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Posted on 07/22/2025 12:45:58 PM PDT by Jan_Sobieski
On May 23rd, The Times published an extraordinarily candid probe into how militarised drones have irrevocably revolutionised warfare in the 21st century, with Russia far at the forefront of this radical shakeup of how conflicts are waged. Meanwhile, there is little indication NATO members even vaguely comprehend this battlefield reality, let alone a single one of them is undertaking any serious measures whatsoever to prepare for conflict such as that currently unfolding and evolving daily throughout Ukraine’s eastern steppe.
The Times piece is a first-person report of a visit to the assorted headquarters of Kiev’s 93rd Mechanised Brigade, in basements of abandoned buildings and homes throughout the Donetsk city of Kostiantynivka. It’s a disquieting account of the realities of war in the era of drones, which has “[altered] the physical make-up of the front line, the tactics of the war and the psychology of the soldiers fighting it,” while “having a devastating impact on Ukraine’s logistical ability.”
At one stage, The Times reporter was warned they were standing nine kilometres - 5.5 miles - from the nearest Russian position, and thus “well inside the kill range.” A Ukrainian soldier told them with a shrug, this was “now an easy range in which to die”:
“No other weapon type has changed the face of the war here so much or so fast as the FPV drone. Almost any vehicle within five kilometres of the front is as good as finished. Anything moving out to ten kilometres is in danger. Drone strikes at 15 or 20 km are not that unusual...”
(Excerpt) Read more at kitklarenberg.com ...
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I’ve heard the rifle, the main battle instrument for centuries, will be relegated to a personal defense weapons by drones.
My niece says so who designs drones.
“ The Times published an extraordinarily candid probe into how militarised drones have irrevocably revolutionised warfare in the 21st century”
This is how to start an article.
It’s remarkable in that it seems most articles ramble about for 2 or 3 paragraphs before getting to the point they’re trying to make.
Large platforms will have to develop anti-drone measures. I suspect if sufficient power is available some form of ectronic deterrence can be achieved.
How many drones can a vulcan gun take out? Drones can’t move as fast as missiles, so there are options for deterrence not exactly the same as with anti-missile defense. Although I see obvious parallels.
Drones will do nothing but advance in terms of lethality and numbers, it’s relatively nothing to build them, with modern manufacturing millions can be built in a short amount of time and no effective defense exists at the present time.
Someone will develop a counter drone defense that is effective and cost efficient, whoever does that will gain a major step up on the modern battlefield.
There are already counter measures using the rifle, special scopes that track the drone and special shot bullets for drones.
“A new type of rifle bullet in Ukraine could give infantry a better way to survive unjammable drone attacks”
https://www.businessinsider.com/rifle-bullet-fpv-anti-drones-ukraine-war-unjammable-nato-2025-7
“U.S. Army deploys cutting-edge smart rifle scopes that automatically shoot down enemy drones in combat”
https://www.foxnews.com/us/u-s-army-deploys-cutting-edge-13m-smart-rifle-scopes-automatically-shoot-down-enemy-drones-combat
The most maddening are articles that keep repeating the headline in many ways without getting to the answer, paragraph after paragraph of repeating the headline question in various ways with the answer buried way down the page.
Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are using hunting shotguns as a last line of defense.
But neither a shotgun nor rifle could outgun a full drone swarm.
Like back in the days when the ‘fearsome’ USSR held sway, it claimed it had invented most everything under the sun. So too with this claim that they revolutionized warfare with drones.
The credit goes 80% to Ukraine and 20% to Iran - and like the Soviets, Russia once again copied them, and now tries to take credit.
agree with your ratios. Ukraine has had to turn to drones as force multipliers out of desperation. the Russians could afford to continue to throw more men and machines at the Ukes until the drones showed up.
That’s right.
The most maddening are articles that keep repeating the headline in many ways “
You have it totally backwards! The article is written BEFORE it is handed to the headline writer.
Russia revolutionized warfare by losing a huge chunk of conventional assets to a ragtag bunch of techies. The fact that Russia has been able to adapt to the nature of drone warfare in Ukraine is to their credit.
Better equipped and managed armies won’t be so easy.
We have seen a lot of drone kills of individual soldiers but I haven’t seen any of an individual fighting off a drone swarm aimed at him.
These weapons are the early stages of counter measures, there are other anti-drone weapons being tested for swarms.
The Daily Mail does it a lot, read their articles.
“The Daily Mail does it a lot, read their articles.”
They write the headline before writing the articlè?
We simply haven't faced off against a technologically advanced enemy.
We have been chasing rag-tag militias, guerrilla forces, using dated military hardware that do not have an industrial or technological base behind them.
We still need the “capability” of a tank.
But what we have isn't capable of doing that.
Some of the folks here laughed and mocked the Russians, saw it as incompetence and proof of inferior equipment, as the Russians got mauled by advanced ATGMS and drones in the beginning of this war.
Truth is, our tanks would not, and did not do any better even when we brought them into the fight later, and we had time to apply lessons learned.
Suddenly all the folks with their war erotica stressing the Russian schadenfreude to prove their genetic, moral, cultural superiority tried to somehow rationalize or even deny the fact that our M1s, Leo's, Challengers, were getting chewed up as well.
Here's the bottom line: no present day tank is built to be impenetrable from all aspects using armor. Such a machine is to heavy and bulky to be practical. These MBT’s merely have a very high level of protection usually in the frontal arc of the vehicle. But today, you have dive and top attack munitions with tandem warheads, even a precursor rocket (dealing with ERA that is intended to defeat a tandem warhead). You have drones where you can literally fly around the armored vehicle and hit it +/- a foot where ever you want, the top, rear, engine compartment, ammo bunker, fly it into an open hatch or ramp.
You can lie to people and tell them they are going to war in a steel beast that's impenetrable, but that bubble is going to burst really quick today against a threat like the Russians.
It is absolutely critical that we develop and field new armored vehicles to replace the M1 and M2.
These machines did awesome!
But they are like a P51 that was also awesome in WWII but would have been out of place in the jet-age and Cold War.
1.) The M1 was designed to operate on friendly terrain. The threat from bellow was limited. There are artillery dispensable mines etc. but generally speaking you didn't need to worry about a giant IED. So the belly is thin, flat and low. ALL WRONG when dealing with a modern threat.
2.) The M1 was designed for a defense of Western Europe and specifically Germany. The roads and bridges can sustain a 70 ton tank. The rivers are technically in some areas passable with some modifications (Snorkel / tower). We could preposition much of our equipment and wouldn't need to necessarily transport these tanks around the world via C17 or C5 which while possible is not ideal. Fuel is available, the temperatures are moderate, there are many and larger patches of forested areas, the terrain is rolling plains.
3.) These tanks were optimized to be highly effective against other tanks. Unlike its predecessor the M60 which laid an emphasis on infantry support, the M1 was more or less designed for tank on tank battles. Not really something that has happened much.
4.) The tech capabilities and it's availability are entirely different today. When the M1 was designed, top and dive attack munitions were not technologically feasible for threat nations, especially at a cost they were able to field them at. Likewise, the thermal sight was a novelty and most our threats at the time had “crappy” night vision intensifiers, with thermal sights only being realistic for nations like the US and later Germany etc. This matters because the M1 has a HUGE thermal signature thanks to a turbine.
The Western MBT is kept alive with Band-Aid fixes, applique solutions that do not work as well as they could if the platform were actually designed to incorporate these new technologies: new materials (newer aluminum, plastics and ceramics), digital systems and networks, sensors and sensor-fusion, drones, new advanced soft and hard kill defensive systems, signature reduction, selective or partial remote operation. Incorporating newer technologies combined with a platform which is designed around the types of threats we face and operate in the sort of terrain we operate in would make a big difference.
What we have today are impressive machines, lots of steel, loud, like a beast made out of steel. But we can also go to a local junk yard and make a 70 ton pile of cars and that too would be impressive to stand on.
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