You are being dishonest. Those squads usually have SOME degree of drone, artillery and aviation support behind them. They are basically there to find out where the defenders are. Sure they are expendable, but they are just a part of the attack. I bet 24 hours sitting in a trench with FPVs, 152mms, and FABs exploding all over your position would change your mind as to the danger posed by those attacks you make fun of. Being at exactly this location vs kilometers away while remotely controlling a mobile gun turret makes ALL the difference

Can we name them The Dinochrome Brigade?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome...

I believe the movie Aliens (1986) has one of the best movie uses of auto turrets.

> abstract it away and play video game?

What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens

> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively

In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked.

> they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.

Your ideas are based on the idea of winning in a closed-system game. War is waged by people. Some people actually want the other people to die.

Finally, my years of playing Starcraft have real-world use! Also: Everyone will soon bow to S. Korea :D

Orignal Star Trek did an episode on this - "A Taste of Armageddon". The war was a video game - fought on a computer. But if the virtual bombs hit your area, you were declared dead and had to a report to a disintegration chamber. If you can get past the dated special effects - the concept is the same.

So like the old League of Legends lore before their Institute of War retcon?

> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?

No.

Young men being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands.

Not a game

The difference is you can appeal or ignore a game result. If Ukraine lost a strategy game tournament, would they give up their territory? Or fight to hold it still?

> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively

This has been the assumption for over a decade now.

> those who can't produce any more drones, lose

Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].

> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat

This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.

The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.

[0] - https://www.themiddleeastuncovered.com/p/inside-the-talibans...

[1] - https://thekhorasandiary.com/en/2026/03/13/taliban-strengthe...

Probably because currently they cause more collateral damage than is useful. Your own equipment will be damaged too leaving a bunch of unguided soldiers with just their guns and rations that are still an obstacle an enemy can't walk through, and it will piss off anybody within 1000 miles when you start disrupting their telecommunications with random noise if not cause actual damage. If they are powerful enough you could potentially cause some mistaken nuclear blast warnings too, although perhaps without a gamma ray component it would still be rightfully ignored.

They are. EW and IR C-UAS has been productionized over the past decade in most countries, but there are still supply chain and cost blockers around power electronics and they tend to be treated as a last resort because of their indiscriminate nature.

When French start supplying Spies.

Maybe drones will make human soldiers unacceptable in the future.

On the plus side there is now quite a lot of drone on drone combat saving people's lives

They are being operated by humans

There was never any other option, given the direction of progress and basic human nature.

I know I know, but this and that and not me nor you, yet here we are and this is just beginning.

I have an educated guess.

Flying drones are lethal, but fairly random. Attacking a point target, which will have anti-drone support, is not what they are for.

And too cheap for a missile which is the weapon for a point target

It would start economical and then some side would eventually resort to the meat grinder.

I had a car hold its position for 6 months during the pandemic. It became occupied by rats, which was fun to deal with.

They gathered some apples from a nearby tree, and apparently had set up a hard cider production facility.

Perhaps in the dead man zone, not sure this would work well where there is civilian population.

Considering the usual behavior of the Russian military, it’ll keep firing at Russian soldiers.

Why are talking about something you have no idea about? There are multiple videos of this system engaging in combat missions. There are first-person videos from them accompanied by footage of recon drones flying above them. And some of those videos are from last year already.

Yep, until it hits you.

Maybe it's the ghost of Kiev controlling the robot army? You don't know. But they sure should get a $50 billion contract to make them

I think you could just ship generic robot dogs in a container and have local contractors straw-purchase firearms, 3d-print cradles, and combine them. None of the contractors would need to know what they were doing.

Common tactic is for drones to wait next to a road and ambush.

Ammunition is heavy.

How is it not a drone?

These ones by PS5 controllers I believe

AIUI, a current common tactic for the Russians is sending many small groups of untrained "solders" out probe the front lines and try to penetrate undefended spots. They take a ton of casualties, but some make it through, and they gradually build up, and then try to take action.

Perhaps it would be helpful to view the claims of this article through a cost/benefit analysis?

Clearly if the opponent had wanted to defeat this vehicle and take this ground, they could have.

That said, it seems likely that this vehicle substantially increased the expected cost of taking this ground, and it did so at very little cost/risk to the defenders.

This sort of device dramatically changes the equation of conflict. It seems this article does a pretty good (though unverified) job of making that case.

There are real videos, even months old of exactly these 'land drones', equipped with good ol' .50 cal. In certain situations, they fought extremely well given no risk for crew. I mean killing off entire bmp-something transport including all crew with AP rounds, typically during night since it has night vision, zoom and so on. Verified also by drone flying nearby.

Now I am not claiming all the facts stated in the article are verified by me, but I can imagine one of them got so lucky with drones and getting hidden from their view for prolonged time it could theoretically pull it off. Not sure about batteries/fuel/ammo part thought.

Yes propaganda and bullshit, but by way of exaggeration and puffery, not lying.

I wouldn't expect even a lightly informed mid-wit to think that this murderbot held the ground by itself; and I don't think the author expects that either. Thus something else is probably going on. To wit - puffery.

The <title> tag is "Ukrainian Drone Holds Position for 6 Weeks". OP probably hit the "fetch title" button or copy-pasted from a chat app embed when submitting.

Drone is just a generic term.

There are more specific terms for specific types of vehicles, and some of those terms have changed over the past few decades.

UGV = unmanned ground vehicle

UAS = unmanned aerial system

UAV = unmanned aerial vehicle

UUV = unmanned underwater vehicle

Etc