Russia Launched Record 948 Drones at Ukraine in a Single Day, 906 Shot Down (militarnyi.com)

submitted 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/ukraine@sopuli.xyz

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How much money did russia burn in that attack? ....and for what? To train Ukraine to be the best at air defense out of any nation on earth? This will never win the war for russia, no matter how many they send at Ukraine. This is a bullshit strategy meant to buy time.

edit I just did a back of the envelope calculation, russia spent probably at least ~50 million usd in drones alone in this attack not to mention the cost of logistics and staging, is this really a "cheap" strategy?

What did the ~50 million do for russia in terms of building true power? This is just desperate terrorism.

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[-] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

There is an important aspect missing here. A drone Army, can stand down, be put to rest in cold storage indefinitely, until called upon. Meanwhile software and accessories can improve in peacetime for pennies with plug and play retrofits. Even a limited production capability can build up to enourmous values over time. When called into service, a drone army goes into full force almost immediately with a charging, and a good dusting off.

Regular armies require constant training, practice, and cost enormously in peacetime and war. Skills get old, soldiers retire etc...

Let's consider the evolutionary potential of dones with fully networked target discrimination and AI based targeting and piloting capabilities. Not even something novel, just the maturation of today's existing tech. Drone doesn't mean Shahed. Think drone tank. Drone planes Loitering drone munitions. Small one time pop-bots with limited raspberry pi zero computing don't do much, but anti-drone drones get more ability. Think of the asymetrical terrorism possibility of a self driving Tesla/Waymo but now the "brains" get installed in a more militarized body.

Combined arms at the speed of computing. What if next gen shaheds don't just pop once, but evolve to carry multiple payloads.

You bring up a lot of good points, but don't let complacency define your concept of drone capabilities in the modern military in the very short term with off the shelf tech. This is the dawn of a new era, and capability of how "smart" anything can have in terms of hardware and software will be mathmatically optimized based on its purpose. Munitions like 1 and done kamikaze drones get relatively little, something like a tank gets full autodrive autoshoot AI etc... The distinction between drone missiles being shot from drone planes and beyond, across the combined arms paradigms is on our doorstep.

The total war imperative also gets a boost, because drone warfare becomes ultimately a competition of industrialization, vs deindustrializations. Can you build technology faster/cheaper and more effectively deployed than your adversary industrial capacity can defend. Civilian and military tagets can't be easily distinguished. This is quite opposite of your "low barrier to entry with low labour and tech costs" points about shaheds.