Militärische Lehren aus dem Ukraine-Krieg

[Quintus Fabius]

Dank Augengeradeaus ein Artikel der NYT über die Drohnenkriegsführung in der Ukraine:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025...=url-share

In Auszügen mit begrenzter Kommentierung:

A Thousand Snipers in the Sky

Drones have changed the war in Ukraine, with soldiers adapting off-the-shelf models and swarming the front lines.

Drones, not the big, heavy artillery that the war was once known for, inflict about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, said Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament. In some battles, they cause even more — up to 80 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say.

Now, drones rule the battlefield. They have far surpassed conventional arms as the war's most lethal weaponry.

The war has killed and wounded more than a million soldiers in all, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates. But drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined, including sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers and mortars, Ukrainian commanders and officials say.

Until recently, the clanging, metallic explosions from incoming artillery, ringing out around the clock, epitomized the war. Ukrainian soldiers raced at high speed in armored personnel carriers or pickup trucks, screeching to a stop and spilling out to run for cover in bunkers.

The artillery gave soldiers a sense of impersonal danger — the dread that you could die any moment from the bad luck of a direct hit.

The trenches that cut scars across hundreds of miles of the front are still essential for defense, but today most soldiers die or lose limbs to remote-controlled aircraft rigged with explosives, many of them lightly modified hobby models. Drone pilots, in the safety of bunkers or hidden positions in tree lines, attack with joysticks and video screens, often miles from the fighting.

Speeding cars or trucks no longer provide protection from faster-flying drones. Soldiers hike for miles, ducking into cover, through drone-infested territory too dangerous for jeeps, armored personnel carriers or tanks. Soldiers say it has become strangely personal, as buzzing robots hunt specific cars or even individual soldiers.

It is, they say, a feeling of a thousand snipers in the sky.

Scharfschützen wurden und werden ja auch weit über ihre tatsächliche Bedeutung gefürchtet. Analog dazu sind die Drohnen heute vor allem auch ein Mittel der psychologischen Kriegsführung, sie brechen den Willen des Gegners indem sie ihn permanenter Todesangst aussetzen. Man nutzt das sogar schon, indem man Drohnen einsetzt die besonders laut sind, damit deren Geräusche über größere Distanzen gehört werden. Die sollen nur durch das charakteristische Geräusch bereits den Gegner in Panik versetzen und zu Bewegung etc. verleiten.

The sheer scale of their wartime production is staggering.

Ukrainian officials said they had made more than one million first-person-view, or FPV, drones in 2024. Russia claims it can churn out 4,000 every day. Both countries say they are still scaling up production, with each aiming to make three to four million drones in 2025.

Um diesen Punkt nochmal hervor zu heben: wir sprechen hier von drei bis vier Millionen Drohnen per Jahr. Und die Bundeswehr will wieviele Skyranger und SMASH Visiere beschaffen ?!

Ukraine has followed suit, firing more drones last year than the most common type of large-caliber artillery shells. The commander of Ukraine’s drone force, Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, says Ukraine is now pursuing a “robots first” military strategy.

“The war is a mix of World War I and World War III — what could be a future war,” said NATO’s supreme allied commander for transformation, Adm. Pierre Vandier of France.

Genau genommen wird der 1WK Charakter einfach dadurch erzeugt, dass die Technologie ein deutliches Primat der Defensive bedingt (analog zu den MG, Stacheldraht, Gas, moderne Artillerie usw im 1WK). Gibt sogar eine militärwissenschaftliche Theorie die sich nur damit beschäfigt, wie Offensive und Defensive als bessere Kampfform sich je nach der Technologie abwechseln.

The pace of advances has astonished even close observers of the war, forcing many to rethink the viability of weapons that cost millions of dollars on a battlefield where they can be destroyed by a drone that costs a few hundred dollars.

Drones armed with shotguns are now shooting down other drones. Antiaircraft drones are being designed to take out surveillance drones flying higher in the sky. Larger drones are being developed to serve as motherships for swarms of small drones, increasing the distance they can fly and kill.

The proliferation of drones, many equipped with powerful cameras, has also provided a closer glimpse of the fighting in frontline areas often inaccessible to journalists. The New York Times analyzed dozens of video clips posted online by military units on both sides of the war. While these videos are sometimes used for promotional purposes, they also help illustrate how new battlefield technologies are reshaping the war.

Capt. Viacheslav, commander of Ukraine’s 68th Separate Jaeger Brigade’s strike drone company, scrolled through his phone to show some of the 50 types of munitions the Ukrainians use.

“This is called ‘White Heat,’” with over 10 kilograms of explosives, he said. “It burns through everything.”

“This one is called ‘Dementor,’ like in Harry Potter,” he added. “It’s black, and it’s a 120-millimeter mortar. We just repurpose it. This one’s called ‘Bead.’ This is ‘Kardonitik.’ The guys really like it.”

The proliferation of drones inevitably gave rise to widespread electronic warfare — tools to jam the radio signals that most drones need to fly.

Tens of thousands of jammers have been littered across Ukraine’s front lines to disable drones, cluttering the electromagnetic spectrum that also enables GPS, military communications, navigation, radar and surveillance.

The jammers have made it much harder for even skilled Ukrainian pilots to hit their targets, Ukrainian soldiers and commanders said.

That has fueled innovative ways of overcoming jamming.

Ukrainian engineers have built drones and robots with “frequency hoppers,” automatically switching from one radio signal to another to evade jammers.

Surveillance drones that guide themselves with A.I. — instead of being remotely operated by radio — are starting to take flight, too. Last fall, a drone being tested by the American company Shield A.I. found two Russian Buk SA-11 surface-to-air missile launchers, and sent their location to Ukrainian forces to strike.

Ukraine and Russia have also reached back to older technologies to thwart jammers, including tethering drones to thin fiber-optic cables that can stretch for more than 10 miles.

With its long tail, the drone remains connected to a controller, so it doesn’t need to use radio signals, rendering it immune to jamming.

Russia has been quicker to churn out these fiber-optic workarounds on a mass scale, partnering with Chinese factories to make the spools of cable for the “fly-by-wire” drones, Ukrainian officials say.

In recent videos from the front lines, fiber-optic cables crisscross fields, glinting in the sun. The production of this new weapon follows a pattern in the war: Ukraine has a broader variety of new designs, but Russia has a numerical advantage, able to make them more quickly.

Ein Vorteil der Russen ist die geringere Typenzahl, mit welcher Russland auf Dauer einen numerischen Vorsprung generieren könnte und dass die russischen Drohne primitiver und billiger sind (gleiche Folge).

Other adaptations to the swirl of drones are surprisingly low-tech. Soldiers cover tanks in anti-drone netting or makeshift structures of metal sheets, with rubber and logs nestled between to protect them.

Die oft verlachten russischen "Mad Max" Aufbauten bewähren sich querschnittlich erstaunlich gut.

Ukrainian officials say they have also made strides in drone-on-drone warfare to bolster traditional air defenses.

Small quadcopter drones can now spring off the ground and crash into long-range Russian drones.

Das letztgenannte wird zunehmend eine dominierende Abwehrform gegen die iranischen Tuckermarschflugkörper et al

Ukraine has developed long-range drones to attack Russia at distances that would have been unthinkable when the war started. Some have struck more than 700 miles beyond the front, and it is not uncommon for more than 100 long-range attack drones to fly into Russia and Ukraine on any given night.

At sea the battle is no less surprising, especially given that Ukraine started the war with almost no navy.

For months, Russian warships, visible from shore, menaced the coast of Odesa, one of Ukraine’s biggest cities. Even after the Ukrainians sank the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, using domestically produced Neptune anti-ship missiles, the Kremlin effectively blockaded Ukrainian ports.

Three years later, Russian ships rarely enter the northwestern Black Sea, while its navy has pulled most of its valuable assets from ports in the occupied Crimean Peninsula, fearing Ukrainian attack.

Crude Ukrainian robotic vessels packed with explosives sail hundreds of miles across choppy waters to target enemy ships. Russia’s fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol now has layers of buoys and barriers to protect itself against naval drones.

Dazu kommt noch der Einsatz von Drohnen bei unkonventioneller Kriegsführung und dem Einsatz von Agenten etc. tief im feindlichen Hinterland. Viele ukrainische Drohnenangriffe tief in Russland wurden mit Drohnen kurzer Reichweite ausgeführt, also von Agenten vor Ort. Solche Angriffe mit Drohnen weit hinter der Front sind auch bei uns zu erwarten.