jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

You can see lots of Bayraktar videos on YouTube - wiping out Russian equipment. It's amazing - like a video game. I'm not sure how the system works, but it looks like a drone flies over the target area, and the missiles come in from other directions, probably from other drones. The targeting is held on the target until the missile hits it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It's all done with real-time transmission of geocoordinates. It is hard to believe that the Russians are so inept. It's almost as if they would rather die for Poothead than fight for him. They are so top-down in their command structure they act like robots. They keep making the same stupid moves over and over.

I saw an interview with a Ukrainian small-drone fighter yesterday. He works with artillery and his team has many "kills" of tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs). He says it's just like playing video games, until you get shot at. Apparently, the Russians figured out they can monitor the same drone channels used by the Ukrainians (the drones are DJI stock). So they have had to find different strategies to launch from 200 meters away, fly really low, then reach altitude almost right over the target and act quickly to signal a strike by the artillery.

The Bayraktar TB2 is the real deal, though. It's well-purposed for picking off Russian targets of all kinds, including inflatable pontoon bridges, ammunition depots, tanks, APCs...

LCD

How will remote combat change warfare? It is disturbing to think what it will be like when everyone has killer drones.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

There are several videos on YouTube about the development of the Bayraktar.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

There are the Bayraktars, and then there are all of the homemade drones they use to simply drop grenades. That must strike terror in the hearts of the Russians. There is one online video showing a group of Russian soldiers running into a car to escape and the drone pilot drops a grenade right through the sunroof of the vehicle. Several soldiers collapse out of the car, obviously seriously injured.

For artillery fire they no longer need forward observers to tell the artillery squad how to correct their fire to hit the target - they use either homemade or commercially-available drone for that. That is just such an advantage! The Russians often seem to use their tanks without protective infantry - which seems like poor planning to my totally untrained perspective. It seems like infantry should clear a town before tanks roll in. Instead, the tanks are picked off by very sophisticated anti-tank weapons in the hands of competent defenders.

The Ukraine IT forces are doing something unique. They are taking photographs of the faces of dead Russian soldiers and use facial recognition software to scan Russian social media and other websites to try to identify the soldiers. So far they have identified about 300 soldiers - they then send emails to the friends, or post on Facebook - the photos and a "condolence" message! They say they have had quite a few responses - about 20% are almost grateful and say they would like to collect the body when possible. The other 80% say that they will come to Ukraine and kill Ukrainians....

It seems like the Ukrainians are just so much more advanced with their technology than the Russians. One report said that some of the downed Russian fighter jets had commercial small GPS devices taped to their control panels. Holy crap.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

During WW I, they used observers in balloons to get info on the enemy. Same idea, better technology.

DavidPhares Loc: Chandler, Arizona

Ought to send a couple if those drone over on the Russian side of the border and make them hurt just as the Russians are making them hurt.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

RightOnPhotography Loc: Quebec,QC

Here is today's score of Russian losses in this war. The text is in Ukrainian, but you can recognize the symbols.

81st day of this horrible, bloody, ruthless and meaningless war.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I don't see a good ending to this.

RightOnPhotography Loc: Quebec,QC

The good ending will be when the last Russian soldier leaves territory of Ukraine. Hopefully soon.