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Willie Tomg posted:That they haven't made that obvious step is representative of America's dirty little secret, unspoken in even the darkest halls of power: the subscribers to the medieval ideology we've at all turns failed to defeat for twenty years now are actually not very quick on the uptake it turns out They showed a lot of tactical flexibility early in the war, when they were capturing cities left and right, but actually holding territory bogged them down and calcified them in some ways. The experiments they and HTS have done with drones more recently as desperation has set in seem very likely to spread beyond the region though.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:08
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steinrokkan posted:We have that already, it's called smart missiles / smart bombs / smart shells. If you consider all those four things to be the same thing in military / technological terms, then sure. But then, we've had gunpowder for 700 years or so and all technological innovations are actually just based on stuff we already knew and therefore aren't worth discussing and won't change anything since change is constant and life is a river.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:11
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The implementation was at its peak when ISIS was at its height geopolitically, and civil manufacturing bases were repurpused. Even then, they were making bombs out of badminton shuttlecocks. Their capabilities are only going to trend downwards as they've lost almost everything.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:11
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OctaMurk posted:Uh, they have made the obvious atep. Or did you forget all those articles about ISIS using dozens of drones to drop mortars all the loving time during Mosul and Raqqa? I have seen lots of incidences of one-off strikes by last-stand holdouts operating apparently independently, but not an implementation in a larger tactical operation. ISIS didn't invent the idea of A Carbomb, But Bigger, And Armored, their innovation was integrating terror weapons used by dissidents into solving the tactical problem of guerilla light infantry being really bad at taking fortified positions. It was so goddamned effective it took the fullness of American airpower to stop it before ISIS overran two countries backed by two international sponsors. Someday, somebody (other than american special forces) is gonna figure out that a guy or two operating coordinated flights of armed UAVs is a problem with no easy solution, and I really hope the people who do so don't also believe homosexuality is a capital crime.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:26
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OctaMurk posted:Uh, they have made the obvious atep. Or did you forget all those articles about ISIS using dozens of drones to drop mortars all the loving time during Mosul and Raqqa? Yeah, it made a huge splash back when it first became a recurring thing. Producing improvised bomb dropping drones is a good example, adjacent to VBIEDS, of something that is actually completely obvious but has also impacted the tactical picture of the Iraqi-Syrian battlefield in a large way. But that kind of drone is different from both the tiny kamikaze drone and especially the "smart drones" being discussed above.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:27
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Technology is a klesha anicca, an illusion of change in the world. There is in reality no change in the world because there is actually nothing to change. I've given up the harmful idea that technology can progress incrementally and achieved ideological samsara.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:28
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lollontee posted:If you consider all those four things to be the same thing in military / technological terms, then sure. But then, we've had gunpowder for 700 years or so and all technological innovations are actually just based on stuff we already knew and therefore aren't worth discussing and won't change anything since change is constant and life is a river. They form sort of a hierarchy / tree of contextually specialized methods of accurately delivering payload at a distance, small grenade carrying drones may be strictly speaking a new technology, but they provide no benefit over the previous ones, they do not form a new specialized branch of the tree, and are only practical as a last ditch effort where more sophisticated and much, much more cost efficient weapons are not available, so they are hardly a military revolution. Full-fledged armies have vastly better weapon systems, and insurgents don't have the capacity to utilize them in a way that would matter much - while drones get publicity, the actual heavy hitters of insurgency bombardments are mortars and missiles. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jan 7, 2018 |
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Jan 7, 2018 22:34
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steinrokkan posted:They form sort of a hierarchy / tree of contextually specialized methods of accurately delivering payload at a distance, small grenade carrying drones may be strictly speaking a new technology, but they provide no benefit over the previous ones, they do not form a new specialized branch of the tree, and are only practical as a last ditch effort where more sophisticated and much, much more cost efficient weapons are not available, so they are hardly a military revolution. Full-fledged armies have vastly better weapon systems, and insurgents don't have the capacity to utilize them in a way that would matter much - while drones get publicity, the actual heavy hitters of insurgency bombardments are mortars and missiles. That may be true on a battlefield, but as a means of assassination and/or terrorism we definitely haven't remotely seen what the damage small drones may have the potential to do.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:39
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steinrokkan posted:They form sort of a hierarchy / tree of contextually specialized methods of accurately delivering payload at a distance, small grenade carrying drones may be strictly speaking a new technology, but they provide no benefit over the previous ones, they do not form a new specialized branch of the tree, and are only practical as a last ditch effort where more sophisticated and efficient weapons are not available, so they are hardly a military revolution. Full-fledged armies have vastly better weapon systems, and insurgents don't have the capacity to utilize them in a way that would matter much - while drones get publicity, the actual heavy hitters of insurgency bombardments are mortars and missiles. An autonomous drone 1/100th the cost of a guided missile, or whatever comparison you wanna draw, that fulfills the same purpose is in of itself a military revolution. Whether imperial armies drowning funding choose to adopt them first isn't relevant. It's always been the question of how cheap you can arm a single soldier that has changed history, not who's got the heaviest plate armour or the biggest tank.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:42
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lollontee posted:An autonomous drone 1/100th the cost of a guided missile, or whatever comparison you wanna draw, that fulfills the same purpose is in of itself a military revolution. Whether imperial armies drowning funding choose to adopt them first isn't relevant. It's always been the question of how cheap you can arm a single soldier that has changed history, not who's got the heaviest plate armour or the biggest tank. Individual grenade drones are too weak to be considered missile equivalents, AFAIK the cases of big, successful hits circulating on social media were very much freak occurrences. In a scenario of an insurgency capable of manufacturing any weapons on a mass scale, equipping a squad with simple mortars or other artillery would give them much more indirect firepower. Though I guess if, and it's a huge if, the insurgents were able to truly get pinpoint accuracy and target acquisition down, that might change - on the other hand, at that point we would probably be talking about prohibitively sophisticated technology for insurgent guerrillas...
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Jan 7, 2018 22:49
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steinrokkan posted:They form sort of a hierarchy / tree of contextually specialized methods of accurately delivering payload at a distance, small grenade carrying drones may be strictly speaking a new technology, but they provide no benefit over the previous ones, they do not form a new specialized branch of the tree, and are only practical as a last ditch effort where more sophisticated and much, much more cost efficient weapons are not available, so they are hardly a military revolution. Full-fledged armies have vastly better weapon systems, and insurgents don't have the capacity to utilize them in a way that would matter much - while drones get publicity, the actual heavy hitters of insurgency bombardments are mortars and missiles. They do provide unique benefits though. A drone, unlike a mortar or a missile, can loiter quietly over a battlefield, observing before it delivers its payload. Drones are small and maneuverable-- a good pilot could guide one inside a building, or around city streets. As Sinteres mentions, they're great for assassination. A drone carrying a small explosive could potentially find and kill a single person without killing those around him. The fact that they're cheap is also probably revolutionary. A state could provide a large number of cheap, modified drones to some rebel group as a way to dramatically increase the rebel's fighting power. And dismissing drones because they don't do as much damage as mortars and missiles is absurd. Tanks in WW1 did an insignificant amount of damage compared to other weapons systems-- that certainly didn't reflect on their usefulness, or how valuable they would become.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:52
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Sinteres posted:The conspiracy theory about MBS being a goon may have been confirmed: Let's all hope that with proper medication Al-Saqr can retain control and become the dominant personality again.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:53
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Mostly it's new, and therefore unusual, so it has a psychological impact disproportionate to its purely tactical impact.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:54
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Cat Mattress posted:Mostly it's new, and therefore unusual, so it has a psychological impact disproportionate to its purely tactical impact. That makes it ideal for terrorism.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:58
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Count Roland posted:And dismissing drones because they don't do as much damage as mortars and missiles is absurd. Tanks in WW1 did an insignificant amount of damage compared to other weapons systems-- that certainly didn't reflect on their usefulness, or how valuable they would become. You don't even have to get that syllogistic with it. The first close air support in human history was literally dudes acting alone under no particular order, chucking live grenades and mortars over the side of the cockpit while flying over trenches doing recon. The Stuka was developed less than two decades later, under strict sanctions no less. This is not an abstract concern. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jan 7, 2018 |
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Jan 7, 2018 23:10
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I'd be curious of the comparable difficulty of being trained to use drones vs training to properly direct mortar fire with any kind of accuracy. Losing trained people is always a problem for irregular forces and I would think it's a lot easier to train drone operation especially for young people used to tech. Drone flying also gets tech improvements to make it easier all the time while I think mortars are pretty much what they've always been. That's only a plus for insurgents if you are drawing recruits from a pool of people already trained in their use.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:34
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steinrokkan posted:at that point we would probably be talking about prohibitively sophisticated technology for insurgent guerrillas... Would we now.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:52
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A drone with a bomb acts as its own spotter and provides a tool for live aerial surveillance. It can find and attack a normally well concealed target without risking the lives of the operators and simultaneously providing live intel on the enemy. In some ways that is a much more powerful tool than a mortar. In other ways the mortar is better - for directly supporting infantry a mortar has much greater volume of fire with a much larger payload and higher rate of fire.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:00
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Willie Tomg posted:I have seen lots of incidences of one-off strikes by last-stand holdouts operating apparently independently, but not an implementation in a larger tactical operation. ISIS didn't invent the idea of A Carbomb, But Bigger, And Armored, their innovation was integrating terror weapons used by dissidents into solving the tactical problem of guerilla light infantry being really bad at taking fortified positions. It was so goddamned effective it took the fullness of American airpower to stop it before ISIS overran two countries backed by two international sponsors. I think you downplaying the sophistication of ISIS use of uav systems. I mean, if you've seen 'lots' of incidents, isn't it contradictory to call them 'one-off?' That they were last-stands is an unfair criticism because one could characterize all recent ISIS tactics as such, and unless you work for the NSA I doubt you have anyway of knowing if they were conducted independently. Anyway, during Mosul I remember seeing the pictures of an ISIS uav factory full of dozens of airframes and motors and other components. They were absolutely produced and employed systematically and their distribution of the same mortar delivery system across several fronts is pretty clear proof of that. Before posting this I checked for the pictures I remembered and couldn't find them, but found pictures from at least three other uav assembly centers Raqqa, Mosul and some other place. The threat of UAVs is well known by military people around the world. Though for those concerned with conventional warfare their ability to deliver small amounts of ordinance is not the principle concern. Rather it is their ability to find targets for the serious artillery, which can then drop massive amounts of high explosive on a target before it can even realize it's been targeted. One goon officer guy was saying that the US army needed to get back to traditional methods of camouflage and concealment. Probably in future insurgencies uavs will become more common but it's hard to predict specific consequences or what counter-tactics will be effective.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:02
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Warbadger posted:In some ways that is a much more powerful tool than a mortar. In other ways the mortar is better - for directly supporting infantry a mortar has much greater volume of fire with a much larger payload and higher rate of fire. Also, a mortar can't be shot out of the air with an assault rifle much less any heavy armament. The advantage of a drone is when you can attack a vulnerable relatively static target. In the case of the Russian base, they almost certainly need to put more funding into lighting and point defense.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:04
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lollontee posted:Would we now. Yes, considering it's something major militaries have been unable to implement with billions of dollars worth of research into sensors, software etc.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:08
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steinrokkan posted:Yes, considering it's something major militaries have been unable to implement with billions of dollars worth of research into sensors, software etc. Well go on, consider it for us then. Make an argument already, jesus loving christ. What do these mystical billions out there in major military fantasyland have to do with AI programming?
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Jan 8, 2018 00:30
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Listen if the procurement regime responsible for the F-22 and F-35 can't swing it, it just ain't possible let alone feasible. Best to avoid the subject entirely.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:51
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ISIS showed some real ingenuity in their inventions during their defense of Mosul such as massed drone attacks on Iraqi forces, rocket equipped up armored svbieds and some sort of one shot RPG that was mass produced with plastic, possibly even 3d printed parts. They also had plenty of weird attacks that even included a roomba sized RC car on treads with an explosive strapped to it that they directed with drones. In the defense of Raqqa they also employed a two person svbied where the second person used a machine gun mounted on top of the vehicle to break deeper into SDF positions and prevent them from using weaponry to knock the svbied out of commission. As I was watching these things appear it all struck me as 'proof of concept' and they were very much moves of desperation or last moments of ingenuity but, aside from the panzerfaust clone or the drone production facility, none of it seemed organized. Wherever and whenever the next real war arrives it is going to be an absolute nightmare. The advances we've seen in this war will be mass manufactured just like how ISIS turned vehicle repair shops into svbied assembly lines (originally seeen in Fallujah around 2004 iirc). I imagine the next generation of vehicle based suicide attacks will make 'drive towards the enemy then blow up' seem primitive.
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Jan 8, 2018 01:30
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Honestly I'm surprised we haven't yet seen ISIS style UAVs employed by the Houthis or Taliban yet. Taliban should easily be able to import commercial equipment from Pakistan, I would think. They probably have much less of the engineering education and experience IS had.
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Jan 8, 2018 01:39
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Squalid posted:Honestly I'm surprised we haven't yet seen ISIS style UAVs employed by the Houthis or Taliban yet. Taliban should easily be able to import commercial equipment from Pakistan, I would think. They probably have much less of the engineering education and experience IS had. If anything, they probably have more, but Taliban is operating a bona fide military these days, so they have plenty of resources to hit the Afghan military even without glorified paper planes. Brother Friendship posted:ISIS showed some real ingenuity in their inventions during their defense of Mosul such as massed drone attacks on Iraqi forces, rocket equipped up armored svbieds and some sort of one shot RPG that was mass produced with plastic, possibly even 3d printed parts. They also had plenty of weird attacks that even included a roomba sized RC car on treads with an explosive strapped to it that they directed with drones. In the defense of Raqqa they also employed a two person svbied where the second person used a machine gun mounted on top of the vehicle to break deeper into SDF positions and prevent them from using weaponry to knock the svbied out of commission. As I was watching these things appear it all struck me as 'proof of concept' and they were very much moves of desperation or last moments of ingenuity but, aside from the panzerfaust clone or the drone production facility, none of it seemed organized. Vehicular IED are definitely the scary lesson of these wars, and I suspect the most productive role of drones will be to guide these larger weapons with a bird's view, instead of carrying weapons themselves. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 01:42
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911 911 First you kill Saddam Then you take Iraq Then you lose control And Isis takes it back 911
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Jan 8, 2018 01:44
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steinrokkan posted:If anything, they probably have more, but Taliban is operating a bona fide military these days, so they have plenty of resources to hit the Afghan military even without glorified paper planes. Yeah the Taliban are using them as spotters already, but they haven't started using them to actually deliver bombs yet. If they did though I doubt remote Afghan army outposts are going to have the kind of sophisticated electronic counters necessary to stop them. FP posted:NATO no longer has a monopoly on drones on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Because now insurgents are using them.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:00
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steinrokkan posted:If anything, they probably have more, but Taliban is operating a bona fide military these days, so they have plenty of resources to hit the Afghan military even without glorified paper planes. Drones are already ubiquitous for svbied attacks and I wouldn't underestimate their role when armed with even simple bombs. https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f95_1508870273&comments=1 There is no reason not to use them to every possible purpose. I get this feeling that they're going to be as universal as an RPG in another decade where you simply aren't even a basic military unit without access to one. At some time in the past year there was a mass shooting (in the USA of course lmao) where the shooter was heavily armed so the police used a flying drone to get close to the guy and then it just detonated itself (I think, they didn't exactly release too much info). ISIS also had a suicide drone but that was more like 'we have this thing, just strap a bomb on it and throw it at the Iraqi army'
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Jan 8, 2018 02:07
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Brother Friendship posted:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/08/485262777/for-the-first-time-police-used-a-bomb-robot-to-kill I believe you're thinking of this, which is another good example of a mostly untrained militia doing a little improvising by strapping a bigger bomb to their (on tracks) bomb robot
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Jan 8, 2018 02:14
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Brother Friendship posted:Drones are already ubiquitous for svbied attacks and I wouldn't underestimate their role when armed with even simple bombs. No, that was a bomb disposal robot. It drove up and disposed a bomb at the guy.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:16
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Bohemian Nights posted:https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/08/485262777/for-the-first-time-police-used-a-bomb-robot-to-kill that wasn't a mass shooting, it was very targeted and against non-civilian targets.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:18
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HorrificExistence posted:that wasn't a mass shooting, it was very targeted and against non-civilian targets. That is what I was thinking of and it seems I was wrong about it being a flying drone. I didn't realize he only targeted the police because I do my best to avoid stories of violence even when they catch my interest such as in this case. While I follow the SCW I do my best to strictly focus on the non human aspects of it for my own mental health.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:28
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My sunnI Coworker Says Iran has nukes.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:30
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Mr Hootington posted:My sunnI Coworker Says Iran has nukes. I think it is hilarious that the US has basically the same views on Iran as ISIS
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Jan 8, 2018 02:38
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HorrificExistence posted:I think it is hilarious that the US has basically the same views on Iran as ISIS That and explaining why shia's are wrong are the most animated i have ever seen him.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:39
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Mr Hootington posted:That and explaining why shia's are wrong are the most animated i have ever seen him. Wrong? This guy a sunni?
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Jan 8, 2018 03:29
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ISIS was carbombing 10,000 Iraqi civilians to death per year before they overran a single mile of territory. I expect this is going to continue.
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Jan 8, 2018 04:26
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So I plan to join the fray in the middle east a second time and im torn between joining the IDF and the YPG, which do you guys think a god fearing trump supporter like myself would fit in better. I do feel fancy in an Ushanka, but I guess Syria is pretty warm. Now I have jewish grandparents so Im golden on getting into the IDF. If they let me become an infantry officer I will attempt to create a culture culminating in naming my platoon Goon Platoon. ty in advasnce (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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