US Army should ditch tanks for AI drones, says Eric Schmidt Former Google chief Eric Schmidt thinks the US Army should expunge "useless" tanks and replace them with AI-powered drones instead. Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia this week, he said: "I read somewhere that the US had thousands and thousands of tanks stored somewhere," adding, "Give them away. Buy …
Eric Schmidt, almost Muskian he is.
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Yes, capable drones -- airborne and probably terrestrial and naval as well -- will very likely come to dominate warfare in the future. Given any luck they will largely or entirely replace boots on the ground ... eventually . But not in a couple of years. More like 2 or 3 or 4 decades. My guess is that conventional weaponry can probably retain its position for longer than Schmidt, Altman and the like can conjure up funding.
At the end of the day wars are still won by boots on the ground. You can't hold ground with a bomber aircraft or a drone or a missile. You can only have temporary local interdictions.
This is why right now drones are mostly used in similar ways to other weapons like tanks or artillery or missiles, to try and force the enemy to evacuate a position so you can send your troops forward in relative safety to take it.
Head of the Widget X maker says that the US Army would be much better off if they bought a bazillion Widget Xs from the Widget X maker company.
I mean, if I was that guy I'd be saying the same thing. Might be getting confused if the US Army is better off, or I'm better off but someone will be.
You got it. The WSJ reported earlier this year that Ukraine was ditching US expensive in favor of DJI drones, and in fact the US was buying DJI drones to supply Ukraine. You have to wonder if some of those drones might have a backdoor that is hurting Ukraine. More subtle than Israels beepers but just as deadly.
So the first step is to develop consumer market for domestic drones - which is really hard and requires tariffs. And watch politically powerful players like the DoD try to carve exceptions for themselves to bypass those tariffs.
Well when is that theoretical "backdoor" going to be activated? It has been quite a while that Ukraine has been using cheap DJI drones with no sign of it.
The potential damage from such a backdoor is tiny compared to what Israel did with the pagers and walkie talkies. Those are something people had on or near their person most of the time, and were powered up basically all of the time. There are a limited number of drones in use at once, and they'd have to be remotely controlled to fly toward whatever friendly target their p0wner wanted them to attack - which is no worse than the situation Ukraine is in fighting Russian drones. Most are in storage, and if some turned against Ukraine the rest would be scrapped without ever having been powered on leaving no chance for them to do anything.
There is no chance of a supply chain attack with DJI drones, and I imagine after the Israel thing they took a random assortment apart very carefully just to be extra certain.
Charlie: DJI, and many other manufacturers, do enforce geofencing on their hardware, which does limit where you can use them, but this is essentially a restriction for consumers.
cow:
A restriction like geo-fencing is a restriction it does not provide a "backdoor" for anyone to control the drone.
The word backdoor means that DJI can actively control a drone they manufacture at any time to do what they wish at their command.
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Charlie: Easy enough to workaround if you have technicians who know what they're doing.
cow: Technicians ?
The fact is no engineer except DJI engineers with the source code knows how the software works.
Stop talking bullshit technicians are not software engineers, if they were you would have used the term software engineer. A technicican cannot change the code that runs, its a major task that would take months maybe years to do on a. DJI drone.
Your entire post is misleading and total bullshit. Nobody has ever changed the software on a DJI drone, and yet you are pretending to the audience that a technician can do it with little effort.
Charlie: HEX-editing can be used, but it's usually a lot easier to modify the firmware and upload it.
cow:
The way you modify firmware is by HEX EDITING.
Your saying HEX EDITING can be used but its usually a lot easier to modify the firmware (BY HEX EDITING) and upload it.
You are talking so. much bullshit your comment contradicts itself.
What backdoor could a DJI drone have ?
You do realise that a DJI drone only has a range of a few kms, its not going to turn around and attack UKR tanks or base, because the base would be too far away...
So waht is it going to hit ? The only targets around are tanks or soldiers. How exactly is it going to "wake up" and know where the UKR soldiers are and fly and get them ?
Fuck some people are idiots without a brain in teh world to think of practical examples of what they say are impossible
Making your own drone is easy.
Ardupilot is open source and the source code is available on github which anyone can of course download binaries for. There are many ardupilot compatible boards from numerous manuf.
Therers a big difference bewteen a drone that flies and an AI powered drone. For starters AI requires a lot of CPU power, the brains of these drones are v humble, they arent goin gto be running any AI process.
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The topic of "drones or tanks" has interested me for over ten years. The Netherlands (my country) had ditched its tanks in 2011, later "hired" some from Germany, and recently has ordered new ones.
I remember seeing footage from Libya(?) where a tank would "hold" an urban crossroads, but end as a target for whatever projectiles (and the thirst of the crew).
On the other hand, drones (UAVs) were on the rise, with quickly improving specifications.
The war in Ukraine shows me (on YouTube) tanks being taken out by several types of UAVs. Some commentators attach price tags (and so does this article): one tank seems to equal one thousand simple UAVs in purchasing price.
By the way, the tanks that the West has sent to Ukraine hardly feature in those videos. I'm sure that they do matter, but I don't get that shown to me.
Another "lesson" I learn from this war is the importance of numbers: launch many projectiles, drones, soldiers at a target, and some will reach it, the rest won't.
That is a topic where Artificial Intelligence may really matter: the "swarming" capability of drones. It would raise drone pilots to drone squad commanders.
The nature of the AI may also matter: a vast library of rules or the capability to discover, add and apply rules. (Likely something in between.)
That nature of AI may revive our interest in non-procedural computer languages like LISP and Prolog, and in concepts like "fuzzy logic".
It is held by some that
1) ground can only be held by a physical presence
2) infantry need tanks for support and tanks need infantry for support
3) air support alters the effectiveness of infantry and armoured vehicles
If both 1 and 2 are true then tanks will remain in use, possibly not be the same as current designs but still part of the mix.
Now UAVs like Predator and Reaper are actually remote controlled aircraft, and conventional anti-aircraft weapons, and other aircraft, can deal with them.
Small drones are something that needs a different type of anti-aircraft weapon. There's no suggestion that one can't be found that's effective, and if so an armoured vehicle would be a good place to mount it.
AC: 1) ground can only be held by a physical presence
2) infantry need tanks for support and tanks need infantry for support
cow:
This is plainly untrue.
Most of America does not have a physical presence backed by tanks. There are no tanks in DC or NYC or LA.
9/11 i think proves my point about presence near NYC.
America has been free a long time, tanks has nothing to do with it. THe same is true for western Europe, it also did not have that many tanks, especially when you comapre their count against the Russians.
Am had how many tanks and infrantry in IQ and AF did they control either ? They might have controlled parts of IQ, but they never controlled that much of AF. The Taliban had no tanks and they beat America, so again your statement is wrong.
THere are many factors but its not all about tanks or infantry.
"AC: 1) ground can only be held by a physical presence
2) infantry need tanks for support and tanks need infantry for support
cow:
This is plainly untrue.
Most of America does not have a physical presence backed by tanks. There are no tanks in DC or NYC or LA.
9/11 i think proves my point about presence near NYC.
America has been free a long time, tanks has nothing to do with it. THe same is true for western Europe, it also did not have that many tanks, especially when you comapre their count against the Russians.
Am had how many tanks and infrantry in IQ and AF did they control either ? They might have controlled parts of IQ, but they never controlled that much of AF. The Taliban had no tanks and they beat America, so again your statement is wrong.
THere are many factors but its not all about tanks or infantry."
You posted earlier that some people dont have a brain in the world and post about things they dont know about. Time to take your own advice.
You know jack-shit about warfare, 2 parts of F-A. Tanks and Infantry are mutally supportive, in close quarter combat.
I have no idea why you are commenting about the lack of tanks in DC or LA... so what? So what if there were no tanks in NYC on 9/11 - even if there were, they would have had no bearing on the outcome. That said, an airliner isnt really an anti-tank weapon so your point is.... what?
No only do you not understand mutually supportive arms, but you dont even understand the point being made: ground can only be held by boots on the ground. That is a simple, undeniable fact. Neither drones, helo, nor air can *hold* ground.
The Taliban never beat the Coalition armies. Nor did AQ. What did happen is Western Govts have no stomach or stamina for protracted conflict, due to financial and political cost, the later being the 'cost' in terms of popularity when body bags come home. They care very little about the occupants of body bags, in or out.
No one said "its all about tanks or infantry". You are strawman'ing an argument.
You must have been around for the first installment of the AI saga?
I think LISP in many forms (eg SCHEME) is still pretty much alive but I haven't really seen much Prolog (on a par with SmallTalk) but might have niche uses. At the time I was quite interested in clausal form logic (CFL) and thought ii could be useful for proving code correctness. I still have a copy of Tom Richards' textbook.
I know one washing machine manufacturer's controller uses fuzzy logic in sensing the laundry load so fuzzy logic may be sufficiently common in some domains that it is not noticed.
I clearly recall as an undergrad. picking up a text on fuzzy logic by Lofti Zadeh - phonetically his name seem so appropriate to the subject that I never forgot it. I suppose long gone now.
"The tank is dead" has been claimed repeated, almost since it was invented:
Post WWI, the tank was specific to the unique conditions of trench warfare, so some wanted rid of it.
ATGMs provided lightweight replacements for antitank guns, which could thus reliably kill tanks, yet the tank remained viable.
The attack helicopter made the tank obsolete, yet the tank remained viable.
Post 1990, 'we' didn't need tanks and cold war armies, until Iraq invaded Kuwait and suddenly those obsolete heavy armour units were exactly what was needed
The Canadians and Dutch scrapped all their MBTs as obsolete, only to re-acquire then when they discovered how useful they were even in counter-insurgency in Afghanistan.
Now we have a war that's been going on for 32 months, with over about the last 2 years, cheap drones proving effective against tanks, many of which (in the case of the Russian Aggressor State) are obsolescent types dragged from storage where they have lain since the 1950s and 1960 and which are operated by poorly trained crew.
Apparently, we are supposed to ignore the lessons of history, which teach us that any new technology often proves highly effective to start with, until suitable technical and operational counters can be developed for it, and instead believe that this new technology is the inevitable future, and this time, the tank really is dead. Honest.
I'm sceptical.
Next gen tanks will likely be lighter armoured, like the new M10 Booker the US has introduced. In the UK the Boxer 120mm would be a good option.
In Ukraine the Bradley IFV is proving to be one the most effective armoured vehicles, it's 25mm chain gun will disable a tank at range (destroy optics and sensors, and jam the turret ring by getting slugs lodged into it) and penetrate the armor in close quarters.
An modern ATGM will always disable a tank these days, so it only needs to be resistant to light arms fire and small explosives.
"but it keeps the drones at arms length and stops their explosives from getting close enough to the armour."
You need to watch a lot more
The Ukrainians have pretty much countered the Turtle tanks. They double attack.
They either send in one to blow the "Protection" then hit it again
Another is to cripple it, then hit it with artillery.
Another innovation is the Thermite drones, where the just hover above it pouring thermite on them (this is used for forest attacks as well.)
The basics are America is just as scared of this war as Russia, because it shows their investment in many weapons systems are shown to be outdated.
All those tanks Russia holds are worthless because they are just targets for western anti tank weapons. Western tanks while havving better armour are no different, they are slow and heavy and weak and would be just as dead if they were attacked by the same anti tank weapons.
The scariest part of a war for a super power is showing to the world how useless their weapons are. America hides from Ukraine because they have basically the same equipment as the Russians.
Thats why they are scared of giving their weapons to UKRAINE, because they are scared of seeing the world know the true value of their weapons.
Remember the F117 and all the hype about how wonderful and stealth it was, and then it went to Serbia and it was retired because all that bullshit was found out.
This is the moment America is scared of.
yeah, no, you're wrong on a lot of counts there.
What was mostly shown about western MBTs (of the last generation) is that they desperately needed ERA (which Ukraine added themselves, and which most modern actually in service MBTs in the west have been retrofitted with), they needed drone protection (cope cages for Ukraine currently, in the west this would be handled by the active protection systems most MBTs are now fitted with) and most importantly tanks and infantry need to operate in unison and in mutually supportive roles. Ukraine was doing old fashioned soviet tank attacks, sending tanks out ahead unprotected and unsupported. Turns out that that doesn't work and it's not what western MBTs are designed for. Get a tank isolated and they're sitting ducks, that's always been the case and western/US tank doctrine says not to do that.
As to the F117, it was already massively outdated by the time it got shot down and it was known it wasn't all that great in terms of stealth by that point. It was designed for stealth against different radar wavelengths than it eventually encountered. It was also not retired until over 9 years later, so saying it was retired because of the incidents in Serbia is also false.
imanidiot: As to the F117, it was already massively outdated by the time it got shot down and it was known it wasn't all that great in terms of stealth by that point. It was designed for stealth against different radar wavelengths than it eventually encountered. It was also not retired until over 9 years later, so saying it was retired because of the incidents in Serbia is also false.
cow: The F117 never flew over any hostile land after the shoot down, thats as good as useless and equivalent to being retired.
A plane that cannot perform its function and must be kept at home for training or any other purpose, is no longer a fighter.
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imanidiot: Get a tank isolated and they're sitting ducks, that's always been the case and western/US tank doctrine says not to do that.
cow: It doesnt take a genius to figure out standing still is a dumb decision on any battle field, western or not.
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imanidiot: and most importantly tanks and infantry need to operate in unison and in mutually supportive roles.
cow: Infantry and tanks are nothing but fodder today.
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The wiki article says it all, PROGRAM CLOSEOUT, and the opening line mentions the SERBIA incident. game over.
I wouldnt call flying training missions or over Somalia, an proud example of its capabitilty. Thats a sad joke and validates how useless it was once its weakieness was demonstrated.
Nobody would retire a successful plane, the B52 and F15 etc are all flying because they are worthy and capable, the F117 was a pile of junk and basically useless after that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk
Program closeout
The loss of an F-117 in Serbia caused the USAF to create a subsection of their existing weapons school to improve tactics. More training was done with other units, and the F-117 began to participate in Red Flag exercises. Though advanced for its time, the F-117's stealthy faceted airframe required a large amount of maintenance and was eventually superseded by streamlined shapes produced with computer-aided design. Other weapon systems began to take on the F-117's roles, such as the F-22 Raptor gaining the ability to drop guided bombs.[3] By 2005, the aircraft was used only for certain missions, such as if a pilot needed to verify that the correct target had been hit, or when minimal collateral damage was vital.[12][8]
So the only mention of the Servia incident is that is was the cause of taking a closer look at the tactics of using rhe F-117 and the reason for it's retirement is clearly that better airframes (like the f22) became available that were less maintenance and resource intensive to keep flying. Even your own source (also, wikipedia, really?) doesn't support your claim the serbia incident eas the rrason for it's retirement. Again, it kept flying in sevia after one was shot down (and even when a second was hit later) so very clearly the "lack of stealth) didn'tcome as a hige shock to the airforce.
> cow: It doesnt take a genius to figure out standing still is a dumb decision on any battle field, western or not.
It's not about standing still, it's about not using combined arms - you must have infantry and artillery support for tanks, and if possible aerial support too as part of your advance.
Tanks need infantry to keep enemy infantry from clambering about all over them dropping grenades into machinery, opening hatches, and setting fire to things. They also need infantry and/or engineers to prevent minefields from being laid or to clear them after they are laid, and to assist with crossing obstacles like anti-tank ditches, tank traps, rivers etc. Artillery is needed to soften up and suppress any enemy forces found in your path to make your advance as risk-free as possible on a battlefield. And if possible your air forces (rotary or fixed wing) should be available to target strong points in the enemy line like other tanks with anti-tank guided missiles (infantry can do this but aircraft have bigger missiles generally), bunkers, redoubts etc.
collins: Tanks need infantry to keep enemy infantry from clambering about all over them dropping grenades into machinery, opening hatches, and setting fire to things
cow: WTF are you talking about ?
OPENING HATCHES, DROPPING GRENADES ?
What you rdescribe basically never happens, you have been watching too many Rambo movies.
Event the recipients of Victoria cross and Purple hearts rarely do what you claim. Anybody doing what you claim would be recievinv their countries highest honours and this is simply not happening and never happens today and rarely for the past 100 years and that includes WW1 and WW2.
You have no idea what happens in war, what you claim almost NEVER happens. It may be happens a dozen times a year it is not happening every day.
"collins: Tanks need infantry to keep enemy infantry from clambering about all over them dropping grenades into machinery, opening hatches, and setting fire to things
cow: WTF are you talking about ?
OPENING HATCHES, DROPPING GRENADES ?
What you rdescribe basically never happens, you have been watching too many Rambo movies.
Event the recipients of Victoria cross and Purple hearts rarely do what you claim. Anybody doing what you claim would be recievinv their countries highest honours and this is simply not happening and never happens today and rarely for the past 100 years and that includes WW1 and WW2.
You have no idea what happens in war, what you claim almost NEVER happens. It may be happens a dozen times a year it is not happening every day."
Your last line.. how ironic. Because you certainly dont.
Yes, infantry have taken out tanks be exactly those means. Molotov cocktails, sock/sticky bomb, grenades dropped onto turrets from buildings in urban warfare in WW2...
The Purple Heart is a US decoration awarded for being wounded, not for heroism. The VC is awarded for valour in the presence of the enemy, not just taking out tanks. And so what if one hasnt been awarded for taking out a tank with a grenade
That's odd. From a distance, it looks like a lot of Soviet and neo-Soviet weaponry and tactics don't have any clothes.
T-14 Armata? SU-57? Terminator (the AFV abortion, not the movie)? Winning a war, next door, with 3x the population, 10x heavy weapon systems, 9x economy?
Sure, we are seeing a bit of a realignment in what weapon systems suit what contexts. To be expected. One of the bigger national security risks in America sticking around in wars like Afghanistan and Irqa was overweighing force capabilities for counterinsurgency warfare. A very different thing indeed from hot peer-on-peer high-intensity warfare. Which the world hadn't seen since decades. Lesson being learned: you need ammo, and lots of it.
But we are also not seeing usage of aviation much, which is where Western forces excel at. Subjected to deep strikes on their logistics/bases via NATO aviation, assuming the Wild Weasels took out their SAMs, what would be the Russian response? We should probably expect it to be nuclear in nature, rather than any brilliant Russian ace in the hole hithertho unseen.
> Apparently, we are supposed to ignore the lessons of history, which teach us that any new technology often proves highly effective to start with, until suitable technical and operational counters can be developed for it, and instead believe that this new technology is the inevitable future, and this time, the tank really is dead. Honest.
Aye. The Russians troops have already started to hack together anti-drone shielding on their tanks, by welding a thin steel cage/corrugated iron onto their tanks. Makes them heavier and affects their ability to fight, but it keeps the drones at arms length and stops their explosives from getting close enough to the armour.
(From the videos I've seen, they also mostly seem to be using their obsolete tanks as troop carriers rather than tanks, which is why they're not too bothered about the reduction in fighting capabilities)
In the meantime, the rest of the world is actively watching and taking notes, and anti drone technologies and doctrine is continuing to evolve. Hell, the British already have a solution which is more elegant - and lighter - than welding a turtle-shell onto a tank; for Afghanistan, we developed a "stiffened fabric" sheet which can be mounted onto vehicles, which is just stiff/heavy enough to cause the shaped charge in an anti-tank shell to prematurely detonate.
And that'd work just as well for drones.
Equally, drones by their nature are not well armoured, and generate a lot of noise across the spectrum - heat, audio, radio, etc. So I wouldn't be surprised to see automated flak cannons appearing on tanks, hooked up to a variety of passive and active sensors. Maybe even anti-drone drones, scout drones, monitor drones, and so on.
In fact, this is something touched on by one of my favorite pulp-military-scifi series, Bolo, which was created by Keith Laumer. He recognised back in the 1960s that NBC warfare was rapidly pushing humans out of the equation and came up with the concept of massive AI-controlled tanks, equipped with both heavy cannon and lighter "infinite repeater" guns designed to take down smaller threats such as drones or infantry.
The series was revived in the 90s by Baen, and the Bolo concept somewhat modernised. One fairly interesting example - despite some overly polemic right-wing politicking between the tanky stuff - is the Road to Damascus, in which an obsolete Bolo is forced to try and deal with an inner-city "terrorist" insurrection, in which the fighters deploy all manner of IEDs and improvised drones in an effort to take out the Bolo.
juice: Makes them heavier and affects their ability to fight, but it keeps the drones at arms length and stops their explosives from getting close enough to the armour.
cow: this is a lie, yes they add their stupid cages, but you have no proof they are effective.
The UKR forces have physical evidence that they are destroying just as many tanks in record numbers, which contradicts your claims. You are making statements that you have no proof of being true.
And yet both Ukraine and Russia are adding cope cages to basically all their tanks. If the Ukrainians know those cages to be ineffective, why would they be putting them on their own tanks? Including the donated western Leopard and Abrams?
You're talking out of your arse. There's plenty of military analysts with actual knowledge on armoured warfare who disagree with you and who state that these cope cages will have at least some effect.
imanidiot: And yet both Ukraine and Russia are adding cope cages to basically all their tanks.
cow: That doesnt mean they work.
imanidiot: You're talking out of your arse. There's plenty of military analysts with actual knowledge on armoured warfare who disagree with you and who state that these cope cages will have at least some effect.
cow:
If tank armour cms thick cant stop UKR explosives, why would a cage barely thcker than chicken wire make any difference ?
Simple answer is it doesnt.
There are even more videos on YT showing Russian tanks gettin destroyed over and over again.
Hundreds of destroyed tanks trumps your bullshit claims.
Cages are intended to (and do) prematurely detonate shaped charges. It just needs to be thick enough to trugger the detonator, it doesn't need to stop the resulting explosion. It's basically spaced armour.
As to russian tanks getting destroyed, yes, plenty of evidence. Usually because they're operating with hatches open. Armour doesn't protect a crew if the grenade is dropped inside of it because someone left the door open. Or the drone hits on a different part of the tank that us not protected.
Things like cope cages don't work always and every time, but again, they wouldn't be in use if they didn't work at all. There's plenty of evidence they provide some protection from the more crude forms of drone dropped shaped charge munitions
iam: Cages are intended to (and do) prematurely detonate shaped charges. It just needs to be thick enough to trugger the detonator, it doesn't need to stop the resulting explosion. It's basically spaced armour.
cow: WTF are you talking about ?
The cages can be best described as sheets of tin if that.
The explosives have destroyed many tanks and you think a sheet of tin will stop them ?
How is a sheet of tin more effective armour than the actual tank itself ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_vehicle_armour#Russo-Ukrainian_War
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ima: Usually because they're operating with hatches open.
cow: open hatches has nothing to do with it.
Tanks do not have the same armour all over the tank... if they did they would be so heavy they couldnt move.
Russian tanks are very old, they were built when tank warfare was head and the enemy was on the other side far away in front. THey only have armour on the front face, they have basically NONE on the top or rear etc, ...
THis is why the manpads target the hatch, because they know they are extremely thin, and they are designed to explode above the tank. They are not exploding inside, they are exploding ABOVE!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin
> The Javelin's high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead can defeat modern tanks by top-down attack, hitting them from above, where their armor is thinnest, and is useful against fortifications in a direct attack flight. The Javelin uses a tandem charge warhead to circumvent an enemy tank's explosive reactive armor (ERA), which would normally render HEAT warheads ineffective.
You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
The other day you said that Russian tanks and western tanks are the same wiehg ... which is clearly untrue if you bothered to check wiki. Western are 50% + greater in weight.
cow: I am a highly experienced warrior. How dare you question me.
me: Aye, a keyboard warrior, and your experience is from YouTube videos.
You have clearly never spent a day in anyone's Forces. And if you have, I'll apologise: I didnt know the muppets had an army.
There is no single war-winning wonder-weapon. There is no single solution to winning a tactical conflict, from a fire-fight to a tank battle. There is no single weapon system that is all conquering and can be deployed on its own in every single tactical environment. Drones and tanks cannot hold land. If the mission purpose is to take and hold land, those two elements are support roles to take land, but neither can hold land (for any value of $land, ie a hill, a building, a village, a river bank. etc).
Every single "tactical" advancement - from snipers, through mortars, through tanks, to drones, has seen a counter.
ShortLegs: You have clearly never spent a day in anyone's Forces. And if you have, I'll apologise: I didnt know the muppets had an army.
cow: Being a random soldier in an army does not make you an expert in anything except the limited role you performed.
Serving in any army does not make you an expert in all the equipment in that army. I hope i dont have to explain this.
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ShortLegs: There is no single weapon system that is all conquering and can be deployed on its own in every single tactical environment. Drones and tanks cannot hold land.
cow: I never claimed any of these statements.
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Short: If the mission purpose is to take and hold land, those two elements are support roles to take land, but neither can hold land (for any value of $land, ie a hill, a building, a village, a river bank. etc).
cow: America had a lot of tanks in AF, they never held the land there. Close to 90% of AF was always held by the taliban. The Taliban never had any tanks and they held all of AF and continue to hold it today.
Holding land is a cmplicated topic, its not about parking a tank anywhere. You are making v large sweeping statements.
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Short:
Every single "tactical" advancement - from snipers, through mortars, through tanks, to drones, has seen a counter.
cow:
Of course it has.
My original statement was that tanks have been shown to be on the way out... just like horses were on the way out and it took a long time for them to stop being used in the military. For Fucks sake Hitler was still moving crazy amounts of supplies in WW2 with horses. Today its tanks.
ShortLegs: You have clearly never spent a day in anyone's Forces. And if you have, I'll apologise: I didnt know the muppets had an army.
cow: Being a random soldier in an army does not make you an expert in anything except the limited role you performed.
Serving in any army does not make you an expert in all the equipment in that army. I hope i dont have to explain this.
After 40+ years I have a hell of a lot more experience and knowlege than you. You have no idea of what *roles* i performed in, nor the experience I have. You plainly have zero experience of any role, or capabillity, of any weapon system, force application, arm, or service.
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ShortLegs: There is no single weapon system that is all conquering and can be deployed on its own in every single tactical environment. Drones and tanks cannot hold land.
cow: I never claimed any of these statements.
No, you are quotoing out of context:
"Short: If the mission purpose is to take and hold land, those two elements are support roles to take land, but neither can hold land (for any value of $land, ie a hill, a building, a village, a river bank. etc).
cow: America had a lot of tanks in AF, they never held the land there. Close to 90% of AF was always held by the taliban. The Taliban never had any tanks and they held all of AF and continue to hold it today."
And now you are totally ignoring the comment. that those two elements (tanks and air) are support roles in the taking of land, but neither can hold land in isolation. You need infantry for that.
America did not have a lot of tanks in AF. None coalition forces deployed tanks in appreciable numbers, primarily because Afghanistan is not suited to manouever warfare. Its a tad difficult to deploy a 60ton tank in the mountains.
"Holding land is a cmplicated topic, its not about parking a tank anywhere. You are making v large sweeping statements."
I never made any such statement. I stated that tanks and drones cannot hold land.
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Short:
Every single "tactical" advancement - from snipers, through mortars, through tanks, to drones, has seen a counter.
cow:
Of course it has.
My original statement was that tanks have been shown to be on the way out... just like horses were on the way out and it took a long time for them to stop being used in the military. For Fucks sake Hitler was still moving crazy amounts of supplies in WW2 with horses. Today its tanks.
All tanks in UKRAINE have been shown to be a poor choice for both sides. Western tanks are oveweight, and have limited mobility in the mud that is the plains of Ukraine and western RUssia. Russian tanks on the other hand are just targets to be destroyed.
This war is a the dreadnaught moment, that nobody wants to admit. WHen the Dreadnaught was released it signalled the end of the British Empire, before this ship, the Royal Navy had a crazy advantage in ship numbers, after this moment they had a lot of useless ships and everybody was on a level playing field.
Today wesee the same with tanks, yes R has a lot of tanks, and they are all useless, which will and have been shown to be totally useless at attacking western europe. We see the same from western powers, Ukrainian offficials have said the same thing smultiple times that Western tanks while better than RUssian ones, are just as usless for the same reasons when compared to other weapon systems.
Western tanks aren't overweight, they weigh pretty much the same as Russian tanks. NOTHING is suitable for the mud-bath that is Ukraine in the mud seasons (fall and spring). Russian equipment isn't doing any better in the mud.
Just stop talking, you clearly don't understand military history or military tactics
regarding dreadnaughts
The British could still outbuild the competing empires (not only building dreadnaughts for the RN but for other navies)
pre-dreadnaughts still had some use in the coming war in secondary roles
the dreadnaughts (and battlecruisers) were only part of the navy, a lot of the navy was cruisers for protection of the sealanes
The dreadnaught and Empire lasted into the Second World War during which the aircraft carrier with its longer "weapon" range became the new capital ship.
graeme: The British could still outbuild the competing empires (not only building dreadnaughts for the RN but for other navies)
cow:
You dont know how to count. After dreadnaught sure the British could build more, but they also had to cover EVERY FUCKING OCEAN, which meant they were actually lost their advantage.
Germany only had to build half as much as Britain, and it was equal, because the RN also had responsibilities in the Med, Pacific, Atlantic and more. THe Germans only had to keep their majority of their ships around the North Sea and they were basically at parity. As soon as the British moved their ships back to cover the germans, they had almost nothing in other places, which other forces like the japanese took advantage of.
My statement about DN remains true, B had a far greater advantage before than they had after DN.
Previouysly they out gunned everybody in the world by something like 10x, with DN they strugged with 2x, because they lost their numeric advantage and had to build everything from scratch.
WTAF. You do realise that the dreadnaught was a British invention? The major clue being in the name of the ship - HMS Dreadnaught.
And that Britain continued to have an empire for about another 40+ years.
Russina tanks are useless for attacking the West? Why? Because they are vulnerbale to drones that the West doesnt have off the bat?
> The war in Ukraine shows me (on YouTube) tanks being taken out by several types of UAVs. Some commentators attach price tags (and so does this article): one tank seems to equal one thousand simple UAVs in purchasing price.
A bicycle is several thousand times cheaper than an SUV, but then, they're for very different use cases. A drone can't hold territory, provide support to infantry, carry supplies, and so on.
> By the way, the tanks that the West has sent to Ukraine hardly feature in those videos. I'm sure that they do matter, but I don't get that shown to me.
The general impression I get is that Ukraine has generally used western tanks for defensive purposes; there's simply not enough of them and too many issues around logistics to throw them into assaults. E.g. the British Challenger tanks may be great, but they use different ammunition to NATO and even the UK is struggling to scrape up spare parts for them.
If you don't mind his slightly rambling drunken-scottish ways, Lazerpig on Youtube has a lot of interesting - and occasionally insightful - videos about what's going on with tanks and drones in Ukraine.
> That is a topic where Artificial Intelligence may really matter: the "swarming" capability of drones. It would raise drone pilots to drone squad commanders.
We're probably several generations of AI away from having drones which could intelligently swarm and work together. And even then, there's going to be countermeasures. And above and beyond all of that, there's the ethical and strategic concerns about letting AI decide on who and what to kill.
> I remember seeing footage from Libya(?) where a tank would "hold" an urban crossroads, but end as a target for whatever projectiles (and the thirst of the crew).
That's a misuse of tanks. Tanks need infantry for support, and do poorly in urban situations where there are not sufficient ground troops to protect the tank and take all the buildings the tank is next to. The tank can assist the infantry in taking those buildings by blasting bits of them, but it's not really suited for that and may end up doing more damage by collapsing buildings. It can also machine gun the buildings if so equipped, but you'd be better off using an Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) or Infantry Fighting Vehicle like a Stryker or Warrior which have cannons on - less likely to destroy the building but can penetrate the walls to deal with the enemy inside.
Tanks are great at what western militaries are currently refocusing on after the end of the cold war brought anti-terror and anti-guerrilla actions, which is land warfare against a near-peer enemy such as Russia or China or North Korea - those with a large army with conventional forces like other tanks and helicopters and infantry who fight in a similar manner to you. Tanks are very good at assisting the infantry with taking and holding a piece of open ground, and then ambushing enemy tanks as they try to advance or counterattack etc. But they again need support to do this, because they need people to fire anti-air missiles at helicopters armed with anti-tank guided missiles, or artillery to bombard advancing enemy tanks to soften them up first, and they need infantry to prevent enemy infantry from advancing and getting on the outside of their tank where they can open hatches, drop grenades into machinery, set things on fire or damage tracks etc. They also need infantry to prevent the enemy from laying minefields and/or engineers to clear minefields so they don't get a track blown off when they advance.
WHy talk about Afhganistan, thats old news.
Look at Yemen, today the Houthis have shown the US NAVY to be completely ineffectgive. Yes the USAF can bomb stuff but that achieves nothing, the straights are still not clear or safe.
Americans navy is just a show, it has failed yet again. If it was effective, then the US hshoudl have eliminated the Houthis a long time ago. The same is true of Ayatollah Iran, there is no reason the USAF and USN cannot finish the government. THe people of Iran would be happy of this they also want the government gone.
How do you expect the US navy to do anything against the Houthi when all they're allowed to do is shoot down missiles if they happen to be at range and tut at them disapprovingly from a distance? The US armed forces haven't done anything against the Houthi because right now, the US doesn't really care enough to actually DO anything.
As for Iran, what does the US stand to gain from removing the Iranian government? Sure they could. Easily. But then they'll plunge that entire region (and probably the rest of the world) into long lasting conflict as local powers start fighting over the scraps. It's unlikely that will benefit anyone.
iman: How do you expect the US navy to do anything against the Houthi when all they're allowed to do is shoot down missiles if they happen to be at range and tut at them disapprovingly from a distance?
cow
Proof ?
~
iman: As for Iran, what does the US stand to gain from removing the Iranian government? Sure they could. Easily.
cow:
Says who - YOU ?
Just like they easily removed the taliban who only have donkeys ?
The US has a lot of gain, i cant believe i need to explain all the negative consequences of having an active Irani gov doing the shit they do today.
Proof... Have you seen much news about the USN or US forces operating against Houthi forces? There's been a limited amount of bombing, there's been a few missiles and that's it. That is proof enough the US isn't doing anything against Houthi rebels.
As to Iran, you say the benefits of removing the government would outweigh the negatives. Most analysts think that removing the government would leave a power vacuum and very likely allow WORSE people in. They also agree that unless the US goes full imperailist and takes controll of the area that just knocking off the current Iranian government is nothing but a very short term solution that will just make the festering puss sore that is the current middle east far worse.
That's because tanks are misused in those countries by being sent into towns and villages without proper infantry support to defend them. Then some enemy fighters get near enough to the tank to throw grenades at it, blow off tracks with explosive packages, or generally immobilise it until the crew have to surrender due to lack of food and water or running out of ammunition etc.
to keep (mostly) unarmed civilians in line.
If I recall correctly the extremely long line of Russian tanks stretching from Byelorussia to Kiev was largely dealt with by enthusiastic Ukrainian lads' being able to get close enough, in the absence of effective Russian infantry support, to use their portable anti tank weapons.
I think that fiasco was before drones were used as offensively as now. I think those tanks also weren't able to leave the road and spread out over the country (terrain, wet boggy land?) and were sitting ducks. (The sunken lanes in WW2 Normandy might have been a clue.)
I can picture Heinz Guderian shaking his head dismayed.
Jesus, you really are clueless
Tanks always need infrantry support, and this has been "known" since WW2. That armies/commanders (or politicians) have forgotten, or ignored, this, is moot.
Infantry can stalk tanks. Infantry armed with AT weapons. Tanks have no real anti-infantry capabillity. Yes, they can have co-ax mounted machine guns; these are limited to forward firing. Pintel mounted on the turret places the firer in a vulnerable position. remote pintel operation suffers from the operator having a severely resticted field of view.
Short: Tanks always need infrantry support, and this has been "known" since WW2. That armies/commanders (or politicians) have forgotten, or ignored, this, is moot.
cow:
No fuel, no tanks, no food and supplies.
This is why the germans stopped and lost in Stalingrad.
Everything is explained if you understand they had no fuel.
You can have as much infantry as you like but soldiers with no food arent going to last very long in the russian cold. Same for supplies like bullets or artillery.
You really have no clue.
Normandy beaches were less fortified because the Germans expected the invasion to be in the Pas de Calias area, and heaviliy fortified that area.
The reaward Panzer Divisions were assigned to an area between Normandy and PdC, in the expectation it would swing against a landing on either beaches, but was not authorised to deploy to Normandy when the allies invded as the High Command believed the Normandy landings were a feint.
This is simple historical fact.
That allmighty Tiger was a sitting duck against the US and UK air forces then. Large, slow sitting duck.
It has now become worse, as the infantery and helicopters with long distance arms have joined the game.
Ukraine proved this. The talk of "combined arms" is theoretical babble - because the ATGM gunner can hide 3000 or more meters away.
The heavy tank industry has a vested interest and produces lots of heavy steel and hot propaganda air.
You can go back to the H-bomb and before to see people dreaming and winning wars without losing a soldier. This has usually led to some fairly awful developments: gas; biological weapons; nuclear, etc. But they've all turned out to be fairly useless when it comes to winning wars. Sure, you can kill huge numbers of the enemy, but at some point you have to actually move bodies into the area if you also want to win the peace. I think we'll see this play out for Israel in Gaza and Lebanon.
In the wonderfully dark Dr. Strangelove, the POTUS is heard to say "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here: this is the war room"
On a similar line, didn't someone once comment that waging war requires the spending of so much money it should be put into the hands of private corporations rather than Governments?
Is life imitating art, Mr. Schmidt?
So Mr. Schmidt, a fellow who knows nothing about military statistics, strategies, or operational capability, thinks he's the one to lead our military in decision making? Does he realize that drones can only be effective for so long? The U.S. have been using drones for decades. They are great at operational support and combat iniatives, but cannot work efficiently without a solid ground force.
Tanks, choppers, and planes do things drones cannot do, while drones operate in niche areas. That small area of operational existence is extremely helpful with the larger picture. Effectively speaking, militaries cannot have as much success if one is without the other.
There is an interesting video on Youtube where a Cybertruck and a Ford F150 pickup truck are run through a series of very rough obstacles and various other "tests" (sorry, don't have the URL). In the end the Ford F150 was severely battered and bruised but still drive-able. The Cybertruck was totally and properly f**ked.
What about the tyres ?
Lets pretend Cyb ertrucks are bullproof, the tyres are not. They are an easy target. The battery is even an easier target. Start a fire with the battery and the occupants are locked inside and incinerated at 3000C.
The result would be even worse than those Russian tanks getting their top blown off.
"What about the tyres ?
Lets pretend Cyb ertrucks are bullproof, the tyres are not. They are an easy target. The battery is even an easier target. Start a fire with the battery and the occupants are locked inside and incinerated at 3000C.
The result would be even worse than those Russian tanks getting their top blown off."
Seriosuly, is your military experience from CoD? How old are you, a teenager? Try shooting a tyre with a 9mm. But dont be anywhere close when you do it.
Tyres can be sold, they can be self-healing, the can be pretty resistant to even 5.56/7.62mm.
An easy target? Is this from your extensive military experience? Hitting a static Fig 11 target at 100m, on a one-way range, can challenge soldiers. If it moves, even wt walking pace, it becomes much harder.
Hitting that same target when the target fires back is immensely harder.
Now try hiting a tyre at 100-300m, on a moving vehicle on unulating terrain. Tell me its easy, for the majority of infrantrymen.
Can you see the battery? No, So how do you aim for it?
Occupants are not locked inside any AFV. And frankly, there isnt any difference between being inside a vehicle burnign at 800deg, 2000deg, 3000deg, or the inside of a tank thats just been hit by HESH, and sliced by spall. Grow up, and stop posting about an area you have zero experience of.
short: Now try hiting a tyre at 100-300m, on a moving vehicle on unulating terrain. Tell me its easy, for the majority of infrantrymen.
cow: You have no idea.
THey are using bombs which explode with thousands of fragments. THey are not shooting individual bullets at the target.
"short: Now try hiting a tyre at 100-300m, on a moving vehicle on unulating terrain. Tell me its easy, for the majority of infrantrymen.
cow: You have no idea.
THey are using bombs which explode with thousands of fragments. THey are not shooting individual bullets at the target."
But you said bullets... let me quote your post:
"What about the tyres ?
Lets pretend Cyb ertrucks are bullproof, the tyres are not. They are an easy target."
Not "bombproof", not "fragment proof" but "bullproof" Now perhaps you are going to state that you meant proof against male bovines...
As for whether I have an idea or not... well. let me see
Qualified Marksman HPSS every ACMT for the last 8 years,
Qualifed marksman on the SLR, SA80, A2, and perhaps more pertinently on the L96A1 back in the day. I think I have more than an idea, sunshine.
Rarely. It's useful to know the actual comment, but not so much who said it. And on the rare occasions people DO need to know who said it, they're intelligent enough to scroll back and figure it out.
> Really you cant comprehend the value of knowing who said what ?
Indenting works.
"Really you cant comprehend the value of knowing who said what ?"
As does italicizing.
Or basically any other way of referencing, including names if that's what flicks your particular switch. Point is, it's not up to you to dictate to others how they should format their comments.
While Google would not be my prime contractor, the guy has a point, at least as far as the job of killing opposing tanks is concerned. Helo mounted, and now drone portable ATGMs have far better stealth and mobility than any tank can ever hope to have are much better at the job, for much lower cost. Losing a tank means (probably) taking a hit to 3 to 5 man crew, that's taken years to train.
Lose the drone? Get the operators a new one. Communications and electronic warfare become the only *really* critical factor.
The three jobs a drone can't do. Firstly, defending a fixed position. It can offer fire support to troops doing that job. Second, It can act as fire support against opponents lacking heavy weapons themselves. (Negate them with the drones first?) Third : Morale. A 50 ton behemoth has an impact, regardless of WHAT equipment you have and how much you know your squadmate with the Javelin hidden in the woods is going to do the biz.
Ask why the M1 Abrams has not practically had attempts at a successor in what is now approaching 50 years service.
What's going on in Eastern Europe will be being pored over by armchair and actual analysts for some time to come, but this tabletop wargamer is firmly on side of stealthy drones being king. Even if they don't make for a pretty tabletop game.
> Ask why the M1 Abrams has not practically had attempts at a successor in what is now approaching 50 years service.
Why has the M1 Abrams not practically had attempts at designing a successor for it?
Maybe it's because they keep updating it with newer technology where it's required? Maybe it's because the core parts of the tank (the shell, the gas turbine engine) haven't advanced in the last 50 years?
Ask the same question about tanks in other western countries and you'll get basically the same answer. Look at the Challenger in the UK - the core shell and engine of the Challenger II are being retained, with a new turret, new optics, and some system upgrades it becomes the Challenger III for much less cost than a brand new tank (which there aren't many designs for anyway).
Did Schmidt just somehow make it to this point without ever once watching a Terminator movie? And were there no eight-year-olds around him to explain why this is a bad idea? Why are these people obsessed with creating the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus?
Tanks are definitely stressed on the modern battlefield. However, it's too early to know exactly how things will play out.
What's the alternative? Look at the 70-80% of casualties that are caused by artillery. Do you want to maneuver infantry in the open instead?
If you ditch armor, how do you achieve maneuver warfare, in order to exploit weak points in the enemy? Are you back to WW1, static, grinding, attritional? Maybe that's all Ukraine can do it, with the means given to them. And all Russia is competent enough to use as tactics. But if a more clever/better resourced opponent than Russia figures out the right mix, whoever draws the wrong conclusions from this war could be in big trouble.
I suspect that will happen instead is that armored vehicles will get their own protective systems, optimized to drones. After all modern tanks managed to somewhat counter modern ATMs with active counterdefenses. Israeli Merkavas got the Trophy system after Russian Kornets proved too dangerous in the 2006 Lebanon War. The MBT - meant for tank-on-tank - may gradually morph into AFV meant to carry infantry and support it. French dude has a great YouTube channel - Les Conflits en Cartes- detailing the changes in frontline, week, by week, using a map to show events. You see plenty of armor use on it.
As long as your countermeasure is reliable enough, and costs less than $5K a shot, a $5K drone isn't a foregone conclusion.
One thing for sure, currently defense is having the upper hand over offense on land (due among other things to the riskiness of massing troops at any one location). But those cycles come and go.
> I suspect that will happen instead is that armored vehicles will get their own protective systems, optimized to drones.
This is one of the uses proposed for the laser systems currently in development. Right now they're a bit big for vehicles (instead being ship-sized) but in a few years they should be miniaturised sufficiently to make a basically free (small fuel cost for the electricity) point defence weapon for heavy vehicles.
JLV:
What's the alternative?
cow:
Havent you watched the war in UKR ?
UKR only problem is they dont have enough manpads and small range missiles.
~
JLV: As long as your countermeasure is reliable enough, and costs less than $5K a shot, a $5K drone isn't a foregone conclusion.
cow: You are looking at this from the WRONG perspective.
$5K is nothing compared to the cost of the $5M tank.
US Military doctrine is currently "full spectrum dominance." Drones add another wavelength to the spectrum, but I doubt they'll crowd out armored vehicles completely. Artillery still seems to be in heavy use as well, since it can strike farther, harder, and with less effort than drones.
What drones do seem to have crowded out is attack helicopters. Why field an expensive, complicated, and hard-to-fly machines which requires a human crew when you can send in unmanned drones or RPVs to deliver an equivalent payload?
Perhaps drones will get sophisticated enough that we can just send them straight after warmongers and launch decapitation strikes, thus sparing our young people the need to fight and die in pointless wars. Tell me, Mr. Schmidt, can you do that for me?
Throat: US Military doctrine is currently "full spectrum dominance."
cow: Yes full dominance demonstraated to perfection with those technically backward Houthis.
Yemen is the modern shame of the USN and USAF, supposedly the most powerful on earth and yet they cant do a single thing to stop the Houthis who today still harass their part of the world.
The US is currently hardly even trying in Yemen. They've basically given them the equivalent of a dirty look at this point. The point is that the only way to be effective is boots on the ground, which they just do not want. No doubt if they did, they'd roll over the Houthi forces in a matter of weeks if not days (Distance/area to cover being the main problem). But just like Irak and Afghanistan the problem isn't winning the battle once, it's effecting any meaningful change after where the real problem lies. And you don't achieve that (only) with guns)
iman: The US is currently hardly even trying in Yemen.
cow: What bullshit, they have been firing lots of missiles and achieved nothing.
~
iman: But just like Irak and Afghanistan the problem isn't winning the battle once, it's effecting any meaningful change after where the real problem lies.
cow: Bullshit.
The USN has had a presence in the Gulf and that general area for over 30 years and yet the Iranians still manage to send ships with those missiles to Yemen.
Thats just pplain pathetic.
"The Gulf" is a giant area, and the USN presence there has consistently consisted of a few ships moving through the area. That's not an effective means of preventing anything. Again, the US isn't TRYING to stop the Iranians, or the Houthi. They are doing basically nothing at all. They're not stopping and inspecting ships, and if they were, Iran could probably ship their missiles in parts by air uncontested.
Throat: US Military doctrine is currently "full spectrum dominance."
cow: Yes full dominance demonstraated to perfection with those technically backward Houthis.
Yemen is the modern shame of the USN and USAF, supposedly the most powerful on earth and yet they cant do a single thing to stop the Houthis who today still harass their part of the world.
You really are an ignoramus, aren't you. The US haven't fought the Houthis. How long do you think the Houthis would last if the US military was unleashed upon them?
The US Forces are operating under RoE that at present do not permit them to engage them.
Its like arguing that PIRA fought the British Army to a standstill. We knew, and so did PIRA, the we could eliminate PIRA as a "fighting force" inside of 48hours had the RoE permitted it, and the Army Council inside of two weeks - with no restrictions on operating inside Eire, which as a soveriegn country would have been tantamount to a declaration of war.
But PIRA would have ceased to exist. The RoE never permitted us to do that.
ShortLegs: You really are an ignoramus, aren't you. The US haven't fought the Houthis.
cow: I never claimed they did fight them.
I said the US has tried to stop the H and cant, which is true, as the H continue to fire and cause enough trouble in the BeB straights.
shortlegs: How long do you think the Houthis would last if the US military was unleashed upon them?
cow: As long as the taliban.
Didnt the T outlast the US ?
The US military was never unleashed on the Taliban. You might want to read an inwardly digest the meaning of the word "unleashed", and take into account RoE. And the fact that no Western army has ever been unleahsed on a foe; we always fight within the RoE and to the desired Effect.
Whatever. Im now thinking you are nothing more than than an adolescent child whose sole experience of the military is Call of Duty, Wikipedia, and a few YouTube videos.
Come back when you are grown up. ta ta
I remember the first solid-state accelerometer packaged as an integrated circuit. OF COURSE it was for military applications: inertial guidance munitions. Later it powered “It,” which became the self-balancing Segway. Then, the proliferation of hexacopters and remote-control drones.
This is the modern Terminator: defeatured, cost-reduced, minimized - automatic murder machine.
The US Armed Forces already has an autonomous anti-drone laser that can take out an individual flier in moments. But how big of a swarm do you need to overwhelm it? This is always the question regarding these “iron dome” technologies.
Meatsack horses may be out of the battlefield but they are being reintroduced in the form of robot ones. Ukraine are trialling them as ways to deliver supplies to front line troops and as a med-evac carrier.
Giving casualties to this as med-evac changes warfare. The general calculation is that wounding one soldier takes three out as they care for and transport the casualty. If the care is temporary and then the caring troops remain on site and ready the advantage of wounding is removed.
Considering UKR is fighting a more numerous enemy this could be key for them.
Interesting to note the currently circulating vid of shoulder launched Russian anti-drone drones...
No doubt chaff and evasion is coming to a drone near you... but then again, if the Amazon delivery drones survive suburban America maybe they already have that capability?
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