The First Person Drones are a delivery method for grenades and rocket propelled grenades and other simple explosives.
RPG-7s have been popular for about two decades and built and used by many countries. They are low cost from $500-2000 for a launcher and $100-500 per rocket. RPGs stand for rocket propelled grenades and they have a range of about 900 meters.
As of October 2022, more than nine million RPG-7s have been produced. The RPG-7 is a portable, shoulder-launched, anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher that has been in production since 1958.
Think not of one millions FPV drones, but think of 2700 Ukrainian FPV drones ($200-400 each) used and expended per day combined with the ($100-200 RPG7 grenade. There is no pristine fleet of one million drones, everything is being destroyed and used up in the same day or same week.
This is going against 12000-15000 Russian FPG drones per day with their grenades.
This will be up from the level produced at the end of 2023. By October, November of 2023, Ukraine production was about 50,000 FPV drones per month versus 300,000 Russian FPV drones per month.
In late 2023, it was already 1700 Ukrainian FPV drones used and expended per day combined with RPG7 grenade or other grenades against 8,000 Russian FPV drones per day.
There are drone launcher teams and drone jamming teams on both sides.
This needs to be looked at in context of grenades, mortars and artillery.
Common ranges for mid-level drones are 400 meters to 3 kilometers or 0.25 to 1.5 kilometers. While toy drones can fly between 50-100 meters, FPV drones can fly between 8-10km. Those ranges are under optimal conditions. The drone team has to keep moving, the drones themselves are going into a jamming environment and everyone is being shot at by drones, artillery and other weapons.
Mortars come in a range of calibres. The common 120mm mortar has a lethal radius of 30 meters from the point of impact, and has been given a 10% probability of ‘incapacitation’ at 100m. Mortars are typically used as indirect fire weapons. Mortars and Artillery and Grenades have been used since WW1.
As of November 2023, Ukraine uses about 240,000 artillery shells per month. The CEO of Rheinmetall, one of Europe’s largest arms manufacturers, says Ukraine needs around 1.5 million artillery shells annually.
The usage of artillery in the war is about 6000-8000 shells per day by Ukraine and about 20,000 shells per day by Russia.
In WW2, everyone knows from the WW2 movies, the soldier would radio in the artillery strike. This would have a probability of hitting the target. There would also be artillery battles where the weapon systems would attack each other. Everyone is trying to spot and kill each other.
RPGs have been dangerous and a threat for decades. They are combined with drones to get some more range and accuracy and the ability to provide their own spotting. Both sides have them and are using them.
More Dangerous for Soldiers and Tanks Means Stalemate No Advancing
This means more danger and destruction but it also more difficult for either side to advance. If you are a regular soldier, then you are trying to stay hidden under tree or other cover. You do not want to spotted from the air or anywhere else. If you are exposed anywhere within 3 miles of the front then you have a high likelihood of ending up dead. The front got a big larger. It used to be one mile or so and now the lethality for the 2-3 mile area has gotten worse bad but the first mile is still the worst.
This also means more danger for tanks and trucks and other vehicles. Those are high priority targets. The highest priority targets are the artillery, the drone launch crews and the drone jammers.
The ten thousand or so drone launch and jammer crews are getting hit a lot. They have to become like snipers. They have to hide well and pick their targets. Jammers turning on their equipment can be detected by jammer detection.
Congratulations, we have a 3 mile deep on either side no-mans land. We have a variation of the new trench warfare.
The depth of no man’s land in WW1 where soldiers would get slaughtered by machine guns was about 250 yards. They would be exposed there to pre-aimed machine-gun fire, artillery barrages, and poison gas, soldiers attempting to cross to the enemy lines could measure their life expectancy in minutes or seconds.
The new no-mans land has more attacks toward back of the 2-3 mile depth. They are trying to reach the drone crews toward the back. Who is going forward. The first mile will start thinning out.
In 2023, Ukraine and Russia traded about 200 square miles of territory. One side got 200 square miles over some areas and then lost about the same somewhere else. They lost about 1000-3000 soldier for each square mile captured.
When one side gets overwhelmed they fall back to multiple trenches farther back and they move behind mine fields. They have both built line after line of trenches and mine fields. Advancing ten miles means pushing through 5 to 8 lines of trenches and pushing through mine fields.
High resolution cameras and detection equipment will be looking to spot the launch of drones and would be seeking drone crews and jammer crews. You would not fly the drones without fear. You would want to keep the drones low and under cover OR fast and short range. You are the hunter and the hunted.
Modern warfare at another level would only work with fast advances, IF one side totally outclasses the other side. This means weapons and systems with effectiveness and ranges beyond what the other side has. This would mean 3000 fighters and stealth bombers that can destroy key facilities and systems. However, IF the defender just wants to last and has the will, they use the Porcupine strategy and uses cheap Stinger-type missiles and all of the cheap drones and has soldiers supplied and ordered to hold. They will need underground production facilities. The cheap missiles would harass the fighters and bombers. The defender needs to be able to have enough air defense to make the fighter and bombers ineffective. This is what has happened in the Russia-Ukraine War. The Air Forces are not effective and not the deciding factor.
This will look somewhat like the fictional movie Terminator where the human resistance is hiding underground.
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I would take all those numbers with a huge grain of salt. From both sides. Take for example the claim that Russia has 5 million FPV drones. Those drones have been used by Russia in bigger number for no more than 1 year (give or take).
That would mean that they are producing more than 400.000 drones per month. Actually, it should be way more right now. Because in the first months the production would have been lower. So we are talking about roughly 1 million drones per month now. No, I am not believing that at all. 1 million drones per month would require absolutely huge factories, people etc. and we would be getting pictures of it.
Also, just a quick google search gives the success rate of 50-80% for FPV drones. So where are the evidence of literally MILLIONS of successful hits? There would be nothing left to target. Every individual soldier, vehicle and building would be dead. Several times over.
Just think about it. It makes no sense. The numbers are made out of thin air, we have absolutely no solid evidence.
As I stated. The drones with grenades are being expended. Just like Artillery shells. How many drone crews are carrying how many drones with grenades.
Yes, I get that. But still those numbers are not realistic. Heck, even some ukrainian official stated lately that Ukraine produced 50.000 drones last month. And that is with allocating 1/3 of their GDP to defense + getting money from 50 countries. And honestly, I do think that they inflate those numbers a lot. And then compare that with around 1 million produced per month by Russia? No chance.
Yes, they are like artillery shells, but guided ones. Think american Excalibur shell. And then think about it that you would shoot 1 MILLION guided shells PER MONTH. For years. Makes no sense, what would they be even targeting by that point? The number would be still huge even if 50% of drones would hit their target.
The shorter range FPV drones are being supported by relay drones to give range up to 20km so no-man’s land is expanding all the time and on board terminal targeting AI (to identify and hit tanks, artillery, soldiers etc) for drones is starting to be fielded making them immune to jamming. This trend will continue with longer and longer range fixed wing drone dropped AI hunter-killer drones and glide bombs that will extend no-man’s land further and further.
It is now impossible to bring together a large attack force to try and punch through – only small attacking groups of infantry have any survivability, and even that is poor – and the only defense is fox holes and bunkers that small drones (and artillery) can’t reliably penetrate.
And so we have stalemate, until or unless one side or other gets access to huge numbers of accurate heavy glide bombs (10’s to 100’s of thousands) to wipe out defensive trenches and bunkers and enable non-suicidal assaults. This was also the lesson of WW1 – where the breakthrough strategy to beat trenches was enormously increasing localised artillery strikes to obliterate an area of trench network. This is where Ukraine should be focusing development if they want to retake territory (mass produced cheap glide bombs that can be lifted by cheap piston aircraft).
Artillery will soon be obsolete as drone range increases, and anyway western production ramping is taking too long to be useful, and the 155mm shells are too expensive (having risen to $4-8k each in current high-demand market they are 10-20x the cost of a $400 FPV drone)
The only other vulnerability is rear-infrastructure, with Ukraine having very limited defense to ballistic missiles (luckily Russia has few), and Russia having very poor defense to Ukrainian drones attacks on their infrastructure. Ukraine could perhaps do enough damage to Russia via long range drones over next 1-2years to force them to end war.
Though I thought that Ukraine would have pushed the southern front to sweep along the beach and hit the Crimea Black Sea coastline by now, they have held up remarkably well. I figured they had lost momentum when the first western mechanized equipment came and they thought they could just sit back and not take any risks, conserving men – silly. It was all or nothing to break through at the south; and they hesitated. The lines will likely remain stagnant for months, even in winterized fields, with more Ukraine push on the south and more russian creeping on the east.
So, now we are entering Future Land War, a pro-defender, terminator-style scenario where it is a rush to the fastest, cheapest, most-deceptive, most-autonomous, versatile remote air and land recon and attack systems. Quantities will matter, but range and coordination more so. This is where the west can dominate (especially locally fabricated in Ukraine) with leading and massively-manufactured chip tech that will enable faster and more sophisticated communications, visual and electronic stealth, armada coordination, and more effective local strikes. Better ‘bulk’ chips, boards, power, and communications are the remote-kill advantage. If the Ukranians are dug in with effective communications at and behind the front lines, they can simply continue to swarm and spread air/land-hover drones through open areas, enemy trenches and installations, minefields, etc., hidden. With ratios of hundreds to thousands of drones per soldier, battlefield strategy changes to infecting the enemy (disrupt cover, signals, routing, etc) rather than mass destruction or precise assassination. I am surpised that there isn’t much mention of ‘ultra-high’ warfare, drones that can go so high as to get right above all sensing and using hyper-detailed optics, drop munitions 100s of meters with pinpoint accuracy (winds maybe?), and return to base. Unfotunately with this warfare, there won’t be much play-by-play as with Desert Storm, only ‘highlight hits’. NATO should take advantage of this stalemate to supply Ukraine with some 200-mile plus ammo to start taking out more significant high-value targets in crimea and russia-proper. Along with critical russian communications and high-value assets, NATO has carte-blanche to strike juicy russian targets by Ukraine ‘defense’ proxy.
The future of warfare: there’s a video of a Ukrainian FPV with a grenade chasing a Russian soldier around a disabled Russian tank. They play ring around the rosie for a bit until the drone wins.
That video is scary AF because there’s no reason they couldn’t do the same anywhere else.
Just drop the killing drone near your target’s door, watch from afar and wait for the right moment for it to strike.
youtu.be/stHLrBs-_iE?si=5hOMsU7cmdlKlSHb
The war will move to a battle between drones doing spotting for high precision long distance artillery/missile strikes. Western artillery has the advantage in that kind of fight. Russia has been hemorrhaging artillery and crews for over a year losing something like an average of 30 artillery pieces per day. I can’t imagine being the Russian logistics officer who has the job of sending equipment to the front where it is continually destroyed.
Russia was able to leverage glide bombs up until a month or two ago when Ukraine shot down three Russians in one day so they no longer have that.
It is definitely a war of attrition but one that rewards the side with the best C4I and accuracy. That’s Ukraine with HIMARS, Excalibur, counter battery radar, glide bombs.
War is still hell. Now who had ever expected that?
So both sides have the same number of drones because both sides have more than enough drones.
I’ve seen Russia milbloggers complain that their drones mostly all work on the same frequency and are easier to jam.
What is interesting is that most of these drones are produced in China. DJI comprises a huge amount of drones. The ones they say are manufactured in Ukraine and Russia are misleading as all supply chains go to China. You can’t even get neodymium magnets from anywhere but china. The motors, the carbon fiber bodies, the batteries all come from China. The chips used are low quality and easily produced on China chip fab equipment. If it wasent for one child policy china and the economic isolation of China that started with trump and accellerated with Biden china would have the upper hand. If taiwan ever needed millions of drones it would likely be unable to procure them reliably given the supply chain issues that would arise from a likely chinese embargo. US munitions are simply too expensive to compete with even existing drone tech. So its clear why the left and right want to contain China and this war in Ukraine drives that reality home for me.