Warfare

[PPQ_Purple]

Now once the drones have generative AI, well now all bets are off.

Not really. There really is no benefit for a disposable drone have to be able to "learn" in the short time it has in this world. Generative AI is best utilized on large datasets over long periods of time and not in conditions of restricted input and learning time.

This is not to say that AI won't be used to help develop the autopilot software for drones of course. It certainly can be used to say sift through hours of video recordings taken from your entire drone swarm and than using that to make the algorithm you use to detect tanks for example 2% more efficient. But that's going to be done by a server room somewhere in the rear and not by individual drones.

People need to realize AI is NOT intelligence. It is not sapience. Modern generative AI is just a pattern recognition algorithm that can generate output based on data that is fed to it. And the more data the better. It's not something you can put on a drone to turn it into a terminator.


Think of it this way. Say you have 500 drones with AI in them. And you send them out to look for tanks hiding in bushes. Now say each of them sees A tank before being shot down. Well, that's a sample of 1. It's worthless. The drone won't "learn" a thing from that, none the least because it is in pieces. And that is a realistic attrition rate for these things. They are used and expended like munitions.

But say you instead put that AI on a computer back at base and feed it video footage taken from those 500 drones. Well, that's a sample of 500 and with it you have an AI that can tell tanks from bushes better than all those drones ever could even if put together. Better than most people even. Now all you have to do is turn that into data to copy paste it into your next 500 drones.

Repeat that process ad infinitum and you get to some really scary places quickly. Where as your opponent who put AI in every drone is still back where he started.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Some folks read too much Elon Musk. I really don't see computers themselves piloting aircraft without some mothership-type thing just throwing out cheap drones to see which ones get blown up where.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Huge bombs, swarms of drones in aerial battles, robotic dogs with AI, and planes crashing into buildings are spectacular, but they're essentially mechanical and not sneaky enough to be really scary for me.
Sweat the slow stuff.

One person using a single drone could cause some minor nuisance over a few weekends until they became bored.
Load up a drone with a few thousand Giant Hogweed seeds and spread them along river banks, or over farming land. Drop Japanese knotweed rhizomes onto freshly ploughed fields or into the compost and mulch in gardens where celebrities live. Mess around with house prices where your imagined enemies live if they are compelled to report knotweed.

A band of 20 or more educated, well-trained people, hell-bent on revenge and destruction could create far more havoc in some places.

CRISPR and other genetic manipulation tools are still relatively new, but there are many people being trained in how to use them. I suspect some are eventually going to find ways to create biological weapons, and I don't mean diseases that kill humans, like ebola, anthrax and others. Those diseases are far too "obvious".

Imagine that the crazies in the 9/11 planes had more "imaginative", insidious ideas and plans. They could be still wandering around the US, unknown and undetected.

Spreading mild influenza, colds, and other diseases that cause a few percent productivity loss in some key target regions would be difficult to trace back to the perpetrators. Who would even know it was deliberate?

Fire ants not spreading fast enough for your evil overlord? Start moving nests further afield, interstate, or to Canada or...

Want to decimate the beef industry? Bring in some freeze-dried foot-and-mouth virus from Indonesia. Well-trained biologists could find ways to make the transportation of some very nasty animal diseases undetectable to customs and border controls.

IMO, be afraid of the small things. Be really afraid. They might already be lurking in your favourite pillow.
Sweet dreams!

 

[EvaDK]

Cyber warfare utilizing AI should be a cause of concern. Especially if you're not as technically advanced as you opponent.

Drones using AI instead of a human controller to be guided towards their target - meh. That's just resource management and making a clever weapon a bit more clever. We already use smart bombs and missiles that have autonomous systems to assist them.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Some folks read too much Elon Musk. I really don't see computers themselves piloting aircraft without some mothership-type thing just throwing out cheap drones to see which ones get blown up where.

The term you are looking for is manned-unmanned teaming. And it's something militaries around the world are heavily looking at. The idea is that you have a manned platform that acts as a command center of sorts networked with a number of relatively cheap and dumb drones that serve as sensors and weapon platforms. And than your human operator or operators basically play an RTS game with these pieces to fight each other.

It's something that is being seriously considered for future fighter jets among other things. But from my understanding it really does not involve AI much other than maybe as a data processing aid in the command vehicle.

 

[banzay13]

Some thought about using drons in current Ukraine - Russia war. (in Russian, use translation tools).

— How significantly have FPV drones changed the landscape on the battlefield?

“I can say this: they radically changed it.” This is the challenge that motorized riflemen must cope with. The fighter has not encountered such a change since around the 1930s, when mass tanks took to the battlefield. FPV drones are now as much of a threat as a tank was to a steel-helmeted fighter with a bolt-action rifle back in the day.

FPV drones have created a colossal threat, which will have to be met by changing the structure of motorized rifle units, starting from the squad and platoon level. At one time, they responded to tanks first by creating an anti-tank rifle, then small-caliber anti-tank artillery appeared, and they also began to allocate people for this task. Units of armor-piercing and tank destroyers appeared. After World War II, grenade launchers and ATGMs appeared. Now the question is about creating and assigning specialists to combat drones. It is necessary that there are anti-aircraft gunner specialists in the infantry squad, in the platoon, in the company. The kits and standards of their weapons have already been prescribed, and the instructors are very high-quality. For example, in the coordination center for assistance to Novorossiya, these issues have already been worked out, because it has direct contacts with the battlefield.

Regarding armored vehicles, the question is even more complicated. An FPV drone is a universal killer; it destroys both an individual person and equipment. The use of these drones will make all armored vehicles obsolete because no one has ever dealt with top-down defense. The turret roof tanks have very weak protection. Accordingly, now it is necessary to reconsider all approaches to the creation of an active protection complex (APS) and the possible use of turret installations. Everything will have to be reworked.

We can say that the Abrams is outdated, the T-90 is outdated, and even the Armata, which did not enter normal production, is also outdated. The FPV drone is a radical change. Now there is an opinion that problems will be solved through electronic warfare. So, from what I know, from what experts told me, electronic warfare will work for another year and a half or two, no more. After that it will stop.

- Why?

— Because there is a technology for auto-locking a target. This, in fact, has been used in photographic and video equipment for a long time; autofocus, object tracking, etc. are based on this. This technology, if I remember correctly, began to be used by our Lancets in October-November last year. At the same time, news appeared that they had replaced cumulative ammunition with ammunition with a percussion core. As a result, these palliative solutions such as “canopies”, “barbecues”, and protective nets are designed to compensate for the lag behind the types that exist now.

But it's just a matter of time before auto-target tracking technology is transferred to FPV drones. A machine of a simpler class with a lower cost, more mass production, assembled from civilian components. The fact is that if we take electronic warfare, then, if my memory serves me correctly, the power of the jamming signal drops 16 times as the distance increases by 2 times. At long distances, electronic warfare is ineffective, as a result, its maximum effectiveness is at close range. The closer the drone flies to the source of interference radiation, the better the electronic warfare works. So, the auto-target acquisition technology eliminates this problem. You don’t need some kind of advanced artificial intelligence to guide this drone and look for something, no!

A man is driving this drone. He looks where the object to be destroyed is located, selects the target, presses the lock with a square and releases it. Since the drone continues to operate using the chip inside, it simply saw a group of pixels and flies towards it. He no longer needs to exchange a stream of data with the operator. And if so, it means that electronic warfare will not work at the critical, most advantageous distance for him. You don’t need to hit the person directly, you just select the target, send it, and the “bird” kills him.

There is no doubt at all that this situation will be realized. Back in 2020, a Turkish quadcopter “Hunter” (Kargu-2) in Libya independently, autonomously tracked down and killed an enemy infantryman. The UN investigated this case - and this was recognized as the first murder of a person by a combat robot. This is a confirmed case of the destruction of a person by a combat robot, which itself made the decision to attack. But the realities of 2020 and the realities of 2024 are fundamentally different. We see entering a new round of military-technical progress. Now it will be massive. There will be slightly different software solutions, most likely a different technical base.

Влад Шлепченко: «РЭБ осталось полтора-два года, дальше будут методы кинетического поражения»

Военный эксперт о том, как ВСУ не дали России развить успех и как войну изменили FPV-дроны

mkam.business-gazeta.ru

 

[EvaDK]

Regarding armored vehicles, the question is even more complicated. An FPV drone is a universal killer; it destroys both an individual person and equipment. The use of these drones will make all armored vehicles obsolete because no one has ever dealt with top-down defense. The turret roof tanks have very weak protection. Accordingly, now it is necessary to reconsider all approaches to the creation of an active protection complex (APS) and the possible use of turret installations. Everything will have to be reworked.

We can say that the Abrams is outdated, the T-90 is outdated, and even the Armata, which did not enter normal production, is also outdated. The FPV drone is a radical change. Now there is an opinion that problems will be solved through electronic warfare. So, from what I know, from what experts told me, electronic warfare will work for another year and a half or two, no more. After that it will stop.

The drones being utilized at the moment, will barely make a dent in the roof armor of a tank. You need armor piercing capability to destroy it and that capability is created by very high speeds, the design of the penetrator and the metal used. The succesful drone raids on tanks we usually see, are carried out by a drones dropping explosive devices into an armored vehicle through an open hatch - which completely solves the problem of defeating its armor.

Tanks aren't outdated when used correctly. Tanks are useless if the generals and crews don't know how to utilize them; same is true for all weapons or tools, not just tanks.

 

[banzay13]

Tanks aren't outdated when used correctly.

The full version of the interview also talks about this. It's up to the engineers

 

[PPQ_Purple]

A man is driving this drone. He looks where the object to be destroyed is located, selects the target, presses the lock with a square and releases it. Since the drone continues to operate using the chip inside, it simply saw a group of pixels and flies towards it. He no longer needs to exchange a stream of data with the operator. And if so, it means that electronic warfare will not work at the critical, most advantageous distance for him. You don’t need to hit the person directly, you just select the target, send it, and the “bird” kills him.

You just described an anti tank guided missile, first deployed circa the 1950s. And the tank is still alive and kicking. What will change is that future tanks and mechanized units will start including more organic light AA and anti drone assets. But that's already happening in the Ukraine.

The real reason why Russian tanks and IFV's proved so bad in the current war has far less to do with drones or the technical capabilities of tanks though than it does with the way they are employed. Basically, the Russian problem is that their army, much like the Soviet army before them is built around the idea of professional soldiers filling the roles of specialists like officers, radar operators, pilots, tank commanders etc. where as the bulk of combat infantry is supposed to come from conscripts. However, because this is technically not a war but a special military operation the Russian state can't actually deploy conscripts to those units. Plus doing so would kind of start a nation wide revolt against Putin.

So what you end up with is an army that is very much top heavy in that it has all these professional high tech specialists but without the meat to support them. Or, as one good commentator put it all metal but no manpower. That's why you see such atrocities like IFVs driving around without any infantry inside. The conscripts that are supposed to be that infantry simply aren't there.

And as squishy as they are infantry are the backbone of any army. All drones did was make this all too obvious by virtue of the fact that unlike most ATGMs and artillery shells they come with a youtube ready murder cam.

And it's not like this is anything new either. We have seen the exact same things during WW2 before everyone figured out tanks need infantry support. Just look at the British armored actions in North Africa or the Soviet tank tactics of the early war. Hell, we saw it back in 1916 at the Somme.

 

[banzay13]

You just described an anti tank guided missile, first deployed circa the 1950s. And the tank is still alive and kicking. What will change is that future tanks and mechanized units will start including more organic light AA and anti drone assets. But that's already happening in the Ukraine.

The real reason why Russian tanks and IFV's proved so bad in the current war has far less to do with drones or the technical capabilities of tanks though than it does with the way they are employed. Basically, the Russian problem is that their army, much like the Soviet army before them is built around the idea of professional soldiers filling the roles of specialists like officers, radar operators, pilots, tank commanders etc. where as the bulk of combat infantry is supposed to come from conscripts. However, because this is technically not a war but a special military operation the Russian state can't actually deploy conscripts to those units. Plus doing so would kind of start a nation wide revolt against Putin.

So what you end up with is an army that is very much top heavy in that it has all these professional high tech specialists but without the meat to support them. Or, as one good commentator put it all metal but no manpower. That's why you see such atrocities like IFVs driving around without any infantry inside. The conscripts that are supposed to be that infantry simply aren't there.

And as squishy as they are infantry are the backbone of any army. All drones did was make this all too obvious by virtue of the fact that unlike most ATGMs and artillery shells they come with a youtube ready murder cam.

Fpv are much cheaper and can be mass produced without heavy industries. And it's much safer for operator. And it can strike from different direction, to unprotected side, for example. And can go autonomous in future. So, I'm think it's quite new weapon

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Fpv are much cheaper and can be mass produced without heavy industries. And it's much safer for operator. And it can strike from different direction, to unprotected side, for example. And can go autonomous in future. So, I'm think it's quite new weapon

We already have modern ATGMs that can do that though, except for the autonomous part. And those, as well as their cheaper counterparts are already doing their fair share of killing in that war. A drone that is capable of doing the same but doing it autonomously is by definition going to cost more for frankly limited utility.

 

[Narz]

Want to decimate the beef industry? Bring in some freeze-dried foot-and-mouth virus from Indonesia. Well-trained biologists could find ways to make the transportation of some very nasty animal diseases undetectable to customs and border controls.

Good vegan activist idea

 

[Joij21]

Huge bombs, swarms of drones in aerial battles, robotic dogs with AI, and planes crashing into buildings are spectacular, but they're essentially mechanical and not sneaky enough to be really scary for me.
Sweat the slow stuff.

One person using a single drone could cause some minor nuisance over a few weekends until they became bored.
Load up a drone with a few thousand Giant Hogweed seeds and spread them along river banks, or over farming land. Drop Japanese knotweed rhizomes onto freshly ploughed fields or into the compost and mulch in gardens where celebrities live. Mess around with house prices where your imagined enemies live if they are compelled to report knotweed.

A band of 20 or more educated, well-trained people, hell-bent on revenge and destruction could create far more havoc in some places.

CRISPR and other genetic manipulation tools are still relatively new, but there are many people being trained in how to use them. I suspect some are eventually going to find ways to create biological weapons, and I don't mean diseases that kill humans, like ebola, anthrax and others. Those diseases are far too "obvious".

Imagine that the crazies in the 9/11 planes had more "imaginative", insidious ideas and plans. They could be still wandering around the US, unknown and undetected.

Spreading mild influenza, colds, and other diseases that cause a few percent productivity loss in some key target regions would be difficult to trace back to the perpetrators. Who would even know it was deliberate?

Fire ants not spreading fast enough for your evil overlord? Start moving nests further afield, interstate, or to Canada or...

Want to decimate the beef industry? Bring in some freeze-dried foot-and-mouth virus from Indonesia. Well-trained biologists could find ways to make the transportation of some very nasty animal diseases undetectable to customs and border controls.

IMO, be afraid of the small things. Be really afraid. They might already be lurking in your favourite pillow.
Sweet dreams!

Don't worry we'll just eradicate the enemy children in retaliation if they hurt ours. Eye for an eye, we did it in the nineteenth century to protect our children getting scalped and by God's grace through manifest destiny we'll do it again if we're forced to.

Take that Russians and Chinese! Be warned!

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Don't worry we'll just eradicate the enemy children in retaliation if they hurt ours. Eye for an eye, we did it in the nineteenth century to protect our children getting scalped and by God's grace through manifest destiny we'll do it again if we're forced to.

Take that Russians and Chinese! Be warned!

Seems like you are taking The Jesus very seriously when he said: Suffer little children!
If you've got a cough and runny nose it might just be some harmless Asian disease. Or it could be Czech, mate.

Czech Republic struggles to contain surge of whooping cough

Czech Republic struggles to contain surge of whooping cough

Prague's elderly mayor coughs and splutters during a public meeting as authorities battle increase.

www.bbc.com

 

[r16]

just before 1900 the Russian Tsar succeeded in getting the international community to declare a ban on aerial weapons . At the same time the first American SDI was in full swing , that Star Wars thing of Reagan's by the USN working on the development of an airplane in 1898 or whatever . Langley's Aerodrome or whatever , to be launched from patrolling ships in the Atlantic to bodily crash into invading German zeplins . To problem , the airships are just bags of gas , no harm can come to the intrepid Anglosaxons ... Considering the British aviators deploying to France were ordered to do the very same in 1914 . Really didn't work out . All attempts to fly ending in crashes .

the Wright Brothers ? Lucked out in their propeller choice , actual experts in bicycles so their structure "sound" and light enough to fly though it would be nothing but flimsy . At the debut of the C-5 , Lockmart took ads that its wingspan was greater than the distance Wright Flyer covered in its first flight . Of course Wright Brothers claimed their invention would end all wars . Their invention was of course of no import to US Authorities as engine reliability was not a thing and there was no way it could be accepted as a service thing .

did absolutely nothing until newspaper reports from Europe suggested they were doing their own thing there . The Wright strategy was claiming all the patents and curtailing others and even "others" from taking flight . The serious development US flying tech starts in 1908 or so when the Wrights took their plane to Europe only to discover they had become antiques ... And nobody would respect American issued patents .

already covered by the letter of the law . In 1907 the ban on aerial warfare was relaxed . Because Great Powers could now fly they decided they could fire guns from planes . Or something . Wikipedia says Great Britain and America had already objected to 1899 and 1907 only revolves around balloons , already some sort of a weapon since the Austrian attempt to burn down Venice in Napoleonic Wars . Anyhow , all aviators were brothers , knights of the air , breaking down boundaries for a bright future .

like bombing us in Libya , because . By 1910 interrupter gear to fire through the propeller arc was understood by all flying countries . Bombs were being dropped in tests , radio control of troops imagined and tested half way through . So , the aviators very confident and all , the first spat was on . Italians nombed an hospital . Which was clearly marked as such even in case it wasn't or it was more than an hospital but still marked . To prevent bombardment by the Italian Navy just a mile or two offshore . Italians of course rejected it . New era historical requirements are working to suggest it was an Arab hospital but anyhow . We Turks were invented in the 1940s in case you haven't heard . Once dropping bombs , we evil Turks fired back , brought down an Italian plane , had a POW . Italians say their dead pilot crashed into the sea , could not be us . The entire range of internet arguments of aerial warfare ? Invented by 1911 . A Russian was undeniably killed by evil Turkish groundfire or whatever in the Balkan Wars .

it was still brotherhood of the air . As hundreds of thousands of men clash underneath , wave a friendly wave to the "enemy aviator" , your brother in the air ... Naturally it was the British who ended that . After their defeat or whatever in Mons , they start firing on their brothers ! The Scottish Rites apply only when you die without resisting to become a number for bragging rights of the Anglosaxons . You are no brother of theirs if you shoot back at them ...

so , it is November 1914 or whatever . Some French plane closes on a German . It has a machine gun for the observer . Who fires 47 rounds one by one because fearing it would jam and it still does . Just after the German pilot is killed by a single round , almost by accident . The German plane is a two seater , the observer sitting in the front having a rifle (after the British started it) . The picture in some book still shows the German plane armed with a machine gun in 1915 style , because there was an uproar because it was "unsporting" ... You know , unlike evil Turks , Germans have civilization and they will get machine guns , too . Increasing the risk to brothers . It takes another 6 months until Roland Garros , some famous dude starts killing Germans in a crude set up of forward firing machine gun . Nope , still nothing . Finally on my birthday or whatever but of course ı wasn't around in 1915 , Garros clearly ignores clear orders given to him not to cross the battlelines , attacks some railway tunnel or whatever and gets shot down with a single bullet or whatever . It takes Germans a week or a weekend or whatever to "copy" it , even if the interrupter gear thing is like invented in 1910 or something . Because , you know , they couldn't stand Garros . Or whatever . It will take the British a yet another 6 months to do something about that .

the moral of the story is that it is all fun to watch a drone to chase a Russian into a building and watch him blown up or something while trying to defend himself with a stick . It is nothing when boots on the ground get the same . It is only an horror when it might happen to you .

 

[Akka]

People need to realize AI is NOT intelligence. It is not sapience. Modern generative AI is just a pattern recognition algorithm that can generate output based on data that is fed to it. And the more data the better.

And, hu, how is that fundamentally different than "true" intelligence ?

 

[r16]

what's the alarm ? The two bit Russian drone operations over America since 2012 or so have always been leaving American speechless . One of them was landed on a US Navy so that they could see it was a Chinese hobby one .

edit: The power AI as shown by the autocorrect ! Should read leaving AmericanS speechless and US Navy SHIP so that ...

 

[Moriarte]

And, hu, how is that fundamentally different than "true" intelligence ?

It isn't. Unless one believes in invisible man watching every move from high above. "True" intelligence is also much worse (than AI) at pattern recognition, error correction. Due to faulty memory, alcoholic tendencies, laziness and tendencies to disobey and misunderstand orders leading to devastating results. In some cases it is going to be much cheaper to build and maintain an army of intelligent drones, humanoid robots, etc. As opposed to training, housing, feeding and paying war pension to the relatives of holders of true intelligence.

 

[banzay13]

Time, then AI will shoot real ppl not so far

1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05468
2. https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/13/24099024/google-deepmind-ai-agent-sima-video-games

 

[Joij21]

Seems like you are taking The Jesus very seriously when he said: Suffer little children!
If you've got a cough and runny nose it might just be some harmless Asian disease. Or it could be Czech, mate.

Czech Republic struggles to contain surge of whooping cough

Czech Republic struggles to contain surge of whooping cough

Prague's elderly mayor coughs and splutters during a public meeting as authorities battle increase.

www.bbc.com

Well God personally nuked two cities filled with gays, and eradicated many other cities through his chosen people.

The God doctrine calls for overwhelming retaliatory force. Proportionality is Lucifer's will.