HN Reader

They may kind of suck but even so they are still transforming the war in Ukraine. A month or so ago FPV drones took out much of Russia's nuclear bomber fleet (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44150789), something like 80% of battlefield casualties are due to drones, neither side pretty much can use tanks because they get taken out by drones. It's a huge change in war fighting.

One stat: "In May alone, Ukrainian drones destroyed over 89,000 Russian targets" https://www.newsweek.com/robert-brovdi-ukraine-russia-war-dr...

They've recently promoted the 'Birds of Madyar' guy to run the newly formed Unmanned Systems Forces and are moving to a unified drone line defence the whole way along the frontline. Update on that: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2073811/russia-army-ukr...

Also re drones not having the effect of artillery, fair enough but Ukraine has been using FPV drones to destroy Russia's artillery. Here's footage of one of it's most modern being taken out https://youtu.be/DMOjOJnAd8A?t=161 It's kind of asymmetric - the artillery can't similarly take out the drones because they are too small and replaceable.

Many of the issues sound like issues coming from using improvised civilian hobbyist tech and doctrine being in its infancy.

If current FPV drones are bit lackluster, it doesn't preclude 'next generation' that are purposefully developed for military use won't be useful. Also it sounds like the designation of "FPV drone" is specific to particular family of drones specific in current day and time, which may be something quite else next year. Like, obviously the next stage is a FPV drone with some capabilities of "reusable" drone or loitering munition author complains of (capability to hover easily)? Or "reusable" drone with FPV camera?

This is kind of a 'Muskets are cool but they take too long to reload' vibe.

Yeah Ukraine isn't working with the best tech; it's a doctrine of desperation rather than preparation. But they discovered something effective and it will change the way wars are fought in the future.

> During my time in [...], I collected statistics on the success of our drone operations. I found that [...]

Assuming the writer and their allegiances are what they say, is any of the info valuable to any of their adversaries?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_lips_sink_ships

> They are controlled by an operator wearing virtual-reality goggles

They aren't really using VR headsets, right? The FPV goggles I know are just a screen showing the camera image without any virtual reality.

The article talks about signal jammers, but as far as I know most drones there are remote controlled using fiber for exactly that reason?

How many artillery shells one needs to expend to hit anything? I bet more than 10. And they are pricier AND endanger people who use them, more.

Mortar shells (80mm class) are cheaper, but mortars need to be compared to drone-dropped munitions, not artillery shells - because mortars' range is way shorter than that of an FPV drone and is comparable to the artillery - a good FPV drone - although not the $500 one - can cover about the median artillery firing range of this war (16km).

Drones bring about more casualties and are used wider exactly because they are more cost-efficient.

I see a lot of comments saying that "but the technology will improve".

Sure, maybe. Or maybe it will be like Musk announcing what Teslas will be capable of in 6 months. We don't know, and the author doesn't pretend that they do. Don't forget that drones have been used in this war for years, and the vast majority of the drone industry has already pivoted to the military because it's easier to make money there. So it's not exactly "brand new technology".

But my point is that the author just says "from what I've seen, here is how it looks". And it seems like it has value.

Even if the technology improves and the economics of scale reduces the cost, I still don't buy the narrative that swarms of tiny kamikaze drones will radically change warfare.

Aside from radio jamming, I have not seen an actual defense against a strong EMP.

To defend against an EMP wiping out your drone swarm, you would have to invest in shielding etc which would remove them from the class of small cheap drones.

Idk if anyone can speak about this, but to me this doesn't seem like a problem that these types of drones can overcome.

You need to compare this to hit rate with mortars and attrition by counter battery fire on mortar teams. Not to detract from a sober assessment but it's hard to judge without the other parts of the story.

Thr tldr would be "temper expectations"

Don't drones have another advantage not mentioned here -- counter-battery against operators being more challenging?

One of the key points of the article is "I feel FPV drones to be mostly a failure because their success rate is low" Why is that a failure? If one 500$ drone has even only 10% success rate, if the target is a 1M$ equipment it's still a win!

> Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components). This results in the need for sophisticated de-confliction procedures that, quite simply, do not always work. Even when de-confliction works, sometimes a team must wait as long as half an hour for a frequency to become available before takeoff. If it does not work and two drones find themselves in the air on the same channel at the same time, they will interfere with each other’s signals, usually resulting in a crash. On top of that, the enemy’s drones also fly on the same frequencies, which can also result in interference and a crash.

This gave me the somewhat macabre image of Ukrainian and Russian drones doing automated frequency coordination with each other, so they can orderly proceed in bombing each other's soldiers.

I don't think that's what happens though. But I'm surprised flying drones in the same area as enemy operators is even possible. Wouldn't both sides try to jam or take over each other's signals, deliberately blocking channels, etc - so that in the end, no one could control anything?

Or, if the signals are really unencrypted, what keeps anyone from setting up a radio beacon that just spams the "detonate now" signal on all channels at maximum power. Instant drone-free zone?

I guess I'm missing something, but why isn't the problem of finicky steering solved by adding auto-stabilizing software? Would that take away too much of the maneuverability?

The author offers no major new insights on the effectiveness of drones. His counter argument is against the maximalists who claim quadcopters are revolutionising warfare and render armour and artillery obsolete. But nobody serious ever suggested that. The same way tanks are relevant despite rpgs. They simply represent a new element in the battlefield, and a useful one as well. The fact that they are not ideally suited for dropping bombs doesn't matter. They are great for surveillance and giving units situational awareness, and the fact that they can occasionally be used to attack targets that otherwise would be impossible simply augments their usefulness. The article is interesting, but it's attacking a straw man. I have a great respect for the ukrainian armed forces but to be perfectly honest their combat effectiveness is not exactly world beating. The suggestion that NATO should be taking lessons from how Ukraine is fighting Russia is odd.

FPV drones don’t suck if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t have proper training, you’re going to suck at it.

International volunteer? I think mercenary sh*t would be more appropriate.

I've seen some of these FPV videos of kills of unarmed Russian soldiers. I honestly don't know why the pilots are not prosecuted for war crimes.

(and I'm sure Russia does the same to Ukraine, I just haven't seen those videos).

FPV drones for combat are a hot flash in the pan. They have had a major effect for now, but naturally as these countermeasures evolve, so weakens their effect.

I keep telling people that the terrain and the strategies that Russians use is the primary reason for the effectiveness. Mortars and artillery already handle the same requirements as the author says. The reason they are effective in 2024-25 is that the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running over vast fields / unarmoed vehicles driving over known routes is the only way Russians make progress. For a moving target they are great, but multiple moving targets would get shredded by competent artillery anyway.

Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.

By far the best use of drones still is as battlefield recon/fire correction to adjust existing artillery/mortar capabilities.

Source: I’m one such drone hobbyist and I’ve watched way too much footage from the front. None of what i’m writing is in absolute terms. I just don’t see the same way as commenters in the public who think they are a checkmate for any combat situation. The incompetence of the Russian forces caught everyone by surprise, but they have learned. My country’s border with Russia is heavily forested and not as flat as Russia. The drones are not able to go through the canopy. Infrared recon is a way better choice than FPV suicide drones.

This tracks with the earlier ~12% drone kill efficiency estimates. However drone is a mass deployment weapon. Ukraine did about 2 million frontline sorties in 2024 and aims for 5 million this year. This 1 out of 9 ratio translates into absolutely devastating damage, that artillery and airstrikes (which are also hardly "easy to use") can only dream of.

I don’t understand why the author has such a narrow definition of FPV drones.

He talks as if reusable drones are a completely different category, that they are all toys designed for enthusiast racers… Generally he implies that a myriad arbitrary technical details are fundamental limitations of this paradigm, it’s a strange mindset.

Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20% accounting for environmental factors and faults in manufacturing. How likely is it that a mortar does anything? Or a soldier with a rifle? Or anything else?

> When I joined the team, I was excited to work with a cutting-edge tool.

It sounds like he was imagining some kind of scifi adventure, but it’s always been clear that they are using cheap drones with tech that has been commonplace for a decade. And that’s completely fine, it’s intentional.

It is interesting hearing feedback from the frontline. Even with the issues, I think it is clear drones are changing modern warfare when you have companies like Anduril. What most people think is coming next is autonomous drones, although I don't morally agree with it. Sorry you had to have this experience, I wish this war would end, too many lives have been lost and it is senseless.

I assume this is like a pilot in WW1 reporting how finicky and hard to use bi-planes were. No doubt a bunch of weapons manufacturers have seen this and the special operations Ukraine did in Russia and Israel did in Iran and the wheels of progress are turning and the result will be terrifying.

> I would, first of all, recommend ensuring that troops in the field have well-trained organic mortar support with an ample supply of ammunition.

That would not be possible because it has become basically impossible to bring in vehicles close to 5-10 kms of the front-lines because of the, well, drones. And you need to carry ammunition to those mortars with something, preferably not how the Vietnamese did it in the jungle (i.e. using brute human force).

Just check this snippet from a recent article in the FT:

> “'At this point, you’re a lucky man if you drive 5km from the front line and your car is still operational,' a Ukrainian drone unit commander deployed in eastern Donetsk region told the Financial Times. He said his men now sometimes had to walk up to 15km at night to reach their positions...

> In the past weeks, Ukrainian supply trucks have reportedly been hit by Russian drones on the road linking Kramatorsk to Dobropillia, some 30km from the fighting. On both sides of the front line, roads are being covered with anti-drone nets in an attempt to stop fibre optic drones."

This comes from Ukrainian guys still fighting this war, not from a Western war-tourist like the guy who wrote this article.

[1] https://x.com/RALee85/status/1937816538439991310

Interesting read. Curious how the author feels re: the attack on airbases using shipping containers/drones that was so successful?

Seems to be a unique case that worked especially well for (higher end I'm sure) FPV drones. Getting artillery in on shipping containers would have a higher likelihood of detection. Similarly, the ability to 'guide' in the drones with munitions seemed to allow for greater flexibility during the attack and its effectiveness.

I imagine eventually these cheap FPV's will be augmented with low-cost GPU's allowing for running smallish models and self-guided autonomy. This would seem the next evolution where a commander deploys them in bulk and overwhelms the enemy in a way that can't be jammed like radio-communication. Similarly, horrifying when you consider their eventual use in terrorism scenarios...

> If this type of pre-aborted mission is included in the total, the success rate drops to between 20 and 30 percent. On the face of it, this success rate is bad ...

I disagree with this premise. I suspect that 20 to 30% success rate is not at all bad, but rather excellent. Compare to artillery with shells costing a few thousand each on the low end, to $100k+ for more advanced rounds, with 100s or 1000s fired per casualty.

I don’t agree with the conclusions he draws from his own analysis - almost all the issues and shortcomings he points out are related to technological shortcomings he admits - are already being addressed by the new systems - or are primarily issues with how drones are being used in the field - i.e. tactical combat decisions.

These are not inherently valid arguments regarding the effectiveness of drones as a new weapons platform - but with the current state of the technology and with the decisions on the battlefield

It’s early days, the technology will improve and the tactics will be standardized with time and drones will prove to be a dangerously effective tool - which has the additional scary bonus of being cheap and easy to mass produce and deploy

It is only a matter of time until those drones fly into their target fully autonomously with machine learning.

Heck, I could build that with hugginface (I will never do that) in a few evenings if you are ok to blow up the wrong target with a single digit percentage.

Most of the problems the article describes are due to using civilian fpv drones on the battlefield or using untrained pilots: bad controls, narrow channel, faulty parts

Most of them would not apply when military finally catches up, starts producing war fpv drones and make good drone pilot training programs

Soon they'll be using CV and won't need FPV.

A guy from Slovakia is fighting for Ukraine? Don't tell that your prime minister and supporter of Russia Robert Fico.