I read a Trent Telenko thread yesterday that kinda blew my mind. Haven’t seen it covered elsewhere. If he’s got it right, it’s amazing evidence of Ukraine’s sophistication and resourcefulness, and a significant military advantage.
If you Twitter, check it out:
TL;DR — Ukraine has developed and refined a groundbreaking artillery targeting solution that is, in many ways, better than anything else out there. It’s not U.S. tech. It’s not Israeli tech. It’s homegrown.
At the heart of it is Ukraine’s “GIS Art for Artillery” software package, written by Yaroslav Sherstyuk — one of many talented earth observation / geospatial (GIS) specialists working in Ukraine.
Sherstyuk's software is reminiscent of Uber or Lyft's taxi software. It’s a true distributed software environment that assigns targets to the nearest gun, mortar, rocket launcher, drone or SF team.
The software can coordinate targeting among a distributed group of multiple guns, with multiple trajectories, spanning a whole front, all focused on hitting one target at one time.
Just like Uber can get you a ride much faster than calling a cab company switchboard, “GIS Art for Artillery” can dramatically reduce the time “from call to trigger pull” — from around 20 minutes, to around 30 seconds (!).
It’s difficult to retaliate against, because instead of targeting a single mass of guns, the enemy has to pinpoint and fire on a number of attackers.
Much, much more at the links, including the critical role of the Starlink system. I’ve found Trent to be a credible source, although — and I say this with the utmost respect — he does occasionally emit a hint of eau de libertarian douchebag.
Intriguing stuff, and yet another piece in the gorgeous mosaic of Ukrainian resourcefulness, advantage, and success.
(I never diary, I barely know how to paste a tweet, so apologies if formatting is jacked.)
**updated — added a couple more tweets
