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A comment on The Ukraine war is driving rapid innovation in drone technology. Parent comment

Re:The Ukraine war is driving rapid innovation in drone tech... by rgbrenner on Thursday May 09, 2024 @11:46PM (#40315351)
Ukraine actually uses Russian fighting tactics.. that's the way they trained and were equipped. They're also very poor, with a gdp per capita (before the war) of 1/3rd of Russia's. So it looks exactly the way these countries are equipped and trained to fight: lots of artillery, loss of life, trench warfare. Ukraine has neither the training nor equipment to do combined arms warfare. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that a war with NATO will look like the war in Ukraine.

As far as drone defense, we already have KuRFS/Ku-720(mobile version)[0,1] radar to track drones/etc that works with a phalanx, 50-caliber guns, 30mm cannon, and coyote drones. We're also deploying a 50kw palletized laser (w/ KuRFS) with the DE MSHORAD program[2].

All of these programs predate the 2022 Ukraine invasion. The Coyote (designed at the start to take out small drones) first took flight in 2007[3].

0. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m...

1. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/news/2021/10/11/rmd-proves-coun...

2. https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote

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Re:The Ukraine war is driving rapid innovation in drone tech... by kiba on Thursday May 09, 2024 @11:53PM (#40315383)
The Russian way of war isn't a bad way to go, but of course the units that know how to best fight like the Russians are actually(or used to be) the Americans.

I don't think it's necessary true that the war devolves into a lot of loss of life and trench warfare. That's mostly the result of a stalemate. The Russians expected Ukraine to be a pushover. That didn't happen.

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Re:The Ukraine war is driving rapid innovation in drone tech... by kasperni on Friday May 10, 2024 @07:37AM (#40317721)
> They're also very poor, with a gdp per capita (before the war) of 1/3rd of Russia's.

It is the other way around. Ukraine has a GDP per capita that is (prewar) 3 times that of Russia's.

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Re:The Ukraine war is driving rapid innovation in drone tech... by fulafel on Friday May 10, 2024 @07:50AM (#40317805)
Ukraine: $5,663 vs Russia: $13,006 (From WP's Economy of {country} pages)

Russia's oil does a lot. Using oil/gas fuels supports Russia's war economy by creating demand and raising their prices in the commodities markets, in addition to contributing to the climate disaster.

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Re:The Ukraine war is driving rapid innovation in drone tech... by ptero on Friday May 10, 2024 @07:44AM (#40317766)
Not trying to knock Raytheon, those are useful technologies, but those sometimes work against some targets (mostly on clean test ranges) and are not even close to a complete solution. Reliably detecting and tracking drones is a very hard problem.
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