Public sentiment regarding Ukraine's defense innovations is mixed, characterized by both cautious optimism and skepticism. Many commenters express admiration for Ukraine's self-sufficient military technology and its potential impact on the conflict, embodying a strong support for their ingenuity and resilience. Nonetheless, concerns remain about the effectiveness of these innovations, the narrative surrounding 'game changers,' and the challenges faced in the ongoing war, leading to a nuanced public opinion.

Ukraine

Russia

Western Allies

May want to check first to see if hegseth will still allow Ukraine to use it to defend themselves.

canspop

excellent. DE spending on rockets while cutting welfare. thanks to all involved, Putin, Trump, Merz espec.

uodkX0

Good on them.  And, another shameful example of America withhold assistance for a besieged democracy.

wwarnout

I can't wait to see another situation of an incident delaying for unspecified amount of time the promised delivery. At this point such purchase's announcement are empty words

Cookie_Volant

“I would say there is some sort of big dick energy moment. You don’t need a scary name for a missile that can fly 3,000 kilometers,” Terekh said of the missile’s claimed range. “The main goal is for a missile to be effective.”

Docccc

40m at 3000km at that sized warhead is absolutely good enough if you can make them at volume.  

I wouldn’t waste time or resources making them more accurate if it costs any volume of production.  Fighting an insurgency is about warheads on foreheads.  Actual war, “to whom it may concern”  often is the way to go

Applespeed_75

Its pointy so you know this is a good rocket.

csueiras

"You don't have the cards" , said someone that went bankrupt with (not in!) a casino.

Additional_Yam_3794

Ninevehenian

They need to give it little pink plastic legs too.

HighDeltaVee

Just when you think Ukraines heroic defenders cant get any more brilliant, they go and outdo themselves once again, while Ruzzia is resorting to the age-old strategy of just throwing more bodies into the fray without caring about how many die.

-Tuck-Frump-

Man, when hundreds of these start flying into Moscow .....

Able-Project3614

wadevb1

Now put some little charges on the Kerch bridge to clear the civilians, and then hulk smash!

catfink1664

The unlubricated dildo of karma has been given a fitting paint job! Slava Ukraini!

kinleyd

Prometeus1985

Kremit-the_Forg

Bubbly-Juggernaut-49

Something tells me the Germans have a hand in this. A sufficient amount would compensate Taurus somewhat.

Hanna-11

SectorSensitive116

The flamingo of consequences has arrived! 

Looking forward to seeing it in action in videos from Russia.

cognitiveglitch

jonshlim

AustralianYobbo

Australia has to worry about emus, seagulls cause chaos in Britain...and Russia now has a flamingo problem...

cleggems

Some EU countries: ehhhh dunno we should provide Ukraine with long range missiles... it might anger putler! Think about escalation!

Ukraine: Fine I'll escalate it myself

7orly7

More: [https://www.politico.eu/article/flamingo-ukraine-3000km-cruise-missile-woman-vladimir-putin-donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskyy-drone/](https://www.politico.eu/article/flamingo-ukraine-3000km-cruise-missile-woman-vladimir-putin-donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskyy-drone/)

Ok_Feedback4200

Saw the thumbnail, and thought they had brought Thunderbird 1 to life!!

Too_Old_For_All_This

They should paint a card on each one ie ace of spades…then they can say actually we do have a lot of cards 😉🇺🇦🫶🏻

Stu247365

Hertje73

another awe-inspiring development by Ukraine

forthehundredthtime

"When she goes by, she looks so fine, Pretty Flamingo..."

*(Manfred Mann BTW, if you were wondering)*

WotTheFook

I heard flamingo gets its color by eating orcs

Opposite-Chemistry-0

Spran02

Wess212

https://preview.redd.it/mkq1f5ev7kkf1.png?width=600&amp;format=png&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=5e00760af62f76907305ff57b837de17e3aceea6

CaptainFit9727

Send the flamingos in on mass, testing is progression and loads of suffering for the ruskies they deserve it ten fold for all the pain they have caused 💥

Maximum_Emu9196

If Ukraine is able to send off several hundred of these to cripple the oil and gas industry in the European part of russia, I can promise you that the coming winter will be cold and dark!

About 700TWh of electric energy is produced every year in russia. And about 400TWh from other sources. Most societies would crumble and collapse if several 100TWh suddenly became unavailable. 

I do not know how many TWh is produced from oil in the European part, but it will be absolutely disastrous any way you turn it. Everything from heating homes to getting to work (walking and bikes excluded) would be close to impossible. 

It will hit the russian people and economy extremely hard. There will be people freezing to death, but there will also be no electricity to run factories producing shahed drones, explosives or ammo. It will knock russia back to 1944 or something around there…

If the russian people will revolt and end putler is impossible for a toilet seat analyst like me to say, but putler would most likely need to reroute more resources into keeping the people in check. 

Soooo…. Can I press/hammer the launch button?? Like a cracy madman?? Or do I have to line up in que??

Maybe that should be something for Ukraine?? Pay 10K up front, send a signature that will be written on it, log on some webpage. Camera feed pops up, countdown and your job is to press the button when the timer is up. If you decide to not push, it will anyway launch one minute past. Pay 20k and you will be allowed to choose between 3-5 targets. 

Just make a reality series of it more or less. Just let the russians know that Ukraine has made a reality out of bombing them…

bjorn1978_2

50746974736b61

Straight to the bridge pleeaassseeee!!!!!!!!

selfdestructo591

Mors_Umbra

zuiopasdf

Fuck your flexing, UKRAINE just Kendrick the game! Only real Alphas would bomb you wearing pink! Fuck Russia! Long live UKRAINE 💛💙💛💙💛

SwimmingPirate9070

Tactical weapons can be a lot more effective than WMD if the targets are selected carefully and hit. 

Something something rhymes with crouton.

blackteashirt

geekphreak

Orcban’s wizzair also uses a similar shade of pink, he should be 100% all over this. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Individual-Cream-581

Flamingos burning down the Kremlin soon

![gif](giphy|3mMdHevrR3tVC)

Zenithixv

Man that looks (almost) like a V-1 Rocket.

Wonder if it sounds similar.

\*EDIT\*: No, doesn't. AI-25TL Tubrofan, if anyone's curious.

TheRealAfinda

I didn't have the doodlebug going back into production on my bingo card

morrisminor66

Oh_its_that_asshole

Readman31

Visualization of today's strike.

A large number of strike UAVs were used. In parallel with the drone attack, strikes were carried out with aeroballistic missiles "Kinzhal", and at the end of the attack cruise missiles appeared in the airspace.

The attack was aimed mainly at Lutsk, Zhytomyr and Ozerne.



During the night and morning of 09.07.2025, the defense forces destroyed:



❗/❗️ 7/7 Kh-101/"Iskander-K" cruise missiles.



❗ 0/6 Kh-47M2 "Kinzhal" aeroballistic missiles.



⚠️ 296/728 strike "Shahedi"/"Gerber" and imitation UAVs.



Locationally lost on the territory of Ukraine:



⚠️ 415 strike/imitative UAVs.

Igor0976

why so far in the back? to hurt where the people live?

Musique_Plus

ruSSian psychpaths.. first fix your broken country and hungry people you scum on earth!

Key_Wrangler_8321

I hope that Germany will provide more Gepards, these machines have been proven effective against the shahed drones.

Redax1990

johfajarfa

https://u24.gov.ua/sky-sentinel?utm_source=reddit&amp;utm_medium=media&amp;utm_campaign=sky-sentinel

Donate to help shoot down drones

MudrakM

If some European feels safe, look how occupied part of Ukraine attacks free Ukraine and extrapolate on occupied Europe vs free Europe.

Garlyon

[deleted]

Long range missiles to deal with the Russian planes launching kinzahl missiles. Patriots to intercept the missiles. We have the means to neutralize ruSSias terror.

Embarrassed_Lemon527


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Obviously something good was delivered there. Once again Ukraine proved that they are smart, capable and hard working people.

youarenotmonkey1

Shit, family lives in Zhytomyr which has usually been “pretty safe”.

Aethernath


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I feel like budget wise, skill wise this is not an either or thing anyway airforce pilots and jet production lines will not pause, and then start producing small drones and the airfoce start skill drone pilots instead, these will be separate pipelines, and drones often being made on private R&amp;D budgets.

i see the small attack drones as replacements for ATGMs and shoulder launched systems more than anything, or a loitering artillery shell.

Electrical-Lab-9593

So,  I mostly disagree with this narrative.

For one, a big part of it is strawman - nobody worth listening to says that FPV drones replace air power. That's like comparing artillery with air power. FPV drones are land warfare tools. Yes there are clueless "normies" like Elon Musk who have said that F-35s are obsolete in the age of drones, maybe it's worth it to respond when people with a big audience say that and many military experts responded to Elon. But this article makes it seem like people in actual military circles, who talk about the importance of drones, say that drones replace air power and that's not the case.

&gt;Ukraine is still taking heavy casualties and slowly losing ground to Russian assaults despite being a world leader in developing, using and innovating with military UAS.

Ukraine is losing ground because its population is \~4 or 5 times smaller, its economy is \~12 times smaller, and the money/resources they can spend on the war is significantly smaller, even with the allies' support. And also, as pointed out in the article itself, Russia's drone usage is at least very close to Ukraine's. So it's a weird argument...

He also overstates the strength of Russian CUAS capabilities. Against tactical drones, most of the Russian and Ukrainian CUAS is EW. But there are classes of drones that are invulnerable to EW - fiber-optic drones, autonomous drones, drones with advanced antennas(Starlink or other directional antennas). Should the West focus on these unjammable drones(which will make them more expensive, but not prohibitively)? Absolutely.

Lastly, this whole debate about the usefulness of small drones is missing the big picture. What's new about this type of warfare is not propellers, batteries, or electric motors. What changed is that microelectronics are getting exponentially cheaper, so it became cost-effective to shoot multiple smart weapons at each enemy soldier, and tens of them at each enemy vehicle. But militaries and military industries are slow and conservative and for the most part they have not kept pace with this technological progress and most smart weapons are as expensive as decades ago.  But this will change at some point. The massive ramp-up of Russian guided bomb production is a part of this change. Maybe FPV drones will become completely ineffective in a few years, maybe they will be replaced by rocket-powered "drones" AKA missiles, but that's immaterial - this is about cheap smart weapons in general.

Fatalist_m

Honestly I've always been in the mindset that crewed aircraft won't be replaceable until we have extremely advanced AI (which to be fair may come sooner than I thought). RPVs will always be susceptible to poor electronic weather in a way a vehicle with a person in it wouldn't be. Drones as a complimentary tool are excellent, of course.

yobob591

Is that really the direction of travel? Most of the news I've read suggests that NATO is investing both. In the latest Pentagon budget the legacy systems most at risk were ground platforms like the Booker. Missiles and aircraft received a boost. Maybe there's an argument to be made that there's an over investment in drones, but that assessment requires more numbers.

Additionally, I think the assessment of the efficacy of drones needs to include the production side. Bronk states that drone employment is driven by necessity, but fails to examine the underlying cause. Drones are cheap and easy to make. Legacy systems are harder and require a skilled workforce that the West pissed away through outsourcing. In the early days of the war Russia alone was out producing the whole of NATO in artillery shells. I don't know the current numbers, but if Chinese production were to be brought to bare, the West will not be able to compete.

So if NATO is unable to mass the required missiles and aircraft to defeat Russia or China in a fight then it would be wise to fill the gaps with drones. Between Ukraine and Israel there has been major concern about magazine depth. Rates of production need to increase, but the reason Ukraine and Russia have relied on drones is because it's easier to ramp up production of drones than conventional systems. The West needs to remember this going into the future.

kantmeout

It seems a strange argument since few are in favour of replacing traditional firepower instead of integrating drones into it

Alexandros6

They're complementary weapons systems, future warfare will require both.

Drones have changed asymmetric warfare. The insurgencies we fought during GWOT would play out entirely differently if substate actors could leverage drones in the way Ukraine has.

It also makes clandestine factions harder to trace when they don't need to engage in arms trafficking, they can just repurpose commercial equipment. It already has a major impact on intelligence gathering.

cyclynn

&gt;Conversely, the greater Russian forces tactical, operational and technical focus on countering Ukrainian UAS, the less they are able to focus on training and equipping their forces to counter NATO’s traditional areas of military strength.

The argument that Russian focus on countering Ukrainian drones necessarily degrades their ability to defend against NATO’s conventional firepower is fundamentally flawed. In modern warfare, anti-UAS capabilities are not a distraction—they’re an essential component of combined arms doctrine. Both Russian and NATO militaries are structured specifically to adapt to new threats *in parallel*, not by trading off one capability for another.

In fact, investing in counter-UAS means protecting tanks, artillery, and troop concentrations from precision drone strikes, thereby enhancing—not reducing—traditional force effectiveness. The idea that these are competing priorities simply doesn’t fit the reality of how contemporary militaries train, equip, and fight.

There’s no substantive evidence, either doctrinal or operational, that Russia’s adaptation to drones and loitering munitions meaningfully undermines its conventional defenses. If anything, it’s the forces that fail to integrate UAS and anti-UAS capabilities with conventional firepower that will be left behind.

Synth_Sapiens

these blanket statements about drone capabilities are incredibly naive.

Ukraine is a global leader is deploying drones, they are in no way a global leader in developing them.

ribeyeballer

Justin Bronk is more of an airpower guy than ground, I wonder what Jack Watling and Nick Reynold at RUSI would have to say on this topic. Though I've heard Mike Kofman and Rob Lee both say similar things as Bronk.

Another point I'd bring up is the attritional nature of this war, due to the shared strategies of exhaustion, has led Russia and **especially** Ukraine to become absolutely obsessed with kills. To the point they most certainly are willing to compromise on C-UAS if it means their own drones have more success. That has big implications, most especially EW.

Most of the FPV drones used in this war have a frequency range equivalent of a cheap ICOM "walkie talkie" radio. I consider myself rather ignorant of physics and the electromagnetic spectrum, but even I know how easy those are jammed, that's WW1 level simple. So why aren't they doing their best to jam those freqs? For the same reason they're also not mass jamming enemy cheap ICOM "walkie talkie" radios, which are the standard type, because they rely on them just as much. But if either side decided to forgo their own drones, to deny themselves the benefit of FPV and other drones in their recon fires complex, they'd probably have a decent chance of seriously degrading enemy drone capabilities. That should be especially attractive to the US, if we know the Russians are utterly reliant on drones, we shouldn't copy them, we should figure out how to stop the drones from working properly.

Also, and I can't stress this enough, too many of the lessons from Ukraine shouldn't apply to the US, anymore than those building armies in the Interwar Period should have copied WW1. Ukrainian (and often Russian) FPV drone usage is a prime example because the manner in which they employ them is so ridiculously boutique that it should have no place in our tactical doctrine. 

An issued drone goes from [these](https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/04/GettyImages-1957348817-scaled.jpeg?strip=all&amp;quality=85) to [this](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240210_LDD001.jpg) only after being customized by the end user in tactical rear area workshops like [this one](https://www.reuters.com/resizer/v2/F5GAYI2XNNMXBOJ6YLTKWYZJAM.jpg?auth=32ef804576918e0d9e3b6d112820a3dd1251ea6fe8c43168387388ac164e5e6e&amp;width=1200&amp;quality=80), with the more better funded the unit, the more modifications they can afford to make. 

Most of those have little to no EW hardening, most have no low light capabilities (kind of a big deal for the US), are not water proofed and have significant performance issues in bad weather. That's what $1-2k per drone gets you. To get the capabilities we would want, it's going to cost probably $30k or more per unit or more, which means they'll never get issued in the numbers anywhere close to the Ukrainians (or Russians), we'll never buy enough especially short of war.

And that's another reason not to go hog wild buying drones. Do that now, pick a model that seems to be the gold plated perfect strike drone, and that model with probably be technological obsolete by the time the first assembly line is at its capacity, let alome storing them for years waiting for a war to start. But an artillery shell made now won't be obsolete a year from now, let alone 15 years.

Duncan-M

Shouldn't their be a submission statement?

Mighmi

&gt; Despite being a global leader in developing and deploying millions of drones, Ukraine is still slowly losing ground and taking heavy casualties. Their increased drone use is driven more by necessity (shortages of personnel, ammunition, and traditional equipment) than by drones being inherently superior to conventional systems like artillery and anti-tank guided missiles for decisive strikes.

Louder for those in the back. People really seem keen on misdiagnosing why the war in Ukraine looks the way it does.

UAF lacks combined arms expertise and is driven heavily by the aforementioned shortages. Nobody should be advocating that NATO make their army look more like Ukraine's.

Command0Dude

I think Ukraines success with drones is met by Russia’s success with very basic and traditional military resources (light infantry waves, artillery, air power).

SGexpat

Drones are continuously getting better and NATO not only has to be at the forefront of that but also at counter UAS. Currently NATO IS fighting Russia via UA, as it knows full well it needs UA to win to prevent expansion of threat by RF. 


By getting better at counter UAS it could thereby help UA defeat RF. 


In addition tanks and mobile artillery have recently started automating and resucing crew volume so tgey can be lighter and support more weapon ststems, for example tge French German  tank concept sportes two additional guns, at least one on its own turret able to tackle drones, in part because automation, smaller form factor leads to a lighter turret. Fully unmanned tanms will have drastically less armour weight but can be much better armed and armoured and more mobike, since volume and surface area shrinks thereby armour mass. With less area, more expensive armour can be used. Tge weiggr saving can be used ro give goid counter UAS and C-RAM capability as well.


No conventional tank will match it for physical performance. 
 


The future is increasingly obviously unmanned. 


Within 5 to 10 years more than 50% of human military tasks may be completely replaced, and many mostly replaced with greatly reduced reliance on convebtional infantry, it would be complete and utter madness not to fight as hard as possible to not fall behind. 


Drones are not either / or, they are complementary in increasingly synergistic ways. They are vital to save budget and costs so your conventional weapon R&amp;D and procurement can be paid for. We are currently losing the edge because we are paying for outdated systems.

Smooth_Imagination

My biggest concern is politicians playing their hands, especially in Europe.

In the UK, for example, there's now an obsession with 'lethality' (which the government doesn't even have a measurement for), which I'm increasingly concerned is going to become a loophole to avoid the simple fact that quantity is a quality of its own. It's a lot cheaper to invest in a big drone force, than invest in an armoured division, for example.

I could really see a scenario where Europe places too much reliance on 'new' forms of warfare (e.g. Drones), at the demise of 'traditional' concepts of warfare. Mainly, armour. Which Europe really lacks the capacity to develop, maintain, support &amp; transport. 

For the record; I'm not saying drones are *not* a critical part of warfare moving forward. They certainly are. I am equally not saying NATO shouldn't invest heavily into drones. But in terms of importance, drones are just as important (arguably less so) than capable &amp; economically resilient conventional fighting forces.

Mediocre_Painting263

Lol, you literally know nothing about how war in Ukraine goes on, what a stupid take

Whole battle field is FPVs, everywhere (source: I am literally here). We are loosing ground because Russia has like 10 times more of them. Nato tanks will be absolutely useless against swarm of drones

nick4fake

It's amazing that these can be made for $150000 each and that they're aiming for 10-13 a month to be made, it states that around ten to thirty of these could protect an entire city so within a few months there should be a notable difference in Ukrainian Air Defence, it sounds like the focus with these are drones primarily but if that's the case then that frees up other air defences when it comes to other things like cruise missiles Etc.

Cool_Stock_9731

Interesting weapon. If it can fulfill the requirements...brilliant. I hope they are using airburst ammunition to ensure, that nobody will get hurt nearby. Thumbs up!

speedyhml2000

&gt; Sky Sentinel is equipped with a large-caliber M2 Browning machine gun.

Scratch "Shahed" on with a knife.

John Moses Browning smiles down upon us from heaven.

StatsBG

Anybody else getting blocked from the militarnyi website ?

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Novel_Source372

Ukraine continues to innovate excellent solutions for living next door to a rabid pack of orcs intent on erasing Ukrainians from the planet.

DataGeek101


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I was confused when I first heard "Sky Sentinel" because there's a [long-endurance drone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Sentinel) made in the US by the same name.  

This is an excellent development and the comments about dealing with "mechanical play" in the article are very interesting.  Such a huge difference from when we fired M2's from simple mounts with manual aiming.  Ukraine modularizes some really nice packages, I wonder if these could go on patrol boats and other vehicles?  If so, they would be great at the front and in rear/logistical areas once there are enough for cities.

Sensitive_Yellow_121

Ukraine has rapidly developed its defense capabilities amid ongoing conflict, announcing significant advancements in military technology.

Ukraine's Defense Innovations and Long-Range Missile Development

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