Second Invincible-class Submarine Returns to Singapore

'EVERYBODY NEEDS THEIR OWN SUBMARINE'

HAGBARD CELINE

Invincible class submarine RSS Singapura at Changi Naval Base. (Sigapore MoD photo)

On September 13, 2024, Singapore Ministry of Defence announced that the second Invincible-class submarine, arrived at Changi Naval Base.

Naval News Staff  16 Sep 2024

Singapore MoD press release

The homecoming ceremony for the Republic of Singapore Navy’s (RSN) Invincible-class submarine, Invincible, was held earlier today [Ed. note:  September 13, 2024] at RSS Singapura – Changi Naval Base. Fleet Commander RADM Kwan Hon Chuong, senior RSN officers and submariners were present to witness the homecoming ceremony.

Launched in Kiel, Germany on 18 February 2019, Invincible is one of the four Invincible-class submarines designed for operations in Singapore’s shallow and busy tropical waters.  Custom-built for Singapore’s needs, these submarines possess state-of-the-art capabilities, including high levels of automation, significant payload capacity, enhanced underwater endurance, and ergonomics optimised for the Asian physique. Their induction into the RSN will further enhance its capability to safeguard Singapore and protect its vital sea lines of communication.

Invincible is expected to be commissioned in the coming weeks. The project development for our two other submarines, Illustrious and Inimitable, is progressing well in Germany, and they are expected to return to Singapore by 2028.

– End –

About Invincible-class submarines

RSN infographic

Invincible is the first of four customized submarines designed for operations in Singapore’s shallow and busy tropical waters. Named Invincible, Impeccable, Illustrious and Inimitable, the new submarines will form the strategic edge of Singapore’s defence. The submarines are expected to be delivered from 2021 onwards and will replace the current ex-Royal Swedish Navy Archer– and Challenger-class submarines, which the RSN has operated for over two decades.

Displacing 2,200 tons (submerged), these submarine will have a speed in excess of 15 knots underwater. They are 70 meters long and 6.3 meters in diameter. Their armament will be deployed from 8 533mm torpedo tubes. Type 218SG are based on TKMS Type 214, with elements from the Type 212A (such as the X ruder section).

The Invincible-class submarines are equipped with significantly improved capabilities. They are being fitted with Air Independent Propulsion systems based on Fuel Cell technology, which will allow the submarines to stay submerged about 50% longer. They are also carrying a combat system designed by both Atlas Elektronik and ST Electronics.

ASIATIC STALINIST MONARCHISM

A union leader freed from prison vows to continue a strike against Cambodia's biggest casino

A Cambodian union leader freed from prison after serving time for her part in a strike against the country’s biggest casino has vowed to continue the labor action until justice is done

By HENG SINITH 

Associated Press 

and 

SOPHENG CHEANG

 Associated Press
September 16, 2024

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- A union leader freed from prison Monday after serving time for her part in a strike against Cambodia’s biggest casino has vowed to continue the labor action until justice is done.

Chhim Sithar was sentenced in May 2023 to two years' imprisonment for incitement to commit a felony, including time served before her conviction, in connection with the strike against the NagaWorld casino, the longest such labor action in the country's history.

She had been leading a strike of hundreds of workers that began in December 2021 to protest mass layoffs and alleged union-busting at the casino in the capital, Phnom Penh, and was arrested and charged after a January 2022 demonstration of dismissed employees who were demanding to be rehired.

NagaWorld in late 2021 had fired 373 employees during financial struggles related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to The Associated Press at her home shortly after her release, Chhim Sithar vowed to continue leading the strike.

"About our advocacy fighting for union rights at NagaWorld, we will continue holding strike action until we get a solution. That’s the position we have determined since the first strike,” Chhim Sithar said, sitting on the floor surrounded by relatives.

“Unfortunately, as of today, after nearly three years, our workers have still not gotten justice. Therefore, as long as there’s no justice, our struggle continues,” she said.

After Chhim Sithar’s arrest, some dismissed workers continued to hold regular protests, appealing for her release and to get their jobs back. However, the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training announced in December 2022 that more than 200 others had accepted compensation under the labor law and dropped their demands.

“Despite relentless efforts by authorities to suppress the strike — including sexual harassment, physical assaults, and judicial harassment — the LRSU strike continues in Phnom Penh,” the Cambodian human rights organization LICADHO noted Monday.

NagaWorld is owned by a company controlled by the family of late Malaysian billionaire Chen Lip Keong. The company received its casino license in 1994 and the property is a huge integrated hotel-casino entertainment complex.


Previous labor union actions in Cambodia were usually at factories in outlying areas or in industrial estates in other provinces. The protest by the NagaWorld workers in the capital was unusually high-profile and drew police action that was sometimes violent.

Last year, the U.S. State Department named Chhim Sithar among 10 recipients of its annual Human Rights Defender Award. She was described by the then-U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia W. Patrick Murphy as “a courageous and tenacious labor union leader who peacefully advocates for the rights of Cambodian workers.”

Cambodia’s government has long been accused of using the judicial system to persecute critics and political opponents. Prime Minister Hun Manet succeeded his father last year after Hun Sen ruled for four decades, but there have been few signs of political liberalization.

DESANTISLAND

Florida homeless law: Orlando Sentinel survey shows cities and counties making scant progress

Ryan Gillespie
Orlando Sentinel (TNS)

Central Florida leaders are on the hunt for more shelter beds for people who sleep on sidewalks, under highway overpasses and in the woods. But with less than three weeks until a new state homelessness law goes into effect, they’re not making progress nearly as quickly as that law suggests they should.

The Orlando Sentinel surveyed numerous local governments across the region over the past week, asking how they plan to comply with the state’s mandate to adopt and enforce camping bans in public spaces by Oct. 1. Local leaders have acknowledged that means the region will need many more shelter beds. But few of the city and county officials who responded to the Sentinel’s inquiry as yet have concrete plans to build them.


Siting shelters remains difficult, with a planned open-access shelter running into a buzz saw of opposition last week in Orlando, which already is home to most of the region’s facilities and services for the homeless. And that creates a conundrum because without beds to offer, local governments will come under pressure to arrest those sleeping outside. For now, officials responding to the Sentinel survey expressed little inclination to make such arrests.


In Orange County alone, 759 people slept outside on a single night in January, with half of those residing in the downtown Orlando area, according to this year’s point-in-time homeless count. That number is expected to climb. The region’s roughly 1,100 shelter beds are full every night, and the bulk of them are in Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood, west of I-4.

“We know we need hundreds” more beds, said Martha Are, the CEO of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. “Realistically we probably need a thousand.”

The new law does allow counties to put such beds in special permanent encampments as well as shelters — but the rules for such encampments are strict and costly, and no Central Florida government has said they have plans for such a setup.

Besides Orlando, Orange County has the firmest plans to move forward of any agency responding to the Sentinel. This week, county leaders added $10 million in funding to homeless agencies to its upcoming budget, Mayor Jerry Demings said. Those new dollars are expected to bolster efforts to fund additional shelter beds, in locations as yet unidentified but ideally on the east and west end of the county, where a sizable number of people sleep in encampments in the woods.


In an interview, Demings said he tasked the county’s real estate office to look for potential shelter sites in areas that won’t impact neighborhoods.

“I suspect that through contracted services it may be multiple shelters that we’ll be housing those to fill in the gap,” he said. “We’ll come out soon with a very detailed plan.”

Demings equivocated, however, when asked about a specific idea favored by city leaders to repurpose the county-owned Work-Release Center just south of downtown Orlando into a shelter.

An Orlando official pitched the county last year on temporarily using it as a shelter while the Salvation Army Men’s Shelter and the Christian Service Center’s day services center were under renovation. Ultimately, the two sides didn’t move forward with that plan due to the expense of the necessary renovations. But the two governments have also had talks about using it as a longer-term solution.

“It was designed as a correctional facility, not as a shelter,” Demings said. “Yes, there’s space there. Is it the best space, the most appropriate place? We’re still evaluating that.”

Orlando has had its own trouble finding a new site for a shelter. Earlier this month, city leaders revealed a proposal to invest $7.5 million into a 24-hour low-barrier shelter in West Lakes, with 250 beds. The city intended to enter a lease, and potentially purchase a 21,000-square-foot building on West Washington Street, which they considered to have the bones of an ideal shelter.

However, neighborhood outcry led to the apparent shelving of the plan.

“We’ve heard the residents loud and clear and we continue to look elsewhere,” said Lisa Portelli, a senior adviser on homelessness to Mayor Buddy Dyer.


Dyer for more than a year has called on the region to get more aggressive in finding shelter space outside of his city’s limits. Of the regions roughly 1,167 beds, nearly 1,000 of them are in Parramore. The latest proposed shelter, while outside of the neighborhood, is only a few blocks west of it.

“If the City of Orlando is baring the burden of most of the Central Florida region, it feels like the city is saying ‘District 5, we’re appointing you to be the area that bears the burden on behalf of the city, which is bearing the burden on behalf of the region,” said Keeyon Upkins, who lives nearby.


Dyer said it is time for Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties to more aggressively pursue shelters rather than just rely on the city’s capacity.

“We call it a regional approach … but it always ends up being a city approach,” he said. “Everybody is not just downtown in Parramore. There are people in east Orange County, west Orange County, and Osceola County, which I know have major issues along the 192 corridor.”

The Sentinel’s survey suggests Dyer’s wish for efforts beyond Orlando will not soon come true. The vast majority of other cities responding said they don’t intend to build shelter beds.

For example, in Seminole County, Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz said he believes the county should take the lead on shelter discussions.

“Since all city residents are also county residents and pay the same county taxes that those living outside of cities, a resident living in a city shouldn’t have to fund this twice or should we create multiple housing authorities,” he said in an email. “We don’t have that expertise. Therefore, we believe this should be a county-wide initiative and we have encouraged that discussion.”


Seminole County officials didn’t answer questions about their plan.

In Osceola County, where there are no general population shelter beds, there are few signs that county leaders are on the verge of changing that. That county also didn’t respond to the Sentinel’s survey questions.

Will Cooper, the Chief Operating Officer of The Hope Partnership, said Osceola County has had representatives at meetings of a regional task force to build open-access shelters, but he hasn’t heard of a plan to construct one there.

“I have not heard any talk from the county level about funding or creating any sort of emergency shelter,” he said. “I think if we’re going to be a true regional response, then each jurisdiction in the region needs access to services. … I do think Osceola County needs shelter and can’t just rely on the City of Orlando’s shelter capacity.”

Many local officials expect Jan. 1 to be the day when the law’s impacts become more understood: At that point, the law allows residents, businesses and the state’s attorney general to file lawsuits against governments who don’t clear makeshift encampments within five days of a complaint.

Without available shelter beds for the people who reside in those encampments, it’s not clear where they could be taken other than to jail. Orange County leaders this week also discussed creating a “homeless court,” which could provide an alternative to jailing people perhaps by sending them to drop-in locations, Spectrum News 13 reported.

But Demings said local leaders who are part of a task force grappling with the enforcement issue — including police, prosecutors and the chief judge — have said they don’t support arresting people for being homeless.


“Here our sheriffs and our police chief … have committed that they won’t simply arrest people who are homeless,” he said. “Who they will arrest are people who may be homeless and commit crimes.”

(Natalia Jaramillo, Martin Comas and Stephen Hudak of the Sentinel staff contributed.)

©2024 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Copyright 2024 Tribune Content Agency.

Illegal monopoly?


ALEXANDRIA (AP) – It happens in milliseconds, ideally, as you browse the web. Networks of computers and software analyse who you are, what you are looking at and buy and sell the advertisements you see on web pages.

The company that most likely determines which ads you get, and how much an advertiser paid to get on your screen, is Google.

In fact, the United States (US) Justice Department and a coalition of states said Google’s dominance over the technology that controls the sale of billions of Internet display ads every day is so thorough that it constitutes an illegal monopoly that should be broken up.

A trial under way in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, will determine if Google’s ad tech stack constitutes an illegal monopoly. The first week has included a deep dive into exactly how Google’s products work together to conduct behind-the-scenes electronic auctions that place ads in front of consumers in the blink of an eye.

Online advertising has rapidly evolved. Fifteen or so years ago, if you saw an Internet display ad, there was a pretty good chance it featured people dancing over their enthusiasm for low mortgage rates, and those ads were foisted on you whether you were looking at real estate or searching for baseball scores.

Now, the algorithms that match ads to your interests are carefully calibrated, sometimes to an almost creepy extent.

Google, for its part, said it has invested billions of dollars to improve the quality of ads that consumers see, and ensure that advertisers can reach the consumers they’re seeking.

The Justice Department contends that what Google has also done over the years is rig the automated auctions of ad sales to favour itself over other would-be players in the industry, and also deprived the publishing industry of hundreds of millions of dollars it would have received if the auctions were truly competitive.

Government witnesses have explained the auction process and how it has evolved over the years in detail at the Virginia trial.

In the government’s depiction, there are three distinct tools that interact to sell an ad and place it in front of a consumer. There’s the ad servers used by publishers to sell space on their websites, particularly the rectangular ads that appear on the top and right-hand side of a web page. Ad networks are used by advertisers to buy ad space across an array of relevant websites.

And in between is the ad exchange, which matches the website publisher to the would-be advertiser by hosting an instant auction.

Publishers naturally want to receive as high a price as possible for their ad space, but testimony at trial has shown that didn’t always happen due to the rules Google imposed.

For years, Google gave its ad exchange, called AdX, the first chance to match a publisher’s proposed floor price. For instance, if a publisher wanted to sell a specific ad impression for a minimum of 50 cents, Google’s software would give its own ad exchange the first chance to purchase. If Google’s ad exchange bid 50 cents, it would win the auction, even if competing ad exchanges down the line were willing to pay more.

Google said the system was necessary to ensure ads loaded quickly. If the computers entertained bids from every ad exchange, it would take too long.

Publishers, dissatisfied with this system, found a workaround to conduct the auctions outside of Google’s purview, a process that became known as “header bidding”. Internal Google documents introduced at trial described header bidding as an “existential threat” to Google’s market share.

Google’s response relied on its control of all three components of the process.

If publishers conducted an auction outside Google’s purview but they still used Google’s publisher ad server, called DoubleClick For Publishers, that software forced the winning bid back into Google’s Ad Exchange.

If Google was willing to match the price that publishers had received under the header-bidding auction, Google would win the auction.

Professor Ramamoorthi Ravi, an expert at Carnegie Mellon University, said rules imposed by Google failed to maximise value for publishers and “seem to have been designed to advantage Google’s own products”.

Publishers could stop using Google’s ad exchange entirely, but at trial said they were reluctant to do so because then they would also lose access to Google’s huge, exclusive cache of advertisers in its Google Ads network, which was only available through Google’s ad exchange. Google, for its part, said it hasn’t run auctions this way since 2019, and that in the last five years Google’s share of the display ad market has begun to erode.

It said that tying its buy side, sell side and middleman products together helps them run seamlessly and quickly, and minimises fraudulent ads or malware risks.

Google also said its innovations over the last 15 years fuelled the improvements in matching online ads to consumer interests. Google said it was at the forefront of introducing “real-time bidding,” which allowed an advertiser selling shoes, for instance, to be paired up with a consumer whose online profile indicated an interest in purchasing shoes.

Those innovations, according to Google, allowed publishers to sell their available ad space at a premium because the advertiser would know that the ad was going to the eyeballs of someone interested in their product or service.

The Justice Department said that even though Google no longer runs its auctions in the ways described, it helped Google maintain its monopoly in the ad tech market in the years leading up to 2019, and that its existing monopoly allows Google to keep up to 36 cents on the dollar of every ad purchase it brokers when the transaction runs through all of its various products.

The Virginia trial comes just a month after a judge in Washington ruling that Google’s search engine also constitutes an illegal monopoly. No decision in that case has been made on what, if any, remedies the judge will impose.

 

Opposition Leader: Netanyahu’s ‘Zero Government’ Dragging Israel to ‘Endless War’

September 16, 2024

 

in News, Gaza

 

Israeli opposition leader Yair Golan on Sunday, 16 September 2024 called the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “zero government” that is dragging Israel to an “endless war.”

In a statement on X, Golan, who heads the Labour Party, called on the Israelis to stage daily protests against the Israeli government.“Only continuous popular pressure will bring down this government,” he added.

The opposition leader said Sunday’s missile attack was a “reminder of the right-wing government’s ongoing failure.”

“Instead of closing battlefronts, this zero government is pulling us into endless war, eternal internal conflict, and an abyss,” he added.

The Yesh Atid Party led by opposition leader Yair Lapid also called in a statement for the resignation of the Netanyahu government, calling it a “government of national disasters.

”According to Haaretz newspaper, the debris from the interceptor missiles fell on a train station on the outskirts of Modi’in in central Israel, causing damage. A fire also broke out in an open area in Kfar Daniel in central Israel due to additional falling debris.

Yemen’s Houthi group has been targeting ships that are Israeli-owned, flagged, operated, or heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden with missiles and drones in solidarity with Gaza, which has been under a devastating Israeli onslaught since 7 October 2023.

Shortlink for this post: https://daysofpalestine.ps/?p=56753

NOT THE FIRST

How The Taliban Are Weaponizing Religion Against Women – OpEd

PATRIARCHY IS WEAPONIZATION

A group of women in Afghanistan wearing burqas. Photo Credit: Nitin Madhav (USAID), Wikimedia Commons

 September 16, 2024  

By Ali Khan Bangash

Afghanistan, once again under Taliban control, has become a prison for its women. In the three years since the Taliban’s return to power, they have unleashed a wave of repressive laws that target women specifically. The latest decrees, issued by the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, are aimed at further erasing women from public life. Banned from raising their voices in public, reciting the Quran in the open, or even looking at men who are not their husbands or relatives, Afghan women are subjected to a regime that seeks to control every aspect of their lives.

The Taliban’s latest measures represent a significant escalation in their assault on women’s rights. These rules are not entirely new—they reflect long-standing practices rooted in the group’s interpretation of Islamic law. However, by formalizing these restrictions, the Taliban have made it clear that any hope for a more moderate government has been extinguished.

In urban centers like Kabul, where women once had relative freedom, the Taliban’s morality police are now omnipresent. Women are watched constantly, punished for minor infractions, and even dispersed from public spaces on Fridays, supposedly to allow men to attend prayers without distraction. Women are no longer seen on television or in public office, and their voices, once part of Afghanistan’s vibrant social fabric, have been silenced.

For women like Meena, who runs secret classes for girls, this crackdown feels like the final nail in the coffin of their dreams. “Three weeks ago, I was still hopeful that the Taliban may change and remove the restrictions on girls’ education,” she said. “But once they published their Vice and Virtue law, I lost all hope.” Many families, once willing to defy the Taliban by sending their daughters to secret schools, have now been forced to pull them out. The fear of being caught, of facing the wrath of the morality police, has become too great.

The Taliban’s actions are driven by a distorted interpretation of Islam, one that is rooted more in centuries-old Pashtun cultural norms than in the teachings of the Quran. Women’s rights activists and scholars argue that the Quran does not prohibit women from being educated or participating in public life. Yet the Taliban continue to use religion as a justification for their oppressive rules, presenting themselves as protectors of Islamic values while denying women their basic human rights.

The international community’s response to this repression has been muted at best. While foreign governments and human rights organizations have condemned the Taliban’s actions, their words have done little to change the situation on the ground. For Afghan women, the silence of the world is a betrayal. “The world has moved on from Afghanistan,” said Meena. “The Taliban will keep using religion as a weapon against women. To them, seeing the hair of a girl is a sin, but starving your country is not.”

The Taliban’s reign of control extends far beyond education and public life. They have imposed strict dress codes on women, who are now required to cover not just their heads but the lower half of their faces as well. Violating these rules can lead to severe punishment, enforced not only by male officers but also by female members of the morality police. These female officers, recruited from conservative rural areas, often show even more zeal in enforcing the Taliban’s rules than their male counterparts. For women like Sajia, a former university student, this crackdown feels like history repeating itself. She remembers the Taliban’s rule in the 1990s, when women were banned from education and public life. Now, she sees the same restrictions being imposed once again. “The entire country has turned into a graveyard for women’s dreams,” she said..

As the Taliban seek international recognition and access to frozen Afghan Central Bank reserves, women’s rights have become a bargaining chip in negotiations with foreign governments. Yet Afghan women remain skeptical that the Taliban will ever truly change. For them, the past three years have shown that the regime’s commitment to gendered oppression is unwavering. The international community must not turn a blind eye to the suffering of Afghan women. This is not just a local issue—it is a global human rights crisis. Afghan women need more than words of condemnation from world leaders; they need concrete action. If the world remains silent, the Taliban’s war on women will continue unabated, and half of Afghanistan’s population will be rendered invisible.

Ali Khan Bangash

Ali Khan Bangash is a student of MPhil in International Relations at Quaid Azam University Islamabad.

 

From Ukraine To Myanmar, Drone Warfare Marks A Paradigm Shift – Analysis

Ukrainian soldiers pose with a drone. Photo Credit: Anton Sheveliov, Ukraine Ministry of Defence

 September 16, 2024

By Geopolitical Monitor

By Antonio Graceffo

On September 10, Ukrainian forces launched the largest drone attack of the war to date, targeting Moscow with 144 drones. The assault resulted in 20 drones being shot down, while several multi-story residential buildings near Moscow were set ablaze. Flights from Russia’s most important airports were temporarily suspended. In response, Russia launched a retaliatory strike using 46 drones.

The strikes from both sides highlight a now indisputable fact: drone warfare is playing a determining role in the Ukraine war.

Armed drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), are pilotless aircraft used to locate, monitor, and strike targets, including individuals and equipment. Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has significantly expanded its use of UAVs for global counterterrorism missions. Drones have key advantages over manned weapons. They can stay airborne for over 14 hours, compared to under four hours for manned aircraft like the F-16, allowing for continuous surveillance without risking pilot safety. Additionally, drones offer near-instant responsiveness, with missiles striking targets within seconds, unlike slower manned systems, such as the 1998 cruise missile strike on Osama bin Laden, which relied on hours-old intelligence.

There is much discussion in the US defense establishment regarding the use of drones, drone policy and how they should be incorporated into military strategy. According to the Marine Corps University, in order to calculate the effectiveness of a drone strike, several factors must be considered, including Tactical Military Effectiveness (TME), Operational Military Effectiveness (OME), and Strategic Military Effectiveness (SME). TME assesses how well the drone strike achieves its immediate objective, such as neutralizing a specific target. OME evaluates the broader impact on military operations, such as troop movements or operational coordination. Lastly, SME considers the long-term consequences of drone warfare, including the effects of drone strikes on enemy leadership, public opinion, and international relations. All three factors are critical in ensuring that drone strikes align with both short-term and long-term military objectives.

Drones are being deployed in large numbers in the Ukraine war, having already played a major role in the battles between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. They are also becoming an increasingly key platform in the Myanmar civil war and conflicts across the Middle East. Advanced militaries, including the Pentagon, are closely monitoring these theaters to refine their own drone strategies. For example, recently the U.S. released a ‘drone hellscape strategy’ for the defense of Taiwan, while China has been conducting simulations of a drone-only attack on the island. Yet even the world’s most advanced militaries seem to lack a definitive approach to drone warfare. And, ironically, they continue to learn valuable lessons from underfunded and undertrained rebels in other far-flung global conflicts.

Drone warfare in the Myanmar civil war

The Free Burma Rangers, a frontline aid group in the Myanmar civil war, has been reporting on the increasing incidence of drone warfare in the conflict. On September 6, 2024, a Tatmadaw drone strike resulted in the deaths of four civilians—two men and two women, and one person was also wounded in the attack. Another drone dropped a handmade bomb on a civilian home in Loi Lem Lay Village, Karenni State. During the same incident, a Tatmadaw drone with six propellers experienced mechanical issues while flying over the battlefield and was subsequently captured by the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF), a pro-democracy ethnic army. Taken together, these incidents underscore how drone warfare is still in its tactical infancy, with numerous failed deployments, and how payloads and weaponization are often being improvised by soldiers on the ground.

Other rebel armies in the Myanmar civil war, particularly the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), have developed their own drone units. For instance, a PDF unit reportedly carried out 125 drone strikes during the Battle of Loikaw in Kayah State. Another unit claims responsibility for around 80 drone strikes last year, resulting in the deaths of 80 to 100 junta troops. These forces are either manufacturing their own drones or repurposing civilian models by adding deployable explosives. The drones are inexpensive, widely available, and highly effective. Even the junta, supported by China and Russia, has adopted similar tactics by attaching mortar shells to their drones, while ethnic armiesoften use homemade explosives based on mortar shells captured from the Tatmadaw. These devices can range from 40 to 60mm, carry up to 2.5 kg of explosives and shrapnel, and are capable of killing or injuring anyone within a 100-meter radius in open terrain.

FPV drones a game-changer in the Ukraine war

In addition to homemade and modified drones, first-person view (FPV) drones can cost around $500 USD each, while reconnaissance drones equipped with advanced cameras can run into the thousands. Ukraine is deploying these drones at a rate of 100,000 per month, with plans to produce one million FPV drones in 2024. For a sense of just how important drones have become in the Ukraine war, consider the fact that this figure far exceeds the number of artillery shells supplied by the entire European Union over the past year.

FPV drones, launched from improvised platforms, can fly between 5 and 20 kilometers depending on their size, battery, and payload. Controlled by a soldier using a headset for a first-person view, with another providing guidance via maps on a tablet, these drones are often used to target vulnerable points such as tank hatches or engines. Their real-time video feed, transmitted through goggles or a headset similar to VR gaming, gives the operator precise control, especially in complex environments like urban warfare or dense terrain. FPV drones are effective for reconnaissance, targeted strikes, and even suicide missions, where they carry explosives and fly directly into a target. Unlike planes or helicopters, they are not hindered by anti-aircraft systems near the front lines. In fact, a $500 FPV drone can target the open hatch of a Russian tank worth millions of dollars, demonstrating their cost-effectiveness in modern warfare.

The rise of counter-drone and jamming technologies

As drone warfare becomes increasingly common on the battlefield, a need arises for effective drone jamming technologies. While Russian, Ukrainian, and other armies have access to jammers, ethnic armies in Myanmar lack them almost entirely. Jammers start at $2,400, but many cheap, commercially available models are essentially useless due to significant design flaws. Some have fixed antennae that point upward, despite attacks coming from the side, and many generate excessive heat without proper cooling. This raises concerns about their effectiveness in harsh environments, such as the deserts of the Middle East or the humid jungles of Myanmar.

Moreover, electronic jamming devices work on specific frequencies and drone pilots are adapting by switching to less commonly used ones. To counter this, new technologies like pocket-sized “tenchies” and backpack electronic warfare (EW) systems have emerged, jamming signals across a broader 720-1,050 MHz range, making them more effective against Russian drones. Despite Ukraine’s deployment of these newer jammers, Russia’s use of hunter-killer drone systems like the Orlan-10 for spotting and the Lancet for strikes, along with missile-equipped Orion drones, continue to challenge Ukraine’s drone defenses.

In response, Ukraine has created the Unmanned Systems Force (USF), a military branch dedicated to drone warfare. Additionally, semi-autonomous drones using AI are being developed to bypass jamming altogether. We remain in the nascent stages of drone warfare, where evolution is playing out in real time via innovations on the battlefield. In this sense, US defense spending in Ukraine is serving as an investment in research and development for the drone wars of tomorrow.

• This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

Shar

Geopolitical Monitor

Geopoliticalmonitor.com is an open-source intelligence collection and forecasting service, providing research, analysis and up to date coverage on situations and events that have a substantive impact on political, military and economic affairs.