Thread by @TrentTelenko

That is a big "ouch" for Russian artillery fire support intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance capability👇

This is a "Combat drones in Ukraine lessons learned" thread related to the realities of that "ouch!"🧵
1/

https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1528409856729829377

By way of comparison, the US Army plans for 12 UAV units of 12 each Grey Eagle UAV's, aka 144 Grey Eagle UAV's for its entire army.

Losing 50 Grey Eagles in combat would be 35% of the US Army's entire planned fleet and likely 50% of all...

2/
army-technology.com/projects/mq1c-…

...operational Grey Eagle drones at full fielding.

There are a lot of implications in this.

The US Army is too high on the price/capability curve versus modern air defenses & needs a drone 1/5 the cost, five times the numbers and about 70% the capability of a Grey Eagle
3/

...for a war lasting more than a few months.

The loss rates of the Orlan-10 are, if anything, getting worse over time as Ukraine pulls ancient AZP S-60 57mm AAA gun out of deep storage & has issued to operational units, initially the 59th separate motorized infantry brigade.
4/

S-60 57mm AAA guna are typically being mounted on a 6x6 "gun truck" for use against drones & ground targets.

The IISS has reported 400 x S-60 in Ukrainian mothball storage.
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https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1527001664884027393

The S-60 has been widely used in the developing world carried by 6x6 and 4x4 trucks,

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https://twitter.com/301arm/status/1428688962995032067

...on MT-LB chassis by Armenia & in the Donbas before the current Russian invasion...
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https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1317854233878794242

They have been used by all sides sides in Syria.

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https://twitter.com/war_noir/status/1469778540035985416

Ukraine has many options for deploying this weapon, especially as a AAA gun for killing Drones cheaply. However, there is as yet no open source evidence that Ukraine has installed thermal imaging or other high tech gear to improve lethality.

"Needs must as the Devil drives."
9/

The Turks with their Bayraktar TB2 broken the code of Drone capability versus cost via better systems engineering aided by the fact there were no pilots involved.

The Turks built specialized drone munitions for the intended mission first, then built the TB2 around them.
10/

The MAM-C (Mini Akıllı Mühimmat-C) weighs 6.5 kg. While the MAM-L weighs 22 kg.

By way of comparison a Hellfire missile weighs 45 kg and a Grey Eagle carries four.

This additional payload required for the UAV sets off a cost/price increase spiral.

11/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAM_(Smar…

The demand that the Grey Eagle carry standard crewed platform munition, which makes it bigger, also makes it a "Platform."

The real problem with Western drone development is the tyranny of crewed aircraft & expensive UAV's as "Platforms."
12/

You see, if UAVs are thought of as "platforms."

Platforms aren't disposable.

This sets off the whole crewed platform safety mafia which shows up and demands crewed aircraft levels of reliability & safety for a disposable munition, because they tagged it as a "Platform."

12/

That evolution is a DoD wide case of "Bean counter-itis" that affects many things but most particularly disposable drone concepts.

In addition "Disposable drones" are a violation of the very unofficial but very real "Convention For Protection of Military Pilot Careers."

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I ran into this convention watching the development of the MQ-4C Triton, the USN's version of the USAF Global Hawk.

The Triton has a reinforced airframe because the USN wanted it to be capable of going lower to get a visual close up of suspect
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_…

... vessels like a crewed P-3 or P-8 maritime patrol plane.

It would have made a whole lot more sense, and saved a lot of development money, to simply place a sonobuoy launcher on the Triton filled with a few cheap & disposable electric powered 4K CCD camera sensor drones

15/

...for those close ups and get a longer run of the cheaper, because you built more, USAF airframe & wings.

NAVSEA could not get NAVAIR to bite for sonobuoy tube launched disposable drone concept because "UAV's are _PLATFORMS_ D--M IT!!!"

16/

The USAF Special Forces - which is independent of the USAF under SOCOM and has independent procurement authority approaching that of an independent military service - loves disposable drones to protect its AC-130 from MANPADS.
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popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/…

NAVAIR also wanted reinforced structure in the Triton's wings for hard points capable of carrying Hellfire later, if money became available.

The thing is Hellfire, unlike it's UK Brimstone derivative, does not have built in heaters for the cold sink of 30k(+) altitude.
18/

A Triton would have to to hang around at lower altitudes for a while so the Hellfire could defrost before using it.

The cost related to all of this prevented weapons hardpoints from being added, but NAVAIR got its "platform."

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What is driving all this is a military cultural problem identified by Carl Builder in his 1989 RAND report "MASKS OF WAR - American military Styles in Strategy & Analysis."

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amazon.com/Masks-War-Amer…

Pilots identify with platforms, "I'm an F-16 pilot," rather than "I'm an Air Force Officer."

This means any drone development Military pilots are involved in will become a "Platform" rather than a "munition with features" that war requires drones to be.
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This kind of military institutional culture fun and games is only something a major power can afford to indulge in when it has no real competitors.

When it comes to weaponized drone technology, this is no longer the case.

The disposable drone paradigm is to platforms like
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...the F-35 what the machine gun was horse cavalry or the aircraft carrier was to the battleship.

Neither Horse cavalry nor battleships became less deadly as weapons and organizations. It was simply other weapons did their jobs better at a lower cost.
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To fully exploit armored formation and sea based airpower required new institutions owing very little to the redundant/less efficient military technologies.

The proper integration of disposable drones as "munitions with features" into a 21st century military will require
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...new military institutions without pilots.

Pilots simply cannot let go of their ingrained "Platform-itis" because that is how they roll.

It is their "Mask of War."

25/End