| ▲ | silvestrov 4 hours ago |
| One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to procure and use in battle. It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics. |
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| ▲ | LPisGood a minute ago | parent | next [-] |
| The system is useful for many reasons, not the least of which that it provides an easy way to avoid war crimes (which hurt the war effort via bad PR in partner countries). They award units 10x as many points (which can be redeemed for drones, HIMARS strikes, etc) for a capture that they do for a kill. |
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| ▲ | lopsotronic an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card. Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex. That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either. |
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| ▲ | elictronic 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Here is a 2024 article pointing out China doing exactly this and Ukraine making many of the blocked items at home. You might be 2 years to late with this comment.
https://kyivindependent.com/as-china-weaponizes-the-drone-su... China controls much of the integration and many of the low level components for super low cost electronics and motors. They aren't the ones controlling all the fabs for the circuits and integration can be done anywhere if you want to pay extra. | |
| ▲ | bix6 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I am so curious about this. There are a lot of 3D printed drone startups now. But nobody really seems to be thinking about the electronics sourcing. Great you can print a drone shell wherever but what happens if China turns off exports? |
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| ▲ | tpurves 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| this strategy worked to keep Ukraine alive, by enabling them to throw literally anything and everything they could obtain into the fight. And the system enabled rapid experimentation and evolution of what works. Also they didn't have enough of anything to equip all units equally or fully, so a market-like system of was also a way to triage short supply. However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably. |
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| ▲ | mcswell 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Reminds me of the Cambrian revolution: suddenly there were all kinds of weird animals. Many of these kinds rapidly disappeared, while a few more successful ones kept on. Or at least that's my reading. | | | |
| ▲ | jerlam 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wouldn't a fragmented, decentralized system also help make their supply chains more resilient? If they had a single large drone factory, it would be a sizable target. | | |
| ▲ | mikewarot an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | During WW2 in the United States, you had all sorts of consumer goods companies reorganized to output a prodigious amount of military supplies. There were multiple companies making the same model of things, with fairly rigorous QA to ensure quality and uniformity. For example, the BC-348 receiver, widely used in aircraft, was produced initially by RCA, and eventually "farmed out" to 3 other manufacturers. More than 4 million M1903 Springfield Rifle were produced by the Smith-Corona typewriter company. Here's a really good example, look at how the production of proximity fuzes, was distributed.[1] The key thing is to have second sources for everything. Something the US military seems to have forgotten, or decided to ignore in their pursuit of gold-plated weapons systems that give the most kick-backs. [1] https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/vtproximityfuze.htm | | |
| ▲ | rwmj a minute ago | parent [-] | | It's not a great comparison because Germany could not hit the US mainland. Even if there had been a single giant everything factory it wouldn't have mattered. |
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| ▲ | soco 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | One design doesn't mean one factory. And it's not about one design anyway, just the thought of culling the less performing ones. |
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| ▲ | tim-tday an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Procurement innovation wins the war. |
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| ▲ | homeonthemtn 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I hadn't heard this before. Do you have a good article on it? I'd be curious to learn more |
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