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

(warontherocks.com)
187 points _tk_ | 1 comments | 26 Jun 25 10:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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ggm ◴[26 Jun 25 11:02 UTC] No.44386154[source]▶
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"

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risyachka ◴[26 Jun 25 11:14 UTC] No.44386215[source]▶
This.

Mortar may be 5 times cheaper but 100x easier to destroy it and its crew.

Also half of the problems described are purely technical and can be easily solved with some budget. In Ukraine most drones are assembled by volunteers. So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA.

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FirmwareBurner ◴[26 Jun 25 11:17 UTC] No.44386237[source]▶
>So its not the reliability of drone that is an issue, its lack of proper assembly and QA

Imagine what China can pull off here in case they're in a war.

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bboygravity ◴[26 Jun 25 11:45 UTC] No.44386437[source]▶
China's fertility rate is 1.

Even if they win the war, they still eventually will have lost.

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LexGray ◴[26 Jun 25 12:52 UTC] No.44386944[source]▶
China can set the fertility rate to whatever they like. It is tied to taxes and penalties. They can move the slider to make it fiscally impossible to be childless.
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1. bboygravity ◴[27 Jun 25 07:39 UTC] No.44394598[source]▶
Sure, they can make it harder to make children. That's easy. Literally every developed country (except Israel) is doing that right now by default.

Moving the slider up (MORE children) is the hard part.