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Search and rescue (lemmy.today)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 11 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I'm not sure. Wars are won by costing the enemy's money these days. So they are using drones on infrastructure, becuase that costs more than soldiers.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (6 children)

    Regardless of how wars are won, they are prevented by altering the risk picture for the enemy.

    This is also why many smaller NATO states are scrambling to procure long-range missiles outside of US control. In a hybrid war with Russia, they would control the escalation ladder - I.e. be able to yeet some high explosives at powerplants and fuel depots - rather than relying on Washington to grant permission.

    Ukraine has been doing similar with the flamingo and other cruise 'missile drone' projects. Iran as well - look at their response to US aggression.

    The trajectory is clear, mass precision strike is cheap and corresponding defense is not. Having a stockpile of millions of flying problems for your enemy to consider is the best deterrent short of nuclear weapons.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (5 children)

    Right, but I thought you were saying we would see these things to the posts drones that can follow humans through the forest, not the general drones for hitting nonhuman targets.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    Ukraine built 8 million drones in the first half of 2026. Many different types, but the majority of them are designed to directly attack humans and light vehicles.

    The limiting factor in their deployment is the number of operators - currently the most common operating model is 1 drone per operator at a time, which means there are only so many drones in the air at the same time. These kinds of hunting algorithms will allow the scale of drone warfare to increase by loosening the operator bottleneck.

    There is force generation (recruitment, manufacturing, organization, etc.) and force employment (actually using those resources to achieve goals). Force generation for unmanned systems is already mature - again we are making millions of these things already - further advancement will come in force employment.

    And what a fresh hell that will be.

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  • [–] 1 point 15 hours ago (1 child)

    Got any source for those numbers. I am fine with being wrong, but my impression from things I have read was that they were focused on drones that hit targets farther away. And that human targeting drones were the lesser of the production focus. The stuff I read talked about fiber optic cable for controlling the smaller ones becuase the jamming was too good. But it took a lot of cable. And each one required a circuit board and all that. The electronics were the harder to get part, so a bigger drone made better use of it. But like I said, I could have gotten the wrong impression.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago

    There aren't sources that directly confirm the exact numbers of drones across types, as that is sensitive information in the middle of a war.

    There are sources that put the FPV drone number in the millions annually, with long range strike being in the thousands. Source

    By spring 2026, Ukraine produces an estimated 1–4M FPV attack drones per year across hundreds of distributed production facilities, 500–1,000+ long-range strike drones per month, advanced naval surface drones, and growing categories of reconnaissance and electronic warfare UAVs.

    Statements from the Prime minister and defense minister agree Source

    Ukrainian defense companies intend to manufacture nearly 3,000 cruise missiles and drone missiles, as well as at least 30,000 long-range drones. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated ... Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said on 21 September 2024 that Ukraine plans to produce several million drones in 2025

    Millions manufactured with thousands planned to be long-range strike, the balance is short-range drones. Source

    Small FPV drones: Annual production target of 6 to 7 million units, equating to roughly 500,000 per month.

    Manufacturing base: Approximately 450 to 500 drone enterprises operating on a distributed model across the country. At theoretical maximum capacity, this network can push 19,000 aerial vehicles into the battlespace per day.

    Long-range strike drones: The FP-series (long-range fixed-wing strike UAVs) has surpassed 100,000 units in cumulative production.

    And then there's the coming swarm technology to increase force employment:

    On 17 February 2026, Minister of Strategic Industries Herman Smetanin announced the successful trial of AI-based drone swarm technology. Seven teams of manufacturers demonstrated a single-operator system capable of controlling dozens of drones in an autonomous network. These swarms plan their own actions and predict the behaviour of others within the network, allowing the operator to focus solely on target authorisation. Source

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