Ukrainian Defensive War against the Russian Invasion - Mark IV: The Partitioning of Discussion

[Balr0g]

I think the vulnerability of tanks (and light vehicles) to FPVs is sort of temporary too - there have to be boffins working on automated anti-drone gun systems that just blast anything close by out of the sky based on mm-wave radar or whatever.

That depnds though how much ammo anti drone weaponry consumes. Would those be like German Roland anti air tank with machine cannons that go through ammo like landwhales go through buffets? Or precision shots that result in "one shot, one drone destroyed"? And then we come to the costs. Drones have become so feared and effective because they are cheap and can usually be operated behind the lines by trained operators. If you really want to stop drones you have to locate the operators and blow their post to bits. Which is easier said then done

 

[Optimus Prime]

Drones, obviously. For the price of one tank you can comfortably field 100.000 fpv drones.

Drones which, as demonstrated, can be taken down with strategies like "a vintage prop plane armed with a shotgun in the backseat"

On the battlefield, the tank still represents a powerful asset. A highly mobile, large bore cannon that requires basically something equal to it in strength to remove as a threat. And simply trying to drone it takes time since you have to call in the target, while the tank merely just needs to see you within range and then it express mails a greeting card of death in your direction. And sure, we get a lot of videos from Ukraine about how easily we see tanks getting droned into burning wrecks, but almost all of them have one thing in common: those tanks are not actively engaged in combat. Generally they're just in transport to some other location or have been left unattended inside buildings. Crews are not prepared for the sudden appearance of a drone slipping into an open hatch and blowing them to kingdom come, but at the same time nobody is going to stay cooped up in a metal box for hours on end with shitty AC - hence the 'cope cages' and turtle armors.

 

[Fatsuit Shinji]

?

This is doctrinal and has nothing to do with smoothbore vs. rifled bore. The US adopted a rather lethal beehive round for the M256 that it used to terrifying effect in Iraq. That it came out of a smoothbore has no bearing on it.

Speaking of bearings, HEAT is an effective support munition, as it doesn't just do the shaped charge thing, it also goes "kaboom" and makes concentrations of enemies very unhappy. But the rifled bore tank gun can't fire them unless it uses a ring race bearing collar on their rounds: a spinning HEAT round can't do the job against enemy armor as well, which is one of the purposes of HEAT. A smoothbore HEAT round doesn't need such adaptation.

Deal with HEAT is they're not the primary anti-tank round as that is what APFSDS-T is for. As HEAT have been relegated to softer targets than current generation tanks. Right now with smoothbore cannons is they had hit their maximum usable direct fire range due to the nap of the earth entering the picture.

Smoothbore vs. rifled will be debated for a good while and they both have their benefits and drawbacks. IMO smoothbore is the way forward. Fortunately I'll never have to find out.

With the Ukrainians have been saying about needing EVERYTHING that have a HE round firing on grid coordinates full of incoming Russians. Either the bean counters loosen the draw strings to buy exponentially more SPGs and or infantry support vehicles. Or it maybe time to reevaluate rifled and smoothbore cannons at least for infantry support vehicles.

 

[Oxyjen]

That depnds though how much ammo anti drone weaponry consumes. Would those be like German Roland anti air tank with machine cannons that go through ammo like landwhales go through buffets?

FPV drones or dropped munitions require very little in the way of airborn metal to destroy compared to old timey bomber aircraft. They are also much closer to you. I speculate that a mini Gatling type gun firing a short burst of very small caliber bullets with the latest in computer targeting would be cost effective and realistic to install a couple of guns onto a tank, or one onto a Bradley or Hilux.

If a guy with a few shotgun rounds is sometimes good enough, throwing some high speed servos and computer vision targeting at the problem will definitely be effective.

Many low cost “Defense drones” might also be stored onboard the vehicle, acting as self guided munitions to take out the loitering or quadcopter bomber drones. I’m sure we’ve seen examples just recently in this thread - those rocket ship shaped quads.

You also have things like lasers increasing in effectiveness. It’s early days for this type of sci-fi warfare, we’re going to see a lot more evolution very quickly imo. Armor will adapt to be more like a drone mothership robotic gun, possibly without anyone inside it.

 

[Balr0g]

Or we get something like mobile ECM cars projecting a "bubble" of eletronic countermeasure disturbing the communication of a drone with it's operators. The battlefields have evolved quiet a bit these couple of years

 

[NKVD qt]

Or we get something like mobile ECM cars projecting a "bubble" of eletronic countermeasure disturbing the communication of a drone with it's operators. The battlefields have evolved quiet a bit these couple of years

Problem is ECM is not very effective against bomber drones and doesn't work at all against fiber optics.

 

[No. 7 cat]

Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, Special Operations Forces and Defence Intelligence (DIU) have struck the Tuapse Oil Refinery in Russia's Krasnodar Krai for a second time.

Source: Unmanned Systems Forces; General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Details: The General Staff reported that hits on the tank farm were recorded, resulting in a fire at the facility.

The special operation was carried out on the night of 19-20 April by drone operators from the 1st Separate Centre of the Unmanned Systems Forces in coordination with the Special Operations Forces and DIU.

Ukrainska Pravda archive / Ukrainska Pravda original link

General Staff confirms strikes on Tuapse refinery, two Russian landing ships, oil depot​

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has confirmed renewed strikes on the Tuapse oil refinery, two large Russian landing ships, an oil depot, and ammunition storage facilities.
The General Staff reported this on Facebook, according to Ukrinform.

On the night of April 19-20, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces struck a number of key targets belonging to the Russian aggressor.

In particular, the Tuapse oil refinery in Russia's Krasnodar region was hit again. A strike on the tank farm was recorded, followed by a fire at the site.
In addition, the Gvardeyskaya oil depot in temporarily occupied Crimea was struck.

Damage to these facilities is expected to reduce Russia's ability to supply fuel to its military units.

The General Staff also confirmed that overnight strikes in temporarily occupied Sevastopol hit a Project 1171 large landing ship and a Project 775 large landing ship. The extent of the damage is being clarified.
Furthermore, Russian ammunition depots were struck in the areas of temporarily occupied Urzuf in the Donetsk region and Loknya in Russia's Belgorod region.

A drone storage facility was also hit near Nova Karakuba, along with a command and observation post near Blahodatne in the Donetsk region.

Russian losses and the full extent of the damage are still being assessed.

Ukrinform archive / Ukrinform original link

It is a particularly good thing that Ukraine is ignoring any requests to go easy on Russian oil. If Putin is allowed to earn unimpeded, far more Ukrainians will die. Anyhow, what exactly has the Trump Administration done recently that's useful? Reinstating a waiver soon after one had expired suggests they've been more useful to Russia recently.

Military communications expert and Defense Ministry advisor Serhii Beskrestnov was injured in what he said was a targeted Russian drone strike on his home outside Kyiv overnight on April 20.

Four jet-powered Shahed-type drones targeted Beskrestnov's home in Kyiv Oblast, he wrote on Facebook the following morning, posting a defiant selfie from hospital. He did not disclose the severity of his injuries.

"This is the first time I've seen the enemy try to eliminate someone using Shahed-type drones in such a targeted manner," Beskrestnov said on national television.

Earlier, Kyiv Oblast authorities reported that a 51-year-old man, the same age as Beskretnov, had been injured in a drone attack and was in stable condition......

Kyiv Independent archive / Kyiv Independent original link

Russia apparently tried to murder this Defense Ministry advisor and got close to it. They're fully capable of precisely targeted attacks, but usually chose not to bother with precision when general terror is the usual aim.

 

[The Wise Shaman]

This made my day:

(Tuapse, Krasnodar Krai)

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

T-55-based turtle tanks get ACK'd by FPV drones and HIMARS:

Is it just me or are they covered in expended rocket artillery tubes field expedient spaced armor?

 

[Snekposter]

?

This is doctrinal and has nothing to do with smoothbore vs. rifled bore. The US adopted a rather lethal beehive round for the M256 that it used to terrifying effect in Iraq. That it came out of a smoothbore has no bearing on it.

Speaking of bearings, HEAT is an effective support munition, as it doesn't just do the shaped charge thing, it also goes "kaboom" and makes concentrations of enemies very unhappy. But the rifled bore tank gun can't fire them unless it uses a ring race bearing collar on their rounds: a spinning HEAT round can't do the job against enemy armor as well, which is one of the purposes of HEAT. A smoothbore HEAT round doesn't need such adaptation.

Smoothbore vs. rifled will be debated for a good while and they both have their benefits and drawbacks. IMO smoothbore is the way forward. Fortunately I'll never have to find out.

You actually don't want to use rifled barrels with any sort of cluster munitions. The spin that gets imparted causes the shot to spread into a torus pattern instead of remaining bunched up, greatly reducing effectiveness. Even the very shallow rifling on the Taurus Judge causes noticeable problems. One of the reasons the Napoleon gun was so widely used in the US Civil War despite its reduced range compared to rifled guns was that it was still accurate enough, and unlike them its canister shot had about twice the effective range because of that greatly reduced spread.

If a guy with a few shotgun rounds is sometimes good enough, throwing some high speed servos and computer vision targeting at the problem will definitely be effective.

Just slap some of those motion-tracking shotguns the Die Another Die Bondmobile had on top of a tank, problem solved.

 

[lIIlIlOO001I0I1I]

A letter to Voenkor Kotenok:

Greetings. I cannot not tell you what is actually happening in the tank battalion of the 110th Brigade of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (formerly the 100th Brigade of the People's Militia of the Donetsk People's Republic).

In short, tanks nowadays barely take part in direct military action, so every 2-3 weeks, two people from every company of the battalion get taken to infantry and sent into charges, toward fortified positions, to assist UAV pilots. Already three platoons are missing from the companies, they're only listed on paper, but in fact all the fighters have been sent into charges, died, or went missing in action. Now has come the time of the second platoon. A few days ago we had been told to prepare two more people for infantry... Thus, ingloriously, the tankmen are disappearing.

Later, most likely, the battalion will get deprecated on paper. If there are no people, there shall be no tanks or a battalion, either.

[...]

While I had been writing this message, information has appeared that literally all the tankmen are sent into charges.

Only a few people are left to guard the tanks. Everyone else moves forward, all, all, all of them.

 

[Type 10 MBT]

It's my opinion that as the sensor suite of tanks evolves and changes anti-drone systems will likely evolve from hard kill active protection systems. The largest issues with a hard kill system are A: It picks up high velocity objects not relatively slow drones and B: It endangers infantry nearby as the drone will be carrying explosives B is more of a doctrinal issue as most forces train to keep away from friendly tanks as they attract more fire but A is the largest problem. The obvious caveat being that Israel puts Trophy on APCs and fires small shaped projectiles to try and avoid infantry casualties but thats here nor there as they train specifically to vacate the APS zone of fire. Fixing it requires a change of how the system differentiates between a good and bad target which can be an easy or monumental task. The "easy" way to do it with systems like Trophy is to adjust the system to accept low velocity incoming projectiles as valid targets. Trophy categorizes targets in a database that references good, bad, incoming or miss. The incoming alert is processed in milliseconds and a countermeasure is fired to intercept, after which the data is shared to a network that enables other vehicles to respond to the origin of the projectile. But it's not like a tanker is looking at an ipad and tapping targets, its a hands off system. This could cause issues though with false identification, think a bird being obliterated because it swooped too close to a tank. It also has an issue in that trophy and other systems like it use radar tracking on the sides of the vehicle leaving a large blind spot above, like where drones usually are. The other, harder way to fix the issue is to upend the entire ID system and use a sensor array comprised of both radar and camera mounted on an independent swivel like the launchers. This requires a whole lot of time and effort to make work but it in theory could lead to better results but a larger system. This also means the database of the APS would have to be widened so as to better classify incoming projectiles/drones and intercept them. I feel that this evolution makes sense as so much has already been put into hard kill APS in western nations. It would be easier than starting from the ground up. BUT as always I could be completely wrong in the future.

This is basically what the Japanese APS program ended up on. It was a sensor attached to the sides of the vehicle that could swivel and cover a large cone above and to the side. The projectile identification system was linked to the already present internal database Japanese tanks draw from for target ID. However the program was not made for drones and had a focus on ATGMS and top down munitions. It used an expensive combination of cameras, IR and radar. Nobody knows if it was adopted in the end or not because the Japanese MOD is really tight lipped about protection information.



The Russian elephant in the room is Arena M. The evolved version of the Arena APS that uses Doppler to detect projectiles. The producer claims it can intercept anything including the Javelin. This has yet to be proven in practice and Arena has been something of a mixed bag historically. Like many expensive Russian assets it's rare to ever see let alone see in the war. Low production rates and all that.

Tl;dr: I think that Anti-drone warfare will evolve from hard kill APS systems many tanks already use. It will require a lot of effort and work and tweaking but so much has already been put into these systems and they're more practical than a mini CIWS mounted to the turret bustle.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

FPV drones or dropped munitions require very little in the way of airborn metal to destroy compared to old timey bomber aircraft. They are also much closer to you. I speculate that a mini Gatling type gun firing a short burst of very small caliber bullets with the latest in computer targeting would be cost effective and realistic to install a couple of guns onto a tank, or one onto a Bradley or Hilux.

You could probably achieve similar results for a lot less money by using some kind of advanced potato gun and a bucket of pebbles.

 

[Otis Mallebrok]

Drones which, as demonstrated, can be taken down with strategies like "a vintage prop plane armed with a shotgun in the backseat"

No? Ukraine produces around 20000 drones a day, Russia produces a similar amount. How many of those are shot down by vintage airplanes? Barely any. How many tanks are killed by drones? Almost all of them.

On the battlefield, the tank still represents a powerful asset. A highly mobile, large bore cannon that requires basically something equal to it in strength to remove as a threat.

That is just not true. Tanks are extremely vulnerable to drones, artillery, anti-tank missiles, land mines, ditches, mud, and breakdowns. That tanks, including abrams and leopards, are furnished with hedgehog armour in Ukraine shows just how vulnerable they are, and how little confidence soldiers have in them. Its notable that Ukraine has many western tanks that were donated to them directly, but under the PURL initiative where Ukraine is given money to buy the equipment they want the most, they have opted for no tanks.

And sure, we get a lot of videos from Ukraine about how easily we see tanks getting droned into burning wrecks, but almost all of them have one thing in common: those tanks are not actively engaged in combat.

True. They get destroyed very easily, and they don't do anything. There are massive casualties in Ukraine every day, and barely any of them are caused by tanks.

A NATO armoured battalion has about 500 personnel and 33-36 tanks. If you compare that to a drone battalion that can make several thousand of sorties a day, the drone unit is much, much less vulnerable, has much higher striking power, and drones are a lot more mobile. Tanks have inferior mobility, striking power and protection, and just as importantly, much worse situational awareness. This is why the above mentioned American general urges western powers to discard their armoured battalions and replace them with drone battalions.

The cheap daytime drones used in Ukraine costs less then 200 euro. The more expensive drone resistant ones with thermal vision, costs maybe 1000 euro. You can use hundreds of them to take down a single tank, and it is easily worth it.

Of course, there IS a type of tank that is increasingly successful in Ukraine: The cheap unmanned tank.

 

[BinaricHate]

A letter to Voenkor Kotenok:

I remember, years ago, reading on 4cucks /k/ about some alleged ukie field medic who said that the russians MO was to send out a squad or so consisting of 2-3 men on like ww1 night raids into ukranian positions. These squads would almost always get instantly wiped out but they would also take down some of the ukranians with them. They were sent purely with the intent of annoying the other side and hopefully taking down an enemy or two before getting inevitably bwowm to widdle bwits.

I wouldn't be so foolish to trust a "source trust me bro" from 4cuck but I wonder if they are doing precisely this. It would explain why they aren't just mobik cubing the entire fucking brigade but are instead slowly picking them apart.

 

[Type 10 MBT]

The cheap daytime drones used in Ukraine costs less then 200 euro. The more expensive drone resistant ones with thermal vision, costs maybe 1000 euro. You can use hundreds of them to take down a single tank, and it is easily worth it.

So your wider argument is essentially "tanks just die and are irrelevant/useless nobody should have them Mr. former general agrees with me drones are the future" while no military in the world, including the two actively engaged in conflict that this board is dedicated to does anything to lessen the amount of armor used in said conflict. In fact they do the opposite and dump loads of money into restarting old production lines for tanks long since out of production. I've yet to hear of the 4th motor rifle division ditching tanks for UAV trailers.

Its notable that Ukraine has many western tanks that were donated to them directly, but under the PURL initiative where Ukraine is given money to buy the equipment they want the most, they have opted for no tanks.

Because PURL is meant for the transfer of weapons from a list of readily exportable items in stockpile or that come off an assembly line and go directly to Ukraine which tanks are not. They are a massive expense and are made to order. It took almost 2 years for Ukraine to get the Abrams they were promised because they had to be so heavily modified before they could be released. Would Ukraine spend 30 million on air defense or tanks using the fund meant for readily exportable items? Would they spend that money on munition needed for daily combat or a single tank? I think you are confusing the wartime foreign aid reliant Ukraine with the operational ideal Ukraine wants. Of course they would love to buy 80 Leopard 2s but other things take precedent and they would rather have missiles soon than tanks later. What Ukraine was given was either out of date or was spares that a military could afford and again, did modify to remove sensitive materials.

 

[Slurgle]

Of course, there IS a type of tank that is increasingly successful in Ukraine: The cheap unmanned tank.

Is that a fantasy of yours, or do you have a source?

Small production UGV with M2 =/= tank

 

[latinlover]

Well boys, it seems after Orban's burial the world is healing.


2 separate articles:

EU envoys back 90 billion euro Ukraine loan as Hungary, Slovakia say Druzhba oil transit resumed / archive

EU ambassadors back 20th package of Russia sanctions after Hungary, Slovakia drop veto / archive

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Orbán evacuates his son from the military to avoid being court martialed. Despite the state of emergency that prevents anyone being discharged, Captain Orbán Gáspár has been discharged.

Source

Orbán Viktor's only son leads a cult and had visions where God told him he needs to lead a holy crusade to Chad, Africa and that it needs to be 'earned in blood' - Hungary has planned multiple diplomatic missions and this military mission with Gáspár as the head to Chad entirely due to Gáspár's religious visions. He is also a homosexual.

The only reason the military mission never went through (it has been accepted by the National Assembly though and went through years of planning and formal organization by Gáspár) was because Chad eventually refused the Hungarian military intervention due to the muddy political situation (it's a fucking nigger civil war)

I wrote about him earlier in this thread.

If you're interested in the Chad arc, now vested with this additional esoteric background knowledge I invite you to read the 2024 article from fucking PANYI SZABOLCS yet again titled "Uncovering the Secret African Mission of Viktor Orbán's Son"

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Prosecutors have launched an investigation into the Nepalese labor-leasing case, in which the key figures may have had business ties to Áron Orbán, the younger brother of the outgoing prime minister.

I wrote about this earlier, based savior of the white race Orban shoveling in jeets and gooks by the hundreds of thousands because it economically benefits his baby brother's jeet labor import company. According to allegations he also engages in illegal (not just legal) human trafficking. Sometimes he gives the gooks and jeets fake education visas and these jeets don't always stop in Hungary, occasionally he pushes them onwards to Germany and other European countries. He's also comically retarded and really bad at being a criminal, unlike his older brother.

Documentary on youtube on the case if you're interested, no artisanal English subtitles but automatic translated captions to English do a good enough job nowadays.

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Both significant NER-adjacent businessmen and low-mid level government officials are now prostrating themselves at the feet of the newly elected PM with pendrives, asking for plea bargains as reported by multiple outlets and TISZA officials.

"Not only government officials, but also the NER’s economic elite are waving USB drives in the air, begging TISZA for impunity" (in Hungarian)

Inshallah I'll be able to soon post pictures of Orban, Szijjarto et al. with a ball and chain around their ankles. TISZA having a supermajority allows for parliamentary immunity to be suspended, which may lead to a legal bloodbath this country (or the EU) has not seen since WW2 if the cogs in the machine keep coming forward with damning evidence to their superiors en masse just like they are doing now.

Once Hungary joins the EPPO [this is one of the first things Magyar keeps repeating he'll do once he takes office] the pitbulls such as Laura Codruța Kövesi will join in on Orban's gangrape; we already know they have completed investigations, such as the ELIOS case that they only need to cross the finish line on; once Hungary gives them jurisdiction it's all joever for the fat gypsy and the gang.

There is no amount of shredding that saves these niggers now.

"We even promise partial immunity to certain NER oligarchs who help hold the country’s plunderers accountable and recover the public assets that have been stolen and embezzled."

-Magyar Péter on his "Immunity Programme"

Reminder that the new government is not even in office yet until May 9, everyone involved has until then to escape somewhere that doesn't extradite to Hungary.

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Spoiler: Misc. corruption related news in Hungary. Sorry, this turns out to be one eventful newsday for vampires preying on this small country

Everything points to Orban and the gang literally emptying everything out, and that includes the Hungarian lottery.

The first week after Orban's record electoral loss, something absolutely unprecedented happened: all 4 State Lottery games had their Jackpots hit at the same time, the rewards totaling 8 billion HUF. This seems like a retarded conspiracy theory, seeing as the money is peanuts compared to Orban's other crimes such as the robbery of the National Bank of Hungary for 650 billion [Documentary on it on youtube, available with english subtitles: "The Big Scheme" ; If you don't watch the entirety, at least watch from cca. 22:15 to 23:50- trust me], but every single commission responsible for the games is firmly under FIDESZ boot and the Hungarian games were notoriously rare audited even before this - this could easily be a lower level (on the foodchain) conspiracy. Another indicator that this is all very plausible is the fact that the Hungarian State Lottery due to public pressure has initiated an emergency audit to determine if this was just extremely curious coincidence or if a crime happened.

Again, reminder that despite the record electoral loss because the new National Assembly hasn't been founded yet it is still Orban at the helm of the temporary caretaker government.

Also, 11 years ago in Serbia:

Serbian lottery probed after winning number shown before draw​

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Medián, the most accurate independent polling institute (predicted the exact mandate numbers for every single party for the election, was very accurate at the previous election as well as the EP elections too) has published their first post-elections poll a few minutes ago: Who would you vote for if elections were today?


Vitya's done.

 

[Snekposter]

the drone unit is much, much less vulnerable

As we have seen in Iran with how readily they were bombed into oblivion by the USA, this is hardly the case. Large drone formations are essentially artillery formations in how they're organized and established as a result of their manpower and logistical needs, and have similar upsides and downsides.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

I remember, years ago, reading on 4cucks /k/ about some alleged ukie field medic who said that the russians MO was to send out a squad or so consisting of 2-3 men on like ww1 night raids into ukranian positions. These squads would almost always get instantly wiped out but they would also take down some of the ukranians with them. They were sent purely with the intent of annoying the other side and hopefully taking down an enemy or two before getting inevitably bwowm to widdle bwits.

I wouldn't be so foolish to trust a "source trust me bro" from 4cuck but I wonder if they are doing precisely this. It would explain why they aren't just mobik cubing the entire fucking brigade but are instead slowly picking them apart.

At least in part, for sure. I'd reckon it's more the command trying to show that things are being done, because they were ordered to do things by people above them, who was in turn ordered the same. Doesn't matter what it is or what the actual results are, knowing how these things usually work, it's more about giving the convincing enough impression that they're trying. If they were to spend all their troops at once, it would prevent them from being able to kick the can down the road by drip-feeding them instead. While they clearly don't value human life, procuring more people nowadays is problematic.
We all know that decisive win is currently impossible for the either side. And when orders come down to take whatever village for the -nth time, you gotta do something or it's your ass.

Let's say that this is merely my conjecture as someone familiar with the mentality.

As a side note, it's funny to see "widdle bwits" meme take traction