Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking.
A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. Also, these can be life-savers for an outpost when weather conditions ground all drones.
This is a fluff piece, but these machines might become very real very soon. They're already used for resupply and dropping mines. We have plenty of videos of that from both sides. A few months ago we had a video of one of these taking out an infantry carrier. This is not vaporware. It's a bad approach at worst, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows exponentially for many years to come.
You are being dishonest. Those squads usually have SOME degree of drone, artillery and aviation support behind them. They are basically there to find out where the defenders are. Sure they are expendable, but they are just a part of the attack. I bet 24 hours sitting in a trench with FPVs, 152mms, and FABs exploding all over your position would change your mind as to the danger posed by those attacks you make fun of. Being at exactly this location vs kilometers away while remotely controlling a mobile gun turret makes ALL the difference
I am not making fun. If it seems that way, I misspoke. I think that any war is terrifying and this one more than any other I know of.
The way I imagine the attacks this UGV defended against is small groups of men deemed expendable knowingly going to their very likely deaths. Yes, this is part of a bigger Russian strategy which is very dangerous and unfortunately, so far, too effective.
Reading between the lines of the article it seems advanced but not too surprising.
I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc.
The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means but it sounds like, "if you see anything moving in this arc, take a few shots at them". Presumably there's some AI to prevent it from wasting ammo on really dumb decoys.
A "simple" mobile automated turret has been around for a while. The novelty they would be demonstrating is essentially battlefield robustness. They aren't claiming that this machine can operate completely autonomously for 6 weeks but the incremental pieces are still hard.
At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?
In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.
If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.
So it is NOT like before. And the logical conclusion, as those drones get better and more widely adopted, is that war will be nothing more a video game with real economics and supply chain. So we basically made the cost of genocide or colonization too high to absorb. Previous wars, people got away with it.
The majority of nations? majority of people on earth? We are going to a multilateral world and to win a war you need secure the appeal of majority. If the majority think your war is illegal they can cut you off from the world economy.
It is a distributed consensus-based algorithm, and the young people who are writing those algorithms will shape the future of governance.
You are arguing today. This is the first kind of wars we are seeing of this nature.
But Iran is hitting exactly where it hurts, global supply chain, and now the US will be pressured by the global economy to either retreat or commit a genocide.
And if all the war was drones and anti-drones today (which is not) we would have saved many lives. Look at UAE/Iran, UAE lost no live despite being hammered with drones/missiles, this is an example of drones/anti-drones future. The reason why we don't have this with the US, is because the US needs a defeat for the legacy system to die, and it seems they will get that defeat soon. Actually they are already defeated, Trump said he is retreating in 3 weeks while achieving nothing but destruction.
Ukrainian invasion was attempt at genocide and colonization. Israel did anoyher genocide last year. And then there is yemen which may not be genocide, I dunno, but has super high unchecked amount of victims. Saudi made sure no one is watching.
But my argument is for the future that we are starting to get a glimpses of. I'm not negating the currently genocides, I'm hoping for a future in which we don't have war at all due to the absurdly of it. And I'm arguing that there is a path forward and it is very realistic.
You missed my point, please read my other comments.
You either agree or disagree with the idea of genocide. And if you disagree with idea of genocide, then this is becoming closer to video games as more drones are deployed which is my thesis. But if you agree with the idea of genocide, then yes, wars can be won by total elimination (or major reduction) in the other people's population and loss of life.
So do you think genocide is acceptable in war or not?
Well, because they reject the idea of making a war a physical video games of drones, therefore, they would be advocating keeping the current system?
My point was that we are better off with abstracting away the war, so if you downvote that idea, then you want to keep the current system, and to win a war in the current system you need total surrender, which comes at a huge cost of life.
No, I downvoted your idea that somehow we "don't allow" genocide and yet Israel killed over 20k children in Gaza and literally nothing happened to anyone as a result - the downvote is on the blatantly untrue assumption that doesn't seem to relate to the real world at all.
I still don't understand why you think this implies that I support genocide, when the exact opposite is true?
You didn't understand my point. I said in the future (not now) the world might trend to having wars similar to those of playing video games. And I said this might be better because we just give politicians another medium for conflict resolution.
But you downvoted the idea, so you either don't like it or didn't understand. I assumed you understood it, but it seems you didn't
>>We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.
I downvoted because I don't find this quoted sentence true, realistic or even remotely plausible. I will repeat for the 4th time now that I don't understand why you seem to think that downvoting you means supporting genocide - you seem to be very fixated on that idea.
>>But you downvoted the idea
I did not - I thought I made it clear in my last comment.
Given my point, you can say it won't happen or you could say I don't want to happen.
My point was to avoid future genocides by having nations fight in abstracted way (i.e. video games). You are either in favour or not of this scenario. If you are not, which you seems to be, then you are advocating for continuation of physical wars, many of which ends in genocide.
It sad you keep advocating for genocide just to prove me wrong.
I think people are downvoting you because your post displays extreme disconnection from reality.
I will believe that it is possible to “fix” war immediately after we “fix” poverty, extreme inequality, hunger, deaths of despair, and crime, any of which should be immensely easier to solve than war.
This speculation in the future if this technology keeps being adopted and the world would have multiple strong players.
Would you rather keep the current system? how do you really think the war in Iran or Ukraine would end? It won't end until one side is completely destroyed, that is why it is called wars of attrition. But war of attrition means what when each side is using commercialized cheaply produced intelligent drones?
What system I would rather have is irrelevant. What system you would rather have is irrelevant. The system that we have, and the systems we will have in the future, are emergent properties of human nature mixed with economic reality (energy/resource availability vs regional economic needs). Voting will not change it, nor will revolution.
You’re welcome to try, but I will no longer waste my time on it. I have studied it for years and I don’t believe it can be changed short of an energy revolution (fusion).
Edit: actually, even if we get fusion, the AI boom has shown that our energy use will automatically expand to consume all economically available energy and resources. So even that would likely not solve the issue.
Regarding your commend on energy, I think it is actually an argument on my point that fighting wars is going to be even more absurd. If the world is running short of energy then fighting a war that further consumes energy without clear win will be viewed as absurd. If all wars will become a war of attrition between robots and economies, then fighting wars means no energy left for local economies to run across the globe. The future war will feel like bleeding, a leak in an already scarce system, you don't do water guns fight int the middle of the desert.
Yes, you are correct about the effects, much as the Sea Peoples destroyed multiple civilizations at the end of the Bronze Age and lowered the world’s overall level of development. Or how the Mongol conquests destroyed Mesopotamian irrigation networks and early organized Chinese societies. Or the Thirty Years’ War that devastated European civilizations.
World Wars I and II would have had similar effects if it weren’t for rapid global technological advancement and industrialization at this time, which enabled more rapid recovery. Much of the cheapest energy has been extracted by now, so the next serious global war will reduce global carrying capacity. With all that entails.
You don't think the absurdity of drone vs drone economic warfare coupled with the reduction in global energy will reduce the probability of future wars?
I actually think it will.
Because in the examples you gave, the world was not as connected. But look at what happening now, an economic bleed in one nation is impact the global economy in way that nobody even understands let alone predicts. You wage a war in Iran? alright, few weeks later people in Brazil can't have food because of shortage in fertilizer..US farmers increase prices by 40% because of the shortage, that causes riots in the US..we live in an extremely interconnected word and nothing short of a third global war would tear that system down.
We had nothing like this in the past, not the tech, nor the economies and the information system, that allows us to see what is happening.
The argument you are making is that it happened in the past with all these semi isolated empires therefore it would happen again. But the world we live is vastly different from the past. And I don't think your assertion hold into the future frankly, it is poorly defended.
I understand your pessimism, but with all due respect, your argument is weak.
I didn't say our preferences, voting, or opinions will change the system. I believe the system is being reshaped by new technology and a shifting world order—specifically AI, robotics, drone warfare, and a multilateral global structure. We are currently witnessing the first iteration of this kind of conflict: the MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Think about it: Iran launched 2,400 projectiles at the UAE—a country of only 83,600 sq km—and caused only 10 casualties. Fifty years ago, if you had launched that many, you would have destroyed the entire country. Why the difference? Because it is literally robots fighting robots.
The reality is that these drones, missiles, and anti-missile systems require a global supply chain. To produce them, you need access to intelligence, GPS components, microprocessors, piston engines, aluminium, and more. No single country possesses all of these resources; in a war of attrition, if your supply chain is cut, you have already lost.
In a few years, we will see mass-produced robots and drones that are even more intelligent, all powered by AI. You can study the entirety of human history and you won't find any precedent for what is coming. The best analogy I can think of is a video game.
Do you have a good suggestion for how to get the next superpower to agree to that kind of thing? I think the most likely outcome is that their allies will be allowed to do genocides where they want, and boycotts and blockades will only work on their enemies, probably.
I think will it will emerge as we get into multilateral world order. Given that those drones depends on global supply chains, satellite images, natural resources across the world, we could imagine that a in multilateral world, if the bigger players decide to pull the plug on the economic supply and/or supply drones themselves, the war is over for the smaller players. Therefore, we either have a global war or a mechanism of conflict resolution that we never seen before or we only saw in sci-fi movies and video games.
Unfortunately, diplomatic conflict resolution is prone to failures and the cost of failure is really really high.
What Iran is doing is telling the empire that their war has a cost on their economy and reputation. And the only reason they are able to do so is because of drones/missiles (basically automated Kamikaze pilots) and I would also argue GenAI since they producing a lot of PR videos which used be expensive to make. If Iran had to fight the war with their people, US would have won due to the imbalance of destructive power.
In other words, we are witnessing a new kind of system for conflict resolution. Not war and not diplomacy. More of drones/AI/robotics systems hitting economies while trying to avoid human life losses in order to win the narrative war. This no where similar to any war of the past. The key change is waging wars without people, i.e the automation of warfare. Which is closer to a video game than traditional wars.
But people think of my statement as reductionist to the current causalities, which is not my point, obviously we are far from having fully automated warfare but we are seeing the first generation. The closest example is the fight between Iran/UAE basically a network of digital systems defending against another.
And if my reasoning hold, we might end up in a more peaceful earth.
Yes exactly. Like an arm wrestle, those who can demonstrate they have the better swarms, better AI, better supply chain, better innovation, win the war. And the other nation surrender. There is for resolving extreme national conflicts. If one side decides to go further and use drones to commit a genocide or completely destroy the other side economy/resources. Then other major players will join the game by using more drones and overwhelm the aggressive nation production and end it.
Orignal Star Trek did an episode on this - "A Taste of Armageddon". The war was a video game - fought on a computer. But if the virtual bombs hit your area, you were declared dead and had to a report to a disintegration chamber. If you can get past the dated special effects - the concept is the same.
This is like the future after the scenario I describe happens. But I diff, is that we keep the game, but change the medium. Humans are war oriented by nature, like chimps, but I think as the world becomes more connected, the cost of destroying one place is causing impact on other..yet there is a desire to resolve conflict in violent way.
The difference is you can appeal or ignore a game result. If Ukraine lost a strategy game tournament, would they give up their territory? Or fight to hold it still?
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
This has been the assumption for over a decade now.
> those who can't produce any more drones, lose
Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].
> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat
This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.
The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.
Yes, but what you are missing the cost of total elimination of the other side.
For example, in Iraq, Saddam was able to use chemical weapons and wipe out the resistance, this is no longer an accepted solution by majority of people on earth.
So there is no real way to actually win a war. If you can't kill or enslave the other population, and the world is not accepting refugees, if you hit one economy completely you might the global economy. So what do you do? there is actually no real way to win a war as those constraints become strong and stronger. You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down and hope they would resign, by better co-ordinating your drones and managing your economy, which is a video game in the real world.
> You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down
How do you (detest this phrasing, it very glib) null the other side?
Most weapon systems aren't developed in entirely separate supply chains - they use off-the-shelf components that are available for commercial usecases as well.
To successfully take out an opponents operational capacity when they are using dual use technology means the barrier between "civilian" and "military" is nonexistent.
It basically means the return to total war doctrine.
My point is that this assertion is wrong - "they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat".
It is predicated on the assumption that the new (but in reality old) iteration of war would lead to less civilian casualties.
How is it really old when we have completely new AI/Robotics enabled warfare that would allow nations in the not distance future (not today) to engage in a war without human involvement? We never had anything like this before?
How would a war like this look like? what does winning really mean? and if your entire drone army depends on a global economy of suppliers, then you can easily cut off.
How is it that old? we never had wars like this..sorry, this is very stupid argument.
“It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.”
― Richard Jordan Gatling, 1877
But imagine the efficiencies to be gained if you swapped out the direct human operator with an automated operator. Then, you can have teams of automated operators being operated by a single human!
Probably because currently they cause more collateral damage than is useful. Your own equipment will be damaged too leaving a bunch of unguided soldiers with just their guns and rations that are still an obstacle an enemy can't walk through, and it will piss off anybody within 1000 miles when you start disrupting their telecommunications with random noise if not cause actual damage. If they are powerful enough you could potentially cause some mistaken nuclear blast warnings too, although perhaps without a gamma ray component it would still be rightfully ignored.
They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.
I haven’t heard “dead man zone” (although I don’t really engage much with military stuff so maybe it is just an expression I’m not familiar with).
I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language?
I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or something maybe it reflects an even bleaker WW1 experience.
It's the space between trenches. I've been watching a WW1 chronological documentary where they use it, but it's also been said in various ways, as you say.
This is surely the future. At some point we will eventually have battles fought entirely by pilot(less) drones? And then war becomes purely economical.
One of my favorite fun facts is that it’s nearly impossible to get a hamster drunk - their foraging method is to get, eg, grains and fruits and store them piled up underground in their burrow, where they of course ferment, so hamsters’ livers have become unreasonably good at metabolizing alcohol.
I think you could just ship generic robot dogs in a container and have local contractors straw-purchase firearms, 3d-print cradles, and combine them. None of the contractors would need to know what they were doing.
It is a drone. But "drone" by itself is primarily used to refer to aircraft. I thought the title referred to some sort of ultra-endurance aircraft.
Merriam-Webster defines drone as "uncrewed aircraft or vessel"; Cambridge limits it to "aircraft". When the drone is not an aircraft, it's often preceded with its type: for example, "underwater drone" or "ground drone".
This smells more like military propagand, i.e., bullshit.
There is no way this is honest or real, i.e., it somehow fought off a tactical unit trying to take the frontline that this drone was holding? Or was it just parked in some area where there was no tactical point of even taking the territory?
Just by virtue of its nature, a single drone and/or a well placed dumb grenade, not even to mention likely a smoke grenade could have easily defeated this thing within seconds of deployment if there was any interest in taking the area this toy was "controlling".
Someone is doing a literal con job to get military graft and fraud contracts.
Perhaps it would be helpful to view the claims of this article through a cost/benefit analysis?
Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have.
That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders.
This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.
AIUI, a current common tactic for the Russians is sending many small groups of untrained "solders" out probe the front lines and try to penetrate undefended spots. They take a ton of casualties, but some make it through, and they gradually build up, and then try to take action.
There are real videos, even months old of exactly these 'land drones', equipped with good ol' .50 cal. In certain situations, they fought extremely well given no risk for crew. I mean killing off entire bmp-something transport including all crew with AP rounds, typically during night since it has night vision, zoom and so on. Verified also by drone flying nearby.
Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.
Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying.
I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.
The murderbot is remotely operated, so it did not held the ground by itself, though it is claimed that it might be able to do some things autonomously.
Nice marketing pitch. In reality it was probably parked at an empty crossroads 10 miles behind the frontline, taking potshots at "suspected" enemy positions.
Why are talking about something you have no idea about? There are multiple videos of this system engaging in combat missions. There are first-person videos from them accompanied by footage of recon drones flying above them. And some of those videos are from last year already.
The article calls this a "Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle armed with a machine gun" and the headline calls it a "Ukrainian Combat Robot". Not a "drone" like the submitter's title has.
Edit: it seems like the creator calls it a "droid". Is that just them, or is that becoming standard terminology for a kind of ground-based "soldier-robot"? See:
The <title> tag is "Ukrainian Drone Holds Position for 6 Weeks". OP probably hit the "fetch title" button or copy-pasted from a chat app embed when submitting.
Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking.
A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. Also, these can be life-savers for an outpost when weather conditions ground all drones.
This is a fluff piece, but these machines might become very real very soon. They're already used for resupply and dropping mines. We have plenty of videos of that from both sides. A few months ago we had a video of one of these taking out an infantry carrier. This is not vaporware. It's a bad approach at worst, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows exponentially for many years to come.
You are being dishonest. Those squads usually have SOME degree of drone, artillery and aviation support behind them. They are basically there to find out where the defenders are. Sure they are expendable, but they are just a part of the attack. I bet 24 hours sitting in a trench with FPVs, 152mms, and FABs exploding all over your position would change your mind as to the danger posed by those attacks you make fun of. Being at exactly this location vs kilometers away while remotely controlling a mobile gun turret makes ALL the difference
I am not making fun. If it seems that way, I misspoke. I think that any war is terrifying and this one more than any other I know of.
The way I imagine the attacks this UGV defended against is small groups of men deemed expendable knowingly going to their very likely deaths. Yes, this is part of a bigger Russian strategy which is very dangerous and unfortunately, so far, too effective.
Can we name them The Dinochrome Brigade?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome...
This is a standard unit from DevDroid.[1] Here's the marketing video.[2] It's available for pre-order. They also have a model with a grenade launcher.
[1] https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oay_-cAlLXE
Reading between the lines of the article it seems advanced but not too surprising.
I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc.
The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means but it sounds like, "if you see anything moving in this arc, take a few shots at them". Presumably there's some AI to prevent it from wasting ammo on really dumb decoys.
A "simple" mobile automated turret has been around for a while. The novelty they would be demonstrating is essentially battlefield robustness. They aren't claiming that this machine can operate completely autonomously for 6 weeks but the incremental pieces are still hard.
The UGVs are manually controlled. If you follow the source link there are some shots of xbox-like controllers.
I believe the movie Aliens (1986) has one of the best movie uses of auto turrets.
Sourcing enough functioning GRID laptops might pose a challenge
https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/grid-os-developmen...
There's a video with footage of a similar land drone and interviews with the operators https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw
I’ve been wondering when modern battlefields would get Team Fortress 2 sentries.
When French start supplying Spies.
At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?
In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.
If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
> abstract it away and play video game?
What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked.
> they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
Your ideas are based on the idea of winning in a closed-system game. War is waged by people. Some people actually want the other people to die.
Yes, but it not like before.
We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.
So it is NOT like before. And the logical conclusion, as those drones get better and more widely adopted, is that war will be nothing more a video game with real economics and supply chain. So we basically made the cost of genocide or colonization too high to absorb. Previous wars, people got away with it.
We don't allow? Who doesn't? And what are they going to do about it?
The majority of nations? majority of people on earth? We are going to a multilateral world and to win a war you need secure the appeal of majority. If the majority think your war is illegal they can cut you off from the world economy.
It is a distributed consensus-based algorithm, and the young people who are writing those algorithms will shape the future of governance.
The majority of the world thinks the Russia-Ukraine war is illegal.
The majority of the world thinks the Israeli/US-Iran war is illegal.
You are arguing today. This is the first kind of wars we are seeing of this nature.
But Iran is hitting exactly where it hurts, global supply chain, and now the US will be pressured by the global economy to either retreat or commit a genocide.
And if all the war was drones and anti-drones today (which is not) we would have saved many lives. Look at UAE/Iran, UAE lost no live despite being hammered with drones/missiles, this is an example of drones/anti-drones future. The reason why we don't have this with the US, is because the US needs a defeat for the legacy system to die, and it seems they will get that defeat soon. Actually they are already defeated, Trump said he is retreating in 3 weeks while achieving nothing but destruction.
> We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable
Literally all of these things are happening as we type this. What the majority of nations do or do not want is irrelevant.
Think in the future, I speak about a future, and you repeat it is happening, yes of course it is happening today, this tech is just being adopted.
So you want this system to stay? You are advocating for loss of life?
Ukrainian invasion was attempt at genocide and colonization. Israel did anoyher genocide last year. And then there is yemen which may not be genocide, I dunno, but has super high unchecked amount of victims. Saudi made sure no one is watching.
And they all get away with it.
Today yes, unfortunately.
But my argument is for the future that we are starting to get a glimpses of. I'm not negating the currently genocides, I'm hoping for a future in which we don't have war at all due to the absurdly of it. And I'm arguing that there is a path forward and it is very realistic.
You missed my point, please read my other comments.
If you downvote me then you are advocating for the old way, which is genocide.
What made you come to that conclusion?
You either agree or disagree with the idea of genocide. And if you disagree with idea of genocide, then this is becoming closer to video games as more drones are deployed which is my thesis. But if you agree with the idea of genocide, then yes, wars can be won by total elimination (or major reduction) in the other people's population and loss of life.
So do you think genocide is acceptable in war or not?
>>So do you think genocide is acceptable in war or not?
Why would downvoting your comment signify supporting genocide though?
Well, because they reject the idea of making a war a physical video games of drones, therefore, they would be advocating keeping the current system?
My point was that we are better off with abstracting away the war, so if you downvote that idea, then you want to keep the current system, and to win a war in the current system you need total surrender, which comes at a huge cost of life.
You got it?
No, I downvoted your idea that somehow we "don't allow" genocide and yet Israel killed over 20k children in Gaza and literally nothing happened to anyone as a result - the downvote is on the blatantly untrue assumption that doesn't seem to relate to the real world at all.
I still don't understand why you think this implies that I support genocide, when the exact opposite is true?
You didn't understand my point. I said in the future (not now) the world might trend to having wars similar to those of playing video games. And I said this might be better because we just give politicians another medium for conflict resolution.
But you downvoted the idea, so you either don't like it or didn't understand. I assumed you understood it, but it seems you didn't
It is as plausible as countries handling wars by boxing match.
>>We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.
I downvoted because I don't find this quoted sentence true, realistic or even remotely plausible. I will repeat for the 4th time now that I don't understand why you seem to think that downvoting you means supporting genocide - you seem to be very fixated on that idea.
>>But you downvoted the idea
I did not - I thought I made it clear in my last comment.
You still don't understand my point or position.
Given my point, you can say it won't happen or you could say I don't want to happen.
My point was to avoid future genocides by having nations fight in abstracted way (i.e. video games). You are either in favour or not of this scenario. If you are not, which you seems to be, then you are advocating for continuation of physical wars, many of which ends in genocide.
It sad you keep advocating for genocide just to prove me wrong.
I think people are downvoting you because your post displays extreme disconnection from reality.
I will believe that it is possible to “fix” war immediately after we “fix” poverty, extreme inequality, hunger, deaths of despair, and crime, any of which should be immensely easier to solve than war.
There are multiple genocides happening today.
This speculation in the future if this technology keeps being adopted and the world would have multiple strong players.
Would you rather keep the current system? how do you really think the war in Iran or Ukraine would end? It won't end until one side is completely destroyed, that is why it is called wars of attrition. But war of attrition means what when each side is using commercialized cheaply produced intelligent drones?
What system I would rather have is irrelevant. What system you would rather have is irrelevant. The system that we have, and the systems we will have in the future, are emergent properties of human nature mixed with economic reality (energy/resource availability vs regional economic needs). Voting will not change it, nor will revolution.
You’re welcome to try, but I will no longer waste my time on it. I have studied it for years and I don’t believe it can be changed short of an energy revolution (fusion).
Edit: actually, even if we get fusion, the AI boom has shown that our energy use will automatically expand to consume all economically available energy and resources. So even that would likely not solve the issue.
Regarding your commend on energy, I think it is actually an argument on my point that fighting wars is going to be even more absurd. If the world is running short of energy then fighting a war that further consumes energy without clear win will be viewed as absurd. If all wars will become a war of attrition between robots and economies, then fighting wars means no energy left for local economies to run across the globe. The future war will feel like bleeding, a leak in an already scarce system, you don't do water guns fight int the middle of the desert.
Yes, you are correct about the effects, much as the Sea Peoples destroyed multiple civilizations at the end of the Bronze Age and lowered the world’s overall level of development. Or how the Mongol conquests destroyed Mesopotamian irrigation networks and early organized Chinese societies. Or the Thirty Years’ War that devastated European civilizations.
World Wars I and II would have had similar effects if it weren’t for rapid global technological advancement and industrialization at this time, which enabled more rapid recovery. Much of the cheapest energy has been extracted by now, so the next serious global war will reduce global carrying capacity. With all that entails.
You don't think the absurdity of drone vs drone economic warfare coupled with the reduction in global energy will reduce the probability of future wars?
I actually think it will.
Because in the examples you gave, the world was not as connected. But look at what happening now, an economic bleed in one nation is impact the global economy in way that nobody even understands let alone predicts. You wage a war in Iran? alright, few weeks later people in Brazil can't have food because of shortage in fertilizer..US farmers increase prices by 40% because of the shortage, that causes riots in the US..we live in an extremely interconnected word and nothing short of a third global war would tear that system down.
We had nothing like this in the past, not the tech, nor the economies and the information system, that allows us to see what is happening.
The argument you are making is that it happened in the past with all these semi isolated empires therefore it would happen again. But the world we live is vastly different from the past. And I don't think your assertion hold into the future frankly, it is poorly defended.
I understand your pessimism, but with all due respect, your argument is weak.
I didn't say our preferences, voting, or opinions will change the system. I believe the system is being reshaped by new technology and a shifting world order—specifically AI, robotics, drone warfare, and a multilateral global structure. We are currently witnessing the first iteration of this kind of conflict: the MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
Think about it: Iran launched 2,400 projectiles at the UAE—a country of only 83,600 sq km—and caused only 10 casualties. Fifty years ago, if you had launched that many, you would have destroyed the entire country. Why the difference? Because it is literally robots fighting robots.
The reality is that these drones, missiles, and anti-missile systems require a global supply chain. To produce them, you need access to intelligence, GPS components, microprocessors, piston engines, aluminium, and more. No single country possesses all of these resources; in a war of attrition, if your supply chain is cut, you have already lost.
In a few years, we will see mass-produced robots and drones that are even more intelligent, all powered by AI. You can study the entirety of human history and you won't find any precedent for what is coming. The best analogy I can think of is a video game.
And frankly, don't we all want less loss of life?
who doesn't allow genocide nowadays, exactly? or rather who intervenes to stop it? they don't seem to be very quick.
A disrupted global consensus-based algorithm.
Do you have a good suggestion for how to get the next superpower to agree to that kind of thing? I think the most likely outcome is that their allies will be allowed to do genocides where they want, and boycotts and blockades will only work on their enemies, probably.
I think will it will emerge as we get into multilateral world order. Given that those drones depends on global supply chains, satellite images, natural resources across the world, we could imagine that a in multilateral world, if the bigger players decide to pull the plug on the economic supply and/or supply drones themselves, the war is over for the smaller players. Therefore, we either have a global war or a mechanism of conflict resolution that we never seen before or we only saw in sci-fi movies and video games.
I choose option 3, in favor of downvoting and at the same time not advocating for the old way.
So what are you advocating? you either vote a better future or want to keep what we currently have.
You either agree with the future I suggest or disagree, or you think it won't happen and you would then have to argue why.
Finally!! https://youtu.be/wgKqKggYdDE?si=x6FFPqSKETIPYqiu
Ideally you'd have some sort of diplomatic solution and no war. But these things don't always pan out.
Agreed.
Unfortunately, diplomatic conflict resolution is prone to failures and the cost of failure is really really high.
What Iran is doing is telling the empire that their war has a cost on their economy and reputation. And the only reason they are able to do so is because of drones/missiles (basically automated Kamikaze pilots) and I would also argue GenAI since they producing a lot of PR videos which used be expensive to make. If Iran had to fight the war with their people, US would have won due to the imbalance of destructive power.
In other words, we are witnessing a new kind of system for conflict resolution. Not war and not diplomacy. More of drones/AI/robotics systems hitting economies while trying to avoid human life losses in order to win the narrative war. This no where similar to any war of the past. The key change is waging wars without people, i.e the automation of warfare. Which is closer to a video game than traditional wars.
But people think of my statement as reductionist to the current causalities, which is not my point, obviously we are far from having fully automated warfare but we are seeing the first generation. The closest example is the fight between Iran/UAE basically a network of digital systems defending against another.
And if my reasoning hold, we might end up in a more peaceful earth.
Finally, my years of playing Starcraft have real-world use! Also: Everyone will soon bow to S. Korea :D
So like the old League of Legends lore before their Institute of War retcon?
Yes exactly. Like an arm wrestle, those who can demonstrate they have the better swarms, better AI, better supply chain, better innovation, win the war. And the other nation surrender. There is for resolving extreme national conflicts. If one side decides to go further and use drones to commit a genocide or completely destroy the other side economy/resources. Then other major players will join the game by using more drones and overwhelm the aggressive nation production and end it.
Orignal Star Trek did an episode on this - "A Taste of Armageddon". The war was a video game - fought on a computer. But if the virtual bombs hit your area, you were declared dead and had to a report to a disintegration chamber. If you can get past the dated special effects - the concept is the same.
Found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8-I9nRAnDk
This is like the future after the scenario I describe happens. But I diff, is that we keep the game, but change the medium. Humans are war oriented by nature, like chimps, but I think as the world becomes more connected, the cost of destroying one place is causing impact on other..yet there is a desire to resolve conflict in violent way.
Interesting, need to watch that.
The difference is you can appeal or ignore a game result. If Ukraine lost a strategy game tournament, would they give up their territory? Or fight to hold it still?
Yes we are not fully there yet, but we are getting there.
We are seeing the transition right in front of our eyes.
> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively
This has been the assumption for over a decade now.
> those who can't produce any more drones, lose
Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].
> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat
This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.
The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.
[0] - https://www.themiddleeastuncovered.com/p/inside-the-talibans...
[1] - https://thekhorasandiary.com/en/2026/03/13/taliban-strengthe...
Yes, but what you are missing the cost of total elimination of the other side.
For example, in Iraq, Saddam was able to use chemical weapons and wipe out the resistance, this is no longer an accepted solution by majority of people on earth.
So there is no real way to actually win a war. If you can't kill or enslave the other population, and the world is not accepting refugees, if you hit one economy completely you might the global economy. So what do you do? there is actually no real way to win a war as those constraints become strong and stronger. You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down and hope they would resign, by better co-ordinating your drones and managing your economy, which is a video game in the real world.
> You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down
How do you (detest this phrasing, it very glib) null the other side?
Most weapon systems aren't developed in entirely separate supply chains - they use off-the-shelf components that are available for commercial usecases as well.
To successfully take out an opponents operational capacity when they are using dual use technology means the barrier between "civilian" and "military" is nonexistent.
It basically means the return to total war doctrine.
And what is your point? you just re-enforced my main assertion?
My point is that this assertion is wrong - "they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat".
It is predicated on the assumption that the new (but in reality old) iteration of war would lead to less civilian casualties.
How is it really old when we have completely new AI/Robotics enabled warfare that would allow nations in the not distance future (not today) to engage in a war without human involvement? We never had anything like this before?
How would a war like this look like? what does winning really mean? and if your entire drone army depends on a global economy of suppliers, then you can easily cut off.
How is it that old? we never had wars like this..sorry, this is very stupid argument.
> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?
No.
Young men being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands.
Not a game
I know it is not.
I'm just saying in the future if all became drones war and we disallow genocide, then what do you think will happen?
Of course I acknowledge real life is lost right now, all I'm saying give politicians a video game to play instead of having drone wars.
Would you rather have politicians commit genocides and destroy real economics or play drone like video games? which side are you with?
We really are trying our best to make Terminator reality aren't we?
Maybe drones will make human soldiers unacceptable in the future.
“It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.” ― Richard Jordan Gatling, 1877
Should write a MIT case study on that in "Bad Hypotheses 101"
If only wars would end when all the soldiers on one side were dead.
If the people fought before they'll keep fighting, even after their robots are gone.
They will certainly make human soldiers unviable. (I draw mostly dystopian conclusions from that prediction.)
Or it will just lead to lopsided massacres like the maxim gun did.
On the plus side there is now quite a lot of drone on drone combat saving people's lives
They are being operated by humans
But imagine the efficiencies to be gained if you swapped out the direct human operator with an automated operator. Then, you can have teams of automated operators being operated by a single human!
There was never any other option, given the direction of progress and basic human nature.
I know I know, but this and that and not me nor you, yet here we are and this is just beginning.
Why is no one using EMP devices against drones?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nucl...
https://www.anduril.com/pulsar
Probably because currently they cause more collateral damage than is useful. Your own equipment will be damaged too leaving a bunch of unguided soldiers with just their guns and rations that are still an obstacle an enemy can't walk through, and it will piss off anybody within 1000 miles when you start disrupting their telecommunications with random noise if not cause actual damage. If they are powerful enough you could potentially cause some mistaken nuclear blast warnings too, although perhaps without a gamma ray component it would still be rightfully ignored.
Both Russia and Ukraine have directed energy rifles. 10 years ago the first examples arrived in Syria.
They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.
A magnet, a conventional explosive, and a coil on a flexible cylinder of polymer film; are power electronics truly necessary for a localized EMP?
Yes. Range, accuracy, targeting, and reducing blast radius matter.
Not sure what else I can say so I'll leave it at that, and will not engage with further comments.
The proportion of videos featuring drones taking out other drones is increasing.
"It takes infantry to hold territory" is still true I guess, but now it's a single operator in a bunker.
Perhaps in the dead man zone, not sure this would work well where there is civilian population.
I haven’t heard “dead man zone” (although I don’t really engage much with military stuff so maybe it is just an expression I’m not familiar with).
I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language?
I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or something maybe it reflects an even bleaker WW1 experience.
It seems like there could actually be a difference between them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man_zone - is related to bush fires but seems like it could apply to a battlefield?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man%27s_land
Something more akin to actually being in "measure" or strike distance vs just contested territory in between?
Edit: Sibling comment I think clears it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_zone
You can call it whatever you like: kill zone, gray zone, dead zone - everyone usually understands what does it means.
Good article on what it is: https://texty.org.ua/projects/116021/20-kilometers-of-the-gr...
> I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression.
No man's land is generic and is used in other non-combat scenarios, it could appear in an HOA pamphlet.
I like "dead man's zone" or "kill zone" as it clearly communicates both the contestation and lethality very clearly.
> I haven’t heard “dead man zone”
It's the space between trenches. I've been watching a WW1 chronological documentary where they use it, but it's also been said in various ways, as you say.
Said playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2vhKMBjSxOb_127vxja...
Time Ghost makes awesome chrono documentaries for the major wars. And a ton of mini series on special topics.
This is surely the future. At some point we will eventually have battles fought entirely by pilot(less) drones? And then war becomes purely economical.
It would start economical and then some side would eventually resort to the meat grinder.
But how it was not destroyed by flying Russian drones? Did it shot them down? Or did it have some anti-drone support unit helping it?
I have an educated guess.
Flying drones are lethal, but fairly random. Attacking a point target, which will have anti-drone support, is not what they are for.
And too cheap for a missile which is the weapon for a point target
> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location.
Why? Isn't the advantage that it can stay in a position indefinitely? Does it not have infrared cameras, etc?
> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location.
Interesting - why?
My car also held position for 6 weeks during the winter storms
I had a car hold its position for 6 months during the pandemic. It became occupied by rats, which was fun to deal with.
They gathered some apples from a nearby tree, and apparently had set up a hard cider production facility.
One of my favorite fun facts is that it’s nearly impossible to get a hamster drunk - their foraging method is to get, eg, grains and fruits and store them piled up underground in their burrow, where they of course ferment, so hamsters’ livers have become unreasonably good at metabolizing alcohol.
i'm going to write a fawning article about cars standing still
This is on my 2026 bingo card of things that never happened.
Yep, until it hits you.
Maybe it's the ghost of Kiev controlling the robot army? You don't know. But they sure should get a $50 billion contract to make them
But what if it gets hacked by the russians?
Considering the usual behavior of the Russian military, it’ll keep firing at Russian soldiers.
So what happens in a few years when a submarine pulls up some miles off US coast and unleashes 100 super-automated drones to terrorize the country?
Heck maybe not even a sub needed, some smaller country could have an automated tiny raft too small to be seen on radar tow in the drones
They could charge via phantom power from powerlines and will find a way around GPS jamming
I think you could just ship generic robot dogs in a container and have local contractors straw-purchase firearms, 3d-print cradles, and combine them. None of the contractors would need to know what they were doing.
Is there some sort of hybrid flying/stationary drone that flys in an sits to hold a ground position?
Common tactic is for drones to wait next to a road and ambush.
Ammunition is heavy.
looks like a treadmill
Not a drone...
How is it not a drone?
It is a drone. But "drone" by itself is primarily used to refer to aircraft. I thought the title referred to some sort of ultra-endurance aircraft.
Merriam-Webster defines drone as "uncrewed aircraft or vessel"; Cambridge limits it to "aircraft". When the drone is not an aircraft, it's often preceded with its type: for example, "underwater drone" or "ground drone".
Another con job...
Are these the ones controlled by Steam Decks?
These ones by PS5 controllers I believe
This smells more like military propagand, i.e., bullshit.
There is no way this is honest or real, i.e., it somehow fought off a tactical unit trying to take the frontline that this drone was holding? Or was it just parked in some area where there was no tactical point of even taking the territory?
Just by virtue of its nature, a single drone and/or a well placed dumb grenade, not even to mention likely a smoke grenade could have easily defeated this thing within seconds of deployment if there was any interest in taking the area this toy was "controlling".
Someone is doing a literal con job to get military graft and fraud contracts.
Perhaps it would be helpful to view the claims of this article through a cost/benefit analysis?
Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have.
That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders.
This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.
AIUI, a current common tactic for the Russians is sending many small groups of untrained "solders" out probe the front lines and try to penetrate undefended spots. They take a ton of casualties, but some make it through, and they gradually build up, and then try to take action.
There are real videos, even months old of exactly these 'land drones', equipped with good ol' .50 cal. In certain situations, they fought extremely well given no risk for crew. I mean killing off entire bmp-something transport including all crew with AP rounds, typically during night since it has night vision, zoom and so on. Verified also by drone flying nearby.
Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.
Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying.
I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.
The murderbot is remotely operated, so it did not held the ground by itself, though it is claimed that it might be able to do some things autonomously.
Nice marketing pitch. In reality it was probably parked at an empty crossroads 10 miles behind the frontline, taking potshots at "suspected" enemy positions.
Why are talking about something you have no idea about? There are multiple videos of this system engaging in combat missions. There are first-person videos from them accompanied by footage of recon drones flying above them. And some of those videos are from last year already.
Are these called drones? I thought drones flew.
The article calls this a "Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle armed with a machine gun" and the headline calls it a "Ukrainian Combat Robot". Not a "drone" like the submitter's title has.
Edit: it seems like the creator calls it a "droid". Is that just them, or is that becoming standard terminology for a kind of ground-based "soldier-robot"? See:
https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw
The <title> tag is "Ukrainian Drone Holds Position for 6 Weeks". OP probably hit the "fetch title" button or copy-pasted from a chat app embed when submitting.
Drone is just a generic term.
There are more specific terms for specific types of vehicles, and some of those terms have changed over the past few decades.
UGV = unmanned ground vehicle
UAS = unmanned aerial system
UAV = unmanned aerial vehicle
UUV = unmanned underwater vehicle
Etc