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Russia/Ukraine conflict

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Imo very likely FPV with a human nearby. But soon there will be enough training data and enough embedded compute to do it autonomously.

Future warfare will be scary... It's all about mass production and cost effective solutions and small drones with explosives are very cost effective... I guess all that's needed to take out most of the population/infrastructure of a country is getting a few million drones there. So how to get them there without getting shot down easily? Submarines could be one way, but I wonder if SpaceX could just launch a few starships filled with a few million drones and a few thousand heat shields and parachutes and let them fall down over the major cities.

To determine how many DJI drones could fit in a SpaceX Starship, we'll need the dimensions and volume of both the Starship and a DJI drone. Let's use the DJI Mavic 2 Pro as a representative drone, given its popularity and typical size.

Dimensions and Volume​

SpaceX Starship:
  • Diameter: 9 meters
  • Height: 50 meters
  • Usable volume (payload bay): approximately 1,000 cubic meters
DJI Mavic 2 Pro:
  • Dimensions (folded): 214 x 91 x 84 mm (0.214 x 0.091 x 0.084 meters)
  • Volume (folded): 0.214 * 0.091 * 0.084 = 0.001637244 cubic meters

Calculation​

First, we need to convert the dimensions to the same units and then calculate how many DJI Mavic 2 Pro drones can fit into the payload bay of the Starship by volume.

Volume of Starship payload bay:
  • Volume: 1,000 cubic meters
Volume of one DJI Mavic 2 Pro:
  • Volume: 0.001637244 cubic meters
Number of DJI Mavic 2 Pro drones: Number of drones=Volume of StarshipVolume of one DJI Mavic 2 ProNumber of drones=Volume of one DJI Mavic 2 ProVolume of Starship Number of drones=1,000 cubic meters0.001637244 cubic metersNumber of drones=0.001637244 cubic meters1,000 cubic meters Number of drones≈610,800Number of drones≈610,800

So, approximately 610,800 DJI Mavic 2 Pro drones could fit into the payload bay of a SpaceX Starship, assuming perfect packing efficiency and no space lost to structural or other components.

Moscow does allegedly have a population of some 13 Million people... So you'd need what – 21-22 Starships just to take out Moscow?... And that's not accounting for all the drones that would be needed to breach windows. Or the drones that would get stuck in window blinds... And what if the people of Moscow were to have covered their windows with a simple welded wire mesh screen? How are the drones going to get through that? And how many drones would run out of battery before they could find 'a target'? And even if you send like ~30(?) Starships and manage to take out Moscow, the rest of Russia would still be completely unscathed...

Even assuming that this would one day work – what you basically have is another 'version' of a Nuclear Weapon. Any use of this 'mass swarm drone weapon thingy' against a nuclear power would guaranteed trigger a nuclear response. Any use of such a weapon by The Russian Dictator or the Military Dictatorship that is China would trigger a massive response by the Democratic world very similar to what has been clearly communicated to the Russian Dictator if he ever were to use a Nuke in Ukraine.
 
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Moscow does allegedly have a population of some 13 Million people... So you'd need what – 21-22 Starships just to take out Moscow?... And that's not accounting for all the drones that would be needed to breach windows. Or the drones that would get stuck in window blinds... And what if the people of Moscow were to have covered their windows with a simple welded wire mesh screen? How are the drones going to get through that? And how many drones would run out of battery before they could find 'a target'? And even if you send like ~30(?) Starships and manage to take out Moscow, the rest of Russia would still be completely unscathed...
The calculation was for DJI Mavic drones, the videos in the warning video were some futuristic much smaller drone, let's say 1/10 of the mass of a DJI. And you don't need to take out every human in Moscow, taking out all men 18-65 will incapacitate their defensive capability a lot.

As for battery, a few large batteries, some solar panel, some drones to ferry around batteries for the smaller drones etc. It's not hard to imagine this being solved 5-10 years after we have AGI which metaculus seems to believe we will have in 2027.

And it's not like China will pause their development of this:
 
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The calculation was for DJI Mavic drones, the videos in the warning video were some futuristic much smaller drone, let's say 1/10 of the mass of a DJI. And you don't need to take out every human in Moscow, taking out all men 18-65 will incapacitate their defensive capability a lot.

As for battery, a few large batteries, some solar panel, some drones to ferry around batteries for the smaller drones etc. It's not hard to imagine this being solved 5-10 years after we have AGI which metaculus seems to believe we will have in 2027.

And it's not like China will pause their development of this:

But you didn't adress this part (with some added text and underline):…
Even assuming that this would one day work – what you basically have is another 'version' of a Nuclear Weapon. Any use of this 'mass swarm drone weapon thingy' [on the scale that you laid out in our first post with "a few million drones"] against a nuclear power would guaranteed trigger a nuclear response. Any use of such a weapon by The Russian Dictator or the Military Dictatorship that is China [against a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons] would trigger a massive response by the Democratic world very similar to what has been clearly communicated to the Russian Dictator if he ever were to use a Nuke in Ukraine.
 
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As someone whose family lost many thousands of acres in Cuba after 1959

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Never mind..
 
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Seems like an unknown amount of Russian soldiers are deserting or refusing to fight in the Russian Dictator's Illegal Attack and Occupation of Ukraine.

Russia: ASTRA journalists identified at least 15 dungeons in occupied Ukraine where discarded Russian soldiers are locked up. They include deserters, maimed soldiers missing various limbs, and soldiers that are otherwise "useless" to the Kremlin.

x.com/igorsushko/status/1805294394536558872

EDIT: The embedding of the tweet below doesn't seem to work. At least not for me. Don't know why...

 
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Please stop the political posts. The US election is 4 months away. It is bad enough all the nonsense and fake news we are being inundated with in media. Please stop it here. Polls are meaningless at this point. This thread is about the Ukraine invasion by a murdering fascist and how the defense of Ukraine is fairing. Please stop replying to trolls.
 
Allegedly:

Biden administration moves toward allowing American military contractors to deploy to Ukraine

The Biden administration is moving toward lifting a de facto ban on American military contractors deploying to Ukraine, four US officials familiar with the matter told CNN, to help the country’s military maintain and repair US-provided weapons systems.

The change would mark another significant shift in the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy, as the US looks for ways to give Ukraine’s military an upper hand against Russia.

The policy is still being worked on by administration officials and has not received final sign-off yet from President Joe Biden, officials said. [...