I’m getting contradictory figures, but I’ve read Ukraine is domestically producing anywhere from 1-4 million drones a year. many of them are FPV drones
What exactly can Ukraine do with so many FPV drones? I’ve seen combat footage online, and it usually shows Ukranian drones targeting Russian materiel like tanks, APCs, and things like that. But Russia probably had less than 100k tanks, APCs, IFVs, artillery pieces, fuel tankers etc combined when the war started. Its probably half that now.
I can understand the appeal of long range drones to strike deep in Russia.
But what is Ukraine going to do with millions of FPV drones a year?
Is it for recon?
One reason I could see them having so many drones is if you want to hit a target, you fly 100 drones at it and hope at least 1 makes it all the way to the target without getting shot down.
While drones can be very effective at reconnaissance and for attacking tanks, fuel transport vehicles, and other military equipment, I think they are still considered disposable. As mentioned, many drones are going to be shot down, so having a large supply of them gives Ukraine the ability to use as many as they want, anywhere they need them, for any particular operation. A large stockpile of drones is considered a good thing.
I rather doubt Ukraine can pull off such high numbers. But assuming they did, and each FPV drone were able to carry a grenade or two, this would be very bad news for any Russian troops within range. Even taking misses, losses, malfunctions and other things into account, one would guess this would mean at least an extra 200,000+ dead/wounded vatniks.
FPV drones are also used in large numbers to attack enemy soldiers. Depending on where you are getting your videos from, you might not see many of these because they tend to be pretty gruesome and disturbing.
Having a million of them would be useful in countering the Russian “meat waves” where the Russians simply send in wave after wave of troops to smash the Ukrainian defenses. Casualty rates are high among the Russian “meat” troops (and hence the Russians don’t use their best and most experienced troops for this) but the tactic is effective, and Russia has a lot of men.
Drones have proven to be a game-changer in Ukraine. Not only can you take out very expensive assets with very cheap drones, but you can also decimate troops. The way that you counter drones being used against troop formations is that you simply spread out your troops so that a single FPV drone with a grenade can’t take out very many soldiers. The counter to that is to simply send a lot more drones against the soldiers.
This kind of massed drone warfare is in its infancy, the way planes in the Interwar years were. But Ukraine is thinking ahead.
As you note, most of these are FPV drones, so basically smart ammo.
Countermeasures to drones are being developed. It’s an arms race. At the start of this war, drones were commercial gizmos you could get on Amazon with a duct taped grenade; now they are sophisticated weapons of war. Countermeasures have also improved, from Private Conscriptovich taking potshots at an incoming drone with his AK to full blown electronic warfare systems.
These used to be modified racing drones, but now they are often custom built.
One possibility that would lead to many drones being desirable is that the Ukranians are working on drone swarms, where a lead drone piloted by FPV is followed by a swarm of chained drones that strike the same target it does.
This is kind of related, but the US is working on sixth generation fighter jets.
One of the upgrades they will supposedly have is each piloted jet will have 3 autonomous drones that flies with it, so each piloted 6th gen fighter jet would technically be an entire formation.
I could see something like that with drone warfare. One FPV drone with multiple autonomous drones.
Just calculating that 1 million drones a year means two drones per minute, 4 millions 1 drone every eight seconds. If they have the pilots to fly them, that is a lot, no matter how long the front line is. I wish them luck!
It’s pretty likely a lot of Russian conscripts aren’t vatniks (some of them doubtless are). They’re just poor fucking conscripts stuck in a war not of their making. Like American draftees in Vietnam. Lord knows I despise the Russian political establishment and their radicalized supporters, but the casual othering of standard-issue soldiers is just another contributor on that slippery slope towards battlefield war crimes.
Agree. It’s a mistake to mentally convert ordinary draftees into non-humans suitable only target practice. The fault (and the cause for our / the West’s animosity) lies much farther up the food chain as you say.
Also a reminder, by the way, that there are very different things that all get called “drones”. The smallest and cheapest ones cost a couple hundred dollars and can’t carry any payload heavier than a camera (and even those can make a big difference in warfare). The largest and most expensive ones are full-on warplanes that just happen to not have a human on board. And of course many variations in between.
The bulk of that 1-4 million are presumably near the cheap end of the spectrum.
They are. The article outlaid how the vast majority are FPV drones. A big reason I started this thread is I can see the value of medium and long range drones. I just was confused by what 1-4 million FPV drones each year would accomplish. I mean Russia probably only has about 300k troops in the entire country of Ukraine right now.
Even if you use the drones for anti-personnel purposes, will going from 1 million to 4 million FPV drones accomplish much? I guess as was mentioned earlier, a situation it would come in handy is in situations where you can send 100 drones on a group of troops or a military target and hope at least 1 makes it through.
The provisions of this plan included domestic manufacturers producing 10,000 medium-range attack drones, 1,000 drones with a range of over 1,000 km, and 1 million FPV drones.
