The Infantry Is Dead (For Now)

59 thoughts on “The Infantry Is Dead (For Now)”

1. I guess no one reads history anymore? if you remember the battle of Kursk ? the Russians put in something like 4-6 thousand mines per klick ? something they learned how to do from the Germans. I remember reading that a whole company of the 28 inf division vanish when attacking the West wall. they didn’t even find bits enough to bury. let alone name the bits.
   as you know, minefields should be covered by direct fire in order to “work” at their best.
   I guessing that drones are doing that now ? scary shit.
   and BTW, Ivan has always loved him some arty. if it wasn’t for lend lease trucks, they never would have moved as fast as they did in 44. one duce and one gun. and we sent over 400,000 trucks back then. you should check out war factories on Youtube. good series on how the war was won. as for the tank bomb, why not from their point of view. the tanks are doing anything but rusting away, so why not make them into a serious mobile bomb ?
   and I don’t think anyone lived thru THAT blast wave either. the over pressure would kill them.
   so, I think your right about being a grunt these days. not a good thing.

   1. The 28th did not land until after D-Day in France, you must mean the 29th Division. I met some of the survivors of the D-Day invasion from the 29th Division. They were from the 3rd wave, very late in the day.

      1. I thought it was the 28th was the bloody bucket div, might be the 29th. when attacking the west wall lost a hell of a lot of people. one company was wiped out to a man. they couldn’t even find bits enough to say who or what it was. between the minefields and machine guns a lot of them just are gone
         then the Germans hit them with mortars to finish the job.
         they really earned that name though. bloody bucket Div. I think they had the “record” for
         people either wounded or killed in WW2. kind of what market-garden was to get around.
         funny thing about that. they never asked the Dutch military about it. there is a record of a Dutch officer telling them they where doing the attack wrong. as they had war gamed it out BEFORE the war at their war school back in the 1930’s. I remember reading that in the book the bridge too far.

2. Don’t reckon infantry is dead so much as will need a hell of a lot more support from other arms, especially combat engineering to harden positions and breach obstacles.
   The infantry moving to contact, doing recon etc. will need some serious rethinking, but end of the day still need to capture and hold the dirt.

   1. well thats the gist of this article… an ENTIRELY NEW WAY is now needed.
      Drones just, for the most part, eliminated “Sneeking and Peeking”
      And imagine the quantum leap if they get -smaller-… like bug-sized that can and will get inside a target for intel/recon/targeting?
      Like the changes are sooooo different from when I was a ground-pounder… A good ghillie, properly done makeup, and a s-l-o-w crawl was all you needed.
      These days? Thermal’ll give you away all. day. long.
      Day OR Night
      Hence the need for a paradigm shift.

      1. Suppose the other aspect to it is we’re got to start thinking how these things are going to be used by cops and other enforcement agencies. Look at some of the co-ordinated displays the chinks are using AI to do, and some of the rumors I’ve seen on how autonomous the Russian drones are in target ID, got to wonder how far we are off drones automatically enforcing traffic violations and small petty shit like that. We’re only a hop and a skip from robocop/judge dredd dystopian type use of drones.

      2. Agree … I’m wondering thinking that it may develop more ‘sniper/stealth’ type of TTPs, garb, etc… ir suppressant or hidden, camouflaged, and more stealth movement, or hidden. Definitely more tech savvy, launch your drone or two instead of hauling a barret around…

         1. Whoop! There it is!, You’re on point brother. I have been saying this for a long time. You can shitblast Orcs and Goblins all day long, start targeting Central Command and you will start getting somethin done.

3. Good article BCE and you are discussing a paradigm shift.
   The crappy thing about paradigm shifts in military technology is that people are slow to recognize it and many will even fight it. Meanwhile a bunch of poor SOBs end up getting killed.
   Some paradigm shifts in the last centuries:
   * The power of artillery – ask the Scots at the Battle of Culloden where the English cannon wiped the Highlanders out.
   * The rifled musket – Civil War generals stilled used Napoleonic tactics to march in formation and charge when within 50 yards (a musket range). Instead rifled muskets along with artillery were wiping out the oncoming troops.
   * The machine gun – WWI troops quickly learned the futility of charging into a crew served machine gun.
   * Aircraft Carriers vs Battleships – before WWII battleship admirals believed it was impossible for aircraft to sink a battleship. Ask the BBs Prince of Wales and Repulse about that.
   * Tanks – The Germans used tanks as an offensive weapon to break out and get behind the enemy lines. The French had good tanks but used them as infantry support.

4. Love the hat. (Ihatealeg.)

   Drones, aircraft with thermal, FLIR, etc.. are great, but terrain dependent. In thick woodlands, FLIR is not very useful. We have been fighting in open non-wooded terrain, and it shows.

   In teh Krain, they have the steppe interspersed with woodlands. Great, except Ivan knows that the Uki’s are hidin’ in the woods. Bad juju. (Like the bomb tank video and arty -BM-27, etc…)

   Where I live the woods are so thick that FLIR can’t penetrate. Still Queen of Battle here.
   So far…

   1. Live action E&E going on in my neck of the woods for the past 8 days now. Local, State and Federales using all to find 1 escaped con. Flir equipped helos plus at least one fixed wing asset with a dome on top. Drones, dogs, horse back, ATVs and foot patrols along with road closures, all to keep him in a now eight sq. mile box and he still keeps running and they have to keep moving the box. Terrain mixed heavy woodlands, corn fields, expensive secluded housing clusters. Sightings are at night on trail cams and doorbell cams ,but by the time they get the info he’s gone. Google Longwood Gardens for the location and aerial map. Oh and the Feds are concerned as it is just up the road from Sleepy Joe’s Delaware home. If we study the response we can plan accordingly for the future.

      1. I live in the area, too. Amused that it has gone on so long, but keep my garage door closed now unless I’m there working in it.

5. For the people who repeatedly claim that “we cannot have an effective drone less than the Predator in size”, I’ll note the switchblade. It’s all of 5 pounds in weight, and can attack non-armored targets. To attack the tanks, there is theswitchblade 600 at twice the weight.

   The point is that these are not some highly classified devices produced at a high tech DOD company. Hobbyist drones had the capability first, before the DOD saw soldiers playing with them off-duty and decided to adapt them. And our enemies can easily adapt the same devices.

6. It was probably 10-12 years ago, when government was deciding to require registration of hobby drones, when DARPA was bragging that they had created a handheld EMP device designed to knock drones out of the sky. There was even a video of it on youtube. It was supposed to be designed for airport security. It looked like one of those handheld bionic ear things you used to see for sale in the back of magazines in the ’80’s.

   Seems there should be some way for Infantry to neutralize the drones, if such a device exists or was DARPA blowing smoke up everyone’s ass? A battlefield EMP device would be the way to do it.

   1. I think the anti-drone guns you speak of are really radios operating on the same frequency as the target drone. They essentially overwhelm the control signal from the drone operator with the yagi directional antenna. The concentrated signal from the yagi is stronger than the remote signal from the drone control console. Most drones now have a fail safe mode that will cause an auto return to the launch location if the control signal is lost. Older drones would just land wherever they were when the signal was lost/jammed. This is my understanding of how these commercially available drones and anti-drone “guns” work. I’m certainly no expert, but if this is more or less accurate, then the basis of an anti drone air guard team already exists in your signals collection section. The radio signal is just as vulnerable to detection, interception, jamming , and maybe even hijacking as is any other radio based system
      I would think that most off the shelf drones probably operate in a known range of frequencies, and the operator is broadcasting when he launches the drone just the same way anyone with a transmitter is broadcasting when they key the mic to talk. I would expect to see a greater emphasis in identifying hostile drone signals, countering them on that frequency, AND simultaneously engaging the location where that signal originated from.
      I have no real issue with you BCE as far as your observations go, but I would point out as others have here that the Eurasian steppes that are 90% agricultural fields and 3% “wooded” are hardly forests in my eyes. When shelled for a period of time they are not much more then scrub vegetation. I would be very surprised if drones were as effective against moving infantry in most dense woodlands, and I seriously doubt they would be much use at all in triple canopy jungle as found in Vietnam. I also think both sides in this war do a rather poor job of camoflaging their earthworks from aerial observation. We used to dig up living sod in sheets like the rolls of turf they sell at Home Depot and cover our fighting positions with it of grass was prominent in our defensive location. If deeper in the woods, the fallen forest duff was used copiously. I can see the yellow digging spoils around the trenches very clearly in all these drone kill videos coming out of the Kraine. It speaks to me of laziness and inexperience that I would have expected them to have figured out by now.

      1. One of the important unrecognized uses of drones is overflying your own positions looking for gaps in camouflage coverage (both visual and thermal)

      2. Durn good observations, Mike, about the laziness of digging trenches –leaving the yellow clay “spoil” round about said trench.

         May as well have painted a bullseye in red on the trench locale.

         Those old drones, “eyes in the sky,” have two words: “NO MERCY!”

   2. The Electronics in a small Drone cannot be Shielded, due to Weight Limitations. So I would suspect that a very High-Power Microwave (Radar) Jammer, like is used on EW Aircraft, would be more useful and effective. With a Directional Antenna and 10’s of Kilowatts on the Amplifier, a Microwave Beam would likely just Fry the Circuits in a small Drone. I know from working in Commercial Aviation, that High-Power Radar Sets are Not to be Messed with (or stood in front of).

      Could a ‘Hand-Held’ device work this way? Depends on the ability to Pulse the Transmitter at a high Loading; It might take a very Narrow Beam and possibly changing Batteries after a few ‘Shots’, but I don’t see it as ‘Impossible’.

      As for the changing effectiveness of Grunts, Everything on the Ground MUST have Air Support, and if the numerous Vids of Tanks and Trucks and Grunts getting Shelled “out of the Blue” from a Recon Drone are any example, it looks like the use of Drones for Art’y Spotting is extremely Effective. The Bear has Air Superiority, therefore the Bear Kicks Ass.

   3. It’s not an EMP gun. It’s a radio receiver & transmitter hooked to a computer running some software. The software “listens” for drone transmissions. When it finds one it looks in its drone signal recognition database to identify it. Once that’s done it looks at its ECM database for countermeasures effective against that particular class of drone.

      Usually it gives the gun operator a choice of soft kill and hard kill options. The soft kill option just sends the drone the “auto land” commands to make it land RTF now. Depending on the target it may be a command sequence or it could be a specific set of countermeasure(s) that make the drone think it has a potentially catastrophic failure in its systems somewhere and that landing immediately is the safest option.

      The hard kill option sends the drone command sequences designed to crash and/or permanently damage the drone. Some of the Drone guns just jam the link between the base station and the drone. Depending on the drone model it may auto land or crash when it loses contact with the operator.

7. Good book “Seven seconds to die” by John Antal.

8. I watch the videos of dudes getting killed and never seeing it coming from drone stuff and that makes me cringe. Doesn’t hardly seem fair but fair has nothing to do with it I guess.

9. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/6/inside-ring-china-advances-emp-weapons-military-wr/

   Every Home …should have… a few !

10. The thick forest at night video with people clearly standing out due to infrared heat signature is the sum it all up video.
    All sides should know that there is no stealth without hiding the heat signature, maybe a space blanket over a rabbit hole?
    Fires at night are not recommended either.
    There are no combined arms for the Ukes and the plan is to depopulate anyway to make way for Greater Israel.
    They don’t give a rip about the people who live there.
    Wunderwaffen need operators and people to train the operators and you can ask the Germans if the waffen of wunder will win the WAR.
    We are seeing the beginnings of Terminator mech war in the Kraine but for now troops still have to capture and hold territory.

    1. I played with a work flir system. A wet wool blanket suspended in 4feet front of a propane torch blocked the heat signature of the fire.

       1. Good to know…shit’s gonna fly here stateside sooner rather than later. One-up the thermal boyz in the chopper or drones.

          1. Assume military is 2 steps better than civy stuff to be safe. I figured out a wet (not damp) wool blanket over a tunnel mouth will hide it from flir based on my expiriments. The blanket if too close to fire gets too warm, hence the 4ft from my tests. Could be closer for a person vs propane torch.

             The unit i tested with back in 2011 was so advanced to buy it required vetting by the gov and an agreement not to export it or loan it to non citizens. The basic civy models now are just as good as that was 12 years ago… hence why i assume military is better now.

             There was a doctor who did a study back then too on finding breast cancer with the ir camera months sooner than a mamagram could.

             We used it to find cracks in the refractory lining of dessicant towers without removing the dessicant. Saved tons of $$ in the 1st year.

       2. For how long? 15 minutes is pointless. 4 hours is a good start. And no, it won’t dissipate the heat signature that long – and if it did, it would show up as a cold spot, which is almost as observable. It has to stand up for *days* to be of actual use to the untrained grunts on the line.

11. I prefer to choose the battle space if I can , and it’s the mountains with their deep canopy. Fuck flatland fighting , you might as well sign up as the turkey in that shoot. Dead ground is my fren!

    1. Come on up the mountains of the Blue Ridge. If you’re not already here.

12. Just so you know, the M3 Lee/Grant thingy…

    The M3 Lee had a turret with the 37mm and a turret on top with two .30 cal mgs. Radio in the hull. With an almost dedicated radio operator (co-driver.)

    The M3 Grant replaced the double turret and introduced a larger turret for the 37mm with coax .30 cal and radio in the turret. Why? Because the Brits asked for it. Radio next to the commander in the turret rather than way below in the hull like the Lee had.

    Other than that, it was a good stop-gap vehicle in either variation. Got the big 75mm gun on a mobile platform before most other nations could mount an equivalent gun on anything. And it also gave American industry the chance to learn how to make big armor, and to equip the lines and build the infrastructure to manufacture the M4 Sherman.

    Other than that, yeah, drones have totally changed the battlefield. Totally. And they’re getting more and more advanced every year, fuck, every month. Which happens with ‘new tech’ in war time. You can’t stick with what you started with, you have to advance.

    It’s gotten so bad with the drones that every 4th trooper should be armed with a semi-auto shotgun with a 24-28 inch barrel for shooting the damned things down.

    1. You just gave me an idear Fren…
       Have to look at working it out…on paper strictly…

       Problem with a -basic- shotty is the range/distances involved. I make fireworks shells here at the house for my 37mm launcher. The way they work is I measure and cut a ‘timer fuse’ that when I fire off the round, the fuse ignites when the propellant charge goes off, the shell goes up, and when the time is right, it pops off the happy-happy Fireworks… I have a chart around here somewhere….

       IF one were to substitute the Star Burst fixins with say, a GOODLY load of #7 birdshot? Figure the dynamics vis-a-vis time from launch/distance, fuse length and whatnot, you could ostensibly make a “Drone Buster Flak Shell” that’d actually range up quite a bit -and- THEN wreck the motherfucker… dunno… I don’t have legal means to play with it, but someone out there might… It’s a hell of a lot cheaper, and probably a lot more effective too… even loading ‘proximity 40mm’ would do it as well and that tech is already out there….

       1. Ah, hmmm, using some of the decent shot-gun wads for buckshot as a base design for 3D printing, you could make reasonably effective 37mm wads without having to worry about proximity warheads and stuff.

          The questions are:

          At what range, in a battlefield situation or static line situation like trench warfare or city fighting, are drones detectable audibly and visually?

          At what range are various shot loads effective against drones?

          That’s the question. Between detecting the little bastards, how quickly can you acquire visually them and then at what range are shotgun style loads effective?

          So, once you determine at what range and how quickly you can spot the flying vampires, would you need something bigger than 12 gauge 3″ or magnum rounds?

          And now you have me thinking, with decent wadding, can you fire flechettes out of a regular shotgun without damaging said shotgun. And can you make pseudo-flechettes out of nails?
          And there are already shot load types for 37mm and 40mm launchers, albeit shot loads of rubber balls for crowd control. How much difference would it be to change out stingballs for lead balls?

          1. steel bb’s might be a better choice than lead pellets. and maybe pour some wax on top to extend the range a bit ? back in the 101st, had a old vet show up how to heat the juice of c-rat
             ham with juices and pour it over the old brass shotgun shells. pry up the cardboard disc
             and pour in the hot juice to make the shot hold together longer.
             he did knock down the flip up target at 100 meters with it though.
             without that bit, it was hard to knock down the target at 50 or was it 75 meters.
             again, that was back in 1975.

    2. “It’s gotten so bad with the drones that every 4th trooper should be armed with a semi-auto shotgun with a 24-28 inch barrel for shooting the damned things down.”

       Something like that is certainly a partial solution in the near term. A shotgun set up for goose hunting with magnum loads would do very well on most of the quadcopter type drones. You need to have someone on constant air guard with the same type of focus on the air as a Vietnam pointman had on his immediate front. There is clearly a lack of enough situational awareness in the Ukraine now when it comes to that by both sides. It is hard for regular armies to make adjustments to doctrine and issue civilian grade solutions as interim stopgap solutions. Civilian partisans may have an advantage here, being unrestrained by organizational inertia. Shotgun ammunition in various bird hunting gauges is also readily available, has a dual purpose, and is generally much cheaper then rifle ammo.

13. War is a game of time, space, and concealment. Drones and missiles change the game permanently.

14. BC – use your thinkin’ meat for something other than shoulder ballast. I won’t get into the technical aspects of drone payloads, telemetry requirements and data acquisition that make the hobby drone narrative a pant load. Apparently no one has the attention span for it.

    Let us try empirical thought instead: If hobby drones actually worked as viable weapons …you would have been using them years ago. Yes, they have been around that long. If they actually worked, Raytheon would be stamping them out by the thousands and sending them to the Kraine.

    If they actually worked, the Russians would be using them the same way. If they actually worked, the war would be over now. They’d have liquidated all the tanks, all the artillery and anything else that moved on the battlefield.

    Last week I busted a gut laughing at Aesop. Apparently the Ukes supposedly destroyed a whole squadron of MiG-29s and heavy bombers with “cardboard RC Airplane drones.” He was humping his keyboard in joy when I popped his balloon: “so I guess you’ll be doing victory laps in front of the Kremlin next week, eh Aesop?”
    😂👍

    Funny…there’s been no follow up strikes after that smashing success. Gee… I wonder why?

    Have it your way, fellas. I’d like to see these weapons and their armoured victims too. But like so much of the Uke war… I’ll bet dollars to donuts it’s just another fake and gay narrative from the usual suspects. I can see an idiot like General Aesop falling for it…but you are made of better stuff.

    1. Problem is Glen, there’s just too much vidya out there. Fact of it is, the ‘hobby drones’? Check this one on the ‘Zon: LINK Granted it lists as an Ag Drone, however, you going to tell me that a drone, capable of a ten kilo payload WOULDN’T be utilized by the DotMil?

       C’mon man. When I was in Affy in 2013, they had BIG fucking 6 armed (not armed-armed but as in 6 engines/on arms like the one linked above) helo-recon drones that were classified AF and I still have never seen them ‘publically revealed.’ The contractors who were training the SF kids using them told me they were “We could tell you details, but then we’d have to kill you, and you’re kind of cool BC!” level secret stuff regarding their capabilities…

       Don’t forget, How long did it take for the DotMil to even acknowledge the A-12/SR-71? Like what? 30 plus fucking years? Even tho they were seen allll over the place? Hell, driving Cab in High School I used to (on sloooow nights do the ‘park at the end of the runway’ like in Wayne’s World, but -right- up against the fence ont he civvie side of it… Seems an SR-71 had a maintenance issue (I found out later from a regular passenger) ‘cos I got to see that glorious bad-ass bird leap into the sky that night… and they were still MAD Secret Squirrel back then (1986)

       Figure we/they got some shit that NO ONE knows about and that BOTH the Krainians AND Ivan have jumped on with both fat feetz. THAT my Canoehead Fren is far closer to the real reality.

       1. We can’t even have a debate if we can’t define our terms. We were talking hobby drones… now we’re talking heavy lift ag drones? Not trying to be a dink, BC…but those are two very, very different animals. Details matter.

          The RPG7 HEAT grenade and the nigger-rigged drone: that looks hokey too. correct me if I’m wrong… that one relies on a shaped charge to defeat armour, right? So you’re taking off the penetrator that shapes the charge, focuses the explosion and provides the molten jet of metal that actually cracks the tank…and just using the explosive portion on the drone? Not trying to be a dink, I’m asking because I don’t know. I just don’t see that working…

          What I DO know is that every day, there’s any number of retards and morons in the mass media that will tell me that the Ukes have Russia on the run, they’ll fold any day… and the normies will believe it because they have video to prove it. Goofs like Aesop will clap with glee because they want to believe it. My question is… why do you guys want to believe this claptrap about small drones?

          Whatever. Have it your way fellas. Fill your boots and have a great Friday!
          😊👍

          1. Hey Glen
             No… VERY Good Question re: Shaped Charges. OPTIMALLY you want the cone to be at a nice neat 90degree flat-to-flat faced hit, however:
             MOST armor on Vehicles has a slant intentionally to help deflect as you know. That particular warhead they’re using on that drone in particular, is a late-gen designed to punch/burn thru REALLY HOTand REALLY QUICK. Therefore in that instance, hell yeah it’ll take out what they’re aiming at, in fact, (you wouldn’t know as you weren’t in my line of work) but the Armor they hit in that particular vidya? The shape/outline screamed US Supplied M113, a 1950’s APC that is fuck all about useless except as shelter for grunts from LIGHT arty shrapnel. Otherwise they’re fucking zippos man. The cone from an IED (key word IMPROVISED) is that they WORK. Ask the Haj in Iraq. Scariest shit driving down Route Irish (for me personally) was watching the curbs… the Iraqis got ‘creative’ and would put a EFP-IED (explosive force penetrator- improvised explosive device) -INSIDE- a fucking ‘fake curbstone’ made of Styrofoam, paint it up, remove a brick curbstone, and set it up to blow up a vehicle, either by way of visually (cell phone) or on a timer. So yeah.

             As far as drones, in the DotMil, there are NO hobby drones is my point. A ‘hobby’ model like the small one I’ve been fucking around with to learn how to fly them? Yeah, not so much, but I’m sure I could -probably- mount a small charge on it, and rig a impact detonator using a percussion cap… Not for nuthin’ you start getting into larger, MOAR expensive drones like the DJI Mavic at $5k? Take off and ‘trim down’ some of the hi-speed bullshit, and replace it (said aforementioned parts) with a large warhead and oops!

             And the Krain, personally I’m leaning in that they’ve lost 500k KIA. Got me a source who’s been ‘counting fresh graves’ via ‘certain recon elements’ and told me it’s FAR worse than ANYTHING we can imagine. Also, some Radio traffic from some Krainian units just plainly disappeared… like as in a 300 man Battalion about to go on the offense went from ‘being there’ to ‘radio silence’…no one ‘officially’ knows what happened… To the point now they’re NOT even recovering the dead but doing the mass-graves/hiding the stiffs/cremating ASAP to NOT let the public know, and protests/questions about missing loved ones are NOT allowed by the Nazis… ask the wrong question and off to the front lines for you, male or female…

             As far as believing what you call ‘claptrap’ well, I’ve SEEN things that civvies have NOT nor are ALLOWED to see… so there it is…TTYL!

             1. We won’t know anything for sure until we see the drones in use, start to finish, close up. If you have a small drone…perfect! Prove it too yourself! Check my methodology?

                Here’s what I did when this flap started: I have a fairly powerful 7 or 8 inch drone I built with low KV high torque motors – for lifting. At the time the faggotry were all screaming that not only could little drones like mine drop grenades on the hapless squaddies below – they could lift heavy tank busters and take out armoured planes and vehicles.

                I looked on the internet and found that the standard NATO baseball grenade weighed 0.67 kg. I am not allowed to play with grenades (can’t imagine why)…so I simulated the weight payload with 670 grams worth of 223 ammo in a Dillon Tupperware ammo box. My drone wouldn’t even lift it or get off the ground. I was (and am) convinced that multirotors this small will not lift a grenade sized explosive. Sure you can bugger around with props and motors but you will not vastly improve your payload by much. If you did…it sure as hell wouldn’t fly well. Can you try this experiment with yours?

                I foolishly terminated the experiment and lost interest. What I should have done is lightened the payload until it DID fly… but my shithouse estimate is that the thing *MIGHT* fly with a payload about half that of the grenade. My question to you is this: can you give me a tank buster that will open up armour with a 335 gram total weight?

                This is off topic but related, I suppose. The Usual Suspects told me (and I believed it) that the Javelin missile system made the tank obsolete. I am now doubting that…I have seen the Russian warehouses stacked to the rafters with captured Javs, and the Ukes were throwing them away in the field. I heard some nonsense that the batteries were no good…but swapping batteries or nigger-rigging a new power cell can’t be a big deal I would think?

                How small can you go and still bust a tank?

             2. Dude, AWESOME info.
                LOVE the give and take. Wish you were here to do a podcast. Have to talk via DM… THAT would be epic. Get Aesop in there to be “monkey in the middle”. As to your question “How small can you go and still bust a tank?”
                I’m going to have to do a full poast on that.
                Make that tomorrows subject, from both MY personal experience(s) as well as the regular word-of-mouth intel I have.
                Look at it this way, depends on what your definition of “bust” is… as in “Blown the fuck open/piece parts scattered to RMTPs” or “Blow’d up enough to render Inoperative” or “Cause enough Damage that the crew bails”? (RMTP = Rapidly Moving Tank Parts)
                Oh, and BTW, the first couple of rounds (iterations) of the Jav, OMFG GREAT weapon… damned near put us TOW guys out of work for a while (moar in the poast tomorrow) As far as later? LOTS of QC issues from what I’ve heard… they got lazy from the sound of it what with the muh diversity hires post war.
                Let me know!

          2. The front cone of an RPG warhead is hollow. On inpact it does mushroom and provides something akin to a “gasket” for the important parts of the RPG warhead, all located in the rear cone: the copper penetrator and the cone-shaped explosive charge. The front cone (which is not the penetrator) does not shape the charge, it is already shaped. So, an RPG warhead with front cone removed would easily still work dropped vertically on a flat target.

       2. Isn’t the answer even larger scale electronic warfare to confuse or destabilize the drones, maybe sending them back against their own side? Taking potshots at them can’t be more than a very partial answer, which could be dealt with by drone swarms…

15. Drones can operate at heights way above anything hand portable has a prayer of reaching them, even a ma duce. There is only one way to deal with them, and that is EW, and that, my friends, is where the Army is in a real pickle, as organic EW assets for Big Green are a bit thin on the ground.

    Russia has had a graduate level course on battlefield EW since Chechnya, and now over a year of operational experience of tactical drone use down to the small unit level. I haven’t heard a word about anything going on with the Army on how to counter widespread use of drones for battlefield recon, and I *highly* doubt that the Army practices operating under the assumption that they are both under drone observation and at risk of precision artillery strikes at all times.

    Army needs a tracked medium gun platform right freaking now, something in the 40-57mm range that can knock drones out of the sky up to a decent height with airburst munitions. A lot of them. Sure would be nice to have a M249A2 Sgt York fielded right about now, especially since the bugs found in testing would have been long since worked out of the system.

    At least at sea, the distances involved force the size of drones to be bigger, which is to say easier to track. I bet a SPY-2 radar emitter can do a wonder on a drone if they crank up the juice, too. Power is one thing those have lots of.

    1. Like a ZSU 23 you mean? Maybe we could buy some from the NORKs /s

    2. Thanky! …US Army GENs in the Pentagram–puffed up with false pride–each posturing with the other showing off their “chest candy.” Perfumed Princes.

       Have neglected EW…to the grunts’ detriment.

16. You know that Russian map. Well those official RU battlefield maps have not changed since May. Same one every day on RU state TV. Yet lots of verified OS intel photos / sat data etc showing UA position 30km to 50km south of those lines drawn on the RU maps.

    Yesterday’s map

    https://www.1tv.ru/shows/big-game/vypuski/bolshaya-igra-chast-2-vypusk-ot-07-09-2023

    ..around 07:31 spot in

    Same area map back back at the end of May

    https://www.1tv.ru/shows/big-game/vypuski/bolshaya-igra-chast-2-vypusk-ot-30-05-2023

    ..around 10:51 spot, same map, same lines, different little explosion graphics. But now with a big lake. I wonder where that went.

    I watch the Western MSM to see what lies they are telling. I watch the Russian State TV channels to see what lies they are telling.

    As for whats going on in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblast the last few months. A rerun of the Kharkiv front last year. Or the early part of 1918 on the Western Front before the 100 Days really kicked off. This is trench warfare after all. Not a lot happens, then a lot happens.

    The talking heads on RU state media made a huge deal back in April and May about being in Odessa before the end of the summer. And recapturing Kherson (which was now officially part of Russia). And Kharkiv as well. Do any of your RU sources talk about what happened to this years promised Russian “Great Summer Offensive”? Guess not.

    I see T-55’s have started appearing in Oryx. Thats the bottom of the barrel. And we now know that a Challenger cannot survive a direct hit from a 152mm shell. Who would have thunk.

    Another day. Another pile of lies to plow through.

    B.T.W Ever read the John Mosby “Reluctant Partisan” books. He seems like your kind of guy. With the same sense of humor. And brutal honesty about what kind of shit will get you killed. Which is pretty much everything written in every other book on the subject.

17. “That’s the Grin of a Lucky far Thinner Motherfucker…”

    No offence intended. And by all means take this as well intentioned

    I lost a stack of weight by using MY FITNESS PAL to track the calories I was consuming, weighed myself every day to keep myself honest (not upset by daily measurements but it’s the general direction), got myself a fitness tracker (just as another yard stick to go by) and I did meal replacement using protein shakes.

    Doing that I managed to lose 20% of my weight.

    Sure I get that my American Frens are fatty fat fats which is cool with me if that’s what you’re happy with.

    I just wanted to share what has worked for me. I also walk at least 10,000 steps a day. sometimes 18,000. But never less than 10k

    Anyway. Keep up the great work

    1. I walk a minimum 10,000 steps per day also. For awhile there I was walking several hundred yards of that backwards. It really worked out unused muscle. Then one day it blew out my Achilles. You may get the urge to try the backward walk but don’t do it. It’s not worth it.

18. CIB????

    1. EIB Expert Infantry Badge. Never earned a CIB (bummer!) All my Combat Experiences were as a civvie or ‘other’ that doesn’t rate unfortunately.

19. Another direction to consider for the future of drones is the Hammer’s Slammers series. Written by David Drake, who served with the 11th cav Blackhorse in nam with Pattons and those crazy ass M113 gun tracks.

    In that world, sensor tech and good line of sight weapons (he uses plasma, but laser will work well enough) means that nothing over the horizon survives. I think we are going there with drones, since they have been shown to be so effective. Once it is this dominating, the drive to overcome it can’t stay locked down, so someone will come up with a laser truck that has shit tons of sensors and has the job of lazing anything it sees. We are already going that direction for arty defense anyways.

    Sure gonna suck on the ground until that happens, though.

20. Great writing and great information. Informative comments, too. Keep it coming.

21. Dammit, dude! Why the fuck didn’t you hit me up on da text and let me know that you were ranting again!?!?

    No way in Hades could anyone get me inside any kind of tin can in a real shootin’ war. Might as well paint a big “Insert Round Here” on your ass with today’s all-seeing weapons systems.

22. As an aside, your mention of not killing a guy while on the shitter reminded me of a story I was told. Guy was a sniper in VN during the unpleasantness. Liked to get out and set up before dawn to catch the VC coming home from work. He was in position when he spotted a likely target, carrying an AK. As he zoomed in on him, the guy took off his gear, sat down next to a tree, and started eating his breakfast. Our guy said he wasn’t in any hurry, so he let him finish. When he did, he leaned back and lit up a cigarette. Took a few puffs and closed his eyes. That’s when he got popped. He said it was a favor, one grunt to another. Never forgot that story.

23. People scoff at the Japs for drawing all those big robots and power armor and thye say “why would anyone USE that kind of stuff militarily”?

    Well now you have your answer.

    Tanks carry 3 or 4 guys and they are vulnerable to modern drone threats. In order to reduce this threat, you shrink the number of guys needed to operate the vehicles. Which means you shrink the vehicles and compensate for the reduction in carrying capacity by increasing the numbers of them.

    Infantry are far more vulnerable to drone threats so to compensate you must increase their armored protection. It reduces the number of men on the field in a given unit, but they gain additional firepower and mobility.

    So you have two lines converging into mechanized robotic suits that have lots of armor and increased firepower. Give them a bigger armored carrier that can protect itself from mines to drop them off and there you have it….

    G1

24. @JimmyPx
    The machine gun – WWI troops quickly learned the futility of charging into a crew served machine gun

    I read on a now defunct site (brusselsjournal.com, it mentioned that the commanding General of the Japanese Nogi Maresuke was described as “The last Samurai”, who lost his sons in this fight.) that this happened a lot earlier.
    During the 1904/1905 war between Russia and Japan the Japanese stormed Russian positions protected by barbed wire and machine guns. The japanese bodies were stacked three bodies high. There were even European observers on both sides of the war, but they didnt learn.

    And I agree with those that say that – normally – an army would look what happened and then decides to find out how to take away the advantage of the enemy.
    War is is a game of learning and evolving. If you do not learn or evolve, you die.
    (Yes, I know I was never in a war – so you all are in a far superior position – and just did my time of 15 month in the german air force but I still read and try to learn.)

25. According to my extensive research (reading and watching a lot of sci-fi), the solution to too much tech cluttering up the story line is more tech which negates that tech, requiring a return to low-tech solutions. e.g., shields in Dune leading to a return to melee combat including knife fights.

    The strength of drones is that they are floating around in the sky; the weakness of drones is that they are floating around in the sky.

    So anti-drone drones + anti-drone ground equipment = infantry supremacy returned.

    https://wh40k-fr.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/6/66/Stalker.jpg

26. Here’s a thought……anti-drone drones.

    Small, disposable drones in Infantry units. I assume they could kajiggered to attack other flying objects.

    Benning Schools for Boys. ‘83

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