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It’s hard to overcome cognitive dissonance when you’re listening to speakers call for investment in aircraft engines that will cost well north of $10 million each, as I was last month at an Air Force Association meeting, and the overnight news was a devastating deep-strike attack on the Toropets ammunition depot. The attack involved detonations that triggered earthquake sensors and was carried out by drones that had propellers and snowmobile engines and flew flying just off the deck at 150km/h.

Different sensors need to be in different places for best performance, so the Ariel system envisages a common drone platform that can carry radar, passive electronic, optical or magnetic sensors or a communications package. IAI is working with startup Aerotor on the Apus 25, a quadrotor powered by a multi-fuel generator driving variable-pitch rotors. Free of battery limits, it has an endurance of up to nine hours. The Ariel system also includes unmanned ground combat vehicles, remote weapons stations on a small tracked vehicle.

Ukraine’s drone attacks have been bolder since Ukrainian forces shot down two of Russia’s handful of Beriev A-50 airborne radars. Nonetheless an undisclosed number of Ukraine’s drones have been shot down. Ukrainian air defenses have also blunted Russian drone attacks. The crucial difference is that the Ukrainian survivors seem to be accurate enough to target specific aimpoints within sprawling energy and munitions storage facilities.

Various exit signs are used on freeways. In urban areas, many exit ramps have more than one lane. Overhead and ground-mounted signs help drivers choose the correct lane to exit or stay on the freeway.

EDR signs are used during the unscheduled closure of a provincial highway when OPP detour all traffic off the highway. The EDR markers are located along alternative routes and provide direction to motorists around the closure and back onto the highway.

Do not stand in the area between the signs. This means you may not stop your vehicle in this area except while loading or unloading passengers. (Used in pairs or groups.)

But we seem to be seeing a new kind of air battle—lower, slower at close quarters and in a physical environment where fighter aircraft cannot intervene affordably or effectively. Could it be that Ukraine is to small unmanned systems what World War I was to aircraft?

Truck entrance on the right side of the road ahead. If the sign shows the truck on the left, the entrance is on the left side of the road.

A railway crossing sign is X-shaped with a white background and red outline. It warns that railway tracks cross the road. Watch for this sign. Slow down and look both ways for trains. Be prepared to stop.

Schoolbus stop sign

These signs mean lanes are only for specific types of vehicles, either all the time or during certain hours. Different symbols are used for the different types of vehicles. They include: buses, taxis, vehicles with three or more people and bicycles.

Do not park in the area between the signs. This means you may not stop your vehicle except to load or unload passengers or merchandise. (Used in pairs or groups.)

How this is done is not known, but one candidate is optical navigation—comparing visual images of the terrain with map databases. This is not unlike the software that journalism operations such as Bellingcat use to locate the sites where videos have been taken, and it has become much more accessible now that global terrain imagery is ubiquitous. Israeli missile-defense guru Uzi Rubin said a decade ago that ‘if you have an iPad, you have a guidance system’.

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These signs warn of a school crossing. Watch for children and follow the directions of the crossing guard or school safety patroller.

The impact of the unmanned was very apparent a few weeks later at the annual show of the Association of the US Army (AUSA). Not long ago, AUSA’s exhibitors filled the caverns of the Washington Convention Center with mine-resistant vehicles that looked like bank vaults perched on creaking truck chassis and loomed over booths full of plastic or ceramic armor, not to mention mine-resistant underpants. (Really.)

Watch for these signs when driving in designated bilingual areas. Read the messages in the language you understand best. Bilingual messages may be together on the same sign or separate, with an English sign immediately followed by a French sign.

Only public vehicles such as buses, or passenger vehicles carrying a specified minimum number of passengers, may use this lane.

This sign warns you that you are coming to a hidden school bus stop. Slow down, drive with extra caution, watch for children and for a school bus with flashing red lights.

These signs warn of unusual temporary conditions such as road work zones, diversions, detours, lane closures or traffic control people on the road. They are usually diamond-shaped with an orange background and black letters or symbols.

This sign reserves curb area for vehicles displaying a valid Accessible Person Parking Permit picking up and dropping off passengers with disabilities.

A yield sign is a triangle with a white background and a red border. It means you must let traffic in the intersection or close to it go first. Stop if necessary and go only when the way is clear.

A school zone sign is five-sided and has a fluorescent yellow/green background with black symbols. It warns that you are coming to a school zone. Slow down, drive with extra caution and watch for children.

Roundabout ahead. Reduce speed. The counter-clockwise arrows show the direction of vehicle traffic within the roundabout.

The "slow-moving vehicle” sign is an orange triangle with a red boarder. It alerts other drivers that the vehicle ahead will be travelling at 40 km/h or less. When on a road, farm tractors, farm implements/machinery, and vehicles not capable of sustaining speeds over 40 km/h must display the slow moving vehicle sign. Watch for these slow moving vehicles and reduce your speed as necessary.

This sign on the back of transit buses serves as a reminder to motorists of the law requiring vehicles approaching a bus stopped at a dedicated Bus Stop to yield to the bus, once the bus has signalled its intent to return to the lane.

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You can extend the World War I analogy further and argue that Ukraine’s long-range attacks can be compared to the birth of strategic bombing. A retired USAF officer with experience in unconventional operations agrees that low-and-slow is a vulnerability in high-end air defense systems. Tracking low-altitude targets calls for Doppler processing pick out moving targets while ignoring ground clutter and slow-moving objects such as ground vehicles and birds. And that’s where low-slow targets can be a problem. The Doppler processing ignores them.

Some experts on air power will tell you that Ukraine is not the best place to learn lessons. Neither side in Ukraine enjoys air superiority, retired Lieutenant General David Deptula of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute think-tank said last month. ‘We want to never find ourselves in such a situation’.

Pavement has been milled or grooved. Your vehicle's stopping ability may be affected so obey the speed limit and drive with extra caution. Motorcyclists may experience reduced traction on these surfaces.

Two roads going in the same direction are about to join into one. Drivers on both roads are equally responsible for seeing that traffic merges smoothly and safely.

Bus stop signmeaning

Divided highway begins: traffic travels in both directions on separated roads ahead. Keep to the right-hand road. Each road carries one way traffic.

Traffic signs give you important information about the law, warn you about dangerous conditions and help you find your way. Signs use different symbols, colours and shapes for easy identification.

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The Ministry of Transportation strives to be a world leader in moving people and goods safely, efficiently and sustainably to support a globally competitive economy and a high quality of life.

Killing drones may cost more per kill than the drone itself, but that is not the point. A ground force that cannot do it will either not survive at all or will spend so much time and effort moving, dispersing and adding passive protection to its equipment—like the Russian army’s cope cages and turtle tanks—that it will be ineffective.

These signs, above the road or on the pavement before an intersection, tell drivers the direction they must travel. For example: the driver in lane one must turn left; the driver in lane two must turn left or go straight ahead; and the driver in lane three must turn right.

Indicates areas where the community has identified that there is a special risk to pedestrians. Traffic related offences committed within the zone are subject to increased fines.

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These signs change according to traffic conditions to give drivers current information on delays and lane closures ahead.

This placard indicates a long commercial vehicle, which is a double trailer and can be up to 40 metres in length. It is important to be able to recognize an LCV on the highway, based on rear signage, and anticipate both extended length and limited speed when preparing to pass one on the highway.

Sometimes one or more lanes may lead off the freeway. The arrows matching the exit lanes are shown on the advance sign in a yellow box with the word 'exit' under them.

This year, much of the hardware was suspended from the ceiling and could fly. What wasn’t up there was variously designed to either control or manage said hardware or destroy or jam it. For a Brit of a certain age, it was inescapably a reminder of General Jumbo, a plump and geeky kid in the weekly Beano comic who commanded a miraculous army of miniature armed robots.

Sharp turn or bend in the road in the direction of the arrow. The checkerboard border warns of danger. Slow down; be careful.

Bill Sweetman is a veteran, award-winning journalist and aerospace industry executive. His new book is Trillion Dollar Trainwreck: How the F-35 hollowed out the U.S. Air Force.

Whatever the technology, there is a lesson: I can lose a lot of cheap unmanned weapons, as long as the ones that get through can get close enough to detonate the enemy’s ammunition or fuel.

The share the road sign is used to warn motorists that they are to provide safe space on the road for cyclists and other vehicles.

Freeway interchanges or exits have numbers that correspond to the distance from the beginning of the freeway. For example, interchange number 204 on Highway 401 is 204 kilometres from Windsor, where the freeway begins. Distances can be calculated by subtracting one interchange number from another.

A stop sign is eight-sided and has a red background with white letters. It means you must come to a complete stop. Stop at the stop line if it is marked on the pavement. If there is no stop line, stop at the crosswalk. If there is no crosswalk, stop at the edge of the sidewalk. If there is no sidewalk, stop at the edge of the inter­section. Wait until the way is clear before entering the intersection.

Do not stop in the area between the signs. This means you may not stop your vehicle in this area, even for a moment. (Used in pairs or groups.)

Signs are emerging of a technological arms race in drone warfare, in which unmanned systems respond to anti-drone technologies by becoming more diverse and resilient and by sensing at greater range. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) at AUSA showed a concept for a system named Ariel, based on an automated mission manager that tasks individual anti-drone equipment automatically. Human controllers, seated at terminals in an armoured vehicle and communicating with the robotic systems via an airborne data relay, approve the mission plan. The Ariel system interprets the commander’s intent and tells the individual vehicles where to go and what to look for.

Tiny-payload vehicles are shockingly lethal against expensive protected targets. From the start of Ukraine operations, it was clear that even grenades dropped from first-person view (FPV) commercial drones have effectively zero miss distance. They act as detonators rather than warheads, using the target’s fuel and ammunition to destroy it.

Bus stop sign onMap

These signs tell you about distances and destinations. They are usually rectangular with a green background and white letters. Other signs with different colours guide you to facilities, services and attractions.

A new Royal United Services Institute paper makes the case that a future force will require a panoply of defensive systems to protect against drones. This will include short-range, mobile radar and electro-optical sensors, a countermeasures-resistant communications system, drone interceptors (such as Anduril’s tail-sitting Roadrunner) and missiles and guns with burst-at-range pre-fragmented ammunition. All this will require a software environment to identify and prioritise threats.

These signs give a direction that must be obeyed. They are usually rectangular or square with a white or black background and black, white or coloured letters. A sign with a green circle means you may or must do the activity shown inside the ring. A red circle with a line through it means the activity shown is not allowed.

There’s always a need for balance between paying too little attention to lessons that challenge conventional thinking and generalising from a single type of conflict. That happened when the US Army and Pentagon bosses pushed the US Air Force into spending too much in 2008 to 2015 on drones that could be used only where an enemy couldn’t shoot at them.

Indicates an upcoming fire truck entrance on the right, and drivers should be aware of fire trucks entering the roadway.

The speed limit in this zone is lower during school hours. Observe the speed limit shown when the yellow lights are flashing.

These signs warn of dangerous or unusual conditions ahead such as a curve, turn, dip or sideroad. They are usually diamond-shaped and have a yellow background with black letters or symbols.

Enforces doubling the Highway Traffic Act HTA fines for speeding in a designated construction zone when there are workers present.

As with aircraft in World War I, drone operations in Ukraine started with artillery spotting before evolving quickly into direct attack with improvised weapons and then into finding targets well behind the front lines. And just as in World War I, the first air-to-air engagements have taken place, and defensive weapons are being employed on the ground.