Fields covered with fiber optic cables, seen from a Ukrainian Mi-24.
Fields covered with fiber optic cables, seen from a Ukrainian Mi-24.
30 comments
-
-
What why? That looks insanely expensive.
-
I'm guessing they're from wire-controlled drones.
-
Good return on investment if a spool of fiber allows your drone to kill enemy combatants and destroy their equipment. Make them switch from RF jamming to lead.
-
Same reason the TOW antitank operator guided missile was produced in 1968 which works on the same principle for precisely the same reasons.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGM-71_TOW
This is an old strategy reborn.
-
I don't know about the TOW2, but I was an Infantry tester in 1988 when the Army was evaluating the TOW replacement contenders; I was in the Bofur's Bill team. No wires, and double the range of the wired alternatives.
The Army went with the TOW2, in the end, which surprised none of us. And Bofur's was tight-lipped about the technology, but us gunners were fairly sure that it was fly-by-laser.
That was so long ago, I wonder if any details have been published in the meanwhile. They acted as if there construction was a state secret, at the time.
It was waaay before any sort of flexible fiber optics; copper wire seems like it'd be cheaper.
-
-
Not that expensive, probably under 10 USD for 10 km, given that I can find offers like below in a few minutes on Aliexpress
30 comments
I presume those fields are farmland? I wonder how much of a postwar nuisance those strands will become. If they don't get fully removed from the fields in bulk before harvest, it seems like it would be an absolute pain to mechanically separate chopped bits of glass or plastic fibers from a harvested grain crop.
Totally. You thought you had a microplastics problem.