Cont: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine part 9

[LDE1976]

This article suggests the success of Vivaldi is based on medium range drone strikes, coordinated to isolate large area from any supplies.

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/operation-vivaldi-drone-strikes-force-russian-forces-to-use-longer-supply-routes/

That's very good news, as the potential mobilization would be useless against it.

Now that's what I call Four Seasons total landscaping.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... wire guidance has existed for decades.

Certainly, but nobody was using a spool of wire to control a drone while receiving high quality video back down the control wire. With a single optical fibre you can send masses of data in both directions at once, using different wavelength lasers, and it's immune to electrical interference.

 

[theprestige]

I think the real benefit of fiber-optic guidance will be the vast amounts of training data for the next generation of drone AI for terminal guidance and targeting.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I think the real benefit of fiber-optic guidance will be the vast amounts of training data for the next generation of drone AI for terminal guidance and targeting.

That and it's lighter than a steel cable.

And on the positive side, unlike other weapons, it seems to actually help the local fauna. There are photos of birds' nests made of the fibre-optic cable left behind. It's good to be eco-friendly, amirite?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Not so sure about that. Once it breaks up, optical fibre is a sharp hazard like old syringe needles. And there's goodness knows how many thousands of miles of the stuff draped all over the place.

 

[theprestige]

Not so sure about that. Once it breaks up, optical fibre is a sharp hazard like old syringe needles. And there's goodness knows how many thousands of miles of the stuff draped all over the place.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Not so sure about that. Once it breaks up, optical fibre is a sharp hazard like old syringe needles. And there's goodness knows how many thousands of miles of the stuff draped all over the place.

I'm not even bloody joking. Birds (especially corvids) learned to even rip up those barbed wire anti-bird things on some balconies and put them around their nests as defences.

Anyway, about the fibre-optic nests, and this is from Reuters talking to a senior museum researcher, not from some joker on X or Reddit:

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/bird-nests-fibre-optic-cables-show-wars-impact-ukraine-2026-06-30/