I learned more about the newest drone tech by reading this 3 minute piece then by watching (too much my wife constantly chides) countless hours of analysts comments.
Simplicius has some excellent material - if you can sort out all the stuff that he (she/ they) throw in from sources like X, as well as "analysis" (not Simplicius's forte). Quantity sometimes interferes with quality. I would go to Black Mountain Analysis or sites like it instead. Simplicius is (like the Duran) an "aggregator" - not an analyst. Our friend "Bob" refers to him as "Simpleton the Thinker" LOL. I wouldn't go THAT far! What S does, he does well and he gets a lot of support from the Alt Media podcast punditocracy, who don't have time to do real research. In my case, I actually worked in the (Japanese / American) defense industry -- so I have a technical background.
I find Simplicius to be reasonably OK in both reporting and analysis, probably because the articles are in written form , which imposes a certain discipline in terms of brevity and clarity, as opposed to long form rants on Youtube(no matter how qualified the participants are) , they simply yak too much and too often - clearly clicks and revenue driven).
Over the last few months Simplicius has been posting 2-3 times per week, which distorts focus, once every 7-10 days would suffice.
The mapping dweebs(Dima, DPA, Willy etc) are unwatchable after a week or 2), Weeb is probably the most concise, but I even skim through his.
Marat’s posts need a Russian translator I find, even though they are concise.
Found a guy just recently who, while he has a strong Russian bias, is a step above the dweebs,- Ruslan Belov, maybe worth a look.
Of course there is always ISW of “ISW has not observed…” fame - the predicate to any and every Russian advance. The fact that it is run by Cookie monster Kagan’s relatives, possibly explains that.
I have been watching the Chinese using drone swarms as firework shows.
Lately they showed a 'Swarm-drone mother 'ship'.
Imagine such a ship with some thousands AI-swarm drones dropping from high such a swarm over a territory with a Brigade that is dug-in. I saw in Ukraine drones entering the trench and fly through it until it could find something to hit. And that they signal each other when they found a good target...
Good point: the West at large fell behind in developing drone technology despite having the lead. And it will never get it back for a simple reason, that drones have a massive deal-breaking problem, for the Western military procurement model:
They're cheap and easy to produce.
Cheap equipment means much less opportunities to jack up prices, less profit, less bribes, less entry barriers for smaller competitors. That's why the US is still relying, and always will, on huge, clearly visible and easily targetable, but really expensive therefore profit-generating, drones like the Reaper.
I learned more about the newest drone tech by reading this 3 minute piece then by watching (too much my wife constantly chides) countless hours of analysts comments.
Bravo, Julian
Try Simplicius on substack.
Simplicius has some excellent material - if you can sort out all the stuff that he (she/ they) throw in from sources like X, as well as "analysis" (not Simplicius's forte). Quantity sometimes interferes with quality. I would go to Black Mountain Analysis or sites like it instead. Simplicius is (like the Duran) an "aggregator" - not an analyst. Our friend "Bob" refers to him as "Simpleton the Thinker" LOL. I wouldn't go THAT far! What S does, he does well and he gets a lot of support from the Alt Media podcast punditocracy, who don't have time to do real research. In my case, I actually worked in the (Japanese / American) defense industry -- so I have a technical background.
I find Simplicius to be reasonably OK in both reporting and analysis, probably because the articles are in written form , which imposes a certain discipline in terms of brevity and clarity, as opposed to long form rants on Youtube(no matter how qualified the participants are) , they simply yak too much and too often - clearly clicks and revenue driven).
Over the last few months Simplicius has been posting 2-3 times per week, which distorts focus, once every 7-10 days would suffice.
The mapping dweebs(Dima, DPA, Willy etc) are unwatchable after a week or 2), Weeb is probably the most concise, but I even skim through his.
Marat’s posts need a Russian translator I find, even though they are concise.
Found a guy just recently who, while he has a strong Russian bias, is a step above the dweebs,- Ruslan Belov, maybe worth a look.
Of course there is always ISW of “ISW has not observed…” fame - the predicate to any and every Russian advance. The fact that it is run by Cookie monster Kagan’s relatives, possibly explains that.
The Duran= Mercouris. NO
Excellent post!
Thank You... Very interesting...
I have been watching the Chinese using drone swarms as firework shows.
Lately they showed a 'Swarm-drone mother 'ship'.
Imagine such a ship with some thousands AI-swarm drones dropping from high such a swarm over a territory with a Brigade that is dug-in. I saw in Ukraine drones entering the trench and fly through it until it could find something to hit. And that they signal each other when they found a good target...
->https://youtube.com/shorts/6o0Kk1rLsdM?si=ay5sL7G2ef1z7xTw
But i think EW defences could be used to disturb such swarms. But it is also possible that such a swarm immediately targets the EW system...
An interesting hobby... Droning.
Cassandra.
Good point: the West at large fell behind in developing drone technology despite having the lead. And it will never get it back for a simple reason, that drones have a massive deal-breaking problem, for the Western military procurement model:
They're cheap and easy to produce.
Cheap equipment means much less opportunities to jack up prices, less profit, less bribes, less entry barriers for smaller competitors. That's why the US is still relying, and always will, on huge, clearly visible and easily targetable, but really expensive therefore profit-generating, drones like the Reaper.
I keep trying to buy you some coffees Julian. Used another CC but didn't work.
Will try again tomorrow.
Just waiting for the IRS and local police-force to acquire those ...
https://uavcoach.com/police-drones/ They have them.
Thanks for the imformative link !!! 👍👍👍