The war in the Ukraine grinds on, despite claims that the Ukraine army is collapsing at various areas of the front. The fact is large industrial age armies do not break and run like armies of the past. This was true in both world wars when the German army was able to fight effectively in certain areas right up to the end. We are seeing the same with the Ukraine army, which maintains some offensive capacity, despite losing ground in many areas due to a lack of men and material.
There is a new element in the mix that changes how a large industrial army, like the Ukraine military, succumbs to a superior opponent. The drone has become a ubiquitous element of the battlefield, and it has not only changed how armies fight, but also how they retreat and get destroyed. We are seeing this in the Donetsk region, where the Ukrainians are struggling to find units to man fortified positions, but the Russians are struggling to overrun these positions.
It has been said that a good sniper team can defeat a battalion, which is an exaggeration, but there is some truth to it. Snipers have been a highly effective way to slow down an opposing force. This is especially true for an army facing a much larger opponent, as was the case for the Finns in the Winter War. Finnish snipers harassed the Red Army to the point where they could not advance, despite having an enormous advantage in men and material.
The drone is something like the high-tech sniper. A competent drone team can harass an opponent from a distance, forcing the opponent to find cover. Unlike the sniper, the drone operator can target equipment. An armored unit advancing toward an enemy position can be knocked out by a drone unit, without taking fire. They attack the column to stall it, pass on the geolocation to their artillery units, then move to a new spot in order to repeat the process until the column is destroyed.
In the past, an attacking army would soften up the fortified position with artillery and air power and then use overwhelming numbers to overrun the enemy position. Defenders would likely fall back before the assault, understanding the math. Today, the defenders can attack the enemy as he is forming up for the attack and at every step he makes toward the defender. This radically increases the cost to the attacker, in men and material, without increasing the cost to the defender.
This is why the NATO counterattack on the Russians in 2023 failed. NATO doctrine is pre-drone, so it assumes the attacker can organize superior numbers to attack a narrow part of the defensive line, thus creating a gap. Reserves are then poured into the gap to break the line and force the defender into a chaotic retreat. This was the plan General Milley devised for Ukraine in 2023. Ukraine would pierce the Russian defenses with a big arrow offensive and the Russians would flee.
What happened is the Ukrainian attackers never got to the line, as drones attacked the advancing columns. The vehicles at the front of the column were hit with drones, which stalled the column. Then precision artillery strikes using geolocations from the drones attacked the rest of the column. The Ukrainians were forced off the roads into the mine fields where they were finally destroyed. The drone allowed the Russians to create a kill box before the Ukrainians could see the front.
The Russians learned from this, which is why their 2024 offensive has been moving at a snail’s place along many points on the front. They use their drones to find weak points on the front, send in small units to develop their attack close to the Ukraine positions, thus avoiding large accumulations of men and machines. This forces Ukraine to move in reserves, which the Russians attack as they are on the move. Then the Russians repeat this in some new area of the front.
This is why the Russian advance has been a creeping affair, rather than the big arrow offensives Western analysts still think is the norm. Even when the Russians open a sizable gap, they avoid pouring in large numbers of troops until they can clear the area and create their own fortifications to protect their men and machines from Ukrainian drone operators. The drone has not only changed the battlefield, but it has also changed the rear areas that support the frontline troops.
The main advantage of the drone is it is cheap, even cheaper than the legendary sniper team that could stall a battalion. Snipers are expensive. It takes a lot of skill and practice to become an effective sniper team. Drone operators, on the other hand, can be created from raw recruits in a short period of time. Most young people have grown up with the technology, so they quickly pick up the skills to effectively operate drones on the modern battlefield.
Of course, the drones themselves are cheap, relative to the other sorts of weapons we see on the modern battlefield. A modern anti-tank system like the Javelin costs about a quarter million dollars. This is the launcher and missiles. New missiles are about one hundred thousand per copy. Compared to a tank, which costs tens of millions, this is a cost-effective weapon, but compared to a drone, that costs ten thousand dollars, it is a wildly expensive white elephant.
The low cost of drones is what has kept the Ukrainians in the war. They can manufacture tens of thousands of these a month using readily available supplies they buy using some of the money they get from the West. They have been able to prevent a large-scale rapid collapse anywhere on the front by slowing down the formation of Russian troops and slowing down Russian advances after they create a gap in the lines or take over some key positions.
The next shoe to drop in the drone revolution is the use of drones in guerilla war and urban combat scenarios. We are getting a glimpse of this in Ukraine. The Russians are using fly-by-wire drones to attack Ukrainians inside buildings. They do this to avoid electronic warfare systems. Surveillance drones looking down on an urban accommodation will detect movement in a building and then drone units will get close enough to fly a drone through the window.
The next step in the evolution of urban combat drones is to cut the wire and program the drone to navigate its way to the target without the use of GPS. The Russians are starting to adapt cruise missile technology, which relies on terrain matching to navigate the missile to the target, to their drones. It will not be long before drones are able to operate without radio communications. Thus, the jamming technology currently used to defeat drones will become ineffective.
Military tech has a habit of finding its way to the streets, which is why police departments all over the West have tanks, armored personnel carriers, and elite tactical units to arrest hate-speakers. This means Western cities will be thick with drones monitoring the behavior of the citizens. It also means gangsters and rival political factions will be using FPV drones on one another. The next shot at Trump could very well be a drone attack and then the drone revolution comes home.
If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!
Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.
Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.
Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at
sa***@mi*********************.com
.
Another aspect I think must be considered, while less cool and not easy to put into an Excel spreadsheet, is the psychological effects of this new style of warfare. Can you imagine the paranoia of knowing that wherever you are a drone might be watching you. Not just the outposts in no-man’s land, not just the main lines or even the rear area, but tens of miles away. And it is not just a drone watching you like an Eye of Sauron, but capable of vectoring in missiles, artillery, or depending on the model, it swoops in and does the… Read more »
Snipers are also primarily psychological
Snipers are famously hated by their enemies and are dealt with harshly when caught.
I’d expect the same for drone operators.
“I’d expect the same for drone operators.”
That means every sixth person you see today is an informer (a spy).
The Brits (well, at least of them) murdered submariners in the world wars. They basically could not surrender. The Brits thought they were not honorable because their methods involved stealth.
You’re telling a silly lie.
Nazi submariners did surrender.
I think you are forgetting one thing. If nowhere is safe, not even the backlines, then liquidating an entire enemy government suddenly becomes economically feasible in a way that doesn’t leave a bunch of glowing craters. I don’t just mean military personnel.
Drone quarantine, anyone?
Total war is gonna look a lot more “total” in the future me thinks.
If you kill everybody you have no one to negotiate with and the enemy still has its conventional and nuclear capabilities.
You don’t need to kill everyone, you merely need to kill enough and show the rest are permanently, personally vulnerable to bring them to the negotiating table. This won’t work on warlords and men with balls or those in an honor culture. But we got rid of all that.
I think the idea would be to send a large cruise missile or heavy drone packed with explosives into the enemy’s parliament while it was in session. Then you hope someone in the enemy military steps into the power vacuum and starts talking directly with the enemy. The Ukraine situation is practically made for this strategy. You’ve got a totally fake “Ukrainian” government that hides in bunkers or Western redoubts while the military can see the slaughter up close. A related idea would be to talk directly to sensible military people and encourage them to mount a coup. Who knows,… Read more »
Yep. A successful drone attack on Trump would herald a new world, in which consequential leaders essentially could not appear in public. They would all be Hitler in the bunker.
It would also increase the theatricality of politics, where the “elected” representatives are mere figureheads for hidden men behind the curtain, so assassinations would affect neither the policy or continuity of government. Kamalas are a dime a dozen.
Every national leader would eventually become Big Brother both in the traditional “all-seeing watchful eye” sense and in the sense of just being a remote figure on a screen, a face in the newspaper, or an icon on a poster.
Ooh, Ooh, Washington DC!!!
Americans are famous for inventing things in their garage…
Used to be. Nowadays, most guys can’t change a tire.
I can but would rather not. When I lived in Texas,they told me that’s what God made Mexicans for.
Nonsense, God clearly made Mexicans to blow leaves and dust around.
Blowse’ Gonzales is a mighty good friend o’ mine…
OK, that’s fair.
But just rememebr that there are a select few of us Remnant who are working on getting out, but aren’t quite there yet….
Saw a video purportedly showing off an anti-drone weapon in use by Russians. Whether true or not, it seems logical that before this war is over, those type of defensive weapons against drones will be in use. Hard to imagine our MIC is not now working feverishly on such things,
I saw an ad for anti-drone shotgun loads.
Yep, I was gonna say shotguns might be made illegal before AR-15’s. 😉
But actually, these drones fly pretty high and pretty fast—even for an experienced skeet shooter to handle.
They are.
Make flak great again.
I would think being watched from the eye in the sky has been there for quite some time. The classified pictures from satellites is supposed to be very good and that individuals are easily discernible as being an individual, though you may or may not be able to make out a face. Who knows? Perhaps we even have real time high res satellite video? What happened was a long period of relative peace among near-peer powers. As recently as 2021, there was endless droning about how this old form of warfare was obsolete and near-peer war was over and how… Read more »
“As recently as 2021, there was endless droning about how this old form of warfare was obsolete and near-peer war was over and how we need to spend on 4th generation warfare.”
A punishing sentence…
I remember listening to NPR in a past life, there was some bigwig terris got droned. They were bragging about how it got done.
Iirc, the story was that he was suspected to be in a certain house. A satellite bounced lasers off the windows. From vibrations in the glass, they were able to reconstruct conversation going on inside and voice ID the guy. I want to say this was 2006-08 or something like that.
Incidentally, that was when I realized NPR absolutely glows.
This goes both ways. Drones do enhance the illusion of control, upon which globalism depends. But asymetric analog struggle — like a truck bomb destroying Chicago’s ability to chlorinate its water supply — shatters this illusion and undermines the real source of regime strength, the money power. Imagine the terror when all the king’s drones and all the king’s men cannot prevent a rolling serious of similar attacks, or stop a murder of crow-sized drones from blowing the heads off General X or Judge Y or Celebrity Z, right in their driveway. Especially if signs point towards Tehran or Kiev… Read more »
Ah…Tehran, Kiev and drug runners doing the Lord’s work.
I admit that I don’t have the technical knowledge of the subject but Israel remotely detonating thousands of Hezbollah pagers today has to give you pause to wonder about what are the risks of that cell phone in your pocket.
Especially if it’s in your front pocket…
Meh.
I think that the more interesting Ukrainian angle is that Trump was impeached for threatening to withhold funds to Ukraine on the testimony of a Jewish-Ukrainian officer in the U.S. Army… and that a pro-Ukraine nut who tried to recruit people to fight for Ukraine just tried to shoot him the other day.
How ’bout them apples, Z?
Something to do with Ukraine is the only thing that makes sense for why the system reacted to Trump the way it did, rather than co-opting and making deals with him and waiting out his 4-8 year term
Agree. Hillary was clearly supposed be ‘get Russia’ president and Trump messed up the timing.
Meh. Another day, another attempt on the life of the most important man on the planet. That doesn’t rate.
(And it really doesn’t. Has there ever been so significant an event that received so little press coverage?)
To be fair, the “press” as we know is in thrall to the Dems/Lefties. To publicize the latest assassination attempt is to promote Trump over the preferred candidate, Harris—name recognition, attention, sympathy, etc. Yeah, I’d bury it.
I appreciate how Zman named General Milley as responsible for the failed plan for Ukraine. He’s despicable for many reasons, but he should at least be held accountable for failures in his own profession.
I don’t know, although I find Milley despicable, I don’t know that I can blame him for being caught flat-footed in the face of a technological revolution. I’m sure he’s using well-reasoned military strategy.
Now as a human being, he is without a doubt, odious.
Disagree. Every commander must be held accountable for being caught “flat-footed”. It’s his job to be one step ahead of the enemy. There is an old precept that was taught in the days of mandatory ROTC in university, (as an officer) “You can delegate ‘authority’, but you can never delegate ‘responsibility’!” Milley remained unscathed because he was a toady for the Left’s new woke military efforts and it was only Uke’s that died in the failed offensive cited by Z-man. I will note however he retired in Sept 2023 when the Ukrainian project was finally seen by all to be… Read more »
I don’t know if that’s reality, though. How many times in history have we had something new thrown at us in war and it has taken us time to adjust? I’m lenient when it comes to instant adjustment to something new. Of course, there is a point at which repeated failure gets you replaced, but I’m not sure that a single miscalculation does that.
Nick, he was the chief officer of the most technological military force in human history, with advisors and experts galore at his elbow. “I was just following the old playbook” would be a feeble excuse.
Milley, not surprisingly, lacked intelligence, boldness and imagination. That’s how he climbed the greasy pole: Being a toady, yes-man, agreeing with whatever was the acceptable conventional answer.
If he had shown an imagination he would have been General Flynn.
Everyone here has worked with a Milley at least once probably more. The guys who climb the ladder by trampling those below them and at their level, who brownnose and ass-kiss and suck up to those above. Even though it’s apparent that they have no talent, they know how to play the game and that is good enough. Always remember that the military is now just another large corporation with all its flaws, it’s no longer a place for warriors and we will pay dearly if they keep on pushing Russia and China. Hell, without using nukes, we can’t beat… Read more »
If true, that’s a break with at least 80 years of GAE military norms. Chief of staff was ostensibly just an advisor to the president, not in the operational chain of command. Of course it’s not technically a US operation, and Dotmil is so top heavy now, who can really say anymore.
Milley was Chief of Staff *until* 2019 for the Army, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until 2023. But I readily admit to no knowledge of exactly what his duties were in those two positions—only some of his onerous praise of DEI in the forces. He looked like so many of those soy boys we so decry here. Compare Milley to “mad dog” Mathis who famously said, “Nothing keeps me awake at night, I keep others awake at night”, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general and former Secretary of Defense. But even if solely to advise the President,… Read more »
Between drones and pagers, modern warfare is so fucking dishonorable…
If you’re looking for honor among men you’re off by a few centuries. And possibly in the wrong universe
I’m definitely not investing in any lance or mace ETFs…
Sniping is pretty dishonorable also. But Clint Eastwood made an entire movie about a guy that killed people from rooftops and other hides so it’s ok if it is American does it.
They are not heroes
First, with respect to the Ukraine War, Russia has the means to destroy the energy infrastructure and turn off the lights and heat throughout the country, and this would end the war quickly. Both electrical and natural gas systems utilize large precision equipment (generators, turbines, and compressors) that take years to replace once damaged beyond repair. Russia is degrading (but not destroying) this equipment because its goal is demilitarization of NATO and a long, slow war serves that purpose best. With respect to drone war in future civilian-based conflicts, asymmetry matters. Rebels are elusive and numerous, the Elites are few… Read more »
Russia has the means to destroy the energy infrastructure
Russia also has pipelines running through Ukraine, through which they export gas to Eurostan.
I’m team TempoNick: everything is a movie, or at least, that assumption makes for the best analysis: Zelensky and Putin are dancing to the same pipe.
Holy smokes. Drones against infrastructure.
Them’s some sand in the gears, ay?
Jiminy. We’re talking flying IEDs.
Rebels are elusive and numerous The second is generally not true until the end stage of the rebellion when the pleb and commoners start to join so that they can get their scraps without a threat of reprisal. Maladjusted and disturbed individuals tend to start rebellions as only such outliers can make a decisive break with the system. Proles can only riot and grumble to express their displeasure, but they won’t fight for an alternative unless convinced that the old order is going down. I agree with the rest of the opinion. In the end drones are just an another… Read more »
After the first half dozen oligarchs, they will flee to greener pastures. There are an estimated 20 million seriously talented sport hunters in the US. They are skilled in camouflage, stealth, stalking, and being eerily calm at the crucial moment. And most prefer to work solo. They can be taught to operate a drone and their range thereby increases from 400 meters to 10 km. And drones can be proficiently operated by anyone from 15 to 75 years of age. Militias duking it out with NGs a is high casualty waste of good men on both sides. Smarter is the… Read more »
“Patience, grasshopper”
You get it
Adding true operational autonomy is very difficult. I think it will be tried for expedience sake but after the first time a runaway autonomous drone lights up some senior officers in the rear while having their homosexual picnic get together, clinking their wine glasses and laughing, it will be stopped again.
Genie might be out of the bottle by that point.
drones are also following units back to their supply points, and then calling in air/artillery strikes on the whole group.
glide bombs are doing a shiton of damage too.
russian ECW is way ahead of anything nafo has, and is effective at neutralizing drones and GPS based missiles.
if this thing escalates, russia could destroy every western arms factory using non-nukes (hypersonic ballistics). daring the US to go first strike, and lose it all. much different math tan MAD was. oh, and at this point the USN ceases to exist.
Larry Ellison proudly announced yesterday that every single move and every single location of every single sack-of-flash-living-in-North-America will be monitored in the future. He plans to live forever and guide Oracle to the leadership position of that effort. I know that one of the DIE attorneys and apparatchiks is openly talking about every component on a gun having a sensor so they can forever trace each part everywhere at all times. Some good that the Claremont guys are doing is trying to get a “Digital Bill of Rights” going. The idea is that the Big Tech Oligarchy wants to have… Read more »
From there, it doesn’t seem like such a big step to most every word you say out loud being heard. I’d say the majority of them already are.
That’s hilarious. If anyone in the USA deserves to be droned with off-the-shelf parts it’s the BoD members, leaders, and nerds of Claremont.
I share your loathing of these guys still rallying around the Constitution like the last Mandarins locked in the Imperial City. That said, if they can secure the ability for us to procure parts and equipment that should be lauded. Anybody who is doing something to advance along some front no matter how much they have permitted the collapse of other fronts should still be supported. In that absence, then we have to look at ourselves and ask, what are we doing to hold some ground or establish some beach head on ground that is essential for our cause.
Yes, and the “who watches the watchers” part of it will be “ahem” monitored by DEI hires, so we’re safe-collection of data does not imply collation.
well larry ellison lives in cloud city and has no idea about the reality on the ground. DEI fedgov isn’t building shit. and they sure as shit aren’t going to be telling the mexicans in the southwest what to do.
Very surprised drones haven’t been made completely illegal for civilians to own/operate. If/when a politico gets wacked, I suspect they will be.
Building one with off the shelf parts is pretty easy to do though, as is disabling the GPS “fencing” that’s supposed to keep them from certain area.
The Russians are experimenting with wire-guided drones which aren’t susceptible to jamming.
This has to be a nightmare for VIP protection teams.
It could be a democratization of violence the same way the printing press was the democratization of knowledge
/\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\!!!!!! o/
It’s like rifled barrels and powder cartridges invented by American gunsmiths in their backrooms and barns.
“The fact is large industrial age armies do not break and run like armies of the past….”
we shall see. Russia is operating under severe restraint; they are pulling their punches in the Kraine because they don’t want full scale war with NATO. In WW2 the war was over in 1943; but the Germans staggered on for another two years…
The Germans fought bitterly to the end. It is clear at this point that most Ukrainians are looking for a way out. The minority of Ukies who are bitter-enders will probably be exterminated by the time the last shovel of soil covers the last mass grave. They trusted the (((internationalist))) and the penalty for such stupidity is death.
“Unlike the sniper, the drone operator can target equipment.”
Said no sniper with an antimateriel rifle, ever. The mere suggestion itself is offensive.
Ukraine is turning out like WWI in more ways than one. The generals of the Great War never really understood that technology had rendered a breakthrough unrealistic. Even the great German spring offensive in 1918 was doomed to failure from the Eastern Front not only by the lethality of machine guns and artillery, but lack of mobility and limitations in tactical communications. This drone stuff has everyone befuddled and it is costing much blood to learn. When and if the war ever winds down, what new horrors it will have spawned on the modern battlefield? We won’t know who has… Read more »
on the bright side, we have the luxury of WW1 having occurred so we can point at it and say “Shit is sort of like this again”
the Russians appear to have figured it out fairly quickly. Much faster than any of the WW1 powers did and at a MUCH lower cost.
The Finns used another low-cost/high-yield tactic – dropping mortars on the Soviet Army field kitchens. And when new ones were set up, mortaring them too. Imagine how demoralizing it was for the Soviet soldiers to fight for weeks without a hot meal or hot coffee, especially in a Finnish winter.
Meanwhile the Finns had a system of fight a few hours, then spend the same number of hours in a warm bunker with a hot meal, very effective.
Off topic; Peter brimelow had an interesting interview with a young guy (a pod called something with coffee or coffee with somebody) not a bad interview except Peter is tough to understand sometimes. Anywho he introduced the following r Kipling poem and to the kids credit, he asked Peter to repeat the poem and explain it a bit. I don’t think everything in the poem necessarily is a copybook god, but the principle of common sense and tradition vs fads, especially philosophal fads, is really brought home. My stars if anyone set up a knockdown like RK, I don’t want… Read more »
“The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
Kipling expresses a faith that many of us are depending upon. We believe that there is a reality and one can only ignore it for so long before reality asserts itself.
You can’t fund a country by borrowing money forever and spending more than you collect in taxes.
You can’t pretend that men and women are the same.
You can’t pretend that the races are the same with respect to intelligence and crime.
But for longer than many of us thought was possible, our rulers have escaped reality’s retribution.
In terms of historical timeframes, it’s been barely a blip.
That would be, “Coffee and a Mike.”
Here is the Brimelow interview on Rumble:
https://rumble.com/v5evah1-coffee-and-a-mike-peter-brimelow-the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings-rudyard-.html
Mike is pretty new, but I like him as an interviewer. He’s in his mid-40s and based in AZ.
“based in AZ”
In more ways than one?
He’s had the Zman on, quite recently.
Mike has interviewed the Z-Man several times now. Mike’s a good guy.
Mike recently had an interview with John Derbyshire.
Our dear John, whom I criticize too much, reads Kipling’s “Gods.”
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Readings/gods.mp3
“They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market who promised these beautiful things.”
Among other things, this poem is a repudiation of those who put the economy above the good of the country. Fiscal conservatives who surrender on social issues.
Here’s another one for the future battlefield; Israel just made hundreds of “pagers” explode (who has pagers these days instead of a cell phone??) No word on how they made them explode. Maybe there’s a secret code that makes any cell phone battery go bang??
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hundreds-wounded-dead-beirut-after-israel-remotely-detonates-hezbollah-pagers
If cell phones go bang I won’t need that DNC sponsored vasectomy.
MyS-
It’s probably just some type of plastique that can be detonated with sufficient battery current.
The real question is how they managed to successfully modify that many devices and get them in place.
What happened today is military history. I think it has to do with the batteries yes. And I think all lithium batteries are capable of that. Because this doesn’t add up otherwise. The pagers are probably made in China. And provided via Iran. How did Mossad get inside the factory or supplier unnoticed?? This is logistically difficult. Unless it’s a general feature. Which I think it is
“What happened today is military history.”
Unless it’s all just a lie, like the “Ghost of Keiv,” a woman fighter ace shooting Russian squadrons out of the sky. The gifted storytellers who rule us believe that they can substitute the narrative for reality.
I don’t know. Whom can you trust to tell you the truth?
A friend made the same point. My response was that Hezbollah, Iran, RT, Al Jazeera and neutral media such as Indian, would refute the story if it were gaslighting. I’ve seen the story on MSM and dissident media like zero hedge so I assume it’s legit
Supply Chain Hack. Bulk shipment of pagers either modified in factory (seems bit unlikely if factory was in PRC — that being said low value electronics like pagers increasingly made outside PRC in cheaper countries like Vietnam, Philippines, India, Bangladesh) or by diversion in logistics chain. Our various alphabet friends certainly have hooks into DHL, Fedex, and the various other air cargo systems. You’re Ahmed and you’re sitting in your harem of boys in the Bekkaa Valley tracking your bulk pager shipment on the web and it’s delayed because of a strike or mechanical problem at Shenzhen or Clarke, or… Read more »
It’s not very far in the future when the regime’s drone army/air force makes the citizen’s AR15 obsolete for purposes of rebellion, separation, or regime change. It appears virtually certain that such a situation will come to pass long before the peasants possess any kind of sufficient organization that could enable armed resistance to the regime. It doesn’t matter which regime you are talking about, GAE, Russia, China, India…. they will all achieve this. That’s when secession will no longer be even hypothetically possible. Which, for the time being, I believe still is.
Drones may do to firearms what firearms did to the bow and arrow yes. Rebellion becomes impossible when the outdoors are reduced to a city park and when they can engage you without risk to themselves. Mortal combat to one side, a video game to the other
“and when they can engage you without risk to themselves.”
There’s the nightmare: Walking cop drones. They break down the door, shoot your dog, your wife. and then you. Oops! Wrong house.
The only thing keeping cops on a leash is the possibility there is a semi-auto shotgun behind the bedroom door. Once they have “Chappy”…
They risk $2,000 electronics, you risk your life. This is really bad for personal liberty
At least one tacit assumption you make, which Z-man has commented upon, is that it’s a united power against the disunited/powerless masses. However, do not we muse that much of what we experience today is really the “powers that be” struggling among themselves for position and supremacy? In which case, one can indeed hypothesize support in any uprising of the masses, both internal and external. This support will provide all the means necessary to effect regime change. We see this today across the world. Heck we are one of the main instigators of such occurrences. In the future the technique… Read more »
I could go for a CME right now.
“The next shot at Trump could very well be a drone attack and then the drone revolution comes home.”
Perhaps that is going to be the next episode of this movie.
Wouldn’t that work beautifully for our overlords? Then they would take out their hated enemy while being able to institute draconian new laws.
I’m having trouble believing anything is real these days. My gut is telling me that we are seeing a reenactment of what has happened before as their way of disclosing it to the public, so I don’t believe the second assassination attempt either. That said, the idea that somebody could drone a president or anybody else for that matter, because they don’t like him, is a very scary thought. In fact, I’m surprised the satanists in our government haven’t droned Putin.
You should see a good priest for an exorcism, TempoNick. You have been expressing a pattern of demonic desires being impressed upon you for a while now.
I wish I was joking.
Why, because I don’t want to live in a society populated by feral bastards? My preference would be for women to keep their legs together, but since that isn’t going to happen, I’m okay with abortion.
Judas frickin’ priest, Eloi. We are caught between Scylla and Charybdis.
So, coming to a city near you. Just as sci-fi movies have shown many times. The movie Screamers shows the evolution (probably implausible) of drone or robotic warfare.
Imagine these things constantly hovering and taking videos and photos of all sorts of infractions. Now imaging the command centers run by npc human drones. Felony divisions, traffic, and all sorts of pre-crime units, not to mention the social media nazi enforcers.
Go check out the short film, “Slaughterbots.”
It’s basically a vision of a Marxist wet dream how drones could be used to efficiently liquidate any and all opponents.
Insect sized killer drones with face recognition. Rich people will be living inside tubes with all the anti drone gear they can stuff in there. The world will become truly strange and dangerous
Portable jammers for the short-range type, air rifles for the bigger ones…
Will become?
Og it’ll get much worse than now
The mighty “Slaughterbots”. High school kids, running between their desks, targeted by autonomous killer drones guided by AI, identified by facial recognition and social media posts.
Imagine these things constantly hovering and taking videos and photos of all sorts of infractions.
People are not going to care. They are already aware their smartphone is spying on them 24/7 and still they are clinging to it like dear life itself. They’ll still cling when it’s mandatory that every smart phone comes with a few grams of Semtex, so it can blow your head off as soon as it detects a forbidden word.
Right on cue:
https://gab.com/disclosetv/posts/113153351025388185
Nothing like helpful fellow shoppers around when you need them—not!
I suspect you’re right. A generation of snowflake narcissists would feel jaded if nothing is watching. This can’t end well
There is an easy way to make yourself immune to these concerns. Simply stop being middle or working class. There is little law enforcement against the very rich or the very poor unless they inconvenience the overlords. The law is just a weapon for attacking the politically disfavored, and for oppressing normal folks and making us miserable.
Happily, as the dusky hordes destroy AINO, these systems will grow harder and harder to maintain and usefully deploy. It will be a terrible adjustment to have to make, of course, but Panopticon will not be our worst problem.
Apparently insurance companies are using drones to spy on home owners and having their own NPC automaton employees arbitrarily cancel policies of customers who have been with them for 20 years or more without even contacting the customers first.
If you’ll excuse total naivety, is it legal to cancel policies like that? (Knocking myself in the head for thinking legality even matters)
During the three years or so when professors actually professing to be postmodernists and doing “deconstruction” took over the teaching of literature, art, music, and philosophy, a strange phrase entered the demagogy of pedagogy: feelings of mastery. The professors’ practico-moral (remember “practico-?”) justification for changing the focus of arts teaching from the study of art—aesthetic, historical, material phenomena—to condemning works and authors as racist, sexist, white male, etc., without having any proper understanding of them, was that dumb students can do it. It was an accommodation to diversity, to stupidity and the rage it feels when confronted with “college material,”… Read more »
Is there a “rock” to the drone “scissor” in this game of rock, paper, scissor?
Might we see EMPs come into play, perhaps non-nuclear EMPs (NNEMP) weapons, to destroy electrical and electronic systems but leave structures, people, and other life un-impacted?
I further wonder if we might see – – in another blast from the past – – more animals in the battlespace, as they are well-suited to these non-permissive environments. DARPA even has a “cyborg” beetle in the works.
I explored these ideas a bit in a recent post, “Rock! Paper! Scissors! Cocaine-Powered Pigeons“.
Strong “the bomber will always get through” energy.
I just smile at my fellow Americanos thinking about the future. Look, in the sky! Nope, not a football, it’s not Sunday!
Excellent analysis Z, but one minor quibble: In the past, an attacking army would soften up the fortified position with artillery and air power and then use overwhelming numbers to overrun the enemy position. Defenders would likely fall back before the assault, understanding the math. Today, the defenders can attack the enemy as he is forming up for the attack and at every step he makes toward the defender. This radically increases the cost to the attacker, in men and material, without increasing the cost to the defender. True, but in the past aircraft could be used for ground attack… Read more »
Modern air defenses have also reduced the utility of air craft in ground support. The Russians came up with the glide bomb is response to Ukrainian air defense. Ukraine no longer has an air force due to Russian AD. That is another thing happening in this war that will revolutionize warfare. Manned aircraft has reached a technological limit, while air defense system progress rapidly. This means fight aircraft is being reduced to standoff platforms.
True, as I mentioned at Sev’s blog once, a manned fighter aircraft is the equivalent of a rare collector car like a classic Ferrari, Rolls Royce, etc worth millions of dollars. You dare not use for its intended purpose of daily driving or high performance driving lest it get stolen, damaged, or totaled. You can’t afford to replace it so it sits in the garage / on the ground / in a hangar since you can’t afford the loss.
Exactly. Imagine future warfare directed by “bean counters”…
“I’m sorry, General…you simply have no choice but to sue for peace. This conflict is already an estimated 12.5 billion dollars over budget for FY 2032…”
Accounting is war by other means.
In the near future we may see soldiers leave the battlefield front entirely and just see drone-on-drone combat as the toys entirely take over. This will especially be true of nations like the U.S. who can’t stomach many casualties in foreign conflicts.
American military doctrine has been “Shock and Awe” for a long time, and it will be interesting to see if we can topple governments the classic way as drones make their return. Otherwise they will grow more dependent on color revolution.
Yes. But how do you capture and hold territory?
By capturing its government, of course. What do you think color revolutions are really about?
I’m glad it that was asked and answered. I’ve thought, if it was just machines killing machines, well then what the he!! is it even for?
You don’t. You just make it too costly for anyone else to do.
After that, it’s just a matter of telling the serfs in that territory where to send the tribute.
google the 2024 robotic convention in China this past year.
Just like tanks, infantry isn’t going anywhere. Every time there’s a technological breakthrough you have experts proclaiming “how the age of X has come to an end on the battlefield”. Russian assault troops speeding on motorcycles are a good example. Now we have a partial reversal in personal equipment development as flak vests and full helmets are back in favor and the increased weight of modern gear is now a concern. Tanks were sent to the military grave many times. The Global Chase After Mohammed was supposed to end the conscript army in favor of Special Forces-dominated professional armies. Then… Read more »
Tanks have been around for 100 years. That’s a pretty short time to make a long term statement. If we can’t figure out a drone defense, I doubt we’ll see them around for another 100 years, or perhaps recognize them in the year 2100. Now compare that to other well known weapons like firearms, artillery, and such.
MANPADs . . . sounds like something a tranny uses.
I completely agree that the drone is the battlefield changer and that drones and AI will be a truly horrifying combo. And lost in this will be personal freedom and privacy. But we’ve partly been here before. Why, at the height of prohibition with gangstere running around with Tommy guns and shotguns, did the SCOTUS protect privacy from near universal phone tabbing? They could have said “only way to stop gangsters is for the police to listen to your phone call”. Instead they said “probable cause searches only”. They could say the same again. But they won’t. It’s interesting to… Read more »
They could have said “only way to stop gangsters is for the police to listen to your phone call” They’d have been laughed at given the labor requirements of a near universal phone tapping and listening scheme in those days. Recording tech, too, wasn’t so good then. Now all that can be automated, and IT sales reps and marketing VPs with stuff to sell are eager to tell everyone about it, esp. if the firm has a spiff this month for new revenue or volume. The judges won’t be able to smother demands for panopticon awareness by saying ‘it’s impossible’.… Read more »
Valid point but surely they could have gotten something with targeted phone tabbing. The more primitive tech back then would have forced them to be more targeted whereas now they can download almost all digital interactions. So doesn’t entirely explain why they chose the high road then and the low one now
One possibility: Back then the so-called Old Right held social and political power. It was effectively marginalized after the desired attack on the empire’s occupation base on Oahu, and virtually nothing of the OR remains today. The Bellamy Brothers won.
I think it is partly a cultural or elite outlook change yes. Sure tech feasibility plays a role but I also think the new elites are more feudal in their values and that this plays a role
Valid point but surely they could have gotten something with targeted phone tabbing.
I bet they had, irrespective of what the law said – just like today.
I believe that but maybe they couldn’t use it in court??
And maybe they didn’t care all that much about ordinary crime, so indictments weren’t all that important.
It’s an “arms race” to be sure. The technology is perfected to the point that a tap can be automated to turn on/off when a particular voice is sensed. Heretofore, a human had to disengage to avoid monitoring parties not permitted by the search warrant. I’ve spoken to retired LEO’s and the discussions are interesting, but those people were old school and still had vestiges of integrity to the process. That’s why the discussion is interesting, they know better than anyone how the system is now being abused and “rights” violated! Of course, duplicitous people/agencies will work around such “minor”… Read more »
I think the US was a trusting, more “honorable” society back then. Or maybe I’m the naive one. There’s a story that Stimpson, FDR s secretary of war, didn’t agree to listen to intercepted cables “because gentlemen don’t read each others mail.” Don’t know if it’s true but what a society if it was
I admit to being a cynic in the extreme, but only for modern society and what it’s become. There are really too many documented cases of honor and integrity in the past to ignore. For example, what happened to those drunken Hessian troops Washington “crossing the Delaware” attacked on Christmas? He capture over 800. He paroled them on the stipulation that they report to (I forget where) and turn themselves in for internment. To a man, the Hessian troops did as was agreed, while Washington took his troops to fight elsewhere. Even a hundred years later, there are many tales… Read more »
Off topic, but mentioning Sherman, may he roast in hell, just look at the Civil War. The north treated the Confederacy worse than they treated any enemy in any other war after we were beaten.
I agree, the age of genuine honor is not a myth. But lamentably far from our time. Glubb even mentioned this in his FAte of Empires essay which I think you’d like
Stimson’s moral calibre was hardly representative of the FDR administration, he single-handedly stopped the Morgenthau-plan when everybody was gung-ho to just genocide Germany.
He was also instrumental in establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal which, at the time, was the alternative to unceremonially massacre 50.000 random German officers, a solution that Churchill and Roosevelt were partial to. His strange bedfellow was Josef Stalin, who understood that show trials were necessary to avoid creating martyrs.
He was old wasp stock of the kind they don’t make anymore and certainly far more moral than his boss, no argument
No, show trials show that justice is a particulalry theatrical form of politics.They undermine the belief that guilt is determined by a jury of peers rather than the whim of a miserable Georgian.
It worked like a charm with Nuremberg, didn’t it?
Of course, duplicitous people/agencies will work around such “minor” annoyances as with our spook agencies having reciprocal agreements with other countries such that *those* country’s spooks spy on US citizens and then turn over their findings/info to our spooks.
Just so. I was rather baffled about the Snowden-headlines: “Alphabet agencies are spying on you too, not just Johnny Foreigner!”
Yeah, we already knew that from the Project Echelon-leak in the late eighties, when it transpired that the NSA had recordings of some senator’s phone calls.
Pre computers, universal phone tapping wasn’t feasible anyway. And the feds tapped all the gangsters they could, warrant or no warrant. Their only limit on that was their technical capability and manpower.
And admissibility in court. Maybe society was the real loser when Capone went up on tax evasion. Because that was certainly early lawfare.
A society with no criminals is a society of slaves
Good article, Z-man. The Blitzkrieg tactics of 1939 are no longer going to be the norm in warfare. Anti-drone weapons will probably be attached to tanks in the future in addition to Chobham and explosive/reactive armor.
Javelins are not only expensive, but they’re also short-ranged compared to the heavier ATGMs which are needed to push the enemy tanks outside their effective range. Ukrainians have often found more use for their own Stugna-P system that has the advantage of range and speed over Javelins.
The next step in warfare will be robots, automated machine guns (described in Vonnegut’s 1953 novel Player Piano), and uncontrolled hunter-killer drones…
https://www.onelook.com/?w=material
https://www.onelook.com/?w=materiel
Let us pray for the wretched Ethopians in central Africa, that Almighty God may at length remove the curse of Ham from their hearts, and grant them the blessing to be found only in Jesus Christ, Our God and Lord -Pius IX, the Book of Indulgences, 1878 wgat moderns of all stripes don’t understand is that if Christ was god then he didn’t leave it up to the folly of man to interpret a bible he never commissioned himself or to make up conflicting Teachings . The Bible is a document of the Catholic Church and can’t be morally interpreted… Read more »
The Catholic Church promotes the curse of Cham as the explaination for the extreme differences in the races . But it has always said you have to mix them up and treat them all the same in a colorblind equal under the law government? The church where bishops owned slaves and never denounced that? No. It was so common sense that the races be separate there was no need to talk about it: ‘Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.’ He could not curse Ham, for God had blessed the three sons and the… Read more »
Catholics have always been racist . The following is just a snapshot of mobberlys text:
The Colour of the African.
May not the colour of the African denote the enormity of Cham’s offence? Are they not excessively given to the lusts of the flesh as well as to the crime of intoxication? That Blacks are more ardent & more persevering in their amorous pursuits than whites is not only shown from daily experience but is also strongly supported by Mr. T. Jefferson in his notes on Virginia.
Cham, Rev. Mobberly, S.J., Maryland 1823
All very interesting but wtf does this have to do with drone warfare?
[…] ZMan looks at war tech. […]