Ukraine struck Russia’s largest oil refinery, located in the city of Omsk, on Monday, marking what its forces say was its furthest-ever drone attack in the war.
The Omsk facility, which processes about 21 million tons of oil a year, is in Western Siberia and about 1,700 miles from Ukrainian territory — roughly the distance between Los Angeles and Houston.
Ukraine has developed very impressive drone technology in a very short time. It is expected that multiple nations will actually try to make deals to acquire Ukrainian drones at the current NATO summit because they are so good now. So Ukraine is no longer dependent on others to sell them drones. They‘re selling them now.
For example, these drones can use terrain as guidance, so GPS isn’t required for navigation. This also allows them to fly at a very low altitude, avoiding Russian air defense. They’re also very resistant to jamming and have advanced autonomous capabilities, so they can “finish the job” on their own if the link to their operator is severed. Also, they’re very cheap, so it’s possible to overwhelm Russian defenses by swarming them.
In summary, they‘ve developed incredible killing machines that are able to act autonomously, which is very good for them right now but probably not very good for humanity in the long run.
It’s possible that this becomes the new “mutually assured destruction” we had back in the 20th. Basically, a cold war brought on by drones instead of nukes. It could mean a near-future of peace, however uneasy. I can’t say that living with the looming propagandized threat of the USSR was good, but I think it was a far sight better than being in an active shooting war with them.
Eh. C’est la vie. We had a good run.
There was a Black Mirror episode featuring the Boston Dynamics “Dog” robot thing with a machine gun on it, and hunting people down, they are terrifying. It’s like being hunted by a zombie tbag doesn’t eat or sleep or get tired and won’t stop.
Flying drones are a whole new level of scary beyond that.
Smart countries are scrambling to buy Ukraine cheap effective next-generation drone warfare weapons. This is developing into a very lucrative market for them.