Thread by @TrentTelenko

This is one of the most poignant testimonies as to why FPV drones are replacing direct fire ATGM on the battlefield.

Only drones can provide the necessary mass of precision guided munitions for a modern battlefield.

Lt. Chornovol is buying 4 drones a month because it is

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https://twitter.com/ArmedMaidan/status/1724558586087407826

...twice the number of Stugna ATGM Ukraine's military can give her two launchers per month.

And Ukraine builds Stugna for $20,000. That is 1/5th that of a US Javelin missile doing the same job.

The Stugna Launcher can be remote fired, but her crew still has to recover it.
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Taking insane risks from Russian return fire because there are no replacement launchers.

FPV drones don't require launchers.

They don't require exposing yourself to enemy direct fire to use them.

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This makes FPV drones logistically superior to Stugna's per unit weight and volume of lethality because the munition is disintermediated from anything carrying or firing it.

Precision guided firepower detached from launch platform is new in warfare.

Even if the guidance tech
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...for the FPV drones is over 50 years old.

Television guidance was used in combat in 1969 on the GBU-8 HOBOS bombs to drop N. Vietnamese bridges.

Radio guidance is 30 years older (Fritz-X) and the USAAF combined both TV & radio in 1942 with the GB-4.
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designation-systems.net/dusrm/app1/gb.…

Eighty years of electronic advancement under the Moore's Law curve - which isn't slowing down - means FPV's becoming equipped with low light level cameras or even cheap thermal sensors are a battlefield reality in numbers already.

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pcgamesn.com/tsmc-moores-la…

Perhaps not at a cost that Lt. Chornovol can afford at four a month, but at a lot less than a Stugna.

Something like 1/5th of a Stugna's cost, using cheap uncooled microbolometer thermal sensors, as a Stugna is 1/5th of a Javelin.

(H/T @ChuckPfarrer)
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This is the WW2 "Washing Machine Charlie" with precision delivery, at night.

And, in fact, the Russians have been using another name for such drones...Baba Yaga

This is the Russian information one of Ukraine's Baba Yaga drones
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https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1714962409318687118

Baba Yaga was the wicked witch used to scare children.

And that seems to be what is happening with the Russians as, if Baba Yaga has Starlink, then it does not need other data channels.

And jamming Starlink is hell.

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Anything that uses a pencil beam with very low sidelobes forces you to put the jammer inside the beam mainlobe.

Starlink's cheap active electronically scanned array (AESA) antenna on both ends do exactly that with a sky filled with dozens of AESA satellites to an AESA...

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...receiver. I have been trying to explain that technological fact of life for years on Twitter/X & the wall of stupid about it still stands.

This is literally Electronic Warfare 101 level knowledge.🙄

And techies have published teardowns of the Starlink AESA antennas...

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...on Youtube, so there are no excuses.

The link below is the result of my typing in "starlink antenna teardown" on the Youtube search engine.

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youtube.com/results?search…

Ukraine's General Staff is now publishing weekly data on it's mostly FPV drone kills.

On the week ending Nov 13, 2023, "...among the destroyed equipment units are 39 tanks, 57 artillery systems, 51 trucks, 34 armored fighting vehicles, & many other

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ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/378…

units that have been successfully turned into scrap," said the deputy prime minister.

The Reporting from Ukraine channel has an outstanding report on how mostly FPV plus the Baba Yaga drones are dominating the battlespace at Avdiivka [Not Stugna's].
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In fact, the conclusion we can draw right now from Ukraine's General Staff Army of drone numbers & OSINT counts is that drones are not only the leading cause of RuAF vehicle kills.

They are at or more than all other direct fire arms combined.😱🤯

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https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1724789006792331533

Rodra Hascaryo on over on the Quora social media platform posted this on why the direct fire 16-inch guns of the USS Iowa (Black circle) are obsolete versus missiles and the F-18 (Green circle) going over the horizon.

FPV's have that F-18 advantage over Stugna's & T-64's.
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Each FPV drone is a PGM - with guidance modelled on the GBU-8/GBU-15 concept with TV/IIR seeker, but powered.

Yes this is revolutionary battlefield effect, but also evolutionary in that the underlying technologies have been there for decades, evolving for the moment.

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Awaiting the moment of a chaotic mix of a existential total war, for a civil society with a large enough computer literate middle class, using a conscript-cadre military, with rampant shortages of traditional artillery shells to make the FPV drone a survival need.

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We are in the midst of a Drone "Revolution in Military Affairs" the likes of which only August Cole and P. W. Singer have barely touched upon in the opening Okinawa raid in their their book "Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War"

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Fle…

Ukraine's little drones are changing everything & faster than we expected.

Small-cheap-many ares overthrowing big-costly-few...

...and we are now in the part of the story where military inertia prevents change short of facing the aftermath of defeat in combat.

20/20 End

@threadreaderapp unroll please.