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[anewaname]

...

There will be changes to drone warfare that will make the current drones seem low-tech and will destroy them fairly easily, and it will probably involve a distributed drone network that is run by an AI and their human partners, and uses different drones for different functionality and moves them around a lot.

So far the best countermeasure to drones has easily been electronic warfare (~75% of drone losses are due to EW as of ~6 months ago), although basic stuff like "just stick a tarp over it" and "make a giant chickenwire cage around your tank" has been just as important.
Wired drones are a counter to EW (but comes with obvious limitations). Presumably sticking AI in them will be an even harder counter, but will come with cost, technical limitations, and sophistication requirements of its own.

Not AI in drones, but AI controlling a network of drones...The drone would be a typical dumb drone, for recon or attack, running on a wire or not. The AI would be in a far off bunker.

AI can already beat "pro" drone racers in obstacle courses. That AI training will arrive on the battlefield and drone terminals probably already collect data for that purpose. Humans already have one drone operator flying recon while another human guides the bomb-drone to the target. AI will be taught to control both drones and that will be one type of a distributed drone network run by AI. It only scales up from there until the AI is operating 90% of the drones and the humans 10%.

...
Preventing drone assassinations and terrorist attacks outside of war is really going to suck.
...

I remember questioning how the first Trump would-be assassin found the only accessible roof and later they said he had used his drone from a distance to scout and the drone and home-made explosives were in his car. There were no drones flying over the site, so it is also possible the event's protections included signal tracking and jammers at-the-ready, and possibly some direct-fire anti-drone system. Then months later when Russia started using tethered drones, my question became, what if the Trump shooter had used some tethered drone-bomb instead? And, how long before this sort of attack is used as a variant of a mass-shooter event? Yeah it is going to suck... because it means those who can protect themselves will do it at the expense of everyone else. And with the confluence of oligarchical-everything, it will mean less freedom for those who don't have the wealth or are not subservient.

[MonkeyHead]

The only thing stopping drone attacks replacing mass shootings in the US is the relative difficulty in obtaining explosives in sufficient quantities compared to semi-auto weapons.

Shit, that's a depressing argument.

Back to topic: if a fibre line could be detected in some way, it would give away the position of it's operators. How could it be detected? The optical properties of the fibre opens a possibility, but how could you detect it's small refractive effects?

[Great Order]

After a certain point you just have slow wire-guided munitions.

[Funk]

But cheap and long ranged.
This is really being a war where both sides are spread out.

[anewaname]

The thumbnail/image for this vid shows a cluster of the fiber cables from wired drones used in Kursk, and he talks about them in the first few minutes. If I recall correctly, he estimates the wireless drones might cost $500 and hit 20% of the time, and the wired drones might cost $5000 but hit 80% of the time.

[Starver]

If I recall correctly, he estimates the wireless drones might cost $500 and hit 20% of the time, and the wired drones might cost $5000 but hit 80% of the time.

2.5:1 cost-benefit ratio, if I've not badly inverted my mental arithmatic over your figures. Wireless still does the business. (Depends how much weight you put upon wasting time on cheaper ones failing easier, of course.)

[lemon10]

Getting the hit in while you have a chance can be more then worth that extra cost though, because if you miss then they *know* the other side has the bead on them and they will reposition and/or try to figure out where the attack came from and counterattack.
~6000 to hit and KO a piece of enemy machinery worth hundreds of thousands or even millions is a excellent deal. Obviously not as good as 2.5k to do the same, but at that scale the difference is almost peanuts.

[Strongpoint]

If I recall correctly, he estimates the wireless drones might cost $500 and hit 20% of the time, and the wired drones might cost $5000 but hit 80% of the time.

This depends on how much jamming equipment the enemy has in the particular sector of the front. Important targets can be protected to the degree that sending wireless ones is a plain waste.

[King Zultan]

Why haven't they made anything similar to the goliath tracked mine, or are things on the ground easier to take out than things in the air?

[Eric Blank]

Chucking a grenade at it would do it, maybe shooting it once or twice. It's not going to be stealthier than a soldier, not going to be much faster and is definitely going to get spotted if you try to move fast, and can easily be defeated by difficult terrain and obstacles. They're not going to be striking very far behind enemy lines that's for sure.

Remote controlled ground tech is probably more useful for ambushes and defenses at the moment; watching suspected pathways with go-pro cameras and claymores/grenades that can be remotely detonated, maybe as sophisticated as a remote operated light machine gun turret you can hide under vegetation, or similarly a sniper rifle turret you can abandon or incinerate after picking off a target. Or literally just watching over an area and alerting you to movement.

[Funk]

Why haven't they made anything similar to the goliath tracked mine, or are things on the ground easier to take out than things in the air?

They have tried that.

The problem is getting it across the frount, there huge dense mine fields that can't be cleared due to overwatch and supporting fires, with remote mineing repairing them.
Ukraine is now home to some of the biggest, longest, deepist and most extensive defensive lines on the planet.

Even if you got it past the mines and front line of drones, there nothing really to blow up, the odd trench an tiny villages of a few houses.

Unlike in Iraq an Sriya there no contested urban areas to let a VBIED hide untill deployment, just huge flat fields and every one has enough anti tank weapons make them into scrap.

[Strongpoint]

Watched Witkoff's interview with Carlson... ****, ****, ****, ****, ***!

All he does is repeat Russian propaganda including hits like "Russian-speaking aka Russian people of several regions of Ukraine voted to join Russia on a referendum."

[Sirus]

If you're talking about Tucker Carlson, yes he is indeed. He's the dude who got that interview with Putin a year or so back, and he is infamous as the guy who tells outright falsehoods as if they were truth and then defend himself from critics by claiming to not be "news". Dude will shill anything if paid enough and he's clearly got connections to Russia.

[Strongpoint]

If you're talking about Tucker Carlson, yes he is indeed. He's the dude who got that interview with Putin a year or so back, and he is infamous as the guy who tells outright falsehoods as if they were truth and then defend himself from critics by claiming to not be "news". Dude will shill anything if paid enough and he's clearly got connections to Russia.

No, it is normal for Carlson. I know him well.

Witkoff, the guy who negotiates with Putin, saying such things is... not a good sign.

[Loud Whispers]

Why haven't they made anything similar to the goliath tracked mine, or are things on the ground easier to take out than things in the air?

They have tried that.

The problem is getting it across the frount, there huge dense mine fields that can't be cleared due to overwatch and supporting fires, with remote mineing repairing them.
Ukraine is now home to some of the biggest, longest, deepist and most extensive defensive lines on the planet.

Even if you got it past the mines and front line of drones, there nothing really to blow up, the odd trench an tiny villages of a few houses.

Unlike in Iraq an Sriya there no contested urban areas to let a VBIED hide untill deployment, just huge flat fields and every one has enough anti tank weapons make them into scrap.

Using this to calculate fatal distances from a 6 ton explosive charge packed in a tank

Injury/Fatality to Personnel Range (m)

Fatal Distance	41.94
Lung Damage	66.47
Eardrum Rupture	170.92
Damage to Brick Structures (m)
Houses completely demolished	83.71

Makes it easier to appreciate how even if the tank doesn't get anywhere near to a trench or fortified place, it only needs to get within 150m of soldiers to cause damage and within 70m to cause life threatening damage. These numbers better help visualise the blast wave when cameras tend to only capture the smaller fireblast