60
I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck - War on the Rocks
(warontherocks.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
60 points (92.9% liked)
World News
48153 readers
1804 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As a person who develops drones, and who has already read the article about a week ago, and given a review of it in another place:
The author's unit was quite obviously supplied with crappy drones, his description hints of many recognizable issues. Their takeoff failure rate would be considered unacceptable in some circles. Their detonation failure rate hints of sappers erring on the side of caution (sappers want to go home alive). These problems can be solved with factory made munitions and decent quality assurance.
Some of his complaints are organizational. Lacking bomber drones, they wasted FPV drones to destroy stationary / abandoned / disabled vehicles. This is not a tech issue, but an organizational issue.
He's correct to point out that heavily loaded quadcopters won't safely take off in adverse weather. I must remind that a catapult launched UAV plane will reliably take off in adverse weather, exceed quadcopters in range and payload capacity, so we can guess that planes taking off from launch tubes will gradually replace quadcopters taking off from grass.
He's correct to point out that once you go below direct visibility, your 5.8 GHz video link will break. There's at least 3 solutions around this: an airborne repeater, fiber optic cable and bombing the target from altitude. All 3 solutions are already widespread.
He mentions lack of GPS, compass, inertial navigation and pilots getting lost. This is true, GPS is suppressed on the front and will likely stay suppressed, some drones are cheap and don't provide the pilot with obvious and simple navigational aids (they should) and some pilots do get lost when navigating (this is unavoidable, but can be reduced).
He mentions need for long training. This is the current reality, but not the reality of a tailor-made combat drone system. Today, people are fighting a war with civilian sports supplies. That's why pilot training is important to overcome difficulties. In a few years, you can give a ready-made drone system (in a sealed container, with a factory-made warhead) to a random guy or girl from a street in the middle of a storm, and he or she can shoot down a combat helicopter from 10 kilometers distance with it. Just liking firing an NLAW can be learned in 5 minutes (but not mastered, of course), firing a drone will be possible with 5 minutes of instruction in the near future.