Seems OK for this thread.
Do they really have some new technology not currently available to the US or Russia? My impression was they were way ahead of Russia in production and tactical use of drones, but were using mostly cheap readily available tech. I could be wrong on that.
The way the cheap and readily available tech is integrated into a cohesive platform is what differentiates the various inexpensive drone systems. Systems integration can be innovative in ways that are not obvious; just because a system is cheap does not mean it is easy to develop. In fact, one of my favorite definitions of engineering is “Doing something for a quarter that any fool can do for a dollar.”
Yep. Warfare is a team sport. Skill at integration is vastly more important than skill at any given position or solo play.
Ukraine is also outsourcing drone production to other countries
Foreign Affairs just published a new article exactly on-point. Probably paywalled but if you give them an email you get a few free articles. David Petraeus: The Ukraine Lesson Taiwan Keeps Missing. The subhead / subtitle reads “It’s Not the Drones—It’s Everything Around Them”
The article is long enough that quoting the two lede paragraphs is a small fraction and IMO fair use:
The conflict in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, has provided extraordinary lessons about the future of war. The enormous impact of cheap, remotely piloted unmanned systems—on the ground, in the air, and at sea—cannot be overstated. But there is a danger that military strategists will look at the battlefield in Ukraine and see little more than a catalog of weapons to buy.
Although lessons about particular weapons systems are relevant, the more important lesson is about the ecosystem necessary for these new tools to be effective. Ukraine, for instance, has developed Sky Fortress, a network of 14,000 acoustic sensors that locate Russian drones by sound, even at altitudes radar cannot see, to provide a high-fidelity picture of incoming threats. It also has its own battle-management software systems that direct unmanned surveillance, as well as the Unmanned Services Force, an entirely new military service—alongside the army, navy, and air force—that is dedicated to drone warfare, with its own doctrine, leader development, procurement processes, and even recruiting and basic training. Perhaps most critically, the ecosystem in Ukraine also includes manufacturers that can produce enormous quantities of unmanned systems and constantly refine the software and hardware of those systems in response to developments on the battlefield.
There’s lots more to the article but you get the idea.
So far, is it a lack of urgency/motivation that keeps Russia from innovating and doing the same thing with drones that Ukraine’s been doing? I assume what Ukraine is doing is technically nothing Russia couldn’t do as well; just apathy.
It’s because of shit like this:
I strongly suspect that the sort of rapid iterative development of drones the Ukrainians have been doing relies heavily on actually being willing to learn: listening to the people operating on the ground and observing the actual results, the feedback both good and bad being faced squarely, intelligent discussion of what the next step should be, and above all else focusing on the reality of what actually works and not on external factors like politics or the reputations of the upper military commanders. I can’t see Russia implementing that sort of “glasnost”.
Apathy is it. Russia has some serious internal problems inlcluding corruption and a culture of bullshit, a.k.a. vranyo. I don’t doubt Russia could build drones, but without sweeping changes to their military and other institutions, I don’t think they’re capable of accomplishing what Ukraine has accomplished.
Ukraine moving on shipping in Sea of Azov.
" Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russian fuel tankers in the Sea of Azov, seeking to disrupt supplies to occupied Crimea at a time when drone strikes have triggered nationwide gasoline shortages.
Ukraine’s drone force commander, Robert Brovdi, known as Magyar, said via Telegram that 14 Russian ships were hit in the Sea of Azov on Thursday evening, taking the number of Russian vessels stuck by Ukrainian drones to 35 over the last 96 hours. CNBC could not independently verify this report."
Here’s some video of the strikes:
Interesting… It looks like they’re mostly targeting the control rooms, not the hulls. That says to me that Ukraine’s plan is to capture all of those ships, not just sink them.
Do they have solid enough control of the sea to get crews out to those ships?
Getting crews to the ships shouldn’t be too dangerous. Small fast boats will do the job. The crews for these tankers are fairly small. But once they try to get the tankers moving, I would be afraid that Russia won’t hesitate to sink them.
I think it’s less that they’re trying to capture the vessels, and more that they’d prefer to disable them without causing more oil spills than necessary.
That was my thought also.
Capturing the ships would be funny and great PR, but I think the control rooms are targeted for practical reasons. It renders the ship inoperable for months. It’s likely to kill/wound/intimidate skilled sailors. It reduces the ecological badness that would result from dozens of tankers being blown open — which helps the positive PR that Ukraine has cultivated since the war began,
It’s also a terror tactic that will make it much harder to find crews willing to crew ships in the Sea of Azov.
It’s probably also where the ships are most vulnerable and least strong, structurally.