10 ms·

Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks

171 points by AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago

andrewstuart 6mo ago
Is there some sort of hybrid flying/stationary drone that flys in an sits to hold a ground position?
- samothrace 6mo ago
  Ammunition is heavy.
- throwaway85825 6mo ago
  Common tactic is for drones to wait next to a road and ambush.
AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago
"It takes infantry to hold territory" is still true I guess, but now it's a single operator in a bunker.
- verdverm 6mo ago
  Perhaps in the dead man zone, not sure this would work well where there is civilian population.
  - bee_rider 6mo ago
    I haven’t heard “dead man zone” (although I don’t really engage much with military stuff so maybe it is just an expression I’m not familiar with). I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language? I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or something maybe it reflects an even bleaker WW1 experience.
    - hkpack 6mo ago
      You can call it whatever you like: kill zone, gray zone, dead zone - everyone usually understands what does it means. Good article on what it is: https://texty.org.ua/projects/116021/20-kilometers-of-the-gray-zone-the-front-line-has-become-blurred/ https://texty.org.ua/projects/116021/20-kilometers-of-the-gr...
    - verdverm 6mo ago
      > I haven’t heard “dead man zone” It's the space between trenches. I've been watching a WW1 chronological documentary where they use it, but it's also been said in various ways, as you say. Said playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2vhKMBjSxOb_127vxjaRRC7yu2TJlJX https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2vhKMBjSxOb_127vxja... Time Ghost makes awesome chrono documentaries for the major wars. And a ton of mini series on special topics.
    - aleksiy123 6mo ago
      It seems like there could actually be a difference between them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man_zone - is related to bush fires but seems like it could apply to a battlefield? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man%27s_land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man%27s_land Something more akin to actually being in "measure" or strike distance vs just contested territory in between? Edit: Sibling comment I think clears it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_zone
      - deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
    - overfeed 6mo ago
      > I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. No man's land is generic and is used in other non-combat scenarios, it could appear in an HOA pamphlet. I like "dead man's zone" or "kill zone" as it clearly communicates both the contestation and lethality very clearly.
      - 6mo ago
pirbull 6mo ago
looks like a treadmill
mullingitover 6mo ago
I’ve been wondering when modern battlefields would get Team Fortress 2 sentries.
- wiseowise 6mo ago
  When French start supplying Spies.
SirFatty 6mo ago
Not a drone...
- tantalor 6mo ago
  How is it not a drone?
  - larsmaxfield 6mo ago
    It is a drone. But "drone" by itself is primarily used to refer to aircraft. I thought the title referred to some sort of ultra-endurance aircraft. Merriam-Webster defines drone as "uncrewed aircraft or vessel"; Cambridge limits it to "aircraft". When the drone is not an aircraft, it's often preceded with its type: for example, "underwater drone" or "ground drone".
CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
This is on my 2026 bingo card of things that never happened.
- roysting 6mo ago
  Maybe it's the ghost of Kiev controlling the robot army? You don't know. But they sure should get a $50 billion contract to make them
- garganzol 6mo ago
  Yep, until it hits you.
roysting 6mo ago
This smells more like military propagand, i.e., bullshit. There is no way this is honest or real, i.e., it somehow fought off a tactical unit trying to take the frontline that this drone was holding? Or was it just parked in some area where there was no tactical point of even taking the territory? Just by virtue of its nature, a single drone and/or a well placed dumb grenade, not even to mention likely a smoke grenade could have easily defeated this thing within seconds of deployment if there was any interest in taking the area this toy was "controlling". Someone is doing a literal con job to get military graft and fraud contracts.
- csours 6mo ago
  Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying. I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.
  - adrian_b 6mo ago
    The murderbot is remotely operated, so it did not held the ground by itself, though it is claimed that it might be able to do some things autonomously.
- kakacik 6mo ago
  There are real videos, even months old of exactly these 'land drones', equipped with good ol' .50 cal. In certain situations, they fought extremely well given no risk for crew. I mean killing off entire bmp-something transport including all crew with AP rounds, typically during night since it has night vision, zoom and so on. Verified also by drone flying nearby. Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.
- WhatsTheBigIdea 6mo ago
  Perhaps it would be helpful to view the claims of this article through a cost/benefit analysis? Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have. That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders. This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.
gclawes 6mo ago
Are these the ones controlled by Steam Decks?
- konchunas 6mo ago
  These ones by PS5 controllers I believe
outside2344 6mo ago
We really are trying our best to make Terminator reality aren't we?
- kakacik 6mo ago
  There was never any other option, given the direction of progress and basic human nature. I know I know, but this and that and not me nor you, yet here we are and this is just beginning.
- k__ 6mo ago
  Maybe drones will make human soldiers unacceptable in the future.
  - theptip 6mo ago
    They will certainly make human soldiers unviable. (I draw mostly dystopian conclusions from that prediction.)
    - throwaway85825 6mo ago
      Or it will just lead to lopsided massacres like the maxim gun did.
  - intheitmines 6mo ago
    “It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.” ― Richard Jordan Gatling, 1877
    - outside2344 6mo ago
      Should write a MIT case study on that in "Bad Hypotheses 101"
  - dguest 6mo ago
mrhottakes 6mo ago
[flagged]
- Ifkaluva 6mo ago
  I had a car hold its position for 6 months during the pandemic. It became occupied by rats, which was fun to deal with. They gathered some apples from a nearby tree, and apparently had set up a hard cider production facility.
  - mrhottakes 6mo ago
    i'm going to write a fawning article about cars standing still
  - roughly 6mo ago
    One of my favorite fun facts is that it’s nearly impossible to get a hamster drunk - their foraging method is to get, eg, grains and fruits and store them piled up underground in their burrow, where they of course ferment, so hamsters’ livers have become unreasonably good at metabolizing alcohol.
Animats 6mo ago
This is a standard unit from DevDroid.[1] Here's the marketing video.[2] It's available for pre-order. They also have a model with a grenade launcher. [1] https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oay_-cAlLXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oay_-cAlLXE
throwaway85825 6mo ago
The proportion of videos featuring drones taking out other drones is increasing.
dmos62 6mo ago
Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking. A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. Also, these can be life-savers for an outpost when weather conditions ground all drones. This is a fluff piece, but these machines might become very real very soon. They're already used for resupply and dropping mines. We have plenty of videos of that from both sides. A few months ago we had a video of one of these taking out an infantry carrier. This is not vaporware. It's a bad approach at worst, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows exponentially for many years to come.
- chasil 6mo ago
  Can we name them The Dinochrome Brigade? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome_Brigade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome...
- iammjm 6mo ago
  You are being dishonest. Those squads usually have SOME degree of drone, artillery and aviation support behind them. They are basically there to find out where the defenders are. Sure they are expendable, but they are just a part of the attack. I bet 24 hours sitting in a trench with FPVs, 152mms, and FABs exploding all over your position would change your mind as to the danger posed by those attacks you make fun of. Being at exactly this location vs kilometers away while remotely controlling a mobile gun turret makes ALL the difference
  - dmos62 6mo ago
    I am not making fun. If it seems that way, I misspoke. I think that any war is terrifying and this one more than any other I know of. The way I imagine the attacks this UGV defended against is small groups of men deemed expendable knowingly going to their very likely deaths. Yes, this is part of a bigger Russian strategy which is very dangerous and unfortunately, so far, too effective.
aprentic 6mo ago
Reading between the lines of the article it seems advanced but not too surprising. I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc. The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means but it sounds like, "if you see anything moving in this arc, take a few shots at them". Presumably there's some AI to prevent it from wasting ammo on really dumb decoys. A "simple" mobile automated turret has been around for a while. The novelty they would be demonstrating is essentially battlefield robustness. They aren't claiming that this machine can operate completely autonomously for 6 weeks but the incremental pieces are still hard.
- BLKNSLVR 6mo ago
  I believe the movie Aliens (1986) has one of the best movie uses of auto turrets.
  - rasz 6mo ago
    Sourcing enough functioning GRID laptops might pose a challenge https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/grid-os-development-tools-resurrected-wrote-ua-571-c-remote-sentry-weapon-terminal-display-from-aliens-as-test-case.1239812/ https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/grid-os-developmen...
    - fractallyte 6mo ago
      The name gives it away: UA 571-C remote gun sentry Obviously developed in Ukraine ;-)
- dmos62 6mo ago
  The UGVs are manually controlled. If you follow the source link there are some shots of xbox-like controllers.
- mikrotikker 6mo ago
naizarak 6mo ago
Nice marketing pitch. In reality it was probably parked at an empty crossroads 10 miles behind the frontline, taking potshots at "suspected" enemy positions.
- iammjm 6mo ago
  Why are talking about something you have no idea about? There are multiple videos of this system engaging in combat missions. There are first-person videos from them accompanied by footage of recon drones flying above them. And some of those videos are from last year already.
ck2 6mo ago
So what happens in a few years when a submarine pulls up some miles off US coast and unleashes 100 super-automated drones to terrorize the country? Heck maybe not even a sub needed, some smaller country could have an automated tiny raft too small to be seen on radar tow in the drones They could charge via phantom power from powerlines and will find a way around GPS jamming
- AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago
  I think you could just ship generic robot dogs in a container and have local contractors straw-purchase firearms, 3d-print cradles, and combine them. None of the contractors would need to know what they were doing.
superjan 6mo ago
But what if it gets hacked by the russians?
- trvz 6mo ago
  Considering the usual behavior of the Russian military, it’ll keep firing at Russian soldiers.
crazygringo 6mo ago
Are these called drones? I thought drones flew. The article calls this a "Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle armed with a machine gun" and the headline calls it a "Ukrainian Combat Robot". Not a "drone" like the submitter's title has. Edit: it seems like the creator calls it a "droid". Is that just them, or is that becoming standard terminology for a kind of ground-based "soldier-robot"? See: https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw
- tart-lemonade 6mo ago
  The <title> tag is "Ukrainian Drone Holds Position for 6 Weeks". OP probably hit the "fetch title" button or copy-pasted from a chat app embed when submitting.
- esseph 6mo ago
  Drone is just a generic term. There are more specific terms for specific types of vehicles, and some of those terms have changed over the past few decades. UGV = unmanned ground vehicle UAS = unmanned aerial system UAV = unmanned aerial vehicle UUV = unmanned underwater vehicle Etc
reenorap 6mo ago
> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location. Why? Isn't the advantage that it can stay in a position indefinitely? Does it not have infrared cameras, etc?
- parliament32 6mo ago
  Powered by what, exactly? Neither lugging around a few tons of fuel or painting a bullseye on yourself via solar panel array sound practical.
krunck 6mo ago
Why is no one using EMP devices against drones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse_(NNEMP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nucl...
- alephnerd 6mo ago
  They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.
  - DoctorOetker 6mo ago
    A magnet, a conventional explosive, and a coil on a flexible cylinder of polymer film; are power electronics truly necessary for a localized EMP?
    - alephnerd 6mo ago
      Yes. Range, accuracy, targeting, and reducing blast radius matter. Not sure what else I can say so I'll leave it at that, and will not engage with further comments.
    - jacquesm 6mo ago
      I'll bet you could make it in a weekend.
      - DoctorOetker 6mo ago
        Only if one understands the different failure modes, but either way the average HN reader shouldn't try this at home or you'll get in trouble with radio spectrum pollution.
- AngryData 6mo ago
  Probably because currently they cause more collateral damage than is useful. Your own equipment will be damaged too leaving a bunch of unguided soldiers with just their guns and rations that are still an obstacle an enemy can't walk through, and it will piss off anybody within 1000 miles when you start disrupting their telecommunications with random noise if not cause actual damage. If they are powerful enough you could potentially cause some mistaken nuclear blast warnings too, although perhaps without a gamma ray component it would still be rightfully ignored.
aogaili 6mo ago
At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day? Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game? In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose. If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.
- worik 6mo ago
  > At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day? No. Young men being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands. Not a game
  - aogaili 6mo ago
    I know it is not. I'm just saying in the future if all became drones war and we disallow genocide, then what do you think will happen? Of course I acknowledge real life is lost right now, all I'm saying give politicians a video game to play instead of having drone wars. Would you rather have politicians commit genocides and destroy real economics or play drone like video games? which side are you with?
- neonstatic 6mo ago
  > abstract it away and play video game? What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens > In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked. > they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat. Your ideas are based on the idea of winning in a closed-system game. War is waged by people. Some people actually want the other people to die.
giacomoforte 6mo ago
This is surely the future. At some point we will eventually have battles fought entirely by pilot(less) drones? And then war becomes purely economical.
- m101 6mo ago
  It would start economical and then some side would eventually resort to the meat grinder.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
spyder 6mo ago
But how it was not destroyed by flying Russian drones? Did it shot them down? Or did it have some anti-drone support unit helping it?
- worik 6mo ago
  I have an educated guess. Flying drones are lethal, but fairly random. Attacking a point target, which will have anti-drone support, is not what they are for. And too cheap for a missile which is the weapon for a point target
philip1209 6mo ago
> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location. Interesting - why?
lovegrenoble 6mo ago
Another con job...
tim333 6mo ago
There's a video with footage of a similar land drone and interviews with the operators https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw
bithavoc 6mo ago
Today I learned aerial drone is not the only type of drone there is.
jopython 6mo ago
Article doesn't talk about battery life.
parliament32 6mo ago
This wasn't immediately obvious to me, but it's important to note this unit is remotely controlled. The article made it sound autonomous. Further, the unit went back to base nightly (for maintenance / battery swaps I assume). https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw
burnt-resistor 6mo ago
US MIC graft and corruption has created a woefully obsolete, dinosaur military force adept at only fighting symmetric wars of 1995. Infantry meat assaults, paratroopers, tanks, and all expensive big kinetic systems are all largely obsolete like castles and mounted knights. What needs to happen is automated factories of highly-integrated, standardized, cheap, fast, disposable drone/rocket/loiter and small, light, fast ground and marine systems that can be rapidly deployed in great numbers via standardized containers (20'/40' ISO perhaps) by unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles. The hand-building of fragile, commodity, bespoke, hobby-grade drones isn't scalable or optimized even though it technically works so far, but it's obviously not the best way to sustain and automate production on an industrial scale for lowest cost and most efficient use of human effort. The company/s|country/ies that can produce orders-of-magnitude more drones and drone supervisors/pilots "wins".
silexia 6mo ago
Welcome to skynet.

171 points by AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago

andrewstuart 6mo ago

Is there some sort of hybrid flying/stationary drone that flys in an sits to hold a ground position?

samothrace 6mo ago
Ammunition is heavy.
throwaway85825 6mo ago
Common tactic is for drones to wait next to a road and ambush.

AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago

"It takes infantry to hold territory" is still true I guess, but now it's a single operator in a bunker.

verdverm 6mo ago
Perhaps in the dead man zone, not sure this would work well where there is civilian population.
- bee_rider 6mo ago
  I haven’t heard “dead man zone” (although I don’t really engage much with military stuff so maybe it is just an expression I’m not familiar with). I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. Out of curiosity, did you translate “dead man zone” from another language? I just find it interesting because it seems conceptually similar but much bleaker, so if it comes from, like, French or German or something maybe it reflects an even bleaker WW1 experience.
  - hkpack 6mo ago
    You can call it whatever you like: kill zone, gray zone, dead zone - everyone usually understands what does it means. Good article on what it is: https://texty.org.ua/projects/116021/20-kilometers-of-the-gray-zone-the-front-line-has-become-blurred/ https://texty.org.ua/projects/116021/20-kilometers-of-the-gr...
  - verdverm 6mo ago
    > I haven’t heard “dead man zone” It's the space between trenches. I've been watching a WW1 chronological documentary where they use it, but it's also been said in various ways, as you say. Said playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2vhKMBjSxOb_127vxjaRRC7yu2TJlJX https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2vhKMBjSxOb_127vxja... Time Ghost makes awesome chrono documentaries for the major wars. And a ton of mini series on special topics.
  - aleksiy123 6mo ago
    It seems like there could actually be a difference between them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man_zone - is related to bush fires but seems like it could apply to a battlefield? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man%27s_land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man%27s_land Something more akin to actually being in "measure" or strike distance vs just contested territory in between? Edit: Sibling comment I think clears it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_zone
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
  - overfeed 6mo ago
    > I think “no man’s land” is a pretty popular and similar expression. No man's land is generic and is used in other non-combat scenarios, it could appear in an HOA pamphlet. I like "dead man's zone" or "kill zone" as it clearly communicates both the contestation and lethality very clearly.
    - 6mo ago

pirbull 6mo ago

looks like a treadmill

mullingitover 6mo ago

I’ve been wondering when modern battlefields would get Team Fortress 2 sentries.

wiseowise 6mo ago
When French start supplying Spies.

SirFatty 6mo ago

Not a drone...

tantalor 6mo ago
How is it not a drone?
- larsmaxfield 6mo ago
  It is a drone. But "drone" by itself is primarily used to refer to aircraft. I thought the title referred to some sort of ultra-endurance aircraft. Merriam-Webster defines drone as "uncrewed aircraft or vessel"; Cambridge limits it to "aircraft". When the drone is not an aircraft, it's often preceded with its type: for example, "underwater drone" or "ground drone".

CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago

This is on my 2026 bingo card of things that never happened.

roysting 6mo ago
Maybe it's the ghost of Kiev controlling the robot army? You don't know. But they sure should get a $50 billion contract to make them
garganzol 6mo ago
Yep, until it hits you.

roysting 6mo ago

This smells more like military propagand, i.e., bullshit. There is no way this is honest or real, i.e., it somehow fought off a tactical unit trying to take the frontline that this drone was holding? Or was it just parked in some area where there was no tactical point of even taking the territory? Just by virtue of its nature, a single drone and/or a well placed dumb grenade, not even to mention likely a smoke grenade could have easily defeated this thing within seconds of deployment if there was any interest in taking the area this toy was "controlling". Someone is doing a literal con job to get military graft and fraud contracts.

csours 6mo ago
Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying. I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.
- adrian_b 6mo ago
  The murderbot is remotely operated, so it did not held the ground by itself, though it is claimed that it might be able to do some things autonomously.
kakacik 6mo ago
There are real videos, even months old of exactly these 'land drones', equipped with good ol' .50 cal. In certain situations, they fought extremely well given no risk for crew. I mean killing off entire bmp-something transport including all crew with AP rounds, typically during night since it has night vision, zoom and so on. Verified also by drone flying nearby. Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.
WhatsTheBigIdea 6mo ago
Perhaps it would be helpful to view the claims of this article through a cost/benefit analysis? Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have. That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders. This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.

gclawes 6mo ago

Are these the ones controlled by Steam Decks?

konchunas 6mo ago
These ones by PS5 controllers I believe

outside2344 6mo ago

We really are trying our best to make Terminator reality aren't we?

kakacik 6mo ago
There was never any other option, given the direction of progress and basic human nature. I know I know, but this and that and not me nor you, yet here we are and this is just beginning.
k__ 6mo ago
Maybe drones will make human soldiers unacceptable in the future.
- theptip 6mo ago
  They will certainly make human soldiers unviable. (I draw mostly dystopian conclusions from that prediction.)
  - throwaway85825 6mo ago
    Or it will just lead to lopsided massacres like the maxim gun did.
- intheitmines 6mo ago
  “It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.” ― Richard Jordan Gatling, 1877
  - outside2344 6mo ago
    Should write a MIT case study on that in "Bad Hypotheses 101"
- dguest 6mo ago

mrhottakes 6mo ago

[flagged]

Ifkaluva 6mo ago
I had a car hold its position for 6 months during the pandemic. It became occupied by rats, which was fun to deal with. They gathered some apples from a nearby tree, and apparently had set up a hard cider production facility.
- mrhottakes 6mo ago
  i'm going to write a fawning article about cars standing still
- roughly 6mo ago
  One of my favorite fun facts is that it’s nearly impossible to get a hamster drunk - their foraging method is to get, eg, grains and fruits and store them piled up underground in their burrow, where they of course ferment, so hamsters’ livers have become unreasonably good at metabolizing alcohol.

Animats 6mo ago

This is a standard unit from DevDroid.[1] Here's the marketing video.[2] It's available for pre-order. They also have a model with a grenade launcher. [1] https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oay_-cAlLXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oay_-cAlLXE

throwaway85825 6mo ago

The proportion of videos featuring drones taking out other drones is increasing.

dmos62 6mo ago

Someone here said "[Russian] tactical units", "smoke grenades". They must be joking. A drone like this is defending against 2-3 50-year-olds without military experience wading through a bombed out tree-line into almost certain death, because there are literal firing squads waiting if they don't. With a huge round like 12.7, all you have to do is fire pot shots in the general vicinity while drone pilots do the rest. Also, these can be life-savers for an outpost when weather conditions ground all drones. This is a fluff piece, but these machines might become very real very soon. They're already used for resupply and dropping mines. We have plenty of videos of that from both sides. A few months ago we had a video of one of these taking out an infantry carrier. This is not vaporware. It's a bad approach at worst, but I wouldn't be surprised if this grows exponentially for many years to come.

chasil 6mo ago
Can we name them The Dinochrome Brigade? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome_Brigade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome...
iammjm 6mo ago
You are being dishonest. Those squads usually have SOME degree of drone, artillery and aviation support behind them. They are basically there to find out where the defenders are. Sure they are expendable, but they are just a part of the attack. I bet 24 hours sitting in a trench with FPVs, 152mms, and FABs exploding all over your position would change your mind as to the danger posed by those attacks you make fun of. Being at exactly this location vs kilometers away while remotely controlling a mobile gun turret makes ALL the difference
- dmos62 6mo ago
  I am not making fun. If it seems that way, I misspoke. I think that any war is terrifying and this one more than any other I know of. The way I imagine the attacks this UGV defended against is small groups of men deemed expendable knowingly going to their very likely deaths. Yes, this is part of a bigger Russian strategy which is very dangerous and unfortunately, so far, too effective.

aprentic 6mo ago

Reading between the lines of the article it seems advanced but not too surprising. I assume that at night when it "withdrew to a covered location" there was opportunity for maintenance, battery swaps, etc. The article says that it successfully carried out "multiple calls for fire." That sounds like over those 45 days there were multiple missions to provide suppressive fire. They're not explicit about what that means but it sounds like, "if you see anything moving in this arc, take a few shots at them". Presumably there's some AI to prevent it from wasting ammo on really dumb decoys. A "simple" mobile automated turret has been around for a while. The novelty they would be demonstrating is essentially battlefield robustness. They aren't claiming that this machine can operate completely autonomously for 6 weeks but the incremental pieces are still hard.

BLKNSLVR 6mo ago
I believe the movie Aliens (1986) has one of the best movie uses of auto turrets.
- rasz 6mo ago
  Sourcing enough functioning GRID laptops might pose a challenge https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C https://github.com/tschak909/UA571C https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/grid-os-development-tools-resurrected-wrote-ua-571-c-remote-sentry-weapon-terminal-display-from-aliens-as-test-case.1239812/ https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/grid-os-developmen...
  - fractallyte 6mo ago
    The name gives it away: UA 571-C remote gun sentry Obviously developed in Ukraine ;-)
dmos62 6mo ago
The UGVs are manually controlled. If you follow the source link there are some shots of xbox-like controllers.
mikrotikker 6mo ago

naizarak 6mo ago

Nice marketing pitch. In reality it was probably parked at an empty crossroads 10 miles behind the frontline, taking potshots at "suspected" enemy positions.

iammjm 6mo ago
Why are talking about something you have no idea about? There are multiple videos of this system engaging in combat missions. There are first-person videos from them accompanied by footage of recon drones flying above them. And some of those videos are from last year already.

ck2 6mo ago

So what happens in a few years when a submarine pulls up some miles off US coast and unleashes 100 super-automated drones to terrorize the country? Heck maybe not even a sub needed, some smaller country could have an automated tiny raft too small to be seen on radar tow in the drones They could charge via phantom power from powerlines and will find a way around GPS jamming

AftHurrahWinch 6mo ago
I think you could just ship generic robot dogs in a container and have local contractors straw-purchase firearms, 3d-print cradles, and combine them. None of the contractors would need to know what they were doing.

superjan 6mo ago

But what if it gets hacked by the russians?

trvz 6mo ago
Considering the usual behavior of the Russian military, it’ll keep firing at Russian soldiers.

crazygringo 6mo ago

Are these called drones? I thought drones flew. The article calls this a "Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle armed with a machine gun" and the headline calls it a "Ukrainian Combat Robot". Not a "drone" like the submitter's title has. Edit: it seems like the creator calls it a "droid". Is that just them, or is that becoming standard terminology for a kind of ground-based "soldier-robot"? See: https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw

tart-lemonade 6mo ago
The <title> tag is "Ukrainian Drone Holds Position for 6 Weeks". OP probably hit the "fetch title" button or copy-pasted from a chat app embed when submitting.
esseph 6mo ago
Drone is just a generic term. There are more specific terms for specific types of vehicles, and some of those terms have changed over the past few decades. UGV = unmanned ground vehicle UAS = unmanned aerial system UAV = unmanned aerial vehicle UUV = unmanned underwater vehicle Etc

reenorap 6mo ago

> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location. Why? Isn't the advantage that it can stay in a position indefinitely? Does it not have infrared cameras, etc?

parliament32 6mo ago
Powered by what, exactly? Neither lugging around a few tons of fuel or painting a bullseye on yourself via solar panel array sound practical.

krunck 6mo ago

Why is no one using EMP devices against drones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse_(NNEMP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse#Non-nucl...

alephnerd 6mo ago
They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.
- DoctorOetker 6mo ago
  A magnet, a conventional explosive, and a coil on a flexible cylinder of polymer film; are power electronics truly necessary for a localized EMP?
  - alephnerd 6mo ago
    Yes. Range, accuracy, targeting, and reducing blast radius matter. Not sure what else I can say so I'll leave it at that, and will not engage with further comments.
  - jacquesm 6mo ago
    I'll bet you could make it in a weekend.
    - DoctorOetker 6mo ago
      Only if one understands the different failure modes, but either way the average HN reader shouldn't try this at home or you'll get in trouble with radio spectrum pollution.
AngryData 6mo ago
Probably because currently they cause more collateral damage than is useful. Your own equipment will be damaged too leaving a bunch of unguided soldiers with just their guns and rations that are still an obstacle an enemy can't walk through, and it will piss off anybody within 1000 miles when you start disrupting their telecommunications with random noise if not cause actual damage. If they are powerful enough you could potentially cause some mistaken nuclear blast warnings too, although perhaps without a gamma ray component it would still be rightfully ignored.

aogaili 6mo ago

At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day? Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game? In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose. If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.

worik 6mo ago
> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day? No. Young men being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands. Not a game
- aogaili 6mo ago
  I know it is not. I'm just saying in the future if all became drones war and we disallow genocide, then what do you think will happen? Of course I acknowledge real life is lost right now, all I'm saying give politicians a video game to play instead of having drone wars. Would you rather have politicians commit genocides and destroy real economics or play drone like video games? which side are you with?
neonstatic 6mo ago
> abstract it away and play video game? What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens > In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked. > they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat. Your ideas are based on the idea of winning in a closed-system game. War is waged by people. Some people actually want the other people to die.

giacomoforte 6mo ago

This is surely the future. At some point we will eventually have battles fought entirely by pilot(less) drones? And then war becomes purely economical.

m101 6mo ago
It would start economical and then some side would eventually resort to the meat grinder.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

spyder 6mo ago

But how it was not destroyed by flying Russian drones? Did it shot them down? Or did it have some anti-drone support unit helping it?

worik 6mo ago
I have an educated guess. Flying drones are lethal, but fairly random. Attacking a point target, which will have anti-drone support, is not what they are for. And too cheap for a missile which is the weapon for a point target

philip1209 6mo ago

> each evening, it withdrew to a covered location. Interesting - why?

lovegrenoble 6mo ago

Another con job...

tim333 6mo ago

There's a video with footage of a similar land drone and interviews with the operators https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw https://youtu.be/Ir6sNgW91Hw

bithavoc 6mo ago

Today I learned aerial drone is not the only type of drone there is.

jopython 6mo ago

Article doesn't talk about battery life.

parliament32 6mo ago

This wasn't immediately obvious to me, but it's important to note this unit is remotely controlled. The article made it sound autonomous. Further, the unit went back to base nightly (for maintenance / battery swaps I assume). https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw https://devdroid.tech/en/catalog/droid-tw

burnt-resistor 6mo ago

US MIC graft and corruption has created a woefully obsolete, dinosaur military force adept at only fighting symmetric wars of 1995. Infantry meat assaults, paratroopers, tanks, and all expensive big kinetic systems are all largely obsolete like castles and mounted knights. What needs to happen is automated factories of highly-integrated, standardized, cheap, fast, disposable drone/rocket/loiter and small, light, fast ground and marine systems that can be rapidly deployed in great numbers via standardized containers (20'/40' ISO perhaps) by unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles. The hand-building of fragile, commodity, bespoke, hobby-grade drones isn't scalable or optimized even though it technically works so far, but it's obviously not the best way to sustain and automate production on an industrial scale for lowest cost and most efficient use of human effort. The company/s|country/ies that can produce orders-of-magnitude more drones and drone supervisors/pilots "wins".

silexia 6mo ago

Welcome to skynet.