@man_integrated As far as truck drivers go, the graduate degree & Silicon Valley tech head crowds have less than zero understanding of the work load.
It isn't just getting a commercial license for driving & driving.
Loads require different trailers & load plans the driver has to execute 1/
@man_integrated ...per thick federal, state, and company rule books.
Often the driver also has to be an all terrain fork lift operator as well in support of delivering to construction sites.
2/
@man_integrated Truckers carrying HAZMAT loads require additional training for signage, documentation, reporting and routing.
This is all long attention span theater through eye wateringly small text.
3/
@man_integrated Then there are the requirements to haul oversized loads.
Again, lots of eye wateringly small DoT text, signage, documentation, reporting, routing, and warning drivers ahead and behind the load. 4/
@man_integrated Then there is the risk. Truckers get in accidents, guaranteed.
It is a function of the amount of time they are diving and the road conditions.
A very small risk times a large enough number of times equals a certainty in a trucking career. 5/
@man_integrated Add to that long hours, truck stop food and no exercise, and you are going to get a stressed and morbidly obese individual in less than a decade.
This Ukrainian fiber optic FPV drone attack underlines that 20th century style tactical truck based logistics are obsolete in the age of mass, cheap, 50 km FPV drones.
Drones costing less than $2,000 are killing trucks costing over $150,000.
The issue of Western truck production versus drone production is stark
Ukraine in 2025 is making ~12,000 FPV and grenade dropping class small drones a month.
The peak annual US Army FMTV production was in 2005 for a total of 8,168 trucks.
Those trucks are 20 years old.
2/
21st Century truck logistics in the age of 50 km unjammable fiber optic guided FPV drones requires systematic combat service support engineering to build vehicle "net tunnels" to protect from powered and persistent drones.
Injection molding gets you a lot of one thing cheaply. Think lots of fiber optic guided FPV drones, which are immune to radio jamming.
3D/AM allows a lot of modifications to meet the changing requirements of war. Think rapidly evolving Ukrainian interceptor drone designs.
2/
The issue for Ukraine versus Russia is Ukraine has to more widely disperse its industrial base because Russia has a bigger cruise and 500 km(+) ballistic missile production base.
Ukraine's need to disperse production and evolve drones means 3D/AM is a better industrial fit.
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The Coyote I was a propeller interceptor like the Ukrainian FPV's, but it wasn't "enough" for the higher end drone threat like the TB-2 Bayraktar.
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So the US military abandoned kinetic solutions the lower end drone threat.
And it has to pretend that high power microwave weapons and jamming will be the answer to fiber optic guided FPV's at weed height and grenade dropping drones behind tree lines.
The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
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The Gogol-M flys low and slow, below ground based radar coverage like a helicopter.
It opens up headquarters, ground & air logistics in the operational depths to artificial intelligence aided FPV drone attacks.
This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.
Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!
Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.
Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.
And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮
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"Just send a drone" is the proper tactic for almost everything a 21st century infantryman does from patrolling, raiding enemy positions, sniping and setting up forward observation posts.
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