I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

> Also, as others commenters state, isn’t a 43% success rate exceedingly high? Even if it’s 20%

That's the whole question, and that's kind of the point that the article raises: the success rate does not matter. What matters is the cost. At the same cost, can you do more damage with other weapons or not?

Indeed that’s what I meant, it’s a good question. It sounds like the author only saw the cases where mortars or reusable drones had been successful. But I cannot imagine a mortar being more efficient even if one shot is 5x cheaper. Perhaps they are more effective at suppression, but I would be surprised if they really hit anything meaningful more than 5% of the time, similar with most artillery or bombing, or just plain infantry.

What even comes close to the success rate of a drone to hit a particular moving target? And you can do it while hidden 10km away with a lightly trained operator. And manufactured cheaply, safely and quickly by unskilled labor, and easily transported to the front and hand-carried by troops.

Any kind of alternative, like precision bombing or sniping, or just getting close and shooting at it, must be much more costly, particularly when you also account for the cost of the equipment used, even if it is reusable, and the training, risk and human cost.

A hit does not equal a kill. Killing a tank or an apc, takes a lot of hits from an FPV drone due to the small payload. I have heard quoted an average of 16 hits.

That's why you see videos trying to go in open hatches and the like. And that's why you are seeing cope cages. It doesnt matter how many chains or steel plates you weld on to your tank if you are hit by a TOW or a Javelin, it's still going to get you. They can penetrate more than a meter of steel.

But the FPV is carrying a DPCIM or a small RPG it's much less likely to penetrate a tanks or an apc armor.

> What matters is the cost.

Logistics matter too. How many FPVs can a company carry? How many fit in a pickup? Do you need a truck load to kill a tank? If you need like 10 to kill a tank, you need to do 10 attacks, either 10 people attacking the same target in quick succession or one guy 10 times.

A Javelin is pretty much one hit one kill, and the hit rate is supposedly at about 89%. So you need like one or two to kill a tank.

From what I have heard, bigger heavier reusable drones, that release their bigger payload are more effective than FPVs.

It's a good point, I'm wondering though what the ROI of a Javelin is throughout its lifetime, including training costs. It's not obvious that you end up better off, perhaps.

The way I see it, it's probably worth it. You probably want a layered approach, you have a few high end, very expensive very effective weapons for maximum effect at the beginning of a conflict to take out the enemies high end, tip of the spear forces. And then you want to have a deep reserve of cheaper, legacy stuff to deal with volume and attrition.

Of course. That's combined arms doctrine

Ofc but javelin launchers and missiles cost $250k a piece. You get a lot of drones for that price.

ROI also depends on availability. Ukraine knows everything about the article and likely agrees (though they will dispute some details) - Ukraine was trained on the old Soviet Artillery doctrine and knows it well. However Ukraine cannot get nearly enough of the supposedly cheaper mortar rounds at any price while they can make drones quickly. In theory I could make 155mm rounds for Ukraine in my garage, but my metal lathe (most people don't have one but I do) isn't the right tool for the job and so I'd be making dozens a month at best, what Ukraine really needs is a modern factory than can make thousands or even millions per month - it would take me years to create that factory.

> A Javelin is pretty much one hit one kill, and the hit rate is supposedly at about 89%. So you need like one or two to kill a tank.

Take those extremely high kill rates with a massive grain of salt.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/08/re-ass...

Javelin consumption rates early in the war (500/day) do not match Russian loss rates if the system was ~90% effective. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/ukraine-us-reque...

I think we should not discount the psychological effect.

From what I have read from Ukraine vets, ubiquitous drones make you crazy in a way that tank attacks don't. The difference is in their ubiquity. You are likely to encounter a tank relatively infrequently, and have enough time to recuperate between those encounters. But with a sky full of drones 24/7, or close to that, your nerves will give way sooner or later.

This alone may cripple the forward units.

And you need to be in a line of sight close to the target and not get hit by an enemy drone. And it requires some time to boot if I am not mistaken.

ukrainians were blowing up with javelins and nlaw everything that is moving and had wheels

You realize that a lot of stuff they were sticking on tanks was to defeat the Javelin?

You simply can't put a big enough warhead on a man portable missile to defeat the main armor of a modern tank. Thus you do not actually want to hit the tank--the purpose of the Javelin is to fly *over* the target tank, when it's overhead it's warhead detonates, firing an explosively formed projectile down into the *top* armor of the tank. Those cages were meant to keep the Javelin from getting to the right spot to do that.

You need to be in line of sight, but not very close, it has a max range of 2 to 4 km depending on the version. Missiles in the spike family can also acquire targets after launch.