Business Insider reports that drone guidance and signal cables are being strewn so thickly over the Ukrainian countryside that they're becoming a major hazard in themselves. I've included some photographs from social media to illustrate the problem.
Small unjammable drones controlled by fiber-optic cables have become so integral to Russian and Ukrainian combat operations that they are leaving trails of cabling everywhere, turning areas of the battlefield into a tangled web.
As a counter to extensive electronic warfare, fiber-optic drones are becoming increasingly prevalent on both sides. And with sprawling cables stretched across the battlefield, soldiers are moving with greater caution.
"You see the little webs, and you never know — is it from the fiber-optic drone? Or it's a part of a booby trap," Khyzhak, a Ukrainian special operator who for security reasons could only be identified by his call sign ("Predator" in Ukrainian), told Business Insider. Mines and traps have also been prominent threats in this war.
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Other video footage taken from the battlefield shows how fiber-optic cables crisscross like spider webs, sometimes only visible in direct sunlight or when viewed from a certain angle.
Soldiers can't always tell right away if it's a harmless fiber-optic cable or something far more dangerous, like a booby trap. This forces them to think carefully about whether they should call an engineer, destroy the web with explosives, halt, or proceed forward.
There's more at the link.
Those are worrying images, to put it mildly. Imagine an infantry soldier having to walk through a meadow festooned with such cables. It'd be almost as bad as barbed or razor wire, not in the sense of being cut, but in the sense of having to cut through almost every cable in order to make progress. It would slow him down so much that he'd end up being an easy target for a sniper, or another drone looking for an enemy to destroy. That truck looked like it was pretty much stopped because of fiber-optic cables wound around its wheels and axles. Speaking from experience, you do not, repeat, NOT want your vehicle to be disabled like that where enemy fire can find you!
This has implications for us as civilians, too. If such fiber-optic drones become commonplace in civilian use, or by criminals (e.g. the drug cartels) or the police, who's going to police up all the leftover fiber optic cables? This could become a hazard to animals as well as humans. There are all sorts of complications one can imagine.
I'm glad I'm not a young soldier these days. Their chances of living through a war appear to be a lot less than mine did, in my day! We may, indeed, be getting closer to the day when mortality rates become so high that actual combat is carried out by machines instead (robots, automatons, call them what you will), with human involvement limited to programming and maintaining the machines, and providing person-in-the-loop supervision.
Remember what Azerbaijan did to Armenia just a few years ago? That war didn't involve one single fiber-optic drone. Its drone technology already seems primitive compared to what we're seeing in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and developments are so rapid that even the latest equipment in the drone war will only be effective for six months to a year before it's superseded by something even more capable - and lethal. Those drone cables strewn all over the Ukrainian landscape did not exist a year ago. All those tangles were laid down over the past twelve months or so. What's the betting that by this time next year, something else will have replaced them? Who can say? And who's going to clear up the debris already on the ground? That may take years, and until it's done, crops can't be planted and land can't be fully utilized.
Peter
Fiber optic fibers troubles. Seems to me that even today construction crews in Germany often have to stop and evacuate to allow EOD folks to deal with a newly found WW2 unexploded bomb and such.
ReplyDeleteParts of France where the most savage battles of WW1 still have no go areas where unexploded shells and corroding Chemical Weapon shells still go off.
The "gift" of American ADAM obsolete artillery shells (deemed undependable because of frequent failure of timed clearing fusing) gives civilians in the Russian Oblasts the gift of an odd bang or such randomly.
War is messy and harder on Civilians than the Leadership that keeps them going.
And what happens when the cables break up and enter into the wild and domesticated animal food supply (e.g. accidental ingestion)? Perforated intestines is the first thing that comes to mind, as glass fibers, unlike metallic sharps, aren't going to be filled by stomach acid.
ReplyDeleteThat's an awful lot of drones in one area. I just doubt the veracity
ReplyDeleteI think those photos are less than accurate, or at least in where they were taken or what they depict.
Infantry soldiers from WWI have entered the chat.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, name one modern day war that hasn't destroyed the landscape and left tons of dangerous pollution behind. They are still digging up live artillery shells from the Great War. Let's not even discuss the millions of land mines still out there. This is more of the same, but different.
Of course I'll never step near an active battlefield, too old and too slow now to be of any use.
It's glass fibers. It won't break down or decompose. Those glass fibers will be there forever.
ReplyDelete"Optical fibers used in FPV drones have a tensile strength of approximately 30 to 40 kilograms, making them resistant to tearing under normal conditions ... the fiber is highly sensitive to bending; it breaks easily if bent beyond a 45-degree angle or becomes knotted."
ReplyDeleteDon
I wonder if they melt? Flamethrowers to clear the path forward!
ReplyDelete