big-power threesome with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in Shenzhen on 18-19 November. Even if a deal is not oven-ready by then, the opportunity to shape the future of European security in the absence of either Ukrainian or other European leaders must look inviting to the US leader after his electoral drubbing. Trump will want to make advances before the new Democratic-controlled Congress takes office in January.

To force Kyiv to accept a humiliating partition, Trump has already shown he is willing to effectively blind Ukraine by withholding crucial satellite intelligence and missile interceptors. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is hobbling its drone defence by imposing crippling speed limits on his Starshield satellite network, preventing Ukrainian drones from shooting down Russia’s jet-powered kamikaze drones. Trump could also try to bludgeon European allies into acquiescing to a deal by threatening US troop withdrawals and base closures, under a Pentagon review that is nearing completion.