Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones that were shot down by air defences in what Russian officials called one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
The war, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers over the border into Russia’s western Kursk region.
For months, Ukraine has also fought an increasingly damaging drone war against the refineries and airfields of Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter, though major drone attacks on the Moscow region - with a population of over 21 million - have been rarer.
Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences destroyed a total of 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region, 23 over the border region of Bryansk, six over the Belgorod region, three over the Kaluga region and two over the Kursk region.
“The war, … , escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers over the border into Russia’s western Kursk region.” Victim blaming? Sounds like the old “if Ukraine would stop fighting the war could be over”
It seems like a pretty neutral phrasing to me. Like, the allies landing in Normandy was also an escalation. Doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad thing
Normandy was an escalation because of the size. If it was 1000 people it would not be famous at all.
With all this drone usage, why aren’t we seeing more smaller drone operations deeper into Russia? This seems like the perfect opportunity for a movie-like secret mission with a bag full of consumer drones strapped with explosives. A low flying drone swam can’t be that difficult to execute. Heck, they do it at Disneyland.
Problem is distance and autonomy.
You can’t really command drones that far, they are programed with the coordinates, then launched. And to go far, you need to have more fuel, thus a heavier drone, which in turn will be easier to detect and target for AA systems.
It can’t be that hard to get into Russia.
Depends on who you bribe.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the damage possible from the explosive payload a tiny quadcopter can carry, unless your goal is strictly terrorism i.e. intentionally targeting civilians.
Civilians dying as collateral damage during an attack/assignation of a legitimate military target is one thing, targeting civilians is another.
And before you say Russia does, don’t forget that Ukraine is dependent upon continued Western support, which is already fragile. It’s doubtful that support would survive them explicitly targeting civilians with suicide drones deep inside Russia.
I did not mean civilian deaths.
An artillery shell stapped drone in a substation, a railway control centre etc etc etc, no need to blow up the whole Kremlin or target civilians.
Again, I think you’re vastly overestimating the capability of a quadcopter drone to inflict serious damage on hard infrastructure.
But hey, maybe I’m not only wrong, but so are all of the Ukrainian sabotage teams and they’ll stumble across your advice here and realize what a great idea it is.
While I agree with your opinion, you could certainly have been a lot less of a jerk when saying it
Moving the goalposts, no one said you had to hit a bridge or something.
But I guess you knows what kind of Ukrainian sabotage is done in Russia lol. Hint: it’s not like russia is acknowledging it.
I didn’t move any goal posts, I’ve been pretty clear about my views on the general ineffectiveness of using quadcopters to target infrastructure.
But like I said, maybe I’m wrong, and the Ukrainian MoD will have a “Eureka!” moment after reading your comments.
A small quad could blow out windows, doors, and other small structures. You don’t have to blow up all of the Kremlin for it to be effective. I postulate that a dozen grenade carrying quads could do a fairly significant amount of damage, or at least put those locations in higher alert. It could have a psychological impact as well even if there was little more than scuff marks. Now scale that up to say 100 drones and it could be a wild scene. However, my exposure to military quads is from the videos posted here on Lemmy, so I don’t know if a large scale quad swarm would even be doable, or what the limitations would be.
You could probably just fly unarmed drones all over there and scare some people.
Yes, and that’s what Ukraine is doing at the moment. But they’re doing it in the cities like Moscow that actually matter to Putin, and the Russian elites.
The comment I was responding to was talking about taking a lot small drones deeper into Russia, which are places that Putin couldn’t give a shit about.
So, if they aren’t useful for destroying critical infrastructure, and Putin and the Russian elite don’t care about any psychological impact on those civilians, what is the point? Which is why I covered using them to target civilians, and why that would be a bad idea.
Saboteurs and Ukrainian assets inside of Russia are not an unlimited resource. Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to use their time doing things that actually politically harm Putin, or impact the wider Russian war effort?
It’s more about the psychological damage than anything else.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the damage possible from the explosive payload a tiny quadcopter can carry
Um, actually YOU are the one that doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
Those ‘tiny quadcopters’ can drop much bigger payloads these days than just a grenade, and even then, the Ukrainians use far more than just quads.
This is from June 2023: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/16/europe/ukraine-drone-night-strike-russia-intl-cmd/index.html
On site they prepare the drone – a large, Ukrainian-made quadcopter — and the explosive they are dropping on the Russian position. The device can carry a payload of up to 45 pounds, but this evening they’re making an improvised explosive – using a shell left behind by Russian forces when they pulled out of Kherson.
This is from December 2023: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/12/03/baba-yaga-is-a-giant-ukrainian-drone-that-drops-bombs-at-night/
Baba Yaga is a large Ukrainian hexacopter drone with an infrared camera and capacity for a 33-pound rocket warhead. The drone’s name is a reference to a mythical witch.
There are many such examples, many of them not so tiny.
Especially when they drop thermobaric payloads (April 2024): https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-kamikaze-drone-thermobaric-warhead-russia-video-1886910
You put so much effort into that post, that I almost feel bad pointing out that you probably should have read the comment I was replying to… you know, the one above my comment.
But, if you’re having a hard time locating it, I pasted the relevant quote that I was responding to:
“…opportunity for a movie-like secret mission with a bag full of consumer drones…”
But yeah, I guess if you completely ignore the actual text I was responding to, you might of had a fair point.
That’s an impressive strawman you pull there, you said targeting civilians not the person you replied to.
There is plenty of valid military (adjacent) targets that can be damaged beyond use with a quadcopter and some explosives. Just think back to the partisans that landed that explosive drone on the A50.
I would expect Ukraine to have gotten some sabotage groups into Russia during the Kursk offensive. Or maybe Ukraine estimates their sabotage units can do more harm and run less risks in Syria, Mali or any other place where the Russians have less defended high value targets.
I’m surprised at how little we’re hearing about any covert actions by either side, since there are significant numbers of Ukrainians in Russia and vice versa. When the war started, I expected that there would be fairly frequent acts of sabotage in both countries. There is periodically news of saboteurs caught in Ukraine before accomplishing anything dramatic, and I don’t follow Russian news closely enough to know whether they have made credible claims of catching Ukrainian saboteurs. The truck bomb on the Kerch bridge is the major exception.
Acts of sabotage have been happening this entire time, whether or not they’re getting covered.
Ukraine has also been running a covert targeted assassination program, which unfortunately got some press coverage some months back due to their legally and morally questionable approach to target selection.
But, it’s an existential war for their survival, so I’m not going to moralize about it.
Didn’t you read any of the news of fire breaking out in munitions factories and manufacturing plants all over Russia? Or the memes about Ivan carelessly smoking at work?
Most of the smoking memes were about ammo depots hit by HIMARS, not sabotage. The fires at factories may have been sabotage (although I expect that the base rate of fires at Russian factories is fairly high) but they seem like the sort of thing a Ukrainian sympathizer acting alone might do rather than something coordinated by Ukraine. I suppose I was expecting bigger explosions, so to speak.
So probably either Russia hasn’t caught any yet, or they think that admitting Ukraine was able to sabotage or come close to sabotaging anything makes Russia look too “weak” so they just blame it on their own incompetence again
The most high value targets are probably close to the actual battle lines. The oil refineries are also decently high value, but they don’t need to go deep into Russia to disrupt that.
Wendover productions video about drone warfare: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kFSR6OuWVQ4
With all this drone usage, why aren’t we seeing more smaller drone operations deeper into Russia?
They need fuel, they need support, and they need skilled operators to navigate them to a target.
Getting those behind enemy lines is difficult.
Drones are fast as fuck. Is it possible to make a bullet dodging drone? Seems like a software issue/solution.
It’s probably not possible to detect and avoid a bullet, but if it had a randomized flight path it ought to be really difficult to shoot down.
A couple of things.
“Drone” doesn’t mean anything about speed. A drone is no faster or slower than than any other weapon with the same propulsion system.
And “shot down” doesn’t mean bullets. Air defense systems generally use extremely fast missiles.
A helpful note to consider: Some of the longer range drones Ukraine has deployed are in fact civilian aircraft that have been modified to fly remotely. These are fairly slow and not highly maneuverable. Certainly not enough to dodge bullets or missiles.
Also, if you have a dozen tiny drones flying fast and low towards a target, there’s really no time to be shooting at the sky.
Presumably, the small numbers were a tactic to locate Moscows air defences.
Do it again. And again. And again.
Wear down the population
Strategic bombing of a civilian population has only ever hardened that population’s resolve.
Bombing Moscow or any other city would only increase support for the regime.
Now, industrial targets that Putin’s cronies make their rubles running? Much more likely to have an impact.
That is what they are doing. I should have structured my post better. Keep striking military targets and the oil and gas infrastructure. Keep the pressure on the regime and bleed the oligarchs pocketbooks dry.
Are they bombing civilian targets in Moscow or strategic targets?
The drones are now precise enough to target hearts and minds, leaving most of the body intact to be taken over by other drones
Honest question, how does this mesh with sieges of cities in earlier periods of history? When cities would surrender because of sieges. What are the differences?
Also, to add to the other poster’s point, in a medieval siege, the defenders have every reason to believe the attackers will happily let every man, woman, and child behind the walls die gruesome deaths to starvatiom or disease. That’s why, when it came down to the wire, cities would submit.
In modern times, cultivating a believable military posture of, “Surrender, or we will personally execute every last motherfucking one of you” is politically dicey. Look at the news stories coming out of Gaza about supplies running low thanks to Israeli interference. Right, wrong , or indifferent, the international community (as well as your domestic community, if those that disagree with these sorts of tactics are allowed to make their voices heard) tends to look down their noses at targeting noncombatants populations. So, due to these complications (which were largely absent or less impactful from warfare in the time of Genghis Khan) wholesale slaughter of civilian life isn’t really openly used. In fact, guidelines like “proportionality” are invented which dictate the level of response you can give certain provocations and what not.
So, if you’re a modern day commander being tasked with taking an urban center, the closest way to approximate a medieval siege would be to absolutely carpet bomb everything. Make it known that you will happily let every single person in Moscow die, if not send them to the afterlife yourself. While you’re bombing the suburbs, you’ll also need to encirce the whole city to prevent supplies from being delivered, since you can’t guarantee every bomb will hit it’s target and need starvation to provide additional assurance to the population that, if they maintain their current course, they are doomed.
Unfortunately, the world isn’t going to allow that, and you know it, so you commit to the level of bombing deemed acceptable by the world at large. At best, you wind up in a situation like London during the Blitz. Your bombing runs are effective, in that they disrupt the daily life of citizenry, and cause some infrastructure damage and loss of life. However, you’re never going to be allowed to scale up to the point where your victims feel they have no way out but to submit. There’s enough plausible deniability that, even when a bomb hits close to home (literally or figuratively), the victim is more pissed at the bomber than their government.
Enemy resolve is such an important and yet tricky factor.
A big part of the reason the US failed in Vietnam, despite having an overwhelming military advantage, was an unwillingness by the US to just burn the whole country to the ground, and the attitude of the NVA and VietCong being that they would either win or die trying. Bombing campaign after bombing campaign didn’t change that.
I doubt the Russians have the same resolve. Especially since they’re the demoralized aggressor at this point. Ukraine has to work very carefully to achieve their strategic objectives without Galvanizing the Russian population. Quitting has to feel like a better option than fighting back.
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Interesting! Just a question, are you saying that the Germans were holding back during their bombing runs of London? I’m no history expert, but that doesn’t sound right to me, and if it is, I’d love to know more about it.
I don’t they were holding back. Hitler isn’t particularly known for his restraint. It was just more rudimentary technology. There were only around 2000ish planes on either side, and they weren’t committing everything every day. The planes were smaller, the bombs weren’t as destructive, and targeting was pretty basic. They absolutely did tons of damage, but it took months.
Carrying out a similar engagement today would level a city in hours, maybe days.
Right, I was just misunderstanding your statement, then. Thanks for the interesting read!
No, it was not my intention to suggest that. I’m sure the Germans threw everything they could afford into the Battle of Britain.
Though, I am most definitely not an expert in the field and should be treated as I am, a dude on the internet lol.
However, even Germany in early WW2 (arguably at the height of their power) was unable to throw enough explosives into London to make that switch flip in the civilian population from “we shall fight them on the beaches” to “okay, in light of recent events, we are reevaluating our ‘Never Surrender’ policy…”.
In fact, I might even suggest that the scale of bombing necessary to make it a viable tactic was impossible at that time, as the nuclear bomb hadn’t yet been invented. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can fact check this assertion, but I think the only time intentionally targeting civilians has successfully cowed a belligerent was when the US nuked Japan. And even then, it took two.
And even that is debatable. Japanese surrender came shortly after a quick succession of several events - the first bomb at Hiroshima, Soviet Union declaring war and invading continental Japanese land, the second bomb at Nagasaki, allies completely obliterating Japanese navy, and preparing to invade their home islands, etc.
Many argue that Japan would surrender even without the two nuclear bombs.
100%. I know that the jury is out, academically speaking, on the actual effectiveness of the bombs, but it makes intuitive sense to me that they at least contributed to the Japanese decision to surrender unconditionally.
In fact, up until the bombs were dropped, Japan was working with the Soviet Union to act as mediators in peace talks, so Japan could get a better deal. Of course, while the USSR entertained the diplomatic overtures from Japan, they were actually planning on declaring war, as they had promised at Yalta. But, I think it still contributes to my point that a civilian population that has been targeted by a besieging force must believe their only options are unconditional surrender or utter destruction (which, incidentally, is exactly the verbiage the US presented Japan in the Potsdam Declaration 10 days before the first bomb was dropped). If there is a plausible third option available (or believed to be available), then that’s what will be pursued.
Ye olde sieges cut off supply lines and forced the defenders to subsist on rations. Once those started running low, they started starving. Eventually the options were starve to death or surrender. These sieges frequently lasted months and sometimes years. Given travel times, it could also be weeks before anyone realized something was wrong and mobilized a force to break the siege.
Ukraine can only do infrequent drone raids. In order to properly siege Moscow, they would need to lock down all ways in and out of the city, and keep it that way for months, possibly longer given modern food preservation techniques and the viability of backyard farming. Additionally, sieging a city no longer prevents the people from communicating with the outside world, meaning other Russian forces would respond in days.
I suppose there’s also little reason to siege cities nowadays, given that city walls for defense are no longer a thing.
The most successful besiegers were probably the Romans. It wasn’t so much the act of laying siege that caused cities to surrender, it was the utter, uncompromising determination of the Romans to see the siege through to the end, and the atrocities they would commit on the surrendering population that made them so successful. Surrender immediately and you don’t get enslaved or butchered… hold out and things will go very, very badly.
I don’t recall all the details but there was one siege in western Europe where the mayor of the town declared ‘you won’t take us: we have supplies for four years in our store houses’ to which the Roman commander replied ‘then we’ll take you on the fifth year.’
Or take Masada, a supposedly impregnable fortress built on a mountaintop. First the Romans built walls all the way around it, both to contain the Jewish ‘rebels’ but also to protect the Roman siegeworks from any potential rescue force. Then they just built a ramp. A massive, massive ramp, that reached all the way up to the fortress walls (which weren’t that strong because who builds a strong wall when your fortress is perched on top of a mountain?). Then they wheeled up some siege engines, smashed their way through the walls and discovered most of the inhabitants had commited suicide rather than face capture.
Yeah exactly. Sieges don’t work except when they do.
Strategic bombing of a civilian population has only ever hardened that population’s resolve.
Are you including Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that?
Are you including Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that?
Those weren’t prolonged grinding attacks on the civilian population.
No, but they were:
Strategic bombing of a civilian population
That’s only when the bad guys do it. It’s different when we do it.
Don’t start nothin, won’t be nothin.
There are valid military targets in Moscow. However the more important part is to instill fear in the populace. People who are afraid of being killed are far more useful a tool to Ukraine than actually killing them. It’s that feeling of impending doom, that this time they might come for you. Them those scared people are a problem for the Russian government, but without pissing them off enough to override their fear.
This strategy might have only worked with the destruction of cities by nuclear weapons in Japan.
The resolve of the German population was not broken by the bombing of civilians. If they wouldn’t have hit the military production capabilities and invaded with ground forces the war would have dragged on much longer (and Germany lacked vital resources in their territory, unlike Russia).
So even if your suggestion to bomb the civilians wouldn’t be quite reprehensible by itself, it’s extremely unlikely that this would end the war on it’s own.
Just look at the numbers of soldiers Russia has lost, this didn’t seem to faze the support of the general population so far either (families and friends if those who died it who were severely injured).
So terrorism. You want to literally terrorize civilians for military gain. What is wrong with you?
Have you seen what they did to Ukraine?
It’s counter-terrorism.
You can’t let terrorists get away with their terror, the fear must be repaid 10-fold or it will never end.
Dude counter-terrorism is the countering of terrorist plots. It does not mean terrorism as retaliation.
It absolutely does, no better way to end terrorism than to make the terrorists afraid of committing acts due to the retaliation.
Lot of afghans still look up in fear when they hear a noise on a clear day.
Arguments about the utility of any given strategy do not determine the definition of the term “counter terrorism”.
I’m not sure that fire-with-fire strategy is the most effective. At least historically it seems to have mixed results. I think going after their economy makes the most sense: sanctions, refinery attacks, sabotage; hit them in the wallet, break their capacity to continue the carnage.
It works if you can actually hit the people who attacked you.
The more layers of abstraction between a populace and its government/army, the less likely “retaliation” against the populace will actually succeed as retaliation.
This is basically the problem with the “Israel/Palestine” conflict. People want to think of it as two parties in conflict but it is not. It is four parties:
- IDF
- Israeli citizens
- Hamas
- Palestinian civilians
That four-player nature to the game makes the traditional tit-for-tat strategy break down, which is why the conflict doesn’t end.
You’re missing the settlers and their ultranationalist allies.
They’re basically the mirror to Hamas.
I think we need to do both, there is no reason to hold back on any front.
Break the country, then we can figure out how to move forward properly.
We tried the kind and gentle approach after the ussr, which was the right thing then, but they don’t respond well, they considered it weakness.
That only leaves the other extreme.
Also the problem with terrorism and retaliation is that terrorism is a guerrilla tactic, and the attacker cannot be located.
Conflating a terrorist group with the host population that it inhabits leads to sloppy retaliation and hence escalation of the conflict.
Retaliation is the way to end a conflict, but terrorism prevents retaliation by its nature.
This is absolutely true .
Which is why the Russians were so foolish as to commit blatant terrorism while leaving their calling cards.
We made an example of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, those lessons held. The same is needed here to imprint the lesson.
In the most technical sense, yeah it is. But since the coming use of ‘terrorism’ is to describe harmful acts that instill fear, your argument lacks any real weight. Bees are worse terrorists than I’m suggesting, because they actually will hurt you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izium_mass_graves
That seems like a harmful act that is meant to instill fear.
I suggest the rational response is to proportionally inspire more fear in them.
Not if you’re Russia, the UK, the US, etc. You’re used to getting away with what you want and nobody can do anything about it. When something like that happens, the populace goes into a state of crisis.
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Ukraine hasn’t been bombing residential areas. Putin has.
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Why aren’t we just sending them millions of small drones instead of all the bigger stuff?
Because the drones are made in China and China wants Russia to genocide so that they can get away with their genocides. It would be nice if we started manufacturing again, but we seem to have trouble getting anything done.
I don’t really want us to get any further into the murder-drone business than we already are, but it does seem to be the way conflicts are going.
Maybe war could just become entirely drones, so instead of people dying it could be a giant game of BattleBots.
I think it was Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age that had clouds of nanomachines constantly at war with each other creating a fog of dead and dying machines that people would just walk through pretty much ignoring it. I read that a long freaking time ago, so I’m sure that memory is, to some degree, degraded.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it exactly. Great book, oddly enough that is pretty much world building but not greatly part of the story.
a fog of dead and dying machines that people would just walk through pretty much ignoring it.
Nah there were alarms and people were staying inside, wore mask and such. Not because the machines would attack them but because of all the fine particulate in the air. Also don’t know about “constantly” it happened IIRC once in the story to deliver some exposition on the setting early on. Kid telling smaller kid about it? Protagonist was involved. Not the one exploding on the pier that wasn’t the protagonist this isn’t cyberpunk.
I remember when I chuckled at “Nanomachines, son” memes. Dystopia when you hit us…
Or we could go further and just simulate the battles so even the land is safe from war.
Like a reverse Enders Game, where the fighters believe they’re fighting a war but it’s actually a simulation. I think there was a Star Trek episode about that, A Taste of Armageddon.
The 80s movie robojox basically has this as it’s central premise, cept they were piloted.
Heavy, existential sigh.
It does seem odd that we aren’t making more drones. Given how big a roll they are playing, it seems like we wouldn’t want China to have access to so many more than we do.
Same reason most mass-market consumer goods aren’t made in western countries - its more profitable to have them made in China and other low(er) wage (and lower employment standards in general) countries.
And in the decades since that shift to offshoring manufacturing started, China has developed infrastructure and expertise in manufacturing, while those same capabilities have atrophied in the US and other countries who import those cheap products.
Financially sure. But strategically I would think the gov would pay for it like they are with chip making fans.
We are!
Organisers of the Army of Drones campaign say they have built or purchased an extra 3,300 drones. Some 400 people have even sent their own hobby drones in the mail.
I mean like on a government scale. Make them like ammunition, so they can be used to overwhelm the defenses
Drones aren’t the be-all and end-all, especially at this stage in the war. They can cause a lot of damage but countermeasures are being used more and more and you can’t win a war with just drones.
Yeah, that why I mean government scale. Send a million of them. If Ukraine can send them in the hundreds, the defenses will be overwhelmed. But they do need to be able to autonomously avoid humans in my opinion. Targeting is probably the hardest part right now.
Ukraine is doing fine building their own drones. They seem to have a fast iteration cycle with their growing drone industry. Their priority for foreign aid is artillery shells, missile systems, and vehicles/planes which is harder for them to produce en mass
Especially when these drones are basically kamikazes. Last think we need is to be shipping over million-dollar Lockheed quadcopters to be met with that kind of fate.
War is already the escalation.
Слава Україні!
But were the drones shot down or “shot down”?
It’s whatever you want to believe. For folks on the opposite side of the world, this conflict is purely about vibes.
Getting objective information is difficult, but not impossible. If, for example, an oil refinery is burning then it probably wasn’t just hit by debris.
Sure. But it has no impact on any of us. It’s just headlines to boo or cheer.
People are clapping like seals at the latest reported horror of war. But they don’t really suffer or benefit in any way.
I’m fairly confident that ensuring countries remain sovereign is a net benefit for the world, even if I never step foot in Ukraine. We are lucky to live in this time of relative global peace, and strongmen countries invading others just because they can is something we need to put behind us.
I know a woman with the strange ability to feel no strong emotions about things that are outside of her control, especially if they also don’t directly affect her life. I think she’s unusual and most people do genuinely care, but maybe I’m biased because I have a personal connection to Ukraine.
Did you know that there are countries out there other than USA, Russia, Ukraine and China?
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Its not a beacon of truth and facts lol. Mbfc isnt right everywhere.
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