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‘Unmanned’ drones take too many humans to operate, says top Army aviator

I’m not sure you understand the bandwidth requirements for what you suggest as well as the confusion it can create.


Delta is a situational awareness[1] and battlefield management system developed and used in Ukraine. The system integrates information from a broad network of participants, including troops, civilian officials, and vetted bystanders;[2] and a wide range of streams,[1] including sensors, intelligence sources, surveillance satellites and drones,[2] especially geolocated data, which it maps in real time, along with pictures of enemy assets.[1]

Delta is used by the Ukrainian military services, as part of the Russo-Ukrainian War, especially after the launch of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, for a wide range of battlefield management tasks, including the planning of operations and combat missions, coordination between units, and secure exchange of information about the location of enemy forces.[1]

On the backend side, it's a cloud native environment.[1] On the client side, it runs on regular PCs, laptop, tablets or mobile phones.[1]


On 4 February 2023, the Ukrainian government gave approval to full deployment of the Delta system to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and permitted hosting of Delta's cloud-components outside of Ukraine to protect it against missile and cyber attacks.[5]

Centrality of drone warfare[edit]​

Aerorozvidka specializes aerial reconnaissance and drone warfare and their main contribution to Delta likely lies in this sphere. Delta, in this view, serves as a key link between raw reconnaissance (often remote photographic telemetry), identification, prioritization, and attack, facilitating a more rapid response cycle across diverse and dispersed participants and resources, known in military parlance as the kill chain.

Systems such as Delta are poised to become a key information-management component of the rapid evolution of drone warfare on the modern battlefield.[6] Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation, would like to see 10,000 drones operating continuously along the front lines.[6] This vision entails a substantial network of digital coordination.

For reasons of ongoing operations security, the precise nature of the integration between Delta and drone warfare remains undisclosed.

Delta might not be "big" enough for you but given the number of clients in Ukraine it seems more than big enough for Canada. And if not that then something else.
 
Yup. This is a tool/set of tools that quickly becomes a monster that eats people, and comms links. The tooth/tail ratio is immense.

I presume the more pictures you take the more eyeballs you need to look at them, the more brains you need to interpret them and the more conversations you need to have to understand them - all of which takes more time.

Does that contribute to shortening the OODA loop?

And how does that compare to having a UAS for every GMG and 60mm mortar reporting fall of shot immediately back to the gunner?

Magyar of Bakhmut Birds fame says that at the end of the day terabytes of hard drives from the field are hand delivered to him and his team and they go over ALL of the info to look for bigger patterns and targets.

Bandwidth and complication I can understand as definitely being factors, and accepting that Ukraine is not everyone's preferred lab, and is not generating everyone's preferred solutions, it does strike me that there isn't an army developing a battlefield management system that transfers data from individual vehicles (and teams) all the way up to higher. Individuals have go pros and personal role radios and tablets.

Pretty much like Google, Chrome and Microsoft et al.
 
I presume the more pictures you take the more eyeballs you need to look at them, the more brains you need to interpret them and the more conversations you need to have to understand them - all of which takes more time.

Does that contribute to shortening the OODA loop?

And how does that compare to having a UAS for every GMG and 60mm mortar reporting fall of shot immediately back to the gunner?
Those are Squad/Section level UAS, a great tool, but can still cause issues for the untrained.
Those real time data feeds ideally also get pushed up higher - so information they possess can be assembled, and deciphered.
Where down here there has been talk of Coy level Int positions, or at least a secondary skill

Magyar of Bakhmut Birds fame says that at the end of the day terabytes of hard drives from the field are hand delivered to him and his team and they go over ALL of the info to look for bigger patterns and targets.
Ideally that data would be automatically available via real-time feed to be filtered by both human and ML/AI for patterns etc.
Bandwidth and complication I can understand as definitely being factors, and accepting that Ukraine is not everyone's preferred lab, and is not generating everyone's preferred solutions, it does strike me that there isn't an army developing a battlefield management system that transfers data from individual vehicles (and teams) all the way up to higher. Individuals have go pros and personal role radios and tablets.

Pretty much like Google, Chrome and Microsoft et al.
Ukraine is a very stagnant theater currently, and somewhat limited in scope - it’s not a multi Corps Theater of Allied AFV’s rolling forward, trying to ensure deconfliction of a ground/air war.
 
Ukraine is a very stagnant theater currently, and somewhat limited in scope - it’s not a multi Corps Theater of Allied AFV’s rolling forward, trying to ensure deconfliction of a ground/air war.

So do you prefer to build the global solution at some point in the future or the Division solution today and grow it from there, or even, let it grow organically from there?
 
So do you prefer to build the global solution at some point in the future or the Division solution today and grow it from there, or even, let it grow organically from there?
Canada needs to link into the US Mil and ideally the Uk as well.

1) Being an Expeditionary Force by nature it can’t rely upon a system setup for a static role.

2) Canada isn’t ever going to get the assets it needs, and pretending it will is going to get folks killed. So setting up to take feed from allies is a no brainer.

3) Due to the size of the CAF, it needs to plug into a coalition.
 
3) Due to the size of the CAF, it needs to plug into a coalition.
4. That's the way we've been trending for years (decades) now.

Canada is not going to go on operation alone (and frankly didn't even when we were much larger).

Going back to the discussion on pers and infrastructure required to process the stuff coming out of RPAs, the USAF has the Distributed Common Ground System (AF DCGS) to process U-2 and MALE/HALE RPAS outputs - they don't even touch the Class 2 and below UAS.

It consists of 27 stations around the US and I'm assuming the figures below are per station. 45 pers every 12 hours for each Global Hawk or U-2 mission really adds up.

Daily operational tempo: more than 50 ISR sorties exploited, over 1,200 hours of motion imagery reviewed, approximately 3,000 Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) reports produced, 1250 still images exploited and 20 terabytes of data managed daily

Operational crew size per 12-hour mission: high altitude U-2 or RQ-4 multi-INT = 45; medium altitude MQ-1/9 multi-INT = 8. Mission crews are tailored according to mission demands and supported by maintenance, communications and contractor personnel.
 
4. That's the way we've been trending for years (decades) now.

Canada is not going to go on operation alone (and frankly didn't even when we were much larger).

Going back to the discussion on pers and infrastructure required to process the stuff coming out of RPAs, the USAF has the Distributed Common Ground System (AF DCGS) to process U-2 and MALE/HALE RPAS outputs - they don't even touch the Class 2 and below UAS.

It consists of 27 stations around the US and I'm assuming the figures below are per station. 45 pers every 12 hours for each Global Hawk or U-2 mission really adds up.
No free lunch…
But again look at the crew and support for an E-3 Sentry. 23 crew (4 flight crew and 19 Mission crew on board) plus ground crews and ground analysts etc.


From my understanding the Army DCGS can now take Class 2 and below — part of the reason for the subunit cell and zero trust cloud.
With the Army DCGS Palantir linkage, it can also automatically parse data streams to find common links and overlay.

A lot more is needed in automation for all the data - and plucking wheat from the chaff isn’t nearly as easy as on TV ;)
 
Oh god yes.

“Enhance. Enhance.” doesn’t actually work like that.
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