In the face of death, the occupiers show their true essence. They throw their helmets hysterically, fight back with automatic weapons, try to escape, but get what they deserve. A forest of EW antennas on the back of one of the occupiers did not help to escape from the “penal sanctions” of the soldiers of the “Rarog” Battalion of the 24th OMBr.
I’ve been wondering, do the Russians also have these types of suicide drones, and if so, do they also use them this way on individual/pairs of soldiers? I know this sub mostly shows Ukrainian videos. Or do they not engage in drone warfare as much with these small quadcopters? Most videos show Russian footsoldiers, vehicles and bigger fixed wing drones.
Also, for the armchair experts here, what are the chances of surviving something like this? Sounds like a dumb question, but is it possible some percent of them are duds/don’t detonate after impact? I’m not sure if the static at the end of the clips is added later, but can we assume if the feed cuts out, it has exploded?
I know nothing about the technology involved, but it seems like a fairly low barrier to entry to me. It makes me wonder if this kind of attack will be used in terrorist attacks in the next years/decades. Doesn’t seem like there’s much one could do against it in civilian areas.
Yes, they produce them about equally, but issues with corruption and bureaucracy in Russia hamper their use.
Russia’s offensive strategy is to use constant “meat assaults” to gain ground via attrition. The most efficient way to defend against that is with cheap FPV drones. The net effect is drone videos of hundreds of Russian troops dying per day.
Anything under 5kg that goes burns or goes boom has been attached to an FPV drone at this point. The most effective against infantry are the 3D printed ones that use ball bearings.
They do sometimes get caught on a net, but some brands have remote triggers. Magyar uses them a lot in his videos.
These have been used in terror attacks for some time, but it’s becoming far easier and cheaper. They even sell the grenade dropping mechanism on Amazon.
Huh, interesting. The disadvantages of the centralised vs distributed approach really makes sense here.
The Russian tactics seem like total madness. Might have worked in WWII still but looking at the videos in this community, surely they will eventually have to run out of vehicles and willing men (if they haven’t run out of the latter already).
Ball bearings, Jesus.
I wasn’t aware they had been used in terror attacks, but I saw an article about an attempted assassination of Maduro on the site you linked.
I’ll take your word on that Amazon link, disturbing shit.
Are these attacks on single soldiers tactically relevant too, or is it mainly intended as a psychological weapon, knowing that these things could hunt you down and you basically can’t do anything against it? I’m not Russian, or a soldier, or in Ukraine but I’m scared of these things.
A little from column A, a little from column B.
In the face of death, the occupiers show their true essence. They throw their helmets hysterically, fight back with automatic weapons, try to escape, but get what they deserve.
The true essence being… afraid of dying? I’d probably react the same.
Whether each individual deserves this is questionable. Though this doesn’t mean I don’t approve of the Ukrainian measures, in fact I support these fully,
However, as I’m not Ukrainian, my view on the matter is naturally different from someone’s who is currently being invaded. So I do get the sentiment. Just that I don’t want to celebrate it
To everyone thinking this is cool because it’s about enemy soldiers:
I get it, they’re the enemy and we HAVE to kill them. It is NOT cool, though.
It’s a guarantee that next up this will be innocent civilians. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if Israel isn’t already using these on Palestinian men, women and children. These videos are a horror show.
A few years back I saw this video made by some AI experts about how AI would be abused and it was basically these drones but with AI and facial recognition taking out students in a swarm because they were political opponents. It was a nightmarish scenario
What awful waste of human lives. And I guess there is no good way to die in war, but this just seems so atrocious for everyone involved
The only way to truly win in war is to never fight.
If you have a choice, that is.
The only winning move is not to play
As long as nobody starts, not playing is the easiest way to avoid defeat. But if one player plays, the rest must follow or lose. And as long as either keeps playing, neither can stop. That is the tragedy of war: Easy to start, hard to end, until the fire runs out of fuel and only ruin is left.
Every death and every kill that will haunt a soldier in this shit show is on Putin’s head.
No, it is not just Putin. Stop excusing all of Russia. They want the war, the see it as patriotic to fight the evil ukrainians. It is not just Putin the same way it was not just Hitler.
.ml account doing .ml things…
That’s funny, I constantly hear people complaining about the opposite sentiment from the .ml community. It’s a very common complaint around Lemmy that the ‘tankies’ from .ml defend Russia. So, it’s weird to hear someone say that saying negative things about Russia is somehow ‘.ml behavior’.
They’re not saying “negative things about Russia”. On the contrary, they’re trying to minimize the atrocities commited by russian “soldiers” and their superiors, by blaming 1 singular person.
As if, if putin disappeared, all will suddenly be rainbows and unicorns, russians and ukrainians best buds.
I see now. I think I was confused because it looked like you replied to the comment that you were agreeing with, but you were referring to the comment above that one as the .ml account. My bad.
The PTSD soldiers will have for the rest of their lives about a whirring motor…
Naming your suicide drone “Shrike” is metal af
Smh they didn’t even dodge roll
Didn’t practice iframes enough.
🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻
Serious question: would carrying a shotgun in the field be worth the additional weight? Would it be feasible to switch to the shotgun and kill it before it got into lethal range?
I’ve seen a video about an ammunition being developed to be adapted to the underbarrel grenade launcher. Problem is that it needs to be ready if you any chance at it, and you only have one chance.
Second problem is that most Russian soldiers are barely trained and equipped anyway, they’re just litteral canon fodder. Elite troops certainly have something to fight drones, but I suspect jamming would be the first layer. The video we see are most probably against the canon fodder.
Shotgun has a short effective range, about 70-100m depending of ammunition and gauge. If the drone explodes it still can hurt the shooter and people around. But, I guess it is a better option than just to wait for death.
I made a relevant comment to someone else above, so I’ll link that here. https://lemmy.zip/comment/14157725
I think a semi-auto shotgun would definitely be worth it. I think armies should also add skeet shooting to boot camp and have skeet shooting specialized troops in every squad going forward.
The resurrection of the AA-12
It just seems self evident, you’d think it would at least be considered. Every drone death I have seen the target is clearly aware of the drone and has had time to react and run.
Maybe. Getting a shotgun out, and pointed in the right direction is not instant. I can do it fairly fast when I’m hunting, but I keep plenty of extra paddles in my canoe so that after shooting I can go find the dropped paddles. I’m not sure if soldiers are in position to safely throw whatever they have in their hands. I’m also not sure if having a shotgun is worth the extra weight when they don’t need it.
For sure this needs a military expert to weigh in on. Though I doubt they are talking yet.
Not sure if there are any experts on drone warfare yet
Compared to me Ukraine as a lot of them. Though your point is probably correct overall.
Of course it was the same way in WW1 with machine guns and tanks.
These days there’s still a limited amount of knowledge about how to attack and defend aircraft carriers.
So it could be that drone warfare is in the same ballpark with these other technologies in terms of understanding.
Would Skeet shooting be applicable here? I thought a good part of the skill with Skeet was seeing the flight path of the target and anticipating where its going to be then shooting, but all of that in skeet is dependent on linear paths and no other change in velocity from the clay pigeon. Drones don’t behave that way. They speed up, they slow down, they hover, they go left, right, up, down, backwards, forwards and seemingly random intervals.
I haven’t tried my shotgun on real drones, but I would expect it makes no difference. Once you point in the right direction and pull the trigger the shot leaves fast enough such that I don’t expect a drone can move too far.
I wasn’t saying the drone would move out of the way between the time you line up the target and pull the trigger, but instead that drones move so quickly and unpredictable that you may never get lined up on the target.
Birds are not exactly predictable (depends on the bird, geese fly in a V and are very predictable, but other birds are erratic), but I’m not sure how different they are. Either way, you only need a more or less straight path for about 1 second, and you get multiple shots. Though if the drone is coming at you it still have momentum bringing it to you and shotguns don’t have much range.
I could see this working as a reasonable shot with a shotgun - but I could also see how it couldn’t and so I want someone in the military to tell me what works. (I’m willing to try on a range if you supply the drones - but at the price of drones I’m not willing to try this myself - and it goes without saying I’m not interested in going to a real battle field with all the other concerns that brings)
Someone should invent an absolutely minimal cost drone for short term flights at a person to practice shooting them down.
I don’t want battery toxic waste all over my shooting range (lead is bad enough - I try to use lead free shot).
It’s got a nice spread
Totally a keyboard warrior reply, but I suspect that since most of those videos show individual or pair of soldiers, its after their squad was destroyed and these guys are remainder. They probably also hear a lot of drones flying around during the day, so even if they are loud as hell, maybe you “get used” to it and don’t react as quick.
Probably don’t expect every soldier to carry shotguns so depending who survives the first contact, might not have a right weapon. Also I don’t actually know what is Russian squads go to load-outs are. It would be interesting to know if Ukrainian squads who have western training keep up with similar load outs as touted by western armies (where people have roles and equipment to suit). But as we rarely see videos of successful interceptions, its probably not something Ukraine would be quick to share.
Take all this with a ton of salt though, I have no sources, just assumptions. Would be great to hear from professional soldiers with actual combat experience though.
The US Infantry already carries shotguns for breaching. So yes. Very feasible.
I wonder what fraction of a Ukrainian soldier’s time is spent with occupied hands where they can’t ready weapon and acquire target within a few seconds. Probably not too common in open battlefield, and you could have a designated drone spotter for those periods if that’s not already a thing.
I’m surprised only one guy tried to shoot it. Are they that low on ammo?
I mean honestly, I would not consider it because drones are tiny and quick. I don’t think I’d be able to shoot one.
Well can’t outrun it and you can’t take the ammo with you after you die.
But depending on direction your fired ammo can fall on someone else on your side and now not only are you dead but you killed someone else via friendly fire.
You have to be extraordinarily unlucky to be hit by a wild shot at range. Unless there’s someone right behind the drone it’s not going to matter.
Well if I was forced to fight like these poor bastards likely where then I doubt that would be a concern.
Also you are very much underestimating the ballistic properties of those rifles. At such an angle those rounds are not landing within a km of this fight.
Russians don’t care much about friendly fire.
I think you would be even less likely to outrun or juke one.
That is true, but I feel my chances would be smaller if I were fucking around with grabbing my gun from my back first
If you are in an active combat zone, your gun shouldn’t be on your back :) unless you are on base but none of these looked like they were. Unless you are talking about switching to a shotgun like some people were mentioning.
Either way this is definitely a new dynamic to modern warfare.
Yeah that’s fair. Good thing I’m not in the army I guess haha. I wouldn’t be a good fit anyways >.<
Depends on what you are shooting with. A standard military rifle would be a difficult shot. A standard hunting shotgun has a good chance - though a shotgun doesn’t have much range.
I hate the “shotguns don’t have range” thing. Sure, they’re usually less than a rifle, but they’re pretty accurate at long ranges, even when not using slugs. When you use slugs then they’re competitive with a rifle with a lot more force.
Shotguns don’t work like video games. They’re not only useful for 2m or less. This article says about 70m for buckshot should be accurate, and 180m for some slugs, and most engagements are within 100m and a large majority within 200m.
For shotguns, it’s all about selecting the right shell for the target. I wouldn’t be that surprised if some militaries start equipping one person per element at least with a shotgun, and giving them a mix of something like birdshot for drones and slugs or buckshot for enemy combatants. It’d add some small amount of extra strain on logistics since they can’t use the same ammo, but I could see it being incredibly useful.
You are mistaking accuracy for lethal range. A lucky shot with buckshot could hit a human at 150m, but the shot will bounce right off their tshirt. A lucky shot with an infantry rifle could hit that human at 3km and kill them. Both of the above shots are luck - nobody can do that intentionally no matter how much training they have. Both of those are about as far as it is possible to reach with the respective gun (pointing up at a 45 degree angle)
If you want to talk about accuracy in the hands of someone well trained, your article is correct. This is well training - you won’t get that much training during basic training. That same training on an infantry rifle would get 800m with confidence (but if you are going to train someone that well you give them a more powerful gun so they can get 2000m).
I agree video games get this wrong all the time.
But you shouldn’t need a shotgun hit that would kill or incapacitate a human to take down a small plastic quadcopter drone.
The drone takedown range for a shotgun should be longer than against a human, but without data I couldn’t say what that is.
For sure regular buckshot isn’t what you’d want to use, but I don’t know if there’s a term for a custom shot designed to penetrate light armor on a person but still isn’t a slug. Kevlarshot? Slugs are probably what would be used for anti-personnel though, for the reason you mentioned. Birdshot would still be useful for anti-drone though, since they need to be lightly armored to fly more easily. If you force them to armor it then that costs payload. It definitely seems like something that should be being considered in this conflict.
I know the US uses shotguns for breaching, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they also carried some Birdshot with them in the future. I don’t know Ukraine already carries shotguns. I haven’t seen any so I don’t think they do.
I don’t think you can custom design shot in a useful way. At least I can’t think of any way to impart a spin on shot which is what you want to get range and accuracy. I’m also not sure if that would be a good idea - short range is often an advantage - if you miss you don’t kill someone on your side you cannot see.
I just meant fewer larger pellets, which will have more force per pellet and they’d also go straighter through momentum. There’s also the option of flechette (little arrows), which I forgot about earlier. They’re not super common, but they do exist.
