Astonished with how high the quality of this content is with how unflatteringly, straightforwardly it's presented. This could be a lecture series at a really prestigious school that people pay astronomical amounts of money to attend, and yet here it is for everyone to see and appreciate. For "just some guy that plays video games" you're a really competent individual. Well done, man.
@@Feandromar nah he's mentioned before he's got a background in acquisition from the civilian side. It's more likely he's a part of the bureaucracy in Canberra (or was) working alongside defence in drawing up white papers etc. So no military background but with enough insitu & institutional knowledge to understand the space. Add that to just a general interest in the means to make war/equipment you have effective PowerPoint presentations. ;) Ohh & it's clear hrs got a university degree Bachelor or greater by the way he does his presentations. Lots of what he presents are inferences immediately backed by facts or at least supporting arguments/documentation. RUclips is full of blow-hards & opinion pieces presented haphazardly. It's not hard for our boy here to stand out by presenting even basic things with supporting evidence rather than effectively saying 'trust me I uploaded first' or 'I know a guy' like others.
Actually he just brought up a body I suspect he worked/work's for. Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) That would very much put him in the right sort of position to have a good overview of acquisitions and spending when it comes to the ADF. Sure he might not be looking at every facet of The Special Operations Command (SOCOMD) expenses etc but he's certainly on the broad stroke level of a defence white paper. The Australian government can be as corrupt & influenced by defence lobbying as any other but our bean counters still try to keep budgets from blowing out & if acquisitions is the first point of control.
A point not mentioned here - I would immagine it's a lot harder to concentrate on your target when you're in a helicopter, actually getting shot at and have to worry about keeping yourself alive vs flying a drone.
even if the Turkish drone is "cheaper", simpler, etc, as long as it is getting the job done, it really doesn't matter. A tool that works, is a good tool.
Agreed! I *wish* drones as good as TB2 were as simple as sheet metal and lawnmower engines. If they were, many countries could build enough to blot out the sun.
@@jordanwalsh1691 You'd be surprised how simple many of these really are. We used many drones overseas such as the Shadow, Predator, Raven, Puma, T-Hawk, etc. Many are really just simple foam core Remote Control airplanes with fancy camera/GPS payloads. TB2, Shadow, and such get a bit bigger, but still not that big a deal. Quadcopters are widespread too. The trick comes with weapons and targeting. But provide a big enough Remote Control airframe, and you can get the targeting system from someone else (a company that produces them for the military) and bolt them in place. these really are very simple machines that most people can develop, aside from the weapons, targeting systems, and high end communications.
I don't mean any disrespect to the Turkish defense industry or the Bayratkar in particular when I say that caution is warranted. Russia has proven catastrophically incompetence in this war and the same NATO countries who have been nervous about Russia air defensed have been bemused by its failures over the last six weeks. That doesn't mean drones like the Bayratkar don't have a very real use for smaller nations or in low intensity conflicts, but they my be punching above their weight in Ukraine due to circumstances. Indeed, the SAM hunting may have been prompted by Ukraine deciding to kill as much anti-air power as possible, as quickly as possible, just in case Russia got its act together.
Even a "large" drone still has a very tiny radar signature. Almost all AD systems are designed to identify, track and destroy plane sized targets. Anecdotal story here. During my last deployment, soldiers in my battlion were having small quad rotor drones sent to them. We used them as local recon while on vehicle/foot patrols. They proved to be a game changer.
Consider swarms of insects for the real game changers. Drones the size of mosquitos with explosives on board. A hundred mosquitos landing on a human and exploding. They can lie in wait like mosquitos that follow CO2 on the wind to track down humans.
@@jackrodgersjr why explosives? a poisoned mosquito dart drone would do far better, or even just kinetic(flying bullet). just anything but explosive. also what you're suggesting would propably be outlawed if developed and classified as a warcrime if used, just like chemical or biological weapons. also if you have to use a hundred drones for 1 human, i doubt thats cheaper than something like a medium sized switchblade drone.
@@snowdrop9810 Geneva Convention prohibits the use of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices" and "bacteriological methods of warfare". This is now understood to be a general prohibition on chemical weapons and biological weapons
everyone seem to be scamed by a comparaison of two diferent thing no existing drone have the same ordinance than a service plane and all are more stealth at least by size and signature but most expensive drone can not carry a ton bomb plus a canon at high speed what the cheapest plane can do
Yes. I appreciate the economic outlook as well. It always amazes me that people don't realize that happy, healthy people contribute more. Yes, don't want people to die, and going further we want them to be happy with their jobs. However, we also want these things because it provides material benefit. Both to the country, and to the organization that trained them. It's why I see employers or nations who treat people as disposable as not just terrible from a moral perspective, but also from an economic perspective.
@@arthurmoore9488 When a nation has a surplus of poorly-educated military-aged men with few economic prospects and potential growing dissent, they instead become a burden on the state welfare system. What better way to reduce that surplus than to deploy them as cannon fodder with cheap vehicles and little ammo or food. At the worst they die, and you reduce the strain on your economy and your aging military surplus/junkyard weapons, and less chance of a revolt happening. At best they inflict casualties on the opposition. To nations with that kind of demographic, life isn't cheap - it has negative value. That's the way with nations such as Russia and China, who have large rural populations who do not contribute much to the national economy.
As certainly as it is construction workers who build the house, it is the soldiers who win a war. Everything else must be built around that idea for a military to be effective.
Life is actually extremely cheap...the materials of an average human are worth a few hundred bucks. A LIFE...is subjectively expensive. While the constituent materials of a body aren't especially valuable, things like their arrangement as organs, can be quite valuable. The knowledge and skills of a given individual are irrelevant, however...those can be transferred to almost anyone, given a little time and effort. Better to not have to expend that time and effort, certainly, but hardly any great loss if it happens. In the universe, life is a bug...not a feature.
The mosquito was contemptuously described as 'just made of plywood and balsawood.' It went on to be one of the best and most versatile aircraft of WW2.
The Heinkel He 162 was contemptuously described as 'just made of plywood and wood glue.' It went on to be one of the absolute worst and useless aircraft of WW2.
Like "ghost of Kiev" and "Snake Island"? Yeah, sorry that is not a damning assessment of Russia, but Ukraine and West who report blatant lies without shred of evidence or shame.
Who are you even quoting? If you're so concerned with the verifiability of information then maybe you should take issue with Perun's use of twitter screenshots and "verifiable" western propaganda in his initial assessment of this conflict. Also you have a fucking my little pony banner on your youtube channel, which is all I need to know about you LMAO.
Two extra benefits to consider on top of those you already mentioned regarding not losing a pilot: training and pilot longevity. A commonly used model in Learning & Development is the "70/20/10", which says that 10% of learning is formal, 20% of learning is from your peers, and 70% of your learning comes from experience. Every pilot who is taken out of action is one who cannot pass their experience onto the next generation of pilots below them.... unless it's a drone pilot, who can pretty much guarantee they will pass their skills on. In fact it's actually far easier to do so, given the difficulty of having an instructor overseeing your activities in a manned combat aircraft on a mission! In contrast a new drone pilot can literally have their instructor behind them, providing advice and encouragement, *despite being on a combat mission*. During WWII the western Allies and Axis had very different approaches to this problem. The Axis kept their best pilots flying combat missions, racking up kills. The top 100+ aces in WWII were ALL German, and you have to go down to #273 before you reach the first Allied ace - the first Western allied ace isn't until #401! But the difference isn't one of inherent skill - it's because the western allies rotated their pilots out of combat duty, specifically so that they could teach the next generation of pilots how to fly and how to fight. What you ended up with was a Luftwaffe that had a limited number of incredibly good aces - and a large remainder of increasingly poor new pilots, with increasing levels of turnover. By contrast the western allies had far fewer amazing pilots - but the AVERAGE level of pilot ability was much higher. Exactly the same can apply to drone vs manned air forces. The drone force will continue to acquire competence because pretty much every single one of their pilots passes on their experience to the next class. In fact it's even better than that, because the working life of a drone pilot is much longer than a combat pilot too. Correctable eyesight issues might bar a pilot from combat duty - but if a drone pilot has to wear glasses, who cares? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_flying_aces
theorically yes but how to compare two diferent sytem since actually the combat drones of the navy never seen combat and in all of the drone list not any one match a manned version what you compare a global hawk or a predator to ?
The military still does this with their manned squadrons as well. The most famous of these programs is the NFW (Naval Fighter Weapons) School, more commonly known as Top Gun. It isn't just an ego boost for the pilot selected to attend from the various duty squadrons. The pilot goes to the school, learns the most up to date tactics and skills and returns to their squadron to train the rest of the pilots what they learned.
It doesnt stop there, piloting a jet in combat is very intense on the human body, there is a hard limit on G forces that can be susteined that cant and didnt improve over the years. Missiles have been able to pull 20+Gs for a long time, there is no reason to believe an unmanned aircraft couldnt do the same, and do insane maneuvers that no manned aircraft could hope to match. Having said that, some level of skepticism is understandable, imo the most critical aspects are establishing a secure and stable connection and providing a good UI. It is undeniable that in a specific context and for a specific mission set UAVs are better, and any military that wishes to stay relevant should look into them and possible counters
The presentation and analysis comes across as scholarly: Comprehensively rigorous, rational, balanced and deep. Add to that, Powerpoint slides that are used effectively! ;) :D I'm very happy to see another Aussie contributing to public education and dialogue in this way. Thankyou @Perun !
It was well done but there are many unanswered questions and possibilities left for sci-fi writers. Yes, the age of hardware is over as newer concepts of how to kill will appear.
A big advantage of those relative lightweight aircraft is that they don't need a (military) airport to operate from. Even if Russia destroys all Ukrainian airports, the drones could fly and land at a straight road. TB2 only has a wingspan of 12m (39ft) and weights max 700kg (1500lbs). With a pretty flat land such as Ukraine, they could build a road through someone's farmland and hide/arm those drones in a barn.
Another thing is that they have insane loitering time compared to any jet. These guys will be way more effective for close air support despite the lack of potent armament.
i thought about the same thing with Taiwan. If China were to invade, they would bomb runways as the first thing. But if a drone can just use a large street, the Taiwanese would still be able to get this kind of local "airsupport," just like were seeing in Ukraine.
@@valentinpedersen6144 Someone living in Taiwan here: This is in fact actual Airforce doctrine for our Jets too, lots of the civilian road infrastructure was built to be able to, in a pinch, be used as makeshift runways for the air force to take off and land at, including the major freeways, and many small fuel and supply depots have been set up just off these roads as well. Taiwan has basically been fortifying and preparing for this invasion for the past 70 years after all. But yeah, the military is definately taking the use of drones seriously as well here.
And for drone helicopters and other VTOL drones, they can launch from the back of any outdated random vehicle, which is already abandoned as likely to be instantly destroyed by the enemy upon seeing it used as a mobile launcher. So loss is 1 or zero infantry drivers, plus the vehicle, drone and fuel. If the drone survives the mission it can be "emergency landed" for later infantry pickup outside immediate combat danger and transport to wherever it can be readied for another mission.
Great stuff. This armchair war historian is young enough, unlike some RUclipsrs in this space that are retired military and/or too vested in their world view to admit it, to be flexible enough to see the "rise of the machines". Analogy: I remember back in the day arguing with Usenet chess fanatics on the point that computers would eventually beat humans in chess, with the old school saying: "computers have no soul" and "computer chess programs are no more smarter than the programmer" and other such nonsense. Then it was the GO game group ("Go is more complex than chess"). Then it was the poker group ("poker requires reading human emotion"). All of them fell to the machines...
From a military professional to whatever kind of a professional it is that you are; I know that you run this as a gaming channel. Holy shit, your videos regarding this war are absolutely top notch. Thank you so much for making these. As an American, I’m proud of our relationship with Australia, and people like you are why. Thank you for what you do.
@@robertely686 What you fail to realise is that many of these "chicken hawks [sic]" are the reason why volunteer forces in the West work, but I can only speak for the US. The US military loves RUclips potential for recruitment. 18 year olds sign military contracts because they gain a certain level of respect from the citizens, especially the ones who are enthusiastic about their nation's military. It's the culture of heroes. It's attractive to many who have a higher calling and incredible drive. Then you get people who want the GI Bill benefits..these soldiers are maybe involved in logistics, vehicle maintenance, etc. They are more motivated by the tangible benefits, but that doesn't make them bad soldiers. They are the backbone of the military. The careerist officers and insane infantrymen are some of the other groups. The military is well-structured. Lesson have been learned in maintaining morale. How can a country fight an unpopular war for 20 years at enormous expense and still retain the same political dynamic at home, the same support for the military. In an instant, Putin erased the malaise in the West. It's just impressive how the U.S. maintains its warmachine. If you aren't a Yank, you probably would be appalled at just how interwoven the military is with citizen life. The military needs young people who have grown up admiring the power of the US. It's not just beneficial for getting new generations of "warfighters", it gets nerds working for companies involved in the MIC. Take the largest development project in recent memory, F-35. Top engineers were required to design the F-35, the engine, the software, everything. How many of the guys and gals wanted to be military pilots but realised the path wasn't there for them? Bad eyesight, incompatible temperament. Many Chickenhawks get Master's Degrees and do their part to maintain the supremacy of the free world. This is something that gets asked a lot by high schoolers in the US, "Why is there so much emphasis on military/warfare?" It's necessary at all levels and stations in our society. I'm glad the American military and MIC is so effective. Edit: citizen should read: civilian.
Perun, I never thought I'd be actively looking for one hour ppt presentations on RUclips. I've listened through a few of them. Great job! Interesting, logical, unbiased (as far as I can tell). I love how you focus on the economic side of warfare. In the end, historically the stronger economy wins wars so it is a pretty important subject. ATGMs and drones gives the weaker economy an edge, interesting! Keep the slide shows coming! You are already doing a great job but bear in mind that some of your followers are not watching you show but listening, for example while driving. So it is really great that you, mostly, comment on the slides in a way that we do not have to look at the slides to grasp what your point is. Thanks for your insights!
You should make a video about how the U.S. military budget completely skews how people view militaries. So many things our military does is only functional because we spend enough money to be good at everything. This series of videos does a great job at shining a light on the choices normal countries have to make when allocating defense resources.
BRO I know. I have a master sql database that needs built by the first and I've gotten tables, keys, and group roles built, and that's about it. Oh and I know not a fucking thing about sql. Wew.
I'm from Germany and would be interested in your perspective on German rearmament and the beginnings of a European strike force. As you probably know, this war caused somewhat of a 180 in terms of German defense policy. How fast can a military really go from very little to going head to head with a powerful opponent by just giving it 100 Billion Euro all of the sudden? (plus adjusting yearly spending) Germany has a long running problem with maintaining its existing systems, should the money go towards new systems or getting the old stuff running again? How do you decide on what to scrap, and what kind of capabilities are really important to maintain and extend? For example, if defending NATO and European allies and deterring an attack on them (without relying on US support) is your priority, what systems do you need?
@@PerunAU Thank you for these insanely informative Videos, they are well presented and spoken too! It would be marvelous If you could give a take on the German Situation.
Given how the Russian army has fared so far i think after the spending Germany could defend against Russia by itself, but with the USA, UK ,Poland and Italy Russia wouldn't stand a chance.
I do find myself saying, “Ah, that makes sense,” or, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” a lot when I watch these presentations. Thanks for this. This really is an eye opening channel. So many issues that float around in the back of one’s mind are crystallised into concise data, by this kind of analysis. Dispelling myths and putting these things into an adult perspective seems an invaluable service, especially now. It leaves me feeling more, “knowledgeable,” yet less, “certain,” about stuff. Which is a good thing, I guess?
The only thing he misses here is how the Russian government and military operates and the class system. A lot of people are ignorant to it. Most of the world values its military men to almost a godlike status, while its basically the polar opposite in Russia because the KGB runs the show. For most of the video this didn't matter until he got to the value of human life and economic cost. Think about it, whats losing ten thousand conscripts when you can obtain a nation of millions of people?
@@goldenhate6649 Its not because of the KGB. It is a holdover from the Soviet era Deep Operation, which leverages the large manpower of the Soviet Union to saturate enemy defenses and prevent the enemy from knowing where to dedicate their reserves. The thing is Russia isn't as populous anymore nor does it have as large of a military so it should be a major concern
I stumbled on to your lessons a few days ago. Now I feel like I'm enrolled in a really good war college. My days are pretty full but I look forward to my daily one hour "class". Thanks!
I think, after the “Moskva” ru warship was hit by 2 Neptun missiles while the massive air-defense systems of the warship had been distracted by three Ukrainian TB-2s, the discussion about efficacy can be closed. UAVs are amazing.
I'm almost certain there is a lot more to this story than the propaganda story we are all hearing. The ship had multiple defense systems, and distracting one system should not have disabled the others. Those missiles probably should not have made it. The fact that they did suggests a larger problem with the ship.
@@lwilton Neptun missiles fly very low to the water surface, and there was a storm that night, which could have made missiles indistinguishable from the waves. Also, another version I heard is that one of the TB-2s destroyed the RLS of the ship before the missiles were launched.
@@eugene_dudnyk Perhaps. I've heard both of those arguments, and I rate at least the first as possible. But the ship was designed to respond to anti-ship missiles and take them out, and had at least two systems that should have been capable of doing so. As far as I know, each system had it's own targeting and acquisition radar. A threat from the other side of the ship would have been engaged by the defenses on that side, leaving the side with the incoming missiles free. I am more inclined to believe that there was a human screwup involved here. They systems perhaps were not on full alert as they should have been. Or maybe the C&C structure required an operator to report an incoming missile to the captain and wait for an order of what to do about it. We may eventually hear more about this in a few years, or we may not.
@@lwilton The rumor is Moskva's search radar didn't have 360 degree angle so when it detected and tracked TB-2s Ukrainians launched Neptune missiles from a blind angle. It also explains how exactly there were only two missiles launched and they both were hit. It is also possible Moskva was already damaged by TB-2s, their smart munitions are really small and i really doubt Russian CIWS could engage them. However this also makes their damage extremely limited against such an armored cruiser, still they could easily damage radars if they could hit on them. There is definitely some mystery going on and Ukrainian side doesn't share footage as well, perhaps because they are planning to use this tactic more in future and there is also rumor about Turkey asking them to not share TB-2 footages as it is making Russian public hostile against Turkey...
what it needed were support ships, like every flag ship should have. Ukrainians were surprised that it was undefended and moving in repetitive patterns, they saw an opportunity to take the heat off from Odessa
I've watched all 3 of your Ukraine videos, for what it's worth, I spent 15 years in the military during the GWOT in a tiered unit, and most of that time either overseas or getting ready to go, and the amount of power points, and lectures I've been subjected to I wouldn't wish on even the worst of ISIS, that said, your videos are excellent. You let on that you work in the field? if I had to guess, procurement or national defence strategy? If so, they aren't paying you enough, these are not only excellent and very informative, even for a guy like myself with a pretty decent grasp on how this works, but are easily digestible for even a total novice like my girlfriend, and the fact you're putting them out in what is a very short time frame makes it even more impressive. You should be giving these lectures to rooms full of generals and politicians, not RUclips, if you have to settle for RUclips though, I think you are good enough to make money off of these analysis videos, Ukraine looks like it is settling in for a stalemate siege type situation, assuming the Russians don't mess up even more than they already are, but there are a lot of different videos you could make regarding various force compositions/structures, strategies, technologies etc even unrelated to the current conflict, or once it is done, just an old mans 2 cents. Also looking through your catalog got me to buy Phoenix Point, so there is that too, lol.
You nailed it, sir. While watching I imagined sitting in a large room with very smart people in it. Everybody paying attention, many nodding now and then. (I am from Finland, a 50+yrs old reserve officer, M.Sci(Eng) with relevant analyst experience.)
@@PerunAU I don’t think it’s boring, and even if it was, you seem to have that talent for explaining things in a way that is both professional and engaging.
“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” ― Frédéric Bastiat
As a glider pilot, our CFI used to say that even if you stray into controlled airspace, the radars will not be able to detect you, as the only thing metallic is the control column. Most modern gliders are glass-fibre, and the older ones were made of wood and canvas. If the drones could only hide their metallic motors, they would be much less visible to radar.
@@Viper607706 Glider pilots usually only fly in designated boxes to keep them separated from other air traffic. At least that's how it works in the UK. They also fly well below cruise altitudes for many aircraft and areas around airports and military bases where you might have planes at similar altitude to a glider are heavily restricted.
It’s funny that they called the simpler drones “cheap metal and a lawn mower engine”… as if that was a bad thing. Like “oh it’s cost-effective and easy to maintain… booooo that’s bad!”
Honestly, the main reason you armor your aircraft is to get the living parts back after use - the pilots and whoever else might be aboard. Adding armor just weighs the thing down, which slows it and affects the flight profile, making it easier to target and destroy.
@@NothingIsKnown00 No, I don't think it was military people. Our Predator drones are in the same class, which has since been retired, or no longer produced. We have the much larger Reaper drones now.
00:00 Introduction 01:04 So what are we covering? 02:03 My contentions 03:41 Proliferation of Unmanned Systems 05:12 Questions over the capabilities of these systems 06:55 TB-2 as an example 08:20 But… they just seem to keep working 09:18 Seriously… they keep blowing things up 09:51 Lots of confirmed kills 10:42 The results are scary, even if you make the most generous assumptions… 12:41 And that is just one of the systems in use 13:50 Russian successes 15:40 Arguments for efficacy 17:53 Countermeasures point deserves its own discussion 21:07 So what does that prove? 23:58 Economics of Unmanned Systems 26:24 The Platform 28:21 The Platform - Maintenance 29:26 The Pilot 31:02 Sidenote - life is not cheap 33:08 Infrastructure 34:30 Accessibility 37:21 Even scarier when we talk smaller munitions 44:04 Key takeaways 48:44 Outro
I recently discovered your analysis videos and think this is the best one yet. I had heard about the Ukrainian UAVs but didn't know much of any details. It's fascinating seeing past the memes and learning how they actually being used. Plus your extrapolation for what it means for the future compelling and chilling. Thanks so much for making these videos!
I am studying Unmanned Systems in the US. While a freshman I can definitely see as more and more commercial drones are able to follow waypoints (think DJI Spark sized drones) you’ll have preplanned routes in wars such as this. Sure they’re easy to shoot it’s just not worth using a Tunguska to take small drones down. It’s just too expensive. These drones being the standard in an army would have GPS, laser guidance for ordinance, and the ability to record and upload 1080p/ 4K photos by small recon teams or those who are sniping. Small drones are going to see a lot of tactics going forward, not just in explosives and weapons. But as distractions, reconnaissance, spotting for artillery, etc. And Ukraine is the testing ground. Heck drones are (under FAA approval) are acting as guards for an airport that’s being used by either FedEx or UPS. My memory is failing me on who.
Have you seen the capability of the new DJI M30T? 20x zoom, infrared cameras, base stations for preprogrammed patrol routes. These things are gonna be game changing.
Assume GPS etc is jammed. Does this still work? Assume more aggressive jamming and RDF, how does that work? I have no idea if you can do a single-chip inertial guidance unit, but I'm pretty confident you can't buy it from Alibaba.
@@k53847 Manual control is relatively easy. Plus most drones that aren’t reliant on our phones can keep a map of an area downloaded. It doesn’t make sense in a warzone to rely solely on satellite, meaning a competent military would plug files from a storage device of the entire nation (or wherever the drone will only be operating) and allow it to fly within that area. I am going to be working for Deveron, an agricultural company that flies drones for farmers. Before work I download the data and then make plans. That’s stored on a drive them plugged into my controller. Those files then work with the drone, even without GPS. I’d be more concerned about the frequency the drone runs on being jammed, if the equipment is around. Even then to jam a civilian drone takes time and other drones, or equipment that can simulate the allowed (2-4) frequencies for civilians. The military can probably give their drones the ability to connect to many upon many frequencies without issue. Making jamming a huge pain in the ass
Not yet started watching but especially on the case TB2, we have to remember that the TB2 operators teaching other countries how to use them are especially experienced against Russian equipment. So far TB2's are used by Turkey and other operators in Syria, Libya, Azerbaijan/Armenia and now Ukraine. Except Syria, everywhere they went they faced Russian old/new equipment. It is safe to assume that by now main operators have extensive knowledge of Russian equipments deployment time, range, effectiveness etc.
During the first week of the war, nearly all Ukrainian air bases with MiG-29 and Su-34 where destroyed, same was said with the TB2. That was very unprofessional.
The lessons learned specific to UAV vs Russian armaments are going to be way secondary or tertiary to general UAV lessons learned. An anti armor munition is going to do roughly as well against different APCs and IFVs, but how those AFVs & IFVs are used is going to vary greatly from conflict to conflict.
@@BariumBlue In Libya Turkish drones supported the government while Haftar the warlord had an abundance of chinese drones, only Turkish drones too date have had this level of success. No one else's, Turks obviously no something that the rest of the world doesnt concerning the utilisation of drones.
One of the factors of the effectiveness of the TB2 drones which I don't believe you mentioned, is the fact that the US and other Western allies are providing substantial air support in the form of identifying targets which would destroy the drones, and letting them know when it's okay to fly them, and where. This is extremely important, as Ukraine does not have this capability to my knowledge and plays a huge role in their effectiveness.
Ukrainian civilian population provide so much intel they could surely still use the drones to substantial effect. This does require the internet though, which they wouldn’t have without US assistance. You are correct though Western intel is an added boost on top.
@@TheEsuohdla That may actually be Elan Musk and his satellite system at least in part. If western countries could tell them when and where not to fly it could go a long way toward preventing units from being shot down though the Russians should have surface radar that could pick up the larger units.
@@dwightehowell8179 it is musk, I still count that as western assistance and to be honest contact between Ukrainian government and musk was likely organised by the US government, that is how such affairs are usually initiated. Western countries almost certainly are providing some level of intelligence like how you described, the comparatively small size of the Ukrainian air force is limiting the operations they can do. As successful as their campaign has been, they are gradually losing units and by most reports they have reached a stage they need to be careful on what missions they take on, so that they retain some form of presence in the air and also so they can force the Russians to pay a steep cost for each of their casualties. The only way Ukraine can do more in the air is with more equipment, though it is very debatable if they would have the trained manpower needed to run it.
A point: pilot requirements are very stringent. Pretty well perfect vision. Ability to take high sustained g forces. Fatigue resistance. Reaction times. In comparison many many gamers with asthma could probably learn to pilot a drone very well. The pool of drone pilots is large where the pool of pilots is small which is also a major economic cost.
Absolutely, and we don’t have to deal with the oversized egos of these idiot pilots. Guys I couldn’t make it into engineering school, they got a bachelor of arts degree and became a fighter pilot. They don’t even understand the physics of what they’re doing.
Second though, not too sure if it’s mentioned as I’m only a quarter in. Pilots are expensive, you lose an aircraft, you lose a pilot, you lose a drone, you lose “some sheet metal and a lawn mower engine.” One is far easier to replace than the other.
I'm a science-fiction fan, and back in the 1980's I read a short story set in a future war zone (unfortunately I can't remember the name of the story). In the story the air above the conflict zone was permanently filled with swarms of loitering autonomous suicide drones that were about the size and intelligence of a crow. They were smart enough to identify targets and attack by themselves. The soldiers were forced to stay in underground bunkers or die. Going outside was suicide for individual soldiers, and any vehicle that went into the open was immediately mobbed by dozens of these drones. Even heavily armored vehicles would suffer a mobility kill, leaving the crew trapped inside. Since both sides had access to these drones, the war was at a stalemate. Much like during WW1 trench warfare, neither side was able to win over the other. The story left a major impression on me because it sounded so plausible ...
The problem with drone swarms is that the small drones themselves have a sub 30 minute flight time. A swarm in the sky would be hard to maintain with drones landing and recharging all the time.
@@nicholasn.2883 Yup the battery technology needs to be better and/or an autonomous recharging capability must be made practical for any of this to happen
You didn't consider personnel costs in the cost-effectiveness analysis. Unless we assume all destroyed vehicles to have been abandoned / unmanned at the time of destruction, that's a lot more cost on the AA side.
Came upon this video randomly but wow.. extremely professional clear and concise delivery of this information. Kind of a military Ted talk. Thank you for the time you put into making this. Will definitely watch your other ones.
I've had drones on my mind for a few days after watching this video, and the thought occured to me: could we see a return of the old anti-air guns to combat drones? Firing a bunch of lead at the (comparatively) slow and low- flying drones might be more feasible and cost effective than wasting a million dollar missile on such a target. And with modern targeting computers it might not even require human input other than turning on a switch marked "AA"
shooting a drone at 5000m alltitude remind the efficiency of ww2 anti air gun and the cost of ammo shells raise up to the stinger manpads value tought i agree than commercial drone flying under 1000m can be intercepted with a simple radar guided machinegun system that actually not exist better than with a ZSU23-2 canon
@@omnianti0 replace stinger rocket engine with drone propeller. Also I have another idea; remove IR, remove guidance, and allow manual control like a drone. Actually why is this even expensive? the Javelin has same shaped-explosive as an RPG-7, which is just a grenade with rocket attached, so attach this to a drone and fly it like the expensive ordinance.
@@xponen what you described already exist it the heavy lootering amunition 600 but i get an even cheaper and better option just replace the sensor by a passive radio antenna that just guide on any radio emission since everyone even terorist use cell phone or encrypted radio they make a target
This is one area where laser-based systems would be ideal. The targets aren't going to be as robust as larger vehicles and they're dirt cheap and potentially appearing in large numbers so you don't want to expend very expensive munitions to take them out. The hardware and power source for a laser is still large and costly but each shot is cheaper than a cannon round - the Israeli Iron Beam system is estimated to cost just $3.50 compared to $100,000+ for an interceptor missile.
Thanks for making this. Possible correction, a switchblade "unit" is 5-20 or something in a box. So more like thousands than hundreds of individual switchblade drone munitions have been sent.
@@TheLadderman Your under selling the Switchblade. The Switchblade 300 has a range of 10km (6 miles approx.) The explosive payload is equivalent to about 2 hand grenades or a 60mm mortar bomb. Its also accurate enough to fly through a doorway or car window. Its basically a very accurate grenade launcher with a 6 mile range. The warhead may not be large but its big enough to kill everyone in a confined space like a command vehicle with the back door open or ignite a truck carrying fuel or ammo. It may not kill a tank but everything else like artillery batteries, SAM vehicles, foxholes, command posts, etc are targets that can be struck and killed by one or more Switchblades.
Back in the day of Iraq and Afghanistan war I was "analyzing " lot of combat footage (watching RUclips videos as I am war geek) and I noticed how easy it is to ambush patrol of first rate military . Watching people die just for lack of info that simple scout drone could provide was mindboggling to me. I thought things would change as war progressed as the solution was obvious, squad level scout drones , but it didn't happened. This war in Ukraine will hopefully changed that.
Absolutely, no military infantry men or armored infantry should be left in the blind without scout drones. I watched these videos from a couple of decades ago and was equally dismayed. But I was in the military and I know how stupid those people are. There is no limit to stupidity
The US military does have man portable drone systems. What has to be recognized in 2005 to 2015 or so these platforms haven’t met the economy of scale required to field them at squad levels, as well as train soldiers in how to use them.also, it’s not exactly easy to remain stealthy and undetected when you are being followed around by an angry swarm of bees.
There was one video of a drone in the donbass region completely scouting the entire trench system. This allows you to determine what areas of the trench are unguarded.
Well as someone who was in Afghanistan, things actually very much did change. There's a reason why you don't see a lot, or any, drone footage of the Taliban or other affiliated forces attacking American or NATO units. Because they couldn't. From at least around 2007-2009 onwards, jamming and electronic countermeasures were replete everywhere. A patrol didn't go out without at least one or two Man packs, plus a much larger vehicle unit, that pretty much shut down every frequency from 1-10Ghz in the immediate area. That means drones, remote IEDs, enemy comms, pretty much everything. Locals did not like it because whenever we rolled by their cell phones and radios stopped working. Of course, it will be possible to develop some penetrative measures to this, and I'm sure a major nation state could make more Jam resistant drones, and then likewise we would make better countermeasures and so on, and the arms race would go back and forth. Since the Taliban had no development capabilities and just bought what they could on the commercial or second-hand military market, they had no capability to do this. It doesn't mean that drones are ineffective, but it does mean that there is quite a lot that a wealthy and sophisticated military can do to counter them, especially on the low end. The Russians either did not have the means, or the inclination to do this
@@Laotzu.Goldbug well, the problem with broad spectrum jamming is that they are basically screaming your location to anyone nearby. The problem with doing this with a capable state power is that there are plenty of anti EM munitions out there. Such jamming would basically make you a giant glowing target to something like a switchblade.
We’re looking at another “Battleship->Carrier” type of paradigm shift. This time largely in ground warfare. (Although you can see some relatively inexpensive naval adaptions). Right now the Drones are probably stronger as a defensive weapon. A situation where you mostly know where the Battlefield is going to be. For example Taiwan will benefit greatly from putting drone swarms over the Straight of Taiwan should China move to invade. But fighting a full out Naval Pacific War with them would minimize many of their advantages. The speed and distance from controller remain somewhat limiting for most lower cost drone options.
The kind of drones that people talk about when discussing a major war over an ocean start looking less and less like drones, and more and more like very smart anti-ship missiles. The Soviets actually pioneered this with their Granit (actually can't remember the name) ASMs. These weapons were designed with a sort of first generation networked communications. One missile would pop up and scan with its radar while the rest of the missiles flew low. It would communicate targeting data back to the rest of the missiles, and they would divide up between detected targets. It was quite smart, quite innovative for the time (I want to say 50's and 60's). That's the sort of weapon I predict will be fielded against US carrier fleets. A missile that operates first as a reconnaissance platform, then as a spotter for other weapons, and then finally as its own missile/suicide drone.
So I've been thinking about those drone swarms quite a bit and I think ironically, the threat of them might very well shift the paradigm back towards the Battleship. Those drones likely wouldn't fare nearly as well against thick armor(since the drones we see now don't attack the thick parts of tanks). Armor, especially Modern Composite armor with ERA would stand to be likely sufficiently protective against such things. When you consider just how much CIWS and AA missiles one could stick on a Battleship it definitely makes the case for them to be fielded again.
You wait until somebody adds the combination of stealth, solar panels (or other long range endurance mod), high altitude capacity and a useful radar onto a drone to create a long range naval patrol drone, backed up with accurate land based SSMs. There will be the potential to control 1000km of sea from a small island.
This is why the next generation of US airforce planes is planned to have capabilities to network with a drone swarm. A large vulnerability with drones is that you cannot control them from distance due to latency or jamming -- but if you can control them from a nearby manned platform that has its own capabilities, much as an aircraft carrier does with jets, then you can bypass many of those issues. We're going to see continued decentralization of command and control capabilities as times goes on.
This really feels like a musket versus a full plate armor knight situation. Cheap easy to use but equally devastating new technology that can do as much damage as conventional technology without the need for specialization. A line of musketeers can do the same damage of a squad of mounted knights on the charging without the requirement of a dedicated aristocracy and a fortune. Here a swarm of loitering drones can inflict the damage of a jet aircraft without the tens of millions of dollars or the risk of losing an equally expensive pilot.
Demise of classic knight in the West was caused by (re)emergence of pikes. At the same time in the Easter Europe knights survived all the way to early 18th century in for of winged hussars.
@@voneror Yes, pikes played a role as well, in the form of pike and shot but pikes served to protect the firearm infantry and once the fire rate increased and bayonets we're created, pikes were phased out in front line combat.
Consider that for the price of one M1A2 Sep3 tank, you can have 90 Javelin missiles and 10 CLUs. For that same cost, you could also buy half a dozen TB2's and control vehicles. It certainly seems to be the best way to reduce support needs and disperse your firepower to avoid being wiped out.
Longbows, crossbows, firearms, pikes, changing tactics, changing social dynamics... it takes more than the introduction of a new, less expensive weapon system which can counter a more expensive weapon system to make the latter obsolete, and obsolescent does not mean useless. For consideration: During WWII, Polish cavalry charges against German forces were successful more often than not, the last being in 1945. The whole "Polish cavalry committing suicide by tank" thing is an invention of German propaganda. Polish cavalry units had anti-tank rifles and guns for a reason. So yeah, I don't expect drones to wipe out any existing technologies in the short term. It's not like Russia or Ukraine has given up on tanks or SAMs.
Great video. ISIS, started the entire dropping munitions from commercial quad copters in Iraq if I recall correctly. 40mm type grenades with fins normally fired from under rifles just dropped. The Azerbaijan v Armenian conflict was an eye opener on potential drone use and the current Ukr v Russia conflict is adding to it. A huge part and you only just touched on it briefly at the end is the counter measures. I'd love to see you do a full video on this topic alone. The most cost effective I imagine has to be EW jamming for the soft kill. But the systems need to be mobile enough to advance with the troops in a multi layer anti air defensive structure. There have been a number of Russian EW systems taken out in Ukr. How effective these were against drones, who knows. The nature of the Ukr conflict has potentially left many of these exposed to attack from the rear from small units, as well as arty & drones when non operational. Current air defence for many Western militaries and almost to an extent the Russians is short range MANPADs for forward troops, with larger more expensive systems like Patriot, S300/400 around strategic targets like cities, bases, airfields. The Russian's I believe currently have an edge somewhat on the West, in that they also field more mid range missile systems, such as the Buks, Pantsir, but their actual effectiveness is unknown by us public at this stage. There isn't currently a western equivalent in the field across all NATO countries (excluding legacy Soviet systems). This all comes back to the cost elements. A drone without EW interference has the potential ability to stand out of SAM or AAA range and chip away at targets. Loiter munitions, are cheap. The MAML munitions on the TB2 are cheap. The West has focused a lot on larger more expensive, more capable and more heavily armed drones in many instances and in my opinion needs to fill the gap with a range of cheaper options that are more expendable, with cheaper munitions such as the TB2. The switch blade is a great product for the frontlines & just beyond. When will we see the mother ship drone releasing waves of suicide drones? Western militaries are looking at counters such as lasers (one US striker unit has been equipped in a trial), Rheinmetall has integrated systems for airfields with short range missiles, 30-57mm air burst cannons and medium range missiles. All remotely crewed. The US is looking at modified naval AIM-X SAMs in truck mounts to cover medium range threats. Not to forget iron dome & CWIS systems for the likes of small targets such as drones, arty/ mortar shells or rockets. An issue with missile systems, as you've mentioned is cost. The missile can be more expensive often than the drone. Will we start to see a return of 88mm to 105mm radar controlled flak cannons with air burst munitions as a more cost effective option to take out medium range drones in the field? It is a fascinating topic.
I can't help but imagine a baby Phalanx CIWS the size of a Portal turret for infantry to lug around... Interdiction drones could be left loitering on their own or monitored by a small number of pilots until something interesting happens. I think lasers are especially interesting because there's the potential that firing them could be extremely low cost.
@@sausage4mash remember when lockdown started and masks and hand sanitizer sold out everywhere. Then many months later they were widely available again. That's because of the time it took to tool up for mass production and distribution. These drones are much harder to make. So yeah, the government can make millions of them and likely will if they perform well, but it'll take months to setup the factories.
As an FPV drone pilot I love this subject.... Thanks for covering some of the 'positive' impacts drones can have. In a world where media want to vilify the anonymity of drones based on nothing but paranoia, this will clearly shed a positive light on drones for a change... 😋
Damm i would like to see terrorist got hands on hundreds of civilian drone and convert to suicide drone against civilians i would like you and other fpv pilot react to that scenario.
Seriously though the future uses of drone will be a droid swarm spamming and overwhelming the defenses like what's more expensive and hard to counter a 1000 drone like switchblade or 1 fighter jet?
Great video, were watching warfare change on a daily basis. Whoever learns these lessons and implements them will be way ahead of the rest of the world.
I'll be honest I haven't watched any of your videogame videos yet, I've just been binge watching your Ukrainian coverage. It's so hard to find reliable information regarding this conflict, particularly for a completely non-expert observer like myself.
I don't expect there'll be much audience crossover, and that's ok as far as I'm concerned. Very happy to just have you here for the Ukraine and Mil-industry stuff.
@@PerunAU Well, there's very definitely some crossover from games to reality. Maybe not so much in the opposite direction, since hobbies vary so much. But thanks for your videos in _both_ areas, Perun!
Here in Canada, I have it from one should know that Russia has already been probing our immense Arctic coastline, which has been melting. A criterion of sovereignty is the ability to provide basic services like mail, customs posts, etc. A Russian ship approaches, launches a small vessel that lands at a small town or village. The passengers disembark, greet the inhabitants, then wait for Canadian officials to arrive. It sometimes takes many hours for Canada to get a customs official into an airplane, then fly that official to the location. The official says, "Welcome to Canada, may I see your passports, please". Documents are presented, then the official asks, "How long do you plan to stay in Canada?" "Oh, we're just leaving", and off they go, smiling and waving. Meanwhile, our government is debating whether to buy F-35's or Viggens. Your discussion highlights the old thinking inherent in the debate. Maybe one of a small fleet of customs drones, stationed at bases spread across the expanse, could land and present a Zoom style interface for a remotely stationed customs officer to ask the relevant questions, meanwhile consulting with superiors who may want to proceed with further interventions. It sounds far-fetched, even to me, but there must be a way to solve new problems with new approaches. Your analyses are bang on - they go back to my training about probabilistic decision-making in a risky cost environment.
@@rexwave4624 If they set foot on Canadian soil without prior approval then imo sounds like a reason to detain them. I'd at least want to fingerprint them and find out why they are there.
Here's a point of reference, the Mavic Pro can take off and fly with 700 grams of payload. MY Mavic Pro has taken off with 700 grams of payload. That's a LOT of payload on an old system. Also, extremely great video!
@@PeterJavi no, but even if you figure 200 grams for a drop system (which is more than available plans would indicate) you've still got half a kilo, and as the other guy said, my Mavic Pro was 700 bucks a couple years ago.
Excellent breakdown of UAV advantages over manned aircraft. To add one more: Manned aircraft require a suite of life support systems to keep the pilot alive and allow him/her to operate it. Pressurized cockpit, ejection seats, oxygen, glass to see out of, miles of wire and hundreds of pounds of gauges, switches, and displays… the list goes on. All of these things take up physical space in the aircraft and add weight, both of which can be used to carry more munitions or fuel.
Also the aircraft's maneuvering capability is constrained by what the human body can withstand in G forces (brief/sustained) and wild maneuvering that could disorient an on-board pilot.
Respect for understanding the long term economic cost of a person. It's sad one has to put human life in economic terms to clarify the argument of why life is important. On a related note, space exploration has been doing the same cost analysis for manned VS unmanned exploration and the end result heavily favors unmanned systems.
I've read a few years ago (when the drone craze started in the commercial sector) that automated laser systems were being designed as drone counters - mostly in terms of stationary defenses and for warships. Since then the US and China now has some ships equipped with lasers as counter-missile and counter-drone systems. Not sure if lasers can be employed on smaller mobile land platforms - they need quite a lot of power. If not, drones might have additional asymetrical advantage for the defending side. Of course, maybe AA systems with conventional munitions will adapt as well.
One development I’ve heard of is directed jamming. You detect the drone and the platform runs electronic warfare on just that one target, causing the drone to be unable to complete its mission. One other thing you can do then is that when the drone flies back home, you can potentially track it and call a fire mission on its base.
I am curious about miniaturized flaks. I would expect two dozens of tiny grenades/shotgun shells detonations in close proximity of smaller drone would be enough to accomplish at least a mission kill (damaged sensors or antennas for example). Repeated hits to the same area should be relatively easy with mosern technology, problems are more likely to occur in detection of enemy drones and in development of ammunition.
@@jirivegner3711 what you are thinking of is basically the Active Protection Systems mounted to many tanks; the only thing is that they are short ranged, basically only able to defend the vehicle it’s attached to.
The problem is the visual and radar cross section of a drone. AA works only if it knows what is in range. It also fails, if like Russians, you don’t ship the fuel for the generators powering your AA systems.
I don't know what you do for a living but I hope it involves conducting this type of analysis for really smart people in decision making positions, because your breakdown on these topics is by far the best I've seen. Super convincing breakdown in both your last videos. Bravo.
Amazing! Great conclusion from a great argument. Great structure and great overall orientation inside the topic! This was the first video I've seen from you but it's surely not going to be the last. Thank you!
The biggest things are: 1) Trained pilots: When you lose an UAV, you do not lose the pilot. They always get experience. 2) Jamming/hacking/electronic warfare: An UAV fleet is great, but if the enemy can disable to connection, suddenly you have no air force anymore. So you can never rely on only UAVs.
that is relevant for those drones which are controlled from the ground, less so for autonomous drones where you just pre program the drones with flight path and launch them, they are gonna fly for a certain period of time over a designated area and land back, and of course nobody is actually arguing to replace the airforce with a fleet of drones
Regarding jamming : there was a report that asked why the Russians did not use this. The short answer was that it also disabled their own drone capabilities, specifically when use over large areas.
Wouldnt it be possible to counteract the jamming/soft kills by simply giving the drone a "return home" feature with fixed coordinates engrained into its system? This way every time it doesnt receive signals for a given time (even just a deadman switch) it just flies back to base, either reacquiring signal or landing?
@@n.l.3776 - no because it could only fly back to base using GPS and you could jam GPS too. It's all about radio signals that can be jammed. It's obvious that the Russians don't have enough jamming systems. They have been caught flat footed.
@@Bobby-fj8mk just curious tho, if missiles can be equipped with inertial guidance systems We could easily integrate them into tb2 sized UAV's, at that point there's nothing much enemy can do except physically striking it ?
I have not read the other comments and I don’t know if this has been mentioned already but the unmanned weaponized aerial drones are like the torpedo boats during WWI. A big expensive battleship can be sunk by a cheaper boat armed with a torpedo.
this is a lesson the Iranian Revolutionary Guard still use today. There's no way they can compete with the sheer force of the US Navy or Air Force, so they rely on much cheaper fast attack boats and anti-ship missiles instead
It’s actually quite funny considering the gaming background of this channel, but perhaps Black Ops 2 had a strong point about unmanned drones and vehicles becoming a dominant force in militaries in the future?
great stuff, good content. i never doubted Drones, but i doubted the seriousness of major Militaries to counter them cost efficiently. Drones are just unmatched when it comes to cost efficiency, maybe we see some some changes in the future to counter them. like lasers, SPAAG's/autocannons with ABM's are allready developed but very low in use/service and jamming. "counter systems" have to be cheaper, u just cant throw a million dollar missiles at cheap Drones. also in my personal opinion, the US-Military creates way to fancy Drones if u ask me, an attack-drone shouldnt cost 40 million USD.
I really enjoy listening to people who are intelligent, have great quality information and have great objectivity, honesty about what you know and don't know and communicative skills. Thanks.
One of the reasons TB2 and drones in general are so effective is flight celling. Most cold war era tactical AA is designed to shoot down low-flying CAS aircraft like a10, so they have fairly limited effective altitude of 3-5km, and their radars can scan only a very narrow band of space above the horizon. Most drones have flight cellings of around 8km and more. This is the reason why you see so much footage of drones circling above AA batteries. If an AA system has a high operational celling, for example something designed to shoot down ballistic missiles like Patriot or S300 then they usually deal with Bayraktars fairly easily
@@ludwigwinter6795 yeah, they did. But S300 is the only AA system that managed to shoot down any Azeri Bayraktars at all. The problem was that they were swarmed and by days 2/3 they were effectively out of the picture, along with the entire armenian AA grid. Azeris used old cropdusters with RC kits at 100-150k$ apiece to make Armenians waste their AA missiles, so something eventually slipped in and took S300s out. Besides, S300's radar tends to overheat amd shouldn't really be turned on for more than 6-8 hours at a time, which is one of the reasons they are used in batteries of 4. At the same time, TB2 can stay in the air for 12+ hours at a time, which is another advantage it could have used
@@KirkFickert they aren't being deployed and Russia isn't deploying it's Airforce I have no idea what going on to me it seems as if Russia was expecting to start WW3 and kept their main more well equipped forces in Belarus why is Russia keeping it's S400 and S500 there are they expecting Ukranians to bomb the Luckashenko what happened to all does soldiers from Syria and does victory day military marches
I see a future where all armour comes with half a dozen recon drones (minimum) that can operate semi-autonomously around the vehicle to provide better awareness, and hopefully avoid getting blasted with a friendly neighbourhood NLAW.
Dude, let's be clear: These videos are amazing. You are clearly very knowledgeable, and you should really create a second channel to talk about this stuff and see how you grow.
Well thought out and well presented material. Good work from a former defense radar systems designer who developed systems concepts back in the 90's for UAV's
Thorough report and enlightening! So we want to invest fully to hone the drone. Cost savings to use these drone platforms in both funds and human lives is exciting. Typically excellent, circumspect Aussie perspectives. Slava Ukraini. 🇺🇸💛🇦🇺
First time I saw the drones, told everyone they are the way to go. Then the drones got more and more sophisticated and bigger. Didn’t know anything about the drones from Turkey, but seems they are more than enough. Will wait for accurate numbers. A squadron of these things might prove overwhelming.
Air defence systems will eventually adapt to stop drones, they've been so effective because there's literally nothing there which is specifically made to target down drones. They'll still be useful, but I'm doubtful that they will always be this incredibly amazing
The TB2 was also in use in Libya against Wagner led Hafter-Forces during the battle of Tripoli and it´s deployment seemed to change the direction of this war (together with the capture of that Airbase in the NE). The adaption of "cope cages" i.e. "improvised drone armor" later speaks a whole lot about how this piece of hardware is perceived by the russian´s and their proxies.
Yees a new video. I subscribed today after watching your 2 other analyses. I'm hoping you can provide more valuable insight into this conflict as it drags on. Edit: Are russian AA systems uncapable of shooting down these drones? Or are they hard to see? I dont understand how so few have been lost. Also theres pretty amazing drone footage on youtube of close firefights between russians and ukrainians. I dont know how much commercial drones can help in real time but they are certainly helpful in documenting combat and training new recruits using these videos.
i think the Russian equipment is probably capable if the operators are good, but given what is going on i don't think the people using the equipment are any good. Also i have no clue what the Russian air force is doing, modern air born warning should pick them up from across the boarder
The drones have a really small radar footprint. They can look like a flock of birds on radar or a glitch, something that's definitely not worth shooting at.
Hi. I'm from Russia Are russian AA systems uncapable of shooting down these drones? - No, lots of these got shot down. Even more got destroyed on the ground Or are they hard to see? - Same as all other objects. Hard when operated skillfully and massively along with smaller devices (not the case of ukranians, lucky for us) I dont understand how so few have been lost - this is because your information sources wage war against Russia
@@testaccount4191 Russian equipment, espesially the older ones, require well-trained operators. Soviet era systems work using analog technology, which leaves more work for the operator. Less skilled radar operators might not even recoqnise targets.
@@ilya1o much respect for Russia when started but obvious inept operation makes everyone scramble to explain the confusing and poor attack . looks like logistics is poor looks like conscripts were lied to. troops are running out of food to bad russian troops are being decimated
One explanation for the survival and effectiveness of the TB2s, that I've heard in millenium's video, is that since the russian airforce is keeping distance, mostly flying outside of Ukrainian airspace, and the low RCS of the TB2 is just making it highly survivable in an environment with no fighters close by. Excluding that, it makes sense for systems designed to fire on stuff like cruise missiles and large,fast planes to fare much worse against much smaller stuff like drones. But, yeah, if I was doing the planning for my small country's millitary (in easy cruise missile range to this conflict) - I would sell all the tanks and SU25s and invest in a lot of small realtively cheap armed drones and tons and tons of commercial quads, with probably improved encryption. If I can do a local production of quads - even better. One thing that pops in to my mind is... a loitering anti-radiation munition ? That would be terrifying.... (reaching the end of the video... seems the israeli's had the same idea... smart people)
Disbanding your armoured force would not be a reasonable response if you still plan to operate on the offensive. Combined arms doctrine is still key - just heavily integrated with drones.
@@ldnstan2454 well depends who you are, my country - small nato country with VERY limited budget, it doesn't make much sense for us frankly. What we have are a single brigade of old T72As with no upgrades. We could be involved in international missions but I doubt we will send tanks there. So basically our mission will be, if attacked hold the line untill somebody bigger shows up... and for that what the ukrainians are doing seems very reasonable - antitank ambushes and opportionistic drone strikes, lots of artillery duels with emphasis on counter battery fire... and being in nato we can reasonably expect help even if we are much more limited than ukraine both in budget, manpower and industry. Keep also in mind that we need to cut something to afford the drones. And I'm not going to cut the long range air defence and the extremely limited number of fighters... yet.
@@concretedonkey4726 Of course, it completely depends on the strategic situation of your nation. For example it also might make sense for the Baltic states to invest in asymmetric capabilities, such as drones and encouraging private firearms ownership and training as to fight an insurgency if invaded. But for a major peer power, you will still need MBTs, IFVs and APCs to conduct mobile combined arms warfare.
TB-2 is hard to shut down as it is made of radar transparent composite materials and they can fly up to 8.2 kilometers which is above detection range of many anti air defense systems
30:28 it also means that as a pilots you can be alot more agressive ... in the sense that more like in warthunder etc you might be mugch more willing to kamiazi your drone into a mig if given the opertunity also you can pilot without all the stress of impending death which could lead to better decision making
I still question the air defense capabilities of Russia. Curious how these drones measure up against modern radar guided automated fire-control systems.
When you look at the footage of TB-2's taking out Buk's Tors and Pantsirs their systems aren't deployed (or Out of ammunition in some cases of the Pantsirs). Both system rely on the engine (of the vehicle) to power their systems. Given the situation (at the time) their logistics was dire; so its expected that they were unable to stay active for more than several hours. In the case of other modern air defense systems, it would be the same too. Off-topic; more related to the video. Great Analysis, drone's are defiantly making a change in how the military high commands around the world think. Even from an engineering perspective it creates more opportunities to be creative as the human factor is removed within the design consideration of an air,ground or sea-frame. Loitering Drones are without a doubt going to be employed as an alternative to SEAD-style missions. Even if they don't destroy the AA system, by damaging & rendering it out of commission is good enough (low payload case).
I think it begs the question that if these drones are targeting AD/AAA systems, that must mean that the Ukrainians still have air capabilities. Which contradicts Russia’s claim to wiping out Ukraine’s Air Force/drone fleet. I mean, why target AA if you have no Air Force? Lol
That @disGuy says, it is so obvious that they have logistical problems. So they don't have fuel to run the system active. Which is such a stupid reason to get blown up. But they also leave systems like pansir and tor without fuel and just run away. Which just makes the morale seem so incredible low.
Turkish drones already showed their potency previously in syria, libya and azerbaijan. Don't sleep on Turkish electronic warfare systems like "koral" thats where the drone success is being had, the Turkish ability to jam air defences.
Azerbaijan not really an appropriate use case for application in an actual war. Yeah they are great when you can just hover over an enemy who has no air cover all day dropping missiles on top of their 60 year old decrepit tanks.
THIS is what RUclips is all about. Info delivered without point of view, cautious and probably correct. Where have you been the last decade when RUclips wanted nothing but shorter clips in order to sell more ads. Thank you, I needed this! And Go Ukraine! Kick them out!
Also, for the drone crews, there's a very important difference - multitasking - most of those are so automated that you might need human input only when the drone reaches the combat zone. Unlike a manned aircraft where 90% of the time is cruising from the airport to the action zone. I would speculate that at some points probably a single pilot manages several drones at once.
In the 70s there was a lot of talk of mothership 747s with swarms of drones following them. The 747s would carry a dozen drone pilots and would stand off at 50km while the drones flew in. In the end, the tech wasn't there. I suspect an arms race in jamming will be the biggest thing that comes out, maybe the droneshield guys are onto something. Can you Jam drone control signals with your own drones, since a centralised jammer just opens you up for anti radiation missles.
@@letsburn00 I think in the current day, there's a lot of stuff we don't know :) I mean, being in the software industry, I think with the advancements of AI/ML, these drones can be programmed to perform own missions, probably even decide where and what to fire upon. And these are technologies that I'm aware of as a regular Joe :) Probably the military guys already have even cooler tech embedded into those toys. SO, probably soon drones would not need comms to the "mothership" at all. Planes already have a lot of ways of navigating around even without GPS and only using passive terrain following and inertial nav, so at some point, you will be able to just say "go, fly around that area, look for baddies, shoot them and come back". 20 hours later, it lands and you get nice RUclips footage of the fireworks.
@@OnE61811301 The main issue with that is that the public, for very very good reasons do not like the opening the box to "add more and more advanced AI to drones which can kill people." In the end, drone technology which kills indesciminately is probably going to end up like total surveillance. I.e the only reason it wasn't done before was because it was too expensive. The problem with automating drones is that what makes them determine target selection? If you feed it the profiles of only people who the government has previously killed, there is a high chance that it will end up with the profile "all males between 12 and 70 are targets. Kill them all." It has no recognition that the rebels actually have a very good reason to fight if that's your design.
@@letsburn00 I imagine it to be more like "we know that in this area there are only enemies, so whatever holds a gun or is more armored than a Toyota Prius can go". I didn't mean stuff from the movies like recognizing whether a walking person is a soldier or civilian. Although, at some moment, that might be possible too. In terms of law, AFAIK, at least in the USA there must be an actual person that pushes the red button so that they're liable. Same applies to self driving cars, so there's a lot that needs change. My point was, technically, even today it's probably viable to let a drone do its thing without almost any comms needed, so jamming won't do a lot to it. Btw big US surveillance drones already do go "offline" for great lengths of time while getting intelligence - they have huuuge potential for autonomy, and that's only the public info part :)
@@OnE61811301 Yeah, but that also raises the issue that what happened with Iran will happen in future. With Iran, they managed to spoof GPS data and sent a drone way off course so it tried to land in Iran. It semi-crashed but they still had a drone at the end of it all. Meanwhile, the problem that whole areas are just declared free fire zones is frankly a war crime. When you can just send a half dozen of them to constantly loiter, it's pretty hard to argue you're not an evil empire if every single guy who fits the profile gets shot. It's an issue now and it'll be a bigger issue in future.
To be honest I see calling a "lawnmower engine and sheet metal" drone as a compliment, something cheap, simple, easy to fix and replace, and a good lawnmower will not let you down, which an effective drone is supposed to do in the first place. Especially when giving those "lawnmower engines" some bombs, is enough to destroy expensive and heavily armored tank engines.
Local electrical utility is using an unmanned hexacopter (six blades), that can tilt in any direction to provide a stable picture/ video / thermal scan of our local community power grid. So much more efficient then a man in a bucket truck with a digital camera. It was amazing to see crew work it’s way up the street. PS - my destroyer, USS Hollister (DD-788) had a Gyrodyne QH-50 DASH (Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter), a small drone helicopter built for use as a long-range anti-submarine weapon. Ship was decommissioned in 1970s. It’s interesting to see how 40-50 years of technological progress has made these drone platforms so effective.
Great video! It's clear that behind the scenes all militaries have been investing in smaller and smaller drone platforms to a much larger degree than was publicly known. My biggest question now is what are the most cost effective ways of killing micro sized drones? Are we talking about radar guided rapid fire cannons with airbursting munitions? Or a directed jamming beam? Definitely seems like there is a lack of effective counters, speaking in video game terms
Both seems decent still wondering where the fuck the Tunguskas and co are than we maybe able to see how such systems would perform , also maybe drone hunting drones ? Micro Suicide bombing drones that RAM and explode others deployed as a swarm to stand above once formation ?
@@dog209 Yeah drone hunting drones are a great point, that idea slipped my mind. Maybe with a ground based radar to support them in finding other drones
I'm thinking more on the lines of deploying loitering jamming drones that provide an area of suppression. Of course this would lead to the development of anti-jammer drones that seek out the jammer's signal and either jams or destroys them. I think I'll go buy stock in some drone manufactures....
The problem with Russian air defenses VS drones, especially the cheap small drones, is a technical problem where the radar, is designed to detect large, manned fighter aircraft, that fly high and fast. Once specific anti-drone air defenses are developed, I suspect that drones will be far less effective.
There's also the problem that they are very dependent on a communications link to the pilot. Thinking about the physics of it, I strongly suspect it will eventually be possible to jam them in a way that can't be overcome. I don't think that subject has yet been developed to its fullest possible extent.
I think the problem is that "institutional" ideas have a hard time giving way to new ideas. The Mosquito was given as example, not because it wasn't advanced, but laminated plywood construction was not a part of the institution. The same initially happened with the Carrier. Billy Mitchell was drummed out of the military because he was advocated airpower, but especially airpower against the institutional mindset of battleships. Many resisted the M1 Garand as unnessecary, until it was actually used in combat. It seems UAV are the same thing. Technoligy will make them more and more effective in time, but there age is here.
I foresee a vast expansion of drones as the the paradigm shift kicks in. I can for see that all current piloted missions will see a drone replacement being experimented with. We will see fighter, ground support, longer range stealth bomber type, cargo, recon, electronic warfare. I also believe we will see more ground based drone like platforms. My son has a remotely controlled truck very speedy and able to have rather heavy loads placed on them. I can predict that munitions and cameras could easily be incorporated to give military potential. As technology increases modern battles will be won by those who can innovate new tactics that takes advantage of the new.
it will be interestimg to see in the future if video games will become a training ground for new drone pilots. i can imagine a person opperating a drone ground vehicle with a mounted heavy machine gun.
@@Shrouded_reaper there is an animated short film series about a bomber that starts up and continues its bombimg runs after its pilot is dead, and no one is still fighting. its a sobering video series
In 2020 there was a second war between Armenia and Azerbaijan it was called "Second Nagorno-Karabakh War" it's one of the most studied but least known wars of modern times because well COVID and the west doesn't really care. Azerbaijan invested heavily in drones and turned the previous humiliating loss they had suffered to a stunning victory second time around in about 44 days. Well worth looking into, the time of the tank is pretty much over unless you are up against a very modern superpower with full air control. Know you covered it quickly here but for any of your other viewers.
Yeah I remember hearing about that war when it happened and I was surprised given how the Armenians seemed to have done well in the 90s that the azeris this time seemed to win decisively in a very short time, I didn't hear about how critical the drones were til a few months after the war and when I did I was skeptical, but it seems such drones are indeed effective even if they are also relatively cheap, this drone factor cannot be ignored or underestimated especially now with Russian forces in Ukraine taking surprising loses, I'm assuming every major military and some minor ones are taking notice of the apparent capabilities of even cheap drones
@@steventhompson399 Armenia had mostly sent weapons to Armenians who were living in the region in Azerbaijan, they didn't send their integrated air defense or main military. The area of advance for Azerbaijan were empty and uninhabited lands, with no defensive positions, so Armenians had to fight in the open and move out of inhabited areas.
@@1GTX1 You are very knowledgeable and also funny :) More than half of the equipment in the inventory of the Armenian army was scrapped in that war. The amount of weapons destroyed and seized is 4.8 billion dollars. Destroyed 53 anti-tank, 4 Smerch, 97 Grad, 2 Uragan and 1 TOS multi-barrel rocket launcher systems of the Armenian army. Having destroyed 7 S-300 air defense systems of Armenia, the Azerbaijani army also rendered 1 S-300 radar and 2 S-300 detection stations unusable. Anti-aircraft systems of the Armenian army were also among the main targets of the Azerbaijani army throughout the war. During the war, Armenia was deprived of 1 Oborona radar station, 5 TOR, 40 OSA, 4 KUB, 1 KRUG, 14 Zastava, 2 S-125 anti-aircraft missile systems. 22 unmanned aerial vehicles, 2 Elbrus ballistic missile systems, 1 Toçka-U ballistic missile system, 5 electronic warfare vehicles, 2 R-142 command headquarters vehicles, 2 Nebo-M radar stations, 7 different radar stations, 4 electronic warfare vehicles were also destroyed. was among those. While 28 Akasiya and Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers were destroyed, 5 of them were captured in working condition. The Azerbaijani army destroyed 315 different caliber cannons and captured 37 of them. 63 mortars destroyed, 62 captured. Armenian soldiers fled during the war, leaving 178 grenade launchers and 1380 different rifles. 5 fully operational Shilka anti-aircraft systems also fell into the hands of Azerbaijani soldiers. The Azerbaijani army, which destroyed 287 tanks of the Armenian army and captured 79 tanks, deprived the other side of a total of 366 tanks. The Azerbaijani army also destroyed 69 armored infantry vehicles and captured 47. 252 military trucks were destroyed, 270 captured. In the battle, 7 command posts and 11 ammunition depots of the Armenian army were also destroyed. The Azerbaijani army maintained its superiority in the air throughout the conflict. During the war, 5 Armenian Su-25 fighter jets were shot down.
@@serednemsfrbir Sure, but when it comes to air defense before the war, Armenia had Tor-M2KM and S-300 as being part of it's main air defense, other older soviet systems were either of unknown or small number or were not maintained/ also they had short range Soviet systems like Osa and Strela. Armenian air defense is based on 9+ Tor-M2KM launchers, and around 40 S-300 launchers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Armenian_Armed_Forces 2 Tor-M2KM launchers and 1 S-300 were destroyed in Azerbaijan. www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/09/the-fight-for-nagorno-karabakh.html This is evidence that they didn't bring their main integrated air defense in large numbers to the conflict.
This war has really been eye-opening, and it's interesting to see new actors like Turkey emerge to the field via drone tech. Europeans seem really left behind when it comes to drones, best we have is prototypes and tech demos. Hope something comes out of them.
The drones from Turkey are ok. But the Chinese automated drones are far more sophisticated and lethal, amongst the best in the world and can go head to head with the best American 5th generation fighters.
@@ilhan1936 Oh yeah, I forgot, China only makes rubbish and copies stuff, and it's America that has the huge advantage in STEM grads over the rest of the world, and most published research papers in AI and related drone tech are by people with American sounding surnames... 'Merica! (the echo chamber)
@@ed-te1fp I am genuinely curious about this topic. I did some light googling but couldn't find anything. Can you tell me the names of these highly sophisticated and lethal Chinese drones?
Astonished with how high the quality of this content is with how unflatteringly, straightforwardly it's presented. This could be a lecture series at a really prestigious school that people pay astronomical amounts of money to attend, and yet here it is for everyone to see and appreciate.
For "just some guy that plays video games" you're a really competent individual. Well done, man.
Not easy to find a real channel these days, this is a good one.
Right? Methinks a logistics officer I smell.
@@Feandromar nah he's mentioned before he's got a background in acquisition from the civilian side. It's more likely he's a part of the bureaucracy in Canberra (or was) working alongside defence in drawing up white papers etc.
So no military background but with enough insitu & institutional knowledge to understand the space. Add that to just a general interest in the means to make war/equipment you have effective PowerPoint presentations. ;)
Ohh & it's clear hrs got a university degree Bachelor or greater by the way he does his presentations. Lots of what he presents are inferences immediately backed by facts or at least supporting arguments/documentation.
RUclips is full of blow-hards & opinion pieces presented haphazardly. It's not hard for our boy here to stand out by presenting even basic things with supporting evidence rather than effectively saying 'trust me I uploaded first' or 'I know a guy' like others.
Actually he just brought up a body I suspect he worked/work's for.
Australian National Audit Office (ANAO)
That would very much put him in the right sort of position to have a good overview of acquisitions and spending when it comes to the ADF. Sure he might not be looking at every facet of The Special Operations Command (SOCOMD) expenses etc but he's certainly on the broad stroke level of a defence white paper.
The Australian government can be as corrupt & influenced by defence lobbying as any other but our bean counters still try to keep budgets from blowing out & if acquisitions is the first point of control.
@@DanielVisOneCade Fair cop. Thanks for the insight!
Every helicopter shot down represents a pilot lost.
Every drone shot down represents a pilot learning.
Yeah it is like a video game. If you 'die' you can simply respawn and use that experience to get better.
A very expensive lesson though 😆
@@-----... On the contrary. Relatively cheap, compared to losing a pilot who is actually flying aircraft.
@@-----... an extremely cheap one if you compare it to anything that flies with a soul on board. Even for the biggest loiterers.
A point not mentioned here - I would immagine it's a lot harder to concentrate on your target when you're in a helicopter, actually getting shot at and have to worry about keeping yourself alive vs flying a drone.
even if the Turkish drone is "cheaper", simpler, etc, as long as it is getting the job done, it really doesn't matter. A tool that works, is a good tool.
Agreed! I *wish* drones as good as TB2 were as simple as sheet metal and lawnmower engines. If they were, many countries could build enough to blot out the sun.
@@jordanwalsh1691 You'd be surprised how simple many of these really are.
We used many drones overseas such as the Shadow, Predator, Raven, Puma, T-Hawk, etc. Many are really just simple foam core Remote Control airplanes with fancy camera/GPS payloads. TB2, Shadow, and such get a bit bigger, but still not that big a deal. Quadcopters are widespread too. The trick comes with weapons and targeting. But provide a big enough Remote Control airframe, and you can get the targeting system from someone else (a company that produces them for the military) and bolt them in place.
these really are very simple machines that most people can develop, aside from the weapons, targeting systems, and high end communications.
I don't mean any disrespect to the Turkish defense industry or the Bayratkar in particular when I say that caution is warranted. Russia has proven catastrophically incompetence in this war and the same NATO countries who have been nervous about Russia air defensed have been bemused by its failures over the last six weeks.
That doesn't mean drones like the Bayratkar don't have a very real use for smaller nations or in low intensity conflicts, but they my be punching above their weight in Ukraine due to circumstances.
Indeed, the SAM hunting may have been prompted by Ukraine deciding to kill as much anti-air power as possible, as quickly as possible, just in case Russia got its act together.
If it gets the job done, then the cheaper and/or simpler, the better.
Cheaper is better. Half the price double the number you can deploy.
Even a "large" drone still has a very tiny radar signature. Almost all AD systems are designed to identify, track and destroy plane sized targets. Anecdotal story here. During my last deployment, soldiers in my battlion were having small quad rotor drones sent to them. We used them as local recon while on vehicle/foot patrols. They proved to be a game changer.
Consider swarms of insects for the real game changers. Drones the size of mosquitos with explosives on board. A hundred mosquitos landing on a human and exploding. They can lie in wait like mosquitos that follow CO2 on the wind to track down humans.
@@jackrodgersjr why explosives? a poisoned mosquito dart drone would do far better, or even just kinetic(flying bullet). just anything but explosive. also what you're suggesting would propably be outlawed if developed and classified as a warcrime if used, just like chemical or biological weapons. also if you have to use a hundred drones for 1 human, i doubt thats cheaper than something like a medium sized switchblade drone.
@@snowdrop9810 Geneva Convention prohibits the use of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices" and "bacteriological methods of warfare". This is now understood to be a general prohibition on chemical weapons and biological weapons
@@snowdrop9810 why explosives?
.
because then its not chemical or bio warfare
AKA its legal (and a big nope)
@@snowdrop9810 "switchblade drone" Lmao 🤣😂😆 ....ffffffiiiT!!! 😯
🤪😂🤣.
As a professional engineer I can't say enough about how unbelievably well this material is presented and logically analyzed. SO we'll done.
everyone seem to be scamed by a comparaison of two diferent thing
no existing drone have the same ordinance than a service plane and all are more stealth at least by size and signature
but most expensive drone can not carry a ton bomb plus a canon at high speed what the cheapest plane can do
Is it .. first I heard of drone success where Iranian produced ones supplied to R
Thank you especially for the "life is not cheap" section. An underappreciated factor in these sorts of videos.
Yes. I appreciate the economic outlook as well. It always amazes me that people don't realize that happy, healthy people contribute more. Yes, don't want people to die, and going further we want them to be happy with their jobs. However, we also want these things because it provides material benefit. Both to the country, and to the organization that trained them.
It's why I see employers or nations who treat people as disposable as not just terrible from a moral perspective, but also from an economic perspective.
That's why Russia always fails. Their military doctrine going all the way back to WWII is men are cheaper than guns. Which is WRONG.
@@arthurmoore9488 When a nation has a surplus of poorly-educated military-aged men with few economic prospects and potential growing dissent, they instead become a burden on the state welfare system. What better way to reduce that surplus than to deploy them as cannon fodder with cheap vehicles and little ammo or food. At the worst they die, and you reduce the strain on your economy and your aging military surplus/junkyard weapons, and less chance of a revolt happening. At best they inflict casualties on the opposition.
To nations with that kind of demographic, life isn't cheap - it has negative value. That's the way with nations such as Russia and China, who have large rural populations who do not contribute much to the national economy.
As certainly as it is construction workers who build the house, it is the soldiers who win a war. Everything else must be built around that idea for a military to be effective.
Life is actually extremely cheap...the materials of an average human are worth a few hundred bucks. A LIFE...is subjectively expensive. While the constituent materials of a body aren't especially valuable, things like their arrangement as organs, can be quite valuable. The knowledge and skills of a given individual are irrelevant, however...those can be transferred to almost anyone, given a little time and effort. Better to not have to expend that time and effort, certainly, but hardly any great loss if it happens.
In the universe, life is a bug...not a feature.
The mosquito was contemptuously described as 'just made of plywood and balsawood.' It went on to be one of the best and most versatile aircraft of WW2.
But it was the fastest airplane in the world the tb2 has the performance of a biplane
@@gingernutpreacher so it can turn on a dime, nice!
@@gingernutpreacher probably costs less than the average biplane though :)
Every new piece of info I learned from the Mosquito made me love it even more! It was such an out-of-the-box idea it’s impressive!
The Heinkel He 162 was contemptuously described as 'just made of plywood and wood glue.' It went on to be one of the absolute worst and useless aircraft of WW2.
When accurate and verifiable information is "anti-Russian propaganda", it's perhaps the most damning assessment OF Russia.
Like "ghost of Kiev" and "Snake Island"? Yeah, sorry that is not a damning assessment of Russia, but Ukraine and West who report blatant lies without shred of evidence or shame.
@@CloneDAnon those captives deserve an oscar
Who are you even quoting? If you're so concerned with the verifiability of information then maybe you should take issue with Perun's use of twitter screenshots and "verifiable" western propaganda in his initial assessment of this conflict. Also you have a fucking my little pony banner on your youtube channel, which is all I need to know about you LMAO.
Yea bro it's war. People need the positive stories to get them through the day.
@@BoleDaPole Yea, but people do not need lies or manipulations.
Two extra benefits to consider on top of those you already mentioned regarding not losing a pilot: training and pilot longevity.
A commonly used model in Learning & Development is the "70/20/10", which says that 10% of learning is formal, 20% of learning is from your peers, and 70% of your learning comes from experience. Every pilot who is taken out of action is one who cannot pass their experience onto the next generation of pilots below them.... unless it's a drone pilot, who can pretty much guarantee they will pass their skills on. In fact it's actually far easier to do so, given the difficulty of having an instructor overseeing your activities in a manned combat aircraft on a mission! In contrast a new drone pilot can literally have their instructor behind them, providing advice and encouragement, *despite being on a combat mission*.
During WWII the western Allies and Axis had very different approaches to this problem. The Axis kept their best pilots flying combat missions, racking up kills. The top 100+ aces in WWII were ALL German, and you have to go down to #273 before you reach the first Allied ace - the first Western allied ace isn't until #401! But the difference isn't one of inherent skill - it's because the western allies rotated their pilots out of combat duty, specifically so that they could teach the next generation of pilots how to fly and how to fight.
What you ended up with was a Luftwaffe that had a limited number of incredibly good aces - and a large remainder of increasingly poor new pilots, with increasing levels of turnover. By contrast the western allies had far fewer amazing pilots - but the AVERAGE level of pilot ability was much higher.
Exactly the same can apply to drone vs manned air forces. The drone force will continue to acquire competence because pretty much every single one of their pilots passes on their experience to the next class. In fact it's even better than that, because the working life of a drone pilot is much longer than a combat pilot too. Correctable eyesight issues might bar a pilot from combat duty - but if a drone pilot has to wear glasses, who cares?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_flying_aces
theorically yes but how to compare two diferent sytem since actually the combat drones of the navy never seen combat and in all of the drone list not any one match a manned version
what you compare a global hawk or a predator to ?
Really good points. I didn't realise how important this was, and is.
Well said. I wondered re. WWII e.g. Galland and the ME262 squadrons.
The military still does this with their manned squadrons as well. The most famous of these programs is the NFW (Naval Fighter Weapons) School, more commonly known as Top Gun. It isn't just an ego boost for the pilot selected to attend from the various duty squadrons. The pilot goes to the school, learns the most up to date tactics and skills and returns to their squadron to train the rest of the pilots what they learned.
It doesnt stop there, piloting a jet in combat is very intense on the human body, there is a hard limit on G forces that can be susteined that cant and didnt improve over the years. Missiles have been able to pull 20+Gs for a long time, there is no reason to believe an unmanned aircraft couldnt do the same, and do insane maneuvers that no manned aircraft could hope to match.
Having said that, some level of skepticism is understandable, imo the most critical aspects are establishing a secure and stable connection and providing a good UI.
It is undeniable that in a specific context and for a specific mission set UAVs are better, and any military that wishes to stay relevant should look into them and possible counters
The presentation and analysis comes across as scholarly: Comprehensively rigorous, rational, balanced and deep. Add to that, Powerpoint slides that are used effectively! ;) :D I'm very happy to see another Aussie contributing to public education and dialogue in this way. Thankyou @Perun !
It was well done but there are many unanswered questions and possibilities left for sci-fi writers. Yes, the age of hardware is over as newer concepts of how to kill will appear.
Sorry the Aussies gave up their guns, now you are slaves, look what they did to you with the Covid, 😵
@@tirionson they’d beat your arse in a fair tear up
Never would have thought he is an Aussie lol. Don't you guys speak different?
@@minzblatt They start English very early in High School.
A big advantage of those relative lightweight aircraft is that they don't need a (military) airport to operate from. Even if Russia destroys all Ukrainian airports, the drones could fly and land at a straight road. TB2 only has a wingspan of 12m (39ft) and weights max 700kg (1500lbs).
With a pretty flat land such as Ukraine, they could build a road through someone's farmland and hide/arm those drones in a barn.
Another thing is that they have insane loitering time compared to any jet. These guys will be way more effective for close air support despite the lack of potent armament.
i thought about the same thing with Taiwan. If China were to invade, they would bomb runways as the first thing. But if a drone can just use a large street, the Taiwanese would still be able to get this kind of local "airsupport," just like were seeing in Ukraine.
That was the swedish cold war doctrine, but for jets.
@@valentinpedersen6144 Someone living in Taiwan here: This is in fact actual Airforce doctrine for our Jets too, lots of the civilian road infrastructure was built to be able to, in a pinch, be used as makeshift runways for the air force to take off and land at, including the major freeways, and many small fuel and supply depots have been set up just off these roads as well.
Taiwan has basically been fortifying and preparing for this invasion for the past 70 years after all.
But yeah, the military is definately taking the use of drones seriously as well here.
And for drone helicopters and other VTOL drones, they can launch from the back of any outdated random vehicle, which is already abandoned as likely to be instantly destroyed by the enemy upon seeing it used as a mobile launcher. So loss is 1 or zero infantry drivers, plus the vehicle, drone and fuel. If the drone survives the mission it can be "emergency landed" for later infantry pickup outside immediate combat danger and transport to wherever it can be readied for another mission.
I’m really happy this series is getting so many views it’s top tier content.
Great stuff. This armchair war historian is young enough, unlike some RUclipsrs in this space that are retired military and/or too vested in their world view to admit it, to be flexible enough to see the "rise of the machines".
Analogy: I remember back in the day arguing with Usenet chess fanatics on the point that computers would eventually beat humans in chess, with the old school saying: "computers have no soul" and "computer chess programs are no more smarter than the programmer" and other such nonsense. Then it was the GO game group ("Go is more complex than chess"). Then it was the poker group ("poker requires reading human emotion"). All of them fell to the machines...
Dang
From a military professional to whatever kind of a professional it is that you are; I know that you run this as a gaming channel. Holy shit, your videos regarding this war are absolutely top notch. Thank you so much for making these. As an American, I’m proud of our relationship with Australia, and people like you are why. Thank you for what you do.
ive found these days that a lot of the most knowledgeable people in any given topic who are also young do not do that thing for work.
Chicken hawks the lot of you
@@robertely686 What you fail to realise is that many of these "chicken hawks [sic]" are the reason why volunteer forces in the West work, but I can only speak for the US. The US military loves RUclips potential for recruitment. 18 year olds sign military contracts because they gain a certain level of respect from the citizens, especially the ones who are enthusiastic about their nation's military. It's the culture of heroes. It's attractive to many who have a higher calling and incredible drive. Then you get people who want the GI Bill benefits..these soldiers are maybe involved in logistics, vehicle maintenance, etc. They are more motivated by the tangible benefits, but that doesn't make them bad soldiers. They are the backbone of the military. The careerist officers and insane infantrymen are some of the other groups. The military is well-structured. Lesson have been learned in maintaining morale. How can a country fight an unpopular war for 20 years at enormous expense and still retain the same political dynamic at home, the same support for the military. In an instant, Putin erased the malaise in the West. It's just impressive how the U.S. maintains its warmachine.
If you aren't a Yank, you probably would be appalled at just how interwoven the military is with citizen life. The military needs young people who have grown up admiring the power of the US. It's not just beneficial for getting new generations of "warfighters", it gets nerds working for companies involved in the MIC. Take the largest development project in recent memory, F-35. Top engineers were required to design the F-35, the engine, the software, everything. How many of the guys and gals wanted to be military pilots but realised the path wasn't there for them? Bad eyesight, incompatible temperament. Many Chickenhawks get Master's Degrees and do their part to maintain the supremacy of the free world. This is something that gets asked a lot by high schoolers in the US, "Why is there so much emphasis on military/warfare?" It's necessary at all levels and stations in our society. I'm glad the American military and MIC is so effective.
Edit: citizen should read: civilian.
@@robertely686 spoken like a true keyboard warrior that u are
@@Chironex_Fleckeri nicely put. Our citizen-soldiers bring their brains and keep their training.
Perun, I never thought I'd be actively looking for one hour ppt presentations on RUclips. I've listened through a few of them. Great job! Interesting, logical, unbiased (as far as I can tell). I love how you focus on the economic side of warfare. In the end, historically the stronger economy wins wars so it is a pretty important subject. ATGMs and drones gives the weaker economy an edge, interesting! Keep the slide shows coming!
You are already doing a great job but bear in mind that some of your followers are not watching you show but listening, for example while driving. So it is really great that you, mostly, comment on the slides in a way that we do not have to look at the slides to grasp what your point is.
Thanks for your insights!
You should make a video about how the U.S. military budget completely skews how people view militaries. So many things our military does is only functional because we spend enough money to be good at everything. This series of videos does a great job at shining a light on the choices normal countries have to make when allocating defense resources.
Gotta love watching these 40 minutes PowerPoint on drones in Ukraine, while I'm still holding off on my finals thesis
Conference paper in 3 weeks. Only one page in. Results plot not done.
I feel you.
Going through the same thing....
BRO I know. I have a master sql database that needs built by the first and I've gotten tables, keys, and group roles built, and that's about it. Oh and I know not a fucking thing about sql. Wew.
This is very relatable.
@@SonOfTerra92 Well the thing is when the deadline gets really close, you suddenly get sense of urgency and get shit done really fast.
I'm from Germany and would be interested in your perspective on German rearmament and the beginnings of a European strike force. As you probably know, this war caused somewhat of a 180 in terms of German defense policy.
How fast can a military really go from very little to going head to head with a powerful opponent by just giving it 100 Billion Euro all of the sudden? (plus adjusting yearly spending)
Germany has a long running problem with maintaining its existing systems, should the money go towards new systems or getting the old stuff running again?
How do you decide on what to scrap, and what kind of capabilities are really important to maintain and extend?
For example, if defending NATO and European allies and deterring an attack on them (without relying on US support) is your priority, what systems do you need?
That's a fascinating topic idea. Can't guarantee I'd get to it, but now I'm thinking about it...
@@PerunAU Thank you for these insanely informative Videos, they are well presented and spoken too! It would be marvelous If you could give a take on the German Situation.
+1 would love to hear more on this topic.
Short answer is Training, wheeled AFV, maintenance, drones, logistics and the unthinkable tactical nuke.
Given how the Russian army has fared so far i think after the spending Germany could defend against Russia by itself, but with the USA, UK ,Poland and Italy Russia wouldn't stand a chance.
I do find myself saying, “Ah, that makes sense,” or, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” a lot when I watch these presentations. Thanks for this.
This really is an eye opening channel. So many issues that float around in the back of one’s mind are crystallised into concise data, by this kind of analysis. Dispelling myths and putting these things into an adult perspective seems an invaluable service, especially now. It leaves me feeling more, “knowledgeable,” yet less, “certain,” about stuff. Which is a good thing, I guess?
The only thing he misses here is how the Russian government and military operates and the class system. A lot of people are ignorant to it. Most of the world values its military men to almost a godlike status, while its basically the polar opposite in Russia because the KGB runs the show. For most of the video this didn't matter until he got to the value of human life and economic cost. Think about it, whats losing ten thousand conscripts when you can obtain a nation of millions of people?
@@goldenhate6649 thats a dark thought. i guess war is just a numbers game to some people
@@goldenhate6649 Its not because of the KGB. It is a holdover from the Soviet era Deep Operation, which leverages the large manpower of the Soviet Union to saturate enemy defenses and prevent the enemy from knowing where to dedicate their reserves. The thing is Russia isn't as populous anymore nor does it have as large of a military so it should be a major concern
What I like about this comment is the last bit:
More, “knowledgeable,” yet less, “certain”
Certainty in our conclusions is a failing of many of us.
I stumbled on to your lessons a few days ago. Now I feel like I'm enrolled in a really good war college. My days are pretty full but I look forward to my daily one hour "class". Thanks!
I think, after the “Moskva” ru warship was hit by 2 Neptun missiles while the massive air-defense systems of the warship had been distracted by three Ukrainian TB-2s, the discussion about efficacy can be closed. UAVs are amazing.
I'm almost certain there is a lot more to this story than the propaganda story we are all hearing. The ship had multiple defense systems, and distracting one system should not have disabled the others. Those missiles probably should not have made it. The fact that they did suggests a larger problem with the ship.
@@lwilton Neptun missiles fly very low to the water surface, and there was a storm that night, which could have made missiles indistinguishable from the waves. Also, another version I heard is that one of the TB-2s destroyed the RLS of the ship before the missiles were launched.
@@eugene_dudnyk Perhaps. I've heard both of those arguments, and I rate at least the first as possible. But the ship was designed to respond to anti-ship missiles and take them out, and had at least two systems that should have been capable of doing so. As far as I know, each system had it's own targeting and acquisition radar. A threat from the other side of the ship would have been engaged by the defenses on that side, leaving the side with the incoming missiles free. I am more inclined to believe that there was a human screwup involved here. They systems perhaps were not on full alert as they should have been. Or maybe the C&C structure required an operator to report an incoming missile to the captain and wait for an order of what to do about it. We may eventually hear more about this in a few years, or we may not.
@@lwilton The rumor is Moskva's search radar didn't have 360 degree angle so when it detected and tracked TB-2s Ukrainians launched Neptune missiles from a blind angle. It also explains how exactly there were only two missiles launched and they both were hit. It is also possible Moskva was already damaged by TB-2s, their smart munitions are really small and i really doubt Russian CIWS could engage them. However this also makes their damage extremely limited against such an armored cruiser, still they could easily damage radars if they could hit on them. There is definitely some mystery going on and Ukrainian side doesn't share footage as well, perhaps because they are planning to use this tactic more in future and there is also rumor about Turkey asking them to not share TB-2 footages as it is making Russian public hostile against Turkey...
what it needed were support ships, like every flag ship should have. Ukrainians were surprised that it was undefended and moving in repetitive patterns, they saw an opportunity to take the heat off from Odessa
I've watched all 3 of your Ukraine videos, for what it's worth, I spent 15 years in the military during the GWOT in a tiered unit, and most of that time either overseas or getting ready to go, and the amount of power points, and lectures I've been subjected to I wouldn't wish on even the worst of ISIS, that said, your videos are excellent. You let on that you work in the field? if I had to guess, procurement or national defence strategy? If so, they aren't paying you enough, these are not only excellent and very informative, even for a guy like myself with a pretty decent grasp on how this works, but are easily digestible for even a total novice like my girlfriend, and the fact you're putting them out in what is a very short time frame makes it even more impressive.
You should be giving these lectures to rooms full of generals and politicians, not RUclips, if you have to settle for RUclips though, I think you are good enough to make money off of these analysis videos, Ukraine looks like it is settling in for a stalemate siege type situation, assuming the Russians don't mess up even more than they already are, but there are a lot of different videos you could make regarding various force compositions/structures, strategies, technologies etc even unrelated to the current conflict, or once it is done, just an old mans 2 cents.
Also looking through your catalog got me to buy Phoenix Point, so there is that too, lol.
You nailed it, sir. While watching I imagined sitting in a large room with very smart people in it. Everybody paying attention, many nodding now and then. (I am from Finland, a 50+yrs old reserve officer, M.Sci(Eng) with relevant analyst experience.)
Australian government needs to see this. they just canceled their drone programs. in favour to cyber security!
Man went from a gamer to a military strategist within a month. Keep up the good work 💪🏻
It sounds odd in retrospect, but I always figured people would find this sort of look at defence investment analysis boring, so I stuck to gaming.
@@PerunAU I don’t think it’s boring, and even if it was, you seem to have that talent for explaining things in a way that is both professional and engaging.
@@Shaun_Jones definitely not boring, remember the people who watch this content will find watching the Kardashians boring
@@PerunAU there are a lot of gaming channels, defense channels a lot less and somewhat credible defense channels....
@@PerunAU Definitely not boring Perun.
Honestly this has been some of the best content about the war, If you actually enjoy making these, I would love to see more! :)
Absolutely, the host is a reasonable thinker. Unfortunately rare
@@steveperreira5850 , Duh... not a thing you wish on our (American) friends.
You’re the first comment I see not just asking for more videos but actually asking if he likes doing them ; good spirit :)
“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.”
― Frédéric Bastiat
As a glider pilot, our CFI used to say that even if you stray into controlled airspace, the radars will not be able to detect you, as the only thing metallic is the control column. Most modern gliders are glass-fibre, and the older ones were made of wood and canvas. If the drones could only hide their metallic motors, they would be much less visible to radar.
If they fly at say just 60kmh I wonder if software might filter them out as a flock of birds?
I thought gliders carried transponders?
@@theVtuberCh i believe its not mandatory.
@@ersendal2466 it probably is or should be to avoid air collisions.
@@Viper607706 Glider pilots usually only fly in designated boxes to keep them separated from other air traffic. At least that's how it works in the UK. They also fly well below cruise altitudes for many aircraft and areas around airports and military bases where you might have planes at similar altitude to a glider are heavily restricted.
well done. a lot of youtubers are getting into this type content, and few of them deserve to. you are one of those few.
I love how you dip in the economics of the war rather than just speak how bad things are in the war. Keep it up
It’s funny that they called the simpler drones “cheap metal and a lawn mower engine”… as if that was a bad thing. Like “oh it’s cost-effective and easy to maintain… booooo that’s bad!”
Honestly, the main reason you armor your aircraft is to get the living parts back after use - the pilots and whoever else might be aboard. Adding armor just weighs the thing down, which slows it and affects the flight profile, making it easier to target and destroy.
Who is "they"?
Random RUclipsrs?
@@RedRider1600 check the video. I think it was some military people.
@@NothingIsKnown00
No, I don't think it was military people.
Our Predator drones are in the same class, which has since been retired, or no longer produced.
We have the much larger Reaper drones now.
@@RedRider1600 Bigger isn't necessarily better. The new $6000 switchblade drones would scare the hell out of me if I was a target.
00:00 Introduction
01:04 So what are we covering?
02:03 My contentions
03:41 Proliferation of Unmanned Systems
05:12 Questions over the capabilities of these systems
06:55 TB-2 as an example
08:20 But… they just seem to keep working
09:18 Seriously… they keep blowing things up
09:51 Lots of confirmed kills
10:42 The results are scary, even if you make the most generous assumptions…
12:41 And that is just one of the systems in use
13:50 Russian successes
15:40 Arguments for efficacy
17:53 Countermeasures point deserves its own discussion
21:07 So what does that prove?
23:58 Economics of Unmanned Systems
26:24 The Platform
28:21 The Platform - Maintenance
29:26 The Pilot
31:02 Sidenote - life is not cheap
33:08 Infrastructure
34:30 Accessibility
37:21 Even scarier when we talk smaller munitions
44:04 Key takeaways
48:44 Outro
I recently discovered your analysis videos and think this is the best one yet. I had heard about the Ukrainian UAVs but didn't know much of any details. It's fascinating seeing past the memes and learning how they actually being used. Plus your extrapolation for what it means for the future compelling and chilling. Thanks so much for making these videos!
I am studying Unmanned Systems in the US. While a freshman I can definitely see as more and more commercial drones are able to follow waypoints (think DJI Spark sized drones) you’ll have preplanned routes in wars such as this.
Sure they’re easy to shoot it’s just not worth using a Tunguska to take small drones down. It’s just too expensive. These drones being the standard in an army would have GPS, laser guidance for ordinance, and the ability to record and upload 1080p/ 4K photos by small recon teams or those who are sniping.
Small drones are going to see a lot of tactics going forward, not just in explosives and weapons. But as distractions, reconnaissance, spotting for artillery, etc. And Ukraine is the testing ground.
Heck drones are (under FAA approval) are acting as guards for an airport that’s being used by either FedEx or UPS. My memory is failing me on who.
Have you seen the capability of the new DJI M30T? 20x zoom, infrared cameras, base stations for preprogrammed patrol routes. These things are gonna be game changing.
@@Fraet I’ll need to look into it, all I have are M300s I am using for work.
Assume GPS etc is jammed. Does this still work? Assume more aggressive jamming and RDF, how does that work? I have no idea if you can do a single-chip inertial guidance unit, but I'm pretty confident you can't buy it from Alibaba.
@@k53847
Manual control is relatively easy. Plus most drones that aren’t reliant on our phones can keep a map of an area downloaded. It doesn’t make sense in a warzone to rely solely on satellite, meaning a competent military would plug files from a storage device of the entire nation (or wherever the drone will only be operating) and allow it to fly within that area.
I am going to be working for Deveron, an agricultural company that flies drones for farmers. Before work I download the data and then make plans. That’s stored on a drive them plugged into my controller. Those files then work with the drone, even without GPS.
I’d be more concerned about the frequency the drone runs on being jammed, if the equipment is around. Even then to jam a civilian drone takes time and other drones, or equipment that can simulate the allowed (2-4) frequencies for civilians.
The military can probably give their drones the ability to connect to many upon many frequencies without issue. Making jamming a huge pain in the ass
Out of curiosity, what degree do you do? Are im military school or are there bachelors for military analysis?
This must have been the first PowerPoint presentation I ever paid full attention to without dosing off a single time. Hats off to you!
Today's video sponsor is...Microsoft! 😀
Not yet started watching but especially on the case TB2, we have to remember that the TB2 operators teaching other countries how to use them are especially experienced against Russian equipment. So far TB2's are used by Turkey and other operators in Syria, Libya, Azerbaijan/Armenia and now Ukraine. Except Syria, everywhere they went they faced Russian old/new equipment. It is safe to assume that by now main operators have extensive knowledge of Russian equipments deployment time, range, effectiveness etc.
During the first week of the war, nearly all Ukrainian air bases with MiG-29 and Su-34 where destroyed, same was said with the TB2. That was very unprofessional.
The lessons learned specific to UAV vs Russian armaments are going to be way secondary or tertiary to general UAV lessons learned.
An anti armor munition is going to do roughly as well against different APCs and IFVs, but how those AFVs & IFVs are used is going to vary greatly from conflict to conflict.
@@BariumBlue In Libya Turkish drones supported the government while Haftar the warlord had an abundance of chinese drones, only Turkish drones too date have had this level of success. No one else's, Turks obviously no something that the rest of the world doesnt concerning the utilisation of drones.
They also hunt USA equipments in Syria and Iraq
@@billyjesus5442 it was said that the Turks downed one of them using a AA-laser.
One of the factors of the effectiveness of the TB2 drones which I don't believe you mentioned, is the fact that the US and other Western allies are providing substantial air support in the form of identifying targets which would destroy the drones, and letting them know when it's okay to fly them, and where. This is extremely important, as Ukraine does not have this capability to my knowledge and plays a huge role in their effectiveness.
Ukrainian civilian population provide so much intel they could surely still use the drones to substantial effect. This does require the internet though, which they wouldn’t have without US assistance. You are correct though Western intel is an added boost on top.
@@TheEsuohdla That may actually be Elan Musk and his satellite system at least in part. If western countries could tell them when and where not to fly it could go a long way toward preventing units from being shot down though the Russians should have surface radar that could pick up the larger units.
@@dwightehowell8179 it is musk, I still count that as western assistance and to be honest contact between Ukrainian government and musk was likely organised by the US government, that is how such affairs are usually initiated.
Western countries almost certainly are providing some level of intelligence like how you described, the comparatively small size of the Ukrainian air force is limiting the operations they can do.
As successful as their campaign has been, they are gradually losing units and by most reports they have reached a stage they need to be careful on what missions they take on, so that they retain some form of presence in the air and also so they can force the Russians to pay a steep cost for each of their casualties. The only way Ukraine can do more in the air is with more equipment, though it is very debatable if they would have the trained manpower needed to run it.
@@TheEsuohdla Not to mention SpaceX is essentially a government-private partnership that works closely with NASA.
@@Bustermachine sort of. Space-X received about 1.5 billion of assistance. Everything else is pay for service.
One of the most informative content creators regarding this brutal war. Also hilarious ‘it’s basically like paper beats scissors’😂
🇺🇦🇦🇺🌻
A point: pilot requirements are very stringent. Pretty well perfect vision. Ability to take high sustained g forces. Fatigue resistance. Reaction times.
In comparison many many gamers with asthma could probably learn to pilot a drone very well.
The pool of drone pilots is large where the pool of pilots is small which is also a major economic cost.
Absolutely, and we don’t have to deal with the oversized egos of these idiot pilots. Guys I couldn’t make it into engineering school, they got a bachelor of arts degree and became a fighter pilot. They don’t even understand the physics of what they’re doing.
Second though, not too sure if it’s mentioned as I’m only a quarter in. Pilots are expensive, you lose an aircraft, you lose a pilot, you lose a drone, you lose “some sheet metal and a lawn mower engine.” One is far easier to replace than the other.
@@steveperreira5850 Have you seen the egos of video game players?
@@_human_1946 Gamer egos aren't really a concern though, they never leave the house
@@sakelaine2953 I suppose that makes it very hard for them to do a Belenko and deliver a drone to your enemy
I'm a science-fiction fan, and back in the 1980's I read a short story set in a future war zone (unfortunately I can't remember the name of the story). In the story the air above the conflict zone was permanently filled with swarms of loitering autonomous suicide drones that were about the size and intelligence of a crow.
They were smart enough to identify targets and attack by themselves. The soldiers were forced to stay in underground bunkers or die. Going outside was suicide for individual soldiers, and any vehicle that went into the open was immediately mobbed by dozens of these drones. Even heavily armored vehicles would suffer a mobility kill, leaving the crew trapped inside.
Since both sides had access to these drones, the war was at a stalemate. Much like during WW1 trench warfare, neither side was able to win over the other. The story left a major impression on me because it sounded so plausible ...
You may be thinking of the James A Corey 'Expanse' series where the attack on a high-tech enemy home planet runs up against these.
_Kaleidoscope Century_ by John Barnes, perhaps.
@@rogerstone3068 The Expanse is new in book terms. No way it's 40 years old.
The problem with drone swarms is that the small drones themselves have a sub 30 minute flight time. A swarm in the sky would be hard to maintain with drones landing and recharging all the time.
@@nicholasn.2883 Yup the battery technology needs to be better and/or an autonomous recharging capability must be made practical for any of this to happen
You didn't consider personnel costs in the cost-effectiveness analysis. Unless we assume all destroyed vehicles to have been abandoned / unmanned at the time of destruction, that's a lot more cost on the AA side.
unless it was included in the ballpark figures of the platforms. And later on you do talk about personnel costs in general.
Came upon this video randomly but wow.. extremely professional clear and concise delivery of this information. Kind of a military Ted talk. Thank you for the time you put into making this. Will definitely watch your other ones.
I've had drones on my mind for a few days after watching this video, and the thought occured to me: could we see a return of the old anti-air guns to combat drones?
Firing a bunch of lead at the (comparatively) slow and low- flying drones might be more feasible and cost effective than wasting a million dollar missile on such a target. And with modern targeting computers it might not even require human input other than turning on a switch marked "AA"
shooting a drone at 5000m alltitude remind the efficiency of ww2 anti air gun and the cost of ammo shells raise up to the stinger manpads value
tought i agree than commercial drone flying under 1000m can be intercepted with a simple radar guided machinegun system that actually not exist better than with a ZSU23-2 canon
@@omnianti0 replace stinger rocket engine with drone propeller. Also I have another idea; remove IR, remove guidance, and allow manual control like a drone. Actually why is this even expensive? the Javelin has same shaped-explosive as an RPG-7, which is just a grenade with rocket attached, so attach this to a drone and fly it like the expensive ordinance.
@@xponen what you described already exist it the heavy lootering amunition 600
but i get an even cheaper and better option just replace the sensor by a passive radio antenna that just guide on any radio emission since everyone even terorist use cell phone or encrypted radio they make a target
This is one area where laser-based systems would be ideal. The targets aren't going to be as robust as larger vehicles and they're dirt cheap and potentially appearing in large numbers so you don't want to expend very expensive munitions to take them out. The hardware and power source for a laser is still large and costly but each shot is cheaper than a cannon round - the Israeli Iron Beam system is estimated to cost just $3.50 compared to $100,000+ for an interceptor missile.
Thanks for making this. Possible correction, a switchblade "unit" is 5-20 or something in a box. So more like thousands than hundreds of individual switchblade drone munitions have been sent.
Interesting, I have not heard that before, thank you for that info
My understanding is that a Switchblade comes in 2 parts, a control set and the munition. I believe a "unit" is a control set and 10 munitions.
Think I heard that The US had send or are currently sending 8.000 Switchblades. Think they are all the small model short range model.
Woah, that changes the stat majorly.
@@TheLadderman Your under selling the Switchblade. The Switchblade 300 has a range of 10km (6 miles approx.) The explosive payload is equivalent to about 2 hand grenades or a 60mm mortar bomb. Its also accurate enough to fly through a doorway or car window. Its basically a very accurate grenade launcher with a 6 mile range.
The warhead may not be large but its big enough to kill everyone in a confined space like a command vehicle with the back door open or ignite a truck carrying fuel or ammo.
It may not kill a tank but everything else like artillery batteries, SAM vehicles, foxholes, command posts, etc are targets that can be struck and killed by one or more Switchblades.
Back in the day of Iraq and Afghanistan war I was "analyzing " lot of combat footage (watching RUclips videos as I am war geek) and I noticed how easy it is to ambush patrol of first rate military . Watching people die just for lack of info that simple scout drone could provide was mindboggling to me. I thought things would change as war progressed as the solution was obvious, squad level scout drones , but it didn't happened. This war in Ukraine will hopefully changed that.
Absolutely, no military infantry men or armored infantry should be left in the blind without scout drones. I watched these videos from a couple of decades ago and was equally dismayed. But I was in the military and I know how stupid those people are. There is no limit to stupidity
The US military does have man portable drone systems. What has to be recognized in 2005 to 2015 or so these platforms haven’t met the economy of scale required to field them at squad levels, as well as train soldiers in how to use them.also, it’s not exactly easy to remain stealthy and undetected when you are being followed around by an angry swarm of bees.
There was one video of a drone in the donbass region completely scouting the entire trench system.
This allows you to determine what areas of the trench are unguarded.
Well as someone who was in Afghanistan, things actually very much did change. There's a reason why you don't see a lot, or any, drone footage of the Taliban or other affiliated forces attacking American or NATO units. Because they couldn't.
From at least around 2007-2009 onwards, jamming and electronic countermeasures were replete everywhere. A patrol didn't go out without at least one or two Man packs, plus a much larger vehicle unit, that pretty much shut down every frequency from 1-10Ghz in the immediate area. That means drones, remote IEDs, enemy comms, pretty much everything. Locals did not like it because whenever we rolled by their cell phones and radios stopped working.
Of course, it will be possible to develop some penetrative measures to this, and I'm sure a major nation state could make more Jam resistant drones, and then likewise we would make better countermeasures and so on, and the arms race would go back and forth. Since the Taliban had no development capabilities and just bought what they could on the commercial or second-hand military market, they had no capability to do this.
It doesn't mean that drones are ineffective, but it does mean that there is quite a lot that a wealthy and sophisticated military can do to counter them, especially on the low end. The Russians either did not have the means, or the inclination to do this
@@Laotzu.Goldbug well, the problem with broad spectrum jamming is that they are basically screaming your location to anyone nearby. The problem with doing this with a capable state power is that there are plenty of anti EM munitions out there. Such jamming would basically make you a giant glowing target to something like a switchblade.
We’re looking at another “Battleship->Carrier” type of paradigm shift. This time largely in ground warfare. (Although you can see some relatively inexpensive naval adaptions). Right now the Drones are probably stronger as a defensive weapon. A situation where you mostly know where the Battlefield is going to be. For example Taiwan will benefit greatly from putting drone swarms over the Straight of Taiwan should China move to invade. But fighting a full out Naval Pacific War with them would minimize many of their advantages. The speed and distance from controller remain somewhat limiting for most lower cost drone options.
The kind of drones that people talk about when discussing a major war over an ocean start looking less and less like drones, and more and more like very smart anti-ship missiles. The Soviets actually pioneered this with their Granit (actually can't remember the name) ASMs. These weapons were designed with a sort of first generation networked communications. One missile would pop up and scan with its radar while the rest of the missiles flew low. It would communicate targeting data back to the rest of the missiles, and they would divide up between detected targets. It was quite smart, quite innovative for the time (I want to say 50's and 60's). That's the sort of weapon I predict will be fielded against US carrier fleets. A missile that operates first as a reconnaissance platform, then as a spotter for other weapons, and then finally as its own missile/suicide drone.
So I've been thinking about those drone swarms quite a bit and I think ironically, the threat of them might very well shift the paradigm back towards the Battleship. Those drones likely wouldn't fare nearly as well against thick armor(since the drones we see now don't attack the thick parts of tanks). Armor, especially Modern Composite armor with ERA would stand to be likely sufficiently protective against such things. When you consider just how much CIWS and AA missiles one could stick on a Battleship it definitely makes the case for them to be fielded again.
You wait until somebody adds the combination of stealth, solar panels (or other long range endurance mod), high altitude capacity and a useful radar onto a drone to create a long range naval patrol drone, backed up with accurate land based SSMs. There will be the potential to control 1000km of sea from a small island.
This is why the next generation of US airforce planes is planned to have capabilities to network with a drone swarm. A large vulnerability with drones is that you cannot control them from distance due to latency or jamming -- but if you can control them from a nearby manned platform that has its own capabilities, much as an aircraft carrier does with jets, then you can bypass many of those issues.
We're going to see continued decentralization of command and control capabilities as times goes on.
@@briancong12345 We've finally reached the age of the flying aircraft carrier.
This really feels like a musket versus a full plate armor knight situation. Cheap easy to use but equally devastating new technology that can do as much damage as conventional technology without the need for specialization. A line of musketeers can do the same damage of a squad of mounted knights on the charging without the requirement of a dedicated aristocracy and a fortune. Here a swarm of loitering drones can inflict the damage of a jet aircraft without the tens of millions of dollars or the risk of losing an equally expensive pilot.
Demise of classic knight in the West was caused by (re)emergence of pikes. At the same time in the Easter Europe knights survived all the way to early 18th century in for of winged hussars.
@@voneror Yes, pikes played a role as well, in the form of pike and shot but pikes served to protect the firearm infantry and once the fire rate increased and bayonets we're created, pikes were phased out in front line combat.
Consider that for the price of one M1A2 Sep3 tank, you can have 90 Javelin missiles and 10 CLUs. For that same cost, you could also buy half a dozen TB2's and control vehicles.
It certainly seems to be the best way to reduce support needs and disperse your firepower to avoid being wiped out.
Longbows, crossbows, firearms, pikes, changing tactics, changing social dynamics... it takes more than the introduction of a new, less expensive weapon system which can counter a more expensive weapon system to make the latter obsolete, and obsolescent does not mean useless.
For consideration: During WWII, Polish cavalry charges against German forces were successful more often than not, the last being in 1945. The whole "Polish cavalry committing suicide by tank" thing is an invention of German propaganda. Polish cavalry units had anti-tank rifles and guns for a reason.
So yeah, I don't expect drones to wipe out any existing technologies in the short term. It's not like Russia or Ukraine has given up on tanks or SAMs.
Great video.
ISIS, started the entire dropping munitions from commercial quad copters in Iraq if I recall correctly. 40mm type grenades with fins normally fired from under rifles just dropped.
The Azerbaijan v Armenian conflict was an eye opener on potential drone use and the current Ukr v Russia conflict is adding to it.
A huge part and you only just touched on it briefly at the end is the counter measures. I'd love to see you do a full video on this topic alone.
The most cost effective I imagine has to be EW jamming for the soft kill. But the systems need to be mobile enough to advance with the troops in a multi layer anti air defensive structure.
There have been a number of Russian EW systems taken out in Ukr. How effective these were against drones, who knows. The nature of the Ukr conflict has potentially left many of these exposed to attack from the rear from small units, as well as arty & drones when non operational.
Current air defence for many Western militaries and almost to an extent the Russians is short range MANPADs for forward troops, with larger more expensive systems like Patriot, S300/400 around strategic targets like cities, bases, airfields.
The Russian's I believe currently have an edge somewhat on the West, in that they also field more mid range missile systems, such as the Buks, Pantsir, but their actual effectiveness is unknown by us public at this stage. There isn't currently a western equivalent in the field across all NATO countries (excluding legacy Soviet systems).
This all comes back to the cost elements. A drone without EW interference has the potential ability to stand out of SAM or AAA range and chip away at targets.
Loiter munitions, are cheap. The MAML munitions on the TB2 are cheap. The West has focused a lot on larger more expensive, more capable and more heavily armed drones in many instances and in my opinion needs to fill the gap with a range of cheaper options that are more expendable, with cheaper munitions such as the TB2. The switch blade is a great product for the frontlines & just beyond.
When will we see the mother ship drone releasing waves of suicide drones?
Western militaries are looking at counters such as lasers (one US striker unit has been equipped in a trial), Rheinmetall has integrated systems for airfields with short range missiles, 30-57mm air burst cannons and medium range missiles. All remotely crewed. The US is looking at modified naval AIM-X SAMs in truck mounts to cover medium range threats. Not to forget iron dome & CWIS systems for the likes of small targets such as drones, arty/ mortar shells or rockets.
An issue with missile systems, as you've mentioned is cost. The missile can be more expensive often than the drone.
Will we start to see a return of 88mm to 105mm radar controlled flak cannons with air burst munitions as a more cost effective option to take out medium range drones in the field?
It is a fascinating topic.
I can't help but imagine a baby Phalanx CIWS the size of a Portal turret for infantry to lug around...
Interdiction drones could be left loitering on their own or monitored by a small number of pilots until something interesting happens.
I think lasers are especially interesting because there's the potential that firing them could be extremely low cost.
The Baykar company would like to thank the Russian army for free marketing
Way underrated video, very nice
It's not a hundred switchblade drones. They're sending 100 switchblade systems which come with 10 drones each. They're sending a 1000 drones.
Oh, Very good to know. I was shocked that we were only sending 100 munitions. 1000 is better. Better yet we should send 10,000
@@steveperreira5850 I don't think 10,000 of them exist yet
@@JD-wf2hu you'd think a government could set up mass production and produce 10'000 a day
@@sausage4mash remember when lockdown started and masks and hand sanitizer sold out everywhere. Then many months later they were widely available again.
That's because of the time it took to tool up for mass production and distribution.
These drones are much harder to make.
So yeah, the government can make millions of them and likely will if they perform well, but it'll take months to setup the factories.
As an FPV drone pilot I love this subject.... Thanks for covering some of the 'positive' impacts drones can have. In a world where media want to vilify the anonymity of drones based on nothing but paranoia, this will clearly shed a positive light on drones for a change... 😋
I think that's going to come down to how you define 'positive impact'
All i can say is that it really has an "impact" regardless :)
Damm i would like to see terrorist got hands on hundreds of civilian drone and convert to suicide drone against civilians i would like you and other fpv pilot react to that scenario.
Seriously though the future uses of drone will be a droid swarm spamming and overwhelming the defenses like what's more expensive and hard to counter a 1000 drone like switchblade or 1 fighter jet?
@@rogermirano2541 at current, you could build a swarm of ~800k explosive drones for one fully equipped fighter
Great video, were watching warfare change on a daily basis. Whoever learns these lessons and implements them will be way ahead of the rest of the world.
Great informational presentation! This makes me see this conflict in a completely different way. And modern warfare tactics also.
I'll be honest I haven't watched any of your videogame videos yet, I've just been binge watching your Ukrainian coverage. It's so hard to find reliable information regarding this conflict, particularly for a completely non-expert observer like myself.
I don't expect there'll be much audience crossover, and that's ok as far as I'm concerned. Very happy to just have you here for the Ukraine and Mil-industry stuff.
@@PerunAU
Well, there's very definitely some crossover from games to reality. Maybe not so much in the opposite direction, since hobbies vary so much. But thanks for your videos in _both_ areas, Perun!
Here in Canada, I have it from one should know that Russia has already been probing our immense Arctic coastline, which has been melting. A criterion of sovereignty is the ability to provide basic services like mail, customs posts, etc. A Russian ship approaches, launches a small vessel that lands at a small town or village. The passengers disembark, greet the inhabitants, then wait for Canadian officials to arrive. It sometimes takes many hours for Canada to get a customs official into an airplane, then fly that official to the location. The official says, "Welcome to Canada, may I see your passports, please". Documents are presented, then the official asks, "How long do you plan to stay in Canada?" "Oh, we're just leaving", and off they go, smiling and waving. Meanwhile, our government is debating whether to buy F-35's or Viggens. Your discussion highlights the old thinking inherent in the debate. Maybe one of a small fleet of customs drones, stationed at bases spread across the expanse, could land and present a Zoom style interface for a remotely stationed customs officer to ask the relevant questions, meanwhile consulting with superiors who may want to proceed with further interventions. It sounds far-fetched, even to me, but there must be a way to solve new problems with new approaches. Your analyses are bang on - they go back to my training about probabilistic decision-making in a risky cost environment.
that sounds a lot like it's prohibited and these people shouldn't be friendly greeted, but rather persecuted.
@@killswitch8493 , it seems legal to me. They landed, waited and left. No attempts to evade anything.
@@rexwave4624 If they set foot on Canadian soil without prior approval then imo sounds like a reason to detain them. I'd at least want to fingerprint them and find out why they are there.
@@jgw9990 , you may have a point there. I’m not sure what our law is about that.
Here's a point of reference, the Mavic Pro can take off and fly with 700 grams of payload. MY Mavic Pro has taken off with 700 grams of payload. That's a LOT of payload on an old system.
Also, extremely great video!
Does that include a system to drop said payload?
@@PeterJavi no need for that. Those drone are cheap enough to consider them as a disposable item.
@@PeterJavi no, but even if you figure 200 grams for a drop system (which is more than available plans would indicate) you've still got half a kilo, and as the other guy said, my Mavic Pro was 700 bucks a couple years ago.
Excellent breakdown of UAV advantages over manned aircraft. To add one more: Manned aircraft require a suite of life support systems to keep the pilot alive and allow him/her to operate it. Pressurized cockpit, ejection seats, oxygen, glass to see out of, miles of wire and hundreds of pounds of gauges, switches, and displays… the list goes on. All of these things take up physical space in the aircraft and add weight, both of which can be used to carry more munitions or fuel.
Also the aircraft's maneuvering capability is constrained by what the human body can withstand in G forces (brief/sustained) and wild maneuvering that could disorient an on-board pilot.
@@phthisics Another excellent point, thank you! :)
Respect for understanding the long term economic cost of a person. It's sad one has to put human life in economic terms to clarify the argument of why life is important.
On a related note, space exploration has been doing the same cost analysis for manned VS unmanned exploration and the end result heavily favors unmanned systems.
I've read a few years ago (when the drone craze started in the commercial sector) that automated laser systems were being designed as drone counters - mostly in terms of stationary defenses and for warships. Since then the US and China now has some ships equipped with lasers as counter-missile and counter-drone systems.
Not sure if lasers can be employed on smaller mobile land platforms - they need quite a lot of power. If not, drones might have additional asymetrical advantage for the defending side.
Of course, maybe AA systems with conventional munitions will adapt as well.
One development I’ve heard of is directed jamming. You detect the drone and the platform runs electronic warfare on just that one target, causing the drone to be unable to complete its mission. One other thing you can do then is that when the drone flies back home, you can potentially track it and call a fire mission on its base.
@@Shaun_Jones I wonder if small counter-radiation missiles will be designed to be carried on drone platforms.
I am curious about miniaturized flaks. I would expect two dozens of tiny grenades/shotgun shells detonations in close proximity of smaller drone would be enough to accomplish at least a mission kill (damaged sensors or antennas for example). Repeated hits to the same area should be relatively easy with mosern technology, problems are more likely to occur in detection of enemy drones and in development of ammunition.
@@jirivegner3711 what you are thinking of is basically the Active Protection Systems mounted to many tanks; the only thing is that they are short ranged, basically only able to defend the vehicle it’s attached to.
The problem is the visual and radar cross section of a drone.
AA works only if it knows what is in range.
It also fails, if like Russians, you don’t ship the fuel for the generators powering your AA systems.
I would enjoy a breakdown of equipment used in other conflicts as well. Great content.
I don't know what you do for a living but I hope it involves conducting this type of analysis for really smart people in decision making positions, because your breakdown on these topics is by far the best I've seen. Super convincing breakdown in both your last videos. Bravo.
Amazing!
Great conclusion from a great argument. Great structure and great overall orientation inside the topic!
This was the first video I've seen from you but it's surely not going to be the last.
Thank you!
The biggest things are:
1) Trained pilots: When you lose an UAV, you do not lose the pilot. They always get experience.
2) Jamming/hacking/electronic warfare: An UAV fleet is great, but if the enemy can disable to connection, suddenly you have no air force anymore. So you can never rely on only UAVs.
that is relevant for those drones which are controlled from the ground, less so for autonomous drones where you just pre program the drones with flight path and launch them, they are gonna fly for a certain period of time over a designated area and land back,
and of course nobody is actually arguing to replace the airforce with a fleet of drones
Regarding jamming : there was a report that asked why the Russians did not use this. The short answer was that it also disabled their own drone capabilities, specifically when use over large areas.
Wouldnt it be possible to counteract the jamming/soft kills by simply giving the drone a "return home" feature with fixed coordinates engrained into its system? This way every time it doesnt receive signals for a given time (even just a deadman switch) it just flies back to base, either reacquiring signal or landing?
@@n.l.3776 -
no because it could only fly back to base using GPS and you could jam GPS too.
It's all about radio signals that can be jammed.
It's obvious that the Russians don't have enough jamming systems.
They have been caught flat footed.
@@Bobby-fj8mk just curious tho, if missiles can be equipped with inertial guidance systems
We could easily integrate them into tb2 sized UAV's, at that point there's nothing much enemy can do except physically striking it ?
I have not read the other comments and I don’t know if this has been mentioned already but the unmanned weaponized aerial drones are like the torpedo boats during WWI. A big expensive battleship can be sunk by a cheaper boat armed with a torpedo.
this is a lesson the Iranian Revolutionary Guard still use today. There's no way they can compete with the sheer force of the US Navy or Air Force, so they rely on much cheaper fast attack boats and anti-ship missiles instead
It’s actually quite funny considering the gaming background of this channel, but perhaps Black Ops 2 had a strong point about unmanned drones and vehicles becoming a dominant force in militaries in the future?
Aside from unrealistic capabilities in some games, yes.
great stuff, good content.
i never doubted Drones, but i doubted the seriousness of major Militaries to counter them cost efficiently.
Drones are just unmatched when it comes to cost efficiency, maybe we see some some changes in the future to counter them.
like lasers, SPAAG's/autocannons with ABM's are allready developed but very low in use/service and jamming.
"counter systems" have to be cheaper, u just cant throw a million dollar missiles at cheap Drones.
also in my personal opinion, the US-Military creates way to fancy Drones if u ask me, an attack-drone shouldnt cost 40 million USD.
I really enjoy listening to people who are intelligent, have great quality information and have great objectivity, honesty about what you know and don't know and communicative skills. Thanks.
I'm loving this video series. Can you please add a few more pictures to these slides? Its more engaging for A.D.D sufferers like me. Amazing job!
One of the reasons TB2 and drones in general are so effective is flight celling. Most cold war era tactical AA is designed to shoot down low-flying CAS aircraft like a10, so they have fairly limited effective altitude of 3-5km, and their radars can scan only a very narrow band of space above the horizon. Most drones have flight cellings of around 8km and more. This is the reason why you see so much footage of drones circling above AA batteries. If an AA system has a high operational celling, for example something designed to shoot down ballistic missiles like Patriot or S300 then they usually deal with Bayraktars fairly easily
Didn't the azeris take out S300s with their Bayraktars?
@@ludwigwinter6795 yeah, they did. But S300 is the only AA system that managed to shoot down any Azeri Bayraktars at all. The problem was that they were swarmed and by days 2/3 they were effectively out of the picture, along with the entire armenian AA grid. Azeris used old cropdusters with RC kits at 100-150k$ apiece to make Armenians waste their AA missiles, so something eventually slipped in and took S300s out. Besides, S300's radar tends to overheat amd shouldn't really be turned on for more than 6-8 hours at a time, which is one of the reasons they are used in batteries of 4. At the same time, TB2 can stay in the air for 12+ hours at a time, which is another advantage it could have used
Buk missile systems are notoriously well able to down civilian aircraft flying well above 8 km altitude … 🤢
BUK are medium ranged, high altitude systems. The claim is they should easily be able to shoot down TB2 and yet...here we are.
@@KirkFickert they aren't being deployed and Russia isn't deploying it's Airforce I have no idea what going on to me it seems as if Russia was expecting to start WW3 and kept their main more well equipped forces in Belarus why is Russia keeping it's S400 and S500 there are they expecting Ukranians to bomb the Luckashenko what happened to all does soldiers from Syria and does victory day military marches
I see a future where all armour comes with half a dozen recon drones (minimum) that can operate semi-autonomously around the vehicle to provide better awareness, and hopefully avoid getting blasted with a friendly neighbourhood NLAW.
Dude, let's be clear: These videos are amazing. You are clearly very knowledgeable, and you should really create a second channel to talk about this stuff and see how you grow.
Well thought out and well presented material. Good work from a former defense radar systems designer who developed systems concepts back in the 90's for UAV's
Thorough report and enlightening! So we want to invest fully to hone the drone. Cost savings to use these drone platforms in both funds and human lives is exciting. Typically excellent, circumspect Aussie perspectives. Slava Ukraini. 🇺🇸💛🇦🇺
First time I saw the drones, told everyone they are the way to go. Then the drones got more and more sophisticated and bigger. Didn’t know anything about the drones from Turkey, but seems they are more than enough. Will wait for accurate numbers. A squadron of these things might prove overwhelming.
Air defence systems will eventually adapt to stop drones, they've been so effective because there's literally nothing there which is specifically made to target down drones. They'll still be useful, but I'm doubtful that they will always be this incredibly amazing
The TB2 was also in use in Libya against Wagner led Hafter-Forces during the battle of Tripoli and it´s deployment seemed to change the direction of this war (together with the capture of that Airbase in the NE).
The adaption of "cope cages" i.e. "improvised drone armor" later speaks a whole lot about how this piece of hardware is perceived by the russian´s and their proxies.
Yees a new video. I subscribed today after watching your 2 other analyses. I'm hoping you can provide more valuable insight into this conflict as it drags on.
Edit: Are russian AA systems uncapable of shooting down these drones? Or are they hard to see? I dont understand how so few have been lost.
Also theres pretty amazing drone footage on youtube of close firefights between russians and ukrainians. I dont know how much commercial drones can help in real time but they are certainly helpful in documenting combat and training new recruits using these videos.
i think the Russian equipment is probably capable if the operators are good, but given what is going on i don't think the people using the equipment are any good. Also i have no clue what the Russian air force is doing, modern air born warning should pick them up from across the boarder
The drones have a really small radar footprint. They can look like a flock of birds on radar or a glitch, something that's definitely not worth shooting at.
Hi. I'm from Russia
Are russian AA systems uncapable of shooting down these drones? - No, lots of these got shot down. Even more got destroyed on the ground
Or are they hard to see? - Same as all other objects. Hard when operated skillfully and massively along with smaller devices (not the case of ukranians, lucky for us)
I dont understand how so few have been lost - this is because your information sources wage war against Russia
@@testaccount4191 Russian equipment, espesially the older ones, require well-trained operators. Soviet era systems work using analog technology, which leaves more work for the operator. Less skilled radar operators might not even recoqnise targets.
@@ilya1o much respect for Russia when started
but obvious inept operation makes everyone scramble to explain the confusing and poor attack .
looks like logistics is poor
looks like conscripts were lied to.
troops are running out of food
to bad russian troops are being decimated
This video of yours and others in the same vein are yt gold! A happy stumble and a treat to strike such a gold vein. Keep it up, mate! Good work.👍
Outstanding. I love video's like this where you pack a lot of great information that I can use.
One explanation for the survival and effectiveness of the TB2s, that I've heard in millenium's video, is that since the russian airforce is keeping distance, mostly flying outside of Ukrainian airspace, and the low RCS of the TB2 is just making it highly survivable in an environment with no fighters close by. Excluding that, it makes sense for systems designed to fire on stuff like cruise missiles and large,fast planes to fare much worse against much smaller stuff like drones.
But, yeah, if I was doing the planning for my small country's millitary (in easy cruise missile range to this conflict) - I would sell all the tanks and SU25s and invest in a lot of small realtively cheap armed drones and tons and tons of commercial quads, with probably improved encryption. If I can do a local production of quads - even better. One thing that pops in to my mind is... a loitering anti-radiation munition ? That would be terrifying.... (reaching the end of the video... seems the israeli's had the same idea... smart people)
Didn't he say Israel has an anti-radiation loiter munition?
Disbanding your armoured force would not be a reasonable response if you still plan to operate on the offensive. Combined arms doctrine is still key - just heavily integrated with drones.
@@ldnstan2454 well depends who you are, my country - small nato country with VERY limited budget, it doesn't make much sense for us frankly. What we have are a single brigade of old T72As with no upgrades. We could be involved in international missions but I doubt we will send tanks there. So basically our mission will be, if attacked hold the line untill somebody bigger shows up... and for that what the ukrainians are doing seems very reasonable - antitank ambushes and opportionistic drone strikes, lots of artillery duels with emphasis on counter battery fire... and being in nato we can reasonably expect help even if we are much more limited than ukraine both in budget, manpower and industry. Keep also in mind that we need to cut something to afford the drones. And I'm not going to cut the long range air defence and the extremely limited number of fighters... yet.
@@concretedonkey4726 Of course, it completely depends on the strategic situation of your nation. For example it also might make sense for the Baltic states to invest in asymmetric capabilities, such as drones and encouraging private firearms ownership and training as to fight an insurgency if invaded. But for a major peer power, you will still need MBTs, IFVs and APCs to conduct mobile combined arms warfare.
@@ldnstan2454 totally agree :), cheers from bulgaria
Black Ops II was all about the importance of unmanned systems, writers were ahead of their time.
TB-2 is hard to shut down as it is made of radar transparent composite materials and they can fly up to 8.2 kilometers which is above detection range of many anti air defense systems
Thank you for you insight into this war. I expected to wait years for analysis like this. Keep up the good work!
Yet another awesome video! Please stay doing these. I get such an intellectual buzz from your to the point presentations! WOW!
30:28 it also means that as a pilots you can be alot more agressive ... in the sense that more like in warthunder etc you might be mugch more willing to kamiazi your drone into a mig if given the opertunity also you can pilot without all the stress of impending death which could lead to better decision making
I still question the air defense capabilities of Russia. Curious how these drones measure up against modern radar guided automated fire-control systems.
When you look at the footage of TB-2's taking out Buk's Tors and Pantsirs their systems aren't deployed (or Out of ammunition in some cases of the Pantsirs). Both system rely on the engine (of the vehicle) to power their systems. Given the situation (at the time) their logistics was dire; so its expected that they were unable to stay active for more than several hours. In the case of other modern air defense systems, it would be the same too.
Off-topic; more related to the video. Great Analysis, drone's are defiantly making a change in how the military high commands around the world think. Even from an engineering perspective it creates more opportunities to be creative as the human factor is removed within the design consideration of an air,ground or sea-frame. Loitering Drones are without a doubt going to be employed as an alternative to SEAD-style missions. Even if they don't destroy the AA system, by damaging & rendering it out of commission is good enough (low payload case).
I think it begs the question that if these drones are targeting AD/AAA systems, that must mean that the Ukrainians still have air capabilities. Which contradicts Russia’s claim to wiping out Ukraine’s Air Force/drone fleet.
I mean, why target AA if you have no Air Force? Lol
@@depthcharge126 Russia aren't even close to air superiority.
That @disGuy says, it is so obvious that they have logistical problems. So they don't have fuel to run the system active. Which is such a stupid reason to get blown up. But they also leave systems like pansir and tor without fuel and just run away. Which just makes the morale seem so incredible low.
@@depthcharge126 a lot of Russia's s400 are actually deployed in Belarus, Russia, and Crimea. But their rang allows them to cover most of Ukraine.
Turkish drones already showed their potency previously in syria, libya and azerbaijan. Don't sleep on Turkish electronic warfare systems like "koral" thats where the drone success is being had, the Turkish ability to jam air defences.
Azerbaijan not really an appropriate use case for application in an actual war. Yeah they are great when you can just hover over an enemy who has no air cover all day dropping missiles on top of their 60 year old decrepit tanks.
@@Shrouded_reaper you not paying attention to ukraine bro? in 40 days of war russians were only able to shoot one down.
THIS is what RUclips is all about. Info delivered without point of view, cautious and probably correct. Where have you been the last decade when RUclips wanted nothing but shorter clips in order to sell more ads. Thank you, I needed this! And Go Ukraine! Kick them out!
That was an excellent analysis in multiple areas, respect Perun
Iran wrecked a Saudi refinery with cheap drones in 2019. They had nothing to stop it. Drones are great equalizers.
Also, for the drone crews, there's a very important difference - multitasking - most of those are so automated that you might need human input only when the drone reaches the combat zone. Unlike a manned aircraft where 90% of the time is cruising from the airport to the action zone. I would speculate that at some points probably a single pilot manages several drones at once.
In the 70s there was a lot of talk of mothership 747s with swarms of drones following them. The 747s would carry a dozen drone pilots and would stand off at 50km while the drones flew in.
In the end, the tech wasn't there. I suspect an arms race in jamming will be the biggest thing that comes out, maybe the droneshield guys are onto something. Can you Jam drone control signals with your own drones, since a centralised jammer just opens you up for anti radiation missles.
@@letsburn00 I think in the current day, there's a lot of stuff we don't know :) I mean, being in the software industry, I think with the advancements of AI/ML, these drones can be programmed to perform own missions, probably even decide where and what to fire upon. And these are technologies that I'm aware of as a regular Joe :) Probably the military guys already have even cooler tech embedded into those toys. SO, probably soon drones would not need comms to the "mothership" at all. Planes already have a lot of ways of navigating around even without GPS and only using passive terrain following and inertial nav, so at some point, you will be able to just say "go, fly around that area, look for baddies, shoot them and come back". 20 hours later, it lands and you get nice RUclips footage of the fireworks.
@@OnE61811301 The main issue with that is that the public, for very very good reasons do not like the opening the box to "add more and more advanced AI to drones which can kill people."
In the end, drone technology which kills indesciminately is probably going to end up like total surveillance. I.e the only reason it wasn't done before was because it was too expensive.
The problem with automating drones is that what makes them determine target selection? If you feed it the profiles of only people who the government has previously killed, there is a high chance that it will end up with the profile "all males between 12 and 70 are targets. Kill them all." It has no recognition that the rebels actually have a very good reason to fight if that's your design.
@@letsburn00 I imagine it to be more like "we know that in this area there are only enemies, so whatever holds a gun or is more armored than a Toyota Prius can go". I didn't mean stuff from the movies like recognizing whether a walking person is a soldier or civilian. Although, at some moment, that might be possible too. In terms of law, AFAIK, at least in the USA there must be an actual person that pushes the red button so that they're liable. Same applies to self driving cars, so there's a lot that needs change.
My point was, technically, even today it's probably viable to let a drone do its thing without almost any comms needed, so jamming won't do a lot to it.
Btw big US surveillance drones already do go "offline" for great lengths of time while getting intelligence - they have huuuge potential for autonomy, and that's only the public info part :)
@@OnE61811301 Yeah, but that also raises the issue that what happened with Iran will happen in future. With Iran, they managed to spoof GPS data and sent a drone way off course so it tried to land in Iran. It semi-crashed but they still had a drone at the end of it all.
Meanwhile, the problem that whole areas are just declared free fire zones is frankly a war crime. When you can just send a half dozen of them to constantly loiter, it's pretty hard to argue you're not an evil empire if every single guy who fits the profile gets shot. It's an issue now and it'll be a bigger issue in future.
To be honest I see calling a "lawnmower engine and sheet metal" drone as a compliment, something cheap, simple, easy to fix and replace, and a good lawnmower will not let you down, which an effective drone is supposed to do in the first place. Especially when giving those "lawnmower engines" some bombs, is enough to destroy expensive and heavily armored tank engines.
Local electrical utility is using an unmanned hexacopter (six blades), that can tilt in any direction to provide a stable picture/ video / thermal scan of our local community power grid. So much more efficient then a man in a bucket truck with a digital camera. It was amazing to see crew work it’s way up the street.
PS - my destroyer, USS Hollister (DD-788) had a Gyrodyne QH-50 DASH (Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter), a small drone helicopter built for use as a long-range anti-submarine weapon. Ship was decommissioned in 1970s. It’s interesting to see how 40-50 years of technological progress has made these drone platforms so effective.
Thanks so much for doing these.
Great video! It's clear that behind the scenes all militaries have been investing in smaller and smaller drone platforms to a much larger degree than was publicly known.
My biggest question now is what are the most cost effective ways of killing micro sized drones? Are we talking about radar guided rapid fire cannons with airbursting munitions? Or a directed jamming beam? Definitely seems like there is a lack of effective counters, speaking in video game terms
Both seems decent still wondering where the fuck the Tunguskas and co are than we maybe able to see how such systems would perform , also maybe drone hunting drones ? Micro Suicide bombing drones that RAM and explode others deployed as a swarm to stand above once formation ?
@@dog209 Yeah drone hunting drones are a great point, that idea slipped my mind. Maybe with a ground based radar to support them in finding other drones
I'm thinking more on the lines of deploying loitering jamming drones that provide an area of suppression. Of course this would lead to the development of anti-jammer drones that seek out the jammer's signal and either jams or destroys them. I think I'll go buy stock in some drone manufactures....
The problem with Russian air defenses VS drones, especially the cheap small drones, is a technical problem where the radar, is designed to detect large, manned fighter aircraft, that fly high and fast. Once specific anti-drone air defenses are developed, I suspect that drones will be far less effective.
There's also the problem that they are very dependent on a communications link to the pilot. Thinking about the physics of it, I strongly suspect it will eventually be possible to jam them in a way that can't be overcome. I don't think that subject has yet been developed to its fullest possible extent.
Also running AIr Defense in conjunction with air power is hard to deconflict.
I think the problem is that "institutional" ideas have a hard time giving way to new ideas. The Mosquito was given as example, not because it wasn't advanced, but laminated plywood construction was not a part of the institution. The same initially happened with the Carrier. Billy Mitchell was drummed out of the military because he was advocated airpower, but especially airpower against the institutional mindset of battleships. Many resisted the M1 Garand as unnessecary, until it was actually used in combat. It seems UAV are the same thing. Technoligy will make them more and more effective in time, but there age is here.
Thank you for explaining this so clearly. My respect goes to the operators near their target who operate the short range devices.
Exceptional presentation. Most informative and eye opening. It's scary to ponder the dark scenarios of non-conventional weaponised UAVs.
I foresee a vast expansion of drones as the the paradigm shift kicks in. I can for see that all current piloted missions will see a drone replacement being experimented with. We will see fighter, ground support, longer range stealth bomber type, cargo, recon, electronic warfare. I also believe we will see more ground based drone like platforms. My son has a remotely controlled truck very speedy and able to have rather heavy loads placed on them. I can predict that munitions and cameras could easily be incorporated to give military potential. As technology increases modern battles will be won by those who can innovate new tactics that takes advantage of the new.
it will be interestimg to see in the future if video games will become a training ground for new drone pilots. i can imagine a person opperating a drone ground vehicle with a mounted heavy machine gun.
Soon humans will barely even be in control of their own war machines in favor of computers. I'm sure nothing will go wrong though.
@@Shrouded_reaper there is an animated short film series about a bomber that starts up and continues its bombimg runs after its pilot is dead, and no one is still fighting. its a sobering video series
@@Shrouded_reaper sadly, the taking of human life will be more so.iliar to a video game.
In 2020 there was a second war between Armenia and Azerbaijan it was called "Second Nagorno-Karabakh War" it's one of the most studied but least known wars of modern times because well COVID and the west doesn't really care. Azerbaijan invested heavily in drones and turned the previous humiliating loss they had suffered to a stunning victory second time around in about 44 days. Well worth looking into, the time of the tank is pretty much over unless you are up against a very modern superpower with full air control.
Know you covered it quickly here but for any of your other viewers.
Yeah I remember hearing about that war when it happened and I was surprised given how the Armenians seemed to have done well in the 90s that the azeris this time seemed to win decisively in a very short time, I didn't hear about how critical the drones were til a few months after the war and when I did I was skeptical, but it seems such drones are indeed effective even if they are also relatively cheap, this drone factor cannot be ignored or underestimated especially now with Russian forces in Ukraine taking surprising loses, I'm assuming every major military and some minor ones are taking notice of the apparent capabilities of even cheap drones
@@steventhompson399 Armenia had mostly sent weapons to Armenians who were living in the region in Azerbaijan, they didn't send their integrated air defense or main military. The area of advance for Azerbaijan were empty and uninhabited lands, with no defensive positions, so Armenians had to fight in the open and move out of inhabited areas.
@@1GTX1 You are very knowledgeable and also funny :) More than half of the equipment in the inventory of the Armenian army was scrapped in that war. The amount of weapons destroyed and seized is 4.8 billion dollars.
Destroyed 53 anti-tank, 4 Smerch, 97 Grad, 2 Uragan and 1 TOS multi-barrel rocket launcher systems of the Armenian army. Having destroyed 7 S-300 air defense systems of Armenia, the Azerbaijani army also rendered 1 S-300 radar and 2 S-300 detection stations unusable.
Anti-aircraft systems of the Armenian army were also among the main targets of the Azerbaijani army throughout the war. During the war, Armenia was deprived of 1 Oborona radar station, 5 TOR, 40 OSA, 4 KUB, 1 KRUG, 14 Zastava, 2 S-125 anti-aircraft missile systems.
22 unmanned aerial vehicles, 2 Elbrus ballistic missile systems, 1 Toçka-U ballistic missile system, 5 electronic warfare vehicles, 2 R-142 command headquarters vehicles, 2 Nebo-M radar stations, 7 different radar stations, 4 electronic warfare vehicles were also destroyed. was among those.
While 28 Akasiya and Gvozdika self-propelled howitzers were destroyed, 5 of them were captured in working condition. The Azerbaijani army destroyed 315 different caliber cannons and captured 37 of them.
63 mortars destroyed, 62 captured. Armenian soldiers fled during the war, leaving 178 grenade launchers and 1380 different rifles. 5 fully operational Shilka anti-aircraft systems also fell into the hands of Azerbaijani soldiers.
The Azerbaijani army, which destroyed 287 tanks of the Armenian army and captured 79 tanks, deprived the other side of a total of 366 tanks. The Azerbaijani army also destroyed 69 armored infantry vehicles and captured 47. 252 military trucks were destroyed, 270 captured. In the battle, 7 command posts and 11 ammunition depots of the Armenian army were also destroyed.
The Azerbaijani army maintained its superiority in the air throughout the conflict. During the war, 5 Armenian Su-25 fighter jets were shot down.
@@1GTX1 ruclips.net/video/t9K0fhMCTGk/видео.html You can watch it in three parts.
@@serednemsfrbir Sure, but when it comes to air defense before the war, Armenia had Tor-M2KM and S-300 as being part of it's main air defense, other older soviet systems were either of unknown or small number or were not maintained/ also they had short range Soviet systems like Osa and Strela. Armenian air defense is based on 9+ Tor-M2KM launchers, and around 40 S-300 launchers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Armenian_Armed_Forces
2 Tor-M2KM launchers and 1 S-300 were destroyed in Azerbaijan. www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/09/the-fight-for-nagorno-karabakh.html
This is evidence that they didn't bring their main integrated air defense in large numbers to the conflict.
This war has really been eye-opening, and it's interesting to see new actors like Turkey emerge to the field via drone tech. Europeans seem really left behind when it comes to drones, best we have is prototypes and tech demos. Hope something comes out of them.
One cannot explain the stupidity of the European Union nations. They are Currently enraptured with a sixth generation MANNED!!!! stealth fighter
The drones from Turkey are ok. But the Chinese automated drones are far more sophisticated and lethal, amongst the best in the world and can go head to head with the best American 5th generation fighters.
@@ed-te1fp yea, as demonstrated where?
@@ilhan1936 Oh yeah, I forgot, China only makes rubbish and copies stuff, and it's America that has the huge advantage in STEM grads over the rest of the world, and most published research papers in AI and related drone tech are by people with American sounding surnames... 'Merica! (the echo chamber)
@@ed-te1fp I am genuinely curious about this topic. I did some light googling but couldn't find anything. Can you tell me the names of these highly sophisticated and lethal Chinese drones?
People hace "complained" because you appear pro Ukraine? Good for you, brother! Keep up the great work. Slava Ukraini!!!
This is a great, well thought, high quality video that kept me informed and entertained me throughout. Keep up the fantastic job!