What happens in 2025? / new tactics- new technologies

[MarkSheppard]

This will only increase as the world faces a manpower crunch due to collapsing birthrates.

You'll see this with the increasing penetration of UGVs to do tasks traditionally seen as manpower intensive or very dangerous:

Minelaying
Mineclearing
Scouting
Manning fixed defensive lines

IOW; with a TFR of less than 2.1 in many countries; you can't just scout using the traditional method of "drive down that road until something happens or you get blown up" (aka advance to contact).

Not enough manpower anymore to be like that. So robots will be the ones advancing to contact.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by MarkSheppard

This will only increase as the world faces a manpower crunch due to collapsing birthrates.

IOW; with a TFR of less than 2.1 in many countries; you can't just scout using the traditional method of "drive down that road until something happens or you get blown up" (aka advance to contact).

Not enough manpower anymore to be like that. So robots will be the ones advancing to contact.

Its a lot simpler to "order" a robot to " Go over to that tree line and draw fire"

That ties in with something I noticed recently in building a little scenario to "simulate" that engagement between the Ukrainian Bradleys and the T-90 attached

In the game it's trickier than RL as the T-90 can detect the Brads no matter which way it's facing

You need to dismount the troops in the Brads to distract i.e "draw fire" OR you use the drone that I added to simulate the one that was used to record the event

Even then, it's tricky getting the Brads into position without losing one

[Dion]

I know a lot of robots that would be really good at that, especially the ones who call you and can talk. Not only the robots, but also the people that run them too, people who think they are protected by the constitutional right of free speech to program robots to trick the gullible to answer questions that make people feel foolish for answering, then asking the person for money based on how they answer the question. What a disgrace.

[Felix Nephthys]

Originally Posted by Dion

I know a lot of robots that would be really good at that, especially the ones who call you and can talk. Not only the robots, but also the people that run them too, people who think they are protected by the constitutional right of free speech to program robots to trick the gullible to answer questions that make people feel foolish for answering, then asking the person for money based on how they answer the question. What a disgrace.

Can this be modeled in the game? Seriously though, this is a story I'd like to hear more about. They have blackmail droids now?

[MarkSheppard]

Originally Posted by Felix Nephthys

Seriously though, this is a story I'd like to hear more about. They have blackmail droids now?

OK, this is a slight detour from SPCAMO games, but I think it's worthy to tell in some detail, if nothing else but to get the word out so that people are less likely to fall for scams.

Okay.

AI blackmail / Whitemail is a variant of the old "bad news" scam:

You get a message or phone call in the middle of the night saying that your son/daughter has been in a car accident / been arrested / whatever; and that they need money (which of course is gonna be gift cards).

What makes AI Black/Whitemail so much more dangerous is that AI is advanced enough to "fake a voice" if given a sufficiently long speech sample -- maybe 20 seconds of you talking might be enough for them to make an AI to fake your voice with 85% accuracy.

So now, instead of a super sketchy text message saying that your son has been in an accident -- it literally sounds like your son/daughter is calling you -- maybe from jail; maybe from the hospital, doesn't matter.

AI voice algorithms have also given new life to the "indian call center scam" -- i.e. you get a call from "Microsoft Tech Support" saying that they've detected a virus on your computer; and if you would do the needful, they can fix it for you (which entails you setting up a remote connection to their PC, allowing them to steal everything of note on your hard drive).

The Indian Call Center Scam has been slowly dying out as people now refuse to answer any calls which have Indian accents.

Enter real time voice AI synthesization -- now they don't sound like Pradvisha from Delhi, but John from Peoria.

It's not 100% though; because of the limited english skills of a lot of these call center scammers; they mangle the verbs and syntax of english, so even though they now sound like Bob from Peoria, they are asking you to do the needful.

In a military context; there's a lot you could do with AI voice/visual synthesization (Deep Fakes). For example, you could fake the voice and video of a commanding officer and tell his troops to surrender; or insert fake orders into the command stream -- even if they're countermanded by real orders in the secure encrypted text communications system, it's still uncertainity that slows down the speed of execution of orders if you have to verify each one.

There's also some nastiness; like possibly using AI/Video deepfakes to break POWs to make them give you information; a variant of the "we have captured your children. You will give us your bank account information or we do bad things to them -- and then cut to AI generated audio/video of your children begging for their lives -- a "virtual kidnapping"

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/29/us/ai...cec/index.html

Jennifer DeStefano’s phone rang one afternoon as she climbed out of her car outside the dance studio where her younger daughter Aubrey had a rehearsal. The caller showed up as unknown, and she briefly contemplated not picking up.

But her older daughter, 15-year-old Brianna, was away training for a ski race and DeStefano feared it could be a medical emergency.

“Hello?” she answered on speaker phone as she locked her car and lugged her purse and laptop bag into the studio.

She was greeted by yelling and sobbing.

“Mom! I messed up!” screamed a girl’s voice.

“What did you do?!? What happened?!?” DeStefano asked.

“The voice sounded just like Brie’s, the inflection, everything,” she told CNN recently. “Then, all of a sudden, I heard a man say, ‘Lay down, put your head back.’ I’m thinking she’s being gurnied off the mountain, which is common in skiing. So I started to panic.”

As the cries for help continued in the background, a deep male voice started firing off commands: “Listen here. I have your daughter. You call the police, you call anybody, I’m gonna pop her something so full of drugs. I’m gonna have my way with her then drop her off in Mexico, and you’re never going to see her again.”

DeStefano froze. Then she ran into the dance studio, shaking and screaming for help. She felt like she was suddenly drowning.

After a chaotic, rapid-fire series of events that included a $1 million ransom demand, a 911 call and a frantic effort to reach Brianna, the “kidnapping” was exposed as a scam. A puzzled Brianna called to tell her mother that she didn’t know what the fuss was about and that everything was fine.

[MarkSheppard]

Begun these Drone Wars, they have...


UGV used by Russian forces to deliver ammo in sights of Ukrainian FPV drone.

Also, the happiest dog and his new drone friend....

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/...43593367478592
(Testing of a new AFU Ground Combat Drone armed with RPK)

[MarkSheppard]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/st...81037821919526

Ukrainian EW and drone specialist Serhii Flash estimates the effectiveness of Ukrainian FPVs to be around 30%, highly dependent on the unit.

Дуже багатьох цікавить питання ефективності FPV.

До целi долітає та попадае 30% FPV. Це середня цифра по країни. І то її ніхто ніколи не рахував, це просто моє припущення. В одних підрозділів вона може бути часом 70%, а в інших 20%.

Залежить це від таких факторів:
1. Якість БПЛА
2. Правильний підбір частот та протоколів для конкретної ділянки фронту
3. Активність російського РЕБ на дільниці фронту
4. Досвід пілотiв
5. Правильність та достовірність розвідки

Бувае так шо одним підрозділам постiйно дають «жирні» та точні цілі і вонi мають успішність 60%. Їх ставлять у приклад, всіх тягнуть під їхній показник, натомість замовчуючи, як він досягається

Я прошу великих командирів на фронтах «не гнати план». Зростання показників має бути з МІСЯЦЯМИ. Це означає, що підрозділ розвивається.
Але успішність на усiх фронтах різна.

Якщо цікавить моя особиста думка, то довгостроковий показник 50% - це дуже, дуже хороший результат. Але не завжди його реально досягти.

Many are interested in the question of FPV efficiency.

30% FPV reaches and hits the target. This is the average figure for the country. And no one has ever counted her, this is just my guess. In some divisions, it can sometimes be 70%, and in others 20%.

It depends on the following factors:

1. UAV quality
2. Correct selection of frequencies and protocols for a specific section of the front
3. The activity of the Russian EW on the front line
4. Experience of pilots
5. Correctness and reliability of intelligence

It happens that some divisions are constantly given "fat" and precise goals and they have a success rate of 60%. They are set as an example, everyone is dragged under their indicator, instead of keeping silent about how it is achieved

I ask the great commanders on the fronts "not to pursue the plan." The increase in indicators should be with MONTHS. This means that the unit is developing.

But success on all fronts is different.

If you're interested in my personal opinion, a long-term figure of 50% is a very, very good result. But it is not always realistic to achieve it.

[MarkSheppard]

The famous Bradley that mogged that T-90 has a drone jammer on the turret.

https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/...15646653948411

Apparently the average range of this type of jammer that AFU is using widely is 40 to 80 meters.

It doesn't stop drones from hovering 200-400 meters away and taking video of you with zoom lens; but it does mitigate a little bit of the suicide FPV drone threat...

...with one caveat...

...you've got to be moving. A jamming range of 40-50m means that if you're stationary; even if you jam a suicide FPV drone in it's attack dive, the ballistics of the drone will mean that it has a good chance of hitting you.

Rough figures...

Objects in free fall drop about 25 m/sec.

Average height of a 10-story building is about 30-35m.

A FPV UAV in power dive takes maybe 1 to 1.2 seconds to hit the target.

Bradleys are 6.55m long...figure an average speed of 7 m/sec so that a Bradley can clear it's own length through the aim point for the FPV UAV operator.

That's roughly 25 km/hr (or 15.6 mph).

Essentially, from the math above; if you have a EW Jammer...movement is life.

EDIT: I just realized that Drones themselves are causing combined arms. They force units to be mobile to avoid drone attack runs; which in turn makes the units visible and targets for other weapons systems on the battlefield.

EDIT II -- and of course someone pointed out that the NEXT generation of FPV kamikaze drones coming online will have machine recognition and AI tracking (currently available in larger stuff like Lancets); so they'd be able to track through jamming; unlike a remotely human operated UAV using a datalink.

[Dion]

Ya, people will do anything for money. These "droids" speak perfect English, they don't even have an accent, they laugh and everything. I hate talking to anybody on the phone nowadays that I don't know. People are getting scammed on the phone all the time.

[Suhiir]

Few weeks ago some telemarketer was calling me 5-10 times a day with different offers (i.e. scams) and was using a different "voice" for each. It could/did answer certain basic questions but the general speale was always the same so that sort of gave it away.