What happens in 2025? / new tactics- new technologies

[MarkSheppard]

Originally Posted by Felix Nephthys

Seriously though, this is a story I'd like to hear more about. They have blackmail droids now?

OK, this is a slight detour from SPCAMO games, but I think it's worthy to tell in some detail, if nothing else but to get the word out so that people are less likely to fall for scams.

Okay.

AI blackmail / Whitemail is a variant of the old "bad news" scam:

You get a message or phone call in the middle of the night saying that your son/daughter has been in a car accident / been arrested / whatever; and that they need money (which of course is gonna be gift cards).

What makes AI Black/Whitemail so much more dangerous is that AI is advanced enough to "fake a voice" if given a sufficiently long speech sample -- maybe 20 seconds of you talking might be enough for them to make an AI to fake your voice with 85% accuracy.

So now, instead of a super sketchy text message saying that your son has been in an accident -- it literally sounds like your son/daughter is calling you -- maybe from jail; maybe from the hospital, doesn't matter.

AI voice algorithms have also given new life to the "indian call center scam" -- i.e. you get a call from "Microsoft Tech Support" saying that they've detected a virus on your computer; and if you would do the needful, they can fix it for you (which entails you setting up a remote connection to their PC, allowing them to steal everything of note on your hard drive).

The Indian Call Center Scam has been slowly dying out as people now refuse to answer any calls which have Indian accents.

Enter real time voice AI synthesization -- now they don't sound like Pradvisha from Delhi, but John from Peoria.

It's not 100% though; because of the limited english skills of a lot of these call center scammers; they mangle the verbs and syntax of english, so even though they now sound like Bob from Peoria, they are asking you to do the needful.

In a military context; there's a lot you could do with AI voice/visual synthesization (Deep Fakes). For example, you could fake the voice and video of a commanding officer and tell his troops to surrender; or insert fake orders into the command stream -- even if they're countermanded by real orders in the secure encrypted text communications system, it's still uncertainity that slows down the speed of execution of orders if you have to verify each one.

There's also some nastiness; like possibly using AI/Video deepfakes to break POWs to make them give you information; a variant of the "we have captured your children. You will give us your bank account information or we do bad things to them -- and then cut to AI generated audio/video of your children begging for their lives -- a "virtual kidnapping"

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/29/us/ai...cec/index.html

Jennifer DeStefano’s phone rang one afternoon as she climbed out of her car outside the dance studio where her younger daughter Aubrey had a rehearsal. The caller showed up as unknown, and she briefly contemplated not picking up.

But her older daughter, 15-year-old Brianna, was away training for a ski race and DeStefano feared it could be a medical emergency.

“Hello?” she answered on speaker phone as she locked her car and lugged her purse and laptop bag into the studio.

She was greeted by yelling and sobbing.

“Mom! I messed up!” screamed a girl’s voice.

“What did you do?!? What happened?!?” DeStefano asked.

“The voice sounded just like Brie’s, the inflection, everything,” she told CNN recently. “Then, all of a sudden, I heard a man say, ‘Lay down, put your head back.’ I’m thinking she’s being gurnied off the mountain, which is common in skiing. So I started to panic.”

As the cries for help continued in the background, a deep male voice started firing off commands: “Listen here. I have your daughter. You call the police, you call anybody, I’m gonna pop her something so full of drugs. I’m gonna have my way with her then drop her off in Mexico, and you’re never going to see her again.”

DeStefano froze. Then she ran into the dance studio, shaking and screaming for help. She felt like she was suddenly drowning.

After a chaotic, rapid-fire series of events that included a $1 million ransom demand, a 911 call and a frantic effort to reach Brianna, the “kidnapping” was exposed as a scam. A puzzled Brianna called to tell her mother that she didn’t know what the fuss was about and that everything was fine.

[lansoar]

CHATGPT! ..well maybe not. . hopefully the dedicated will remain.

we all want a WinSPMBT with ai Drones connected to Amazon.com and remote MBT's with alien armor alloys.

[MarkSheppard]

New stuff just dropped, babe:

https://twitter.com/markito0171/stat...68549583311286
https://twitter.com/SenftPatrick/sta...20941415498026

Ukrainian military used a UGV and drove it 4 km (2.5 miles) behind enemy lines to deliver a KZ-4 demolition charge to drop a bridge:

https://twitter.com/SenftPatrick/sta...20946515706253

The KZ-4 used here as a warhead is designed to disable roads and reinforced concrete structures.

The KZ-4 packs a substantial 49kg of TG-50 explosive (weighing 63kg in total).

It's quite impressive that the UGV managed to drive 4km with that much weight without falling over.

And elsewhere, you have further use of UGVs to deploy TM-62 mines

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/...96740574658839
https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/...69691993366970

But what's new is that both sides apparently now are using UAVs to deploy mines from the air silently:

https://twitter.com/Jamie04381095/st...94077756211484

The [RUSSIAN] enemy continues to mine [UKRANIAN] our positions with anti-personnel mines at night using drones 😡

So be careful & watch your step, especially in the morning when you leave your dugout or shelter.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by MarkSheppard

New stuff just dropped, babe:

https://twitter.com/markito0171/stat...68549583311286

FORTUNATELY it is possible to hit the mute button for this vid..... you WILL want to before the earworm burrows too deep!

[Isto]

I like the idea of Future MBT type of third Steel Panthers game. As in, keeping the WinSPMBT as it is with no new modern add ons, and create an entire new game to be updated (for example starting at date 2025).

That would make things simpler, and possibly even preserve the old WinSPMBT from any possible malfunctioning it can have because of new added features, and only add the new features to entirely new platform, updating it as the time goes on (by whoever is up for that task).

[Dion]

I like it! As it would give Shrapnel the excuse to do all the little things that they have been saying can't done without having to create a whole new game. I have my doubts that it would work as described though. I think they would accidentally forget to include some of the "old" features of the current system, or forget to include some obscure feature that not many people use, but in reality the feature is very important to some players, just not used by the majority of players.

If they made a whole new game, it would give them a reason to raise the system requirements without ruining the current version. In my opinion that would be an outstanding consequence, as that would mean the graphics and other features would be state of the art!

Really, the only thing I see that's missing are mainly walls, tunnels, and some other obscure types of terrain, and possibly the upgrade of graphics too, but to tell you the truth, I think the current version has the best "top down" graphics on the market. The only games I see that has better graphics are real time games, and if Steel Panthers became a real time game, I think the game would change so much, it would become a different game, as a result, action scenes would become more important than game play.

[KAreil]

Originally Posted by Isto

I like the idea of Future MBT type of third Steel Panthers game. As in, keeping the WinSPMBT as it is with no new modern add ons, and create an entire new game to be updated (for example starting at date 2025).

That would make things simpler, and possibly even preserve the old WinSPMBT from any possible malfunctioning it can have because of new added features, and only add the new features to entirely new platform, updating it as the time goes on (by whoever is up for that task).

Wanted to post something like that myself. Personally I would fully support a third game like "WinSP2k" or similar.

I would let it start in the year 2000 and have an overlap of the database with WinSPMBT. The new game could have (if possible from the code) new features not available in the older engines to make all this UAV centric warfare possible.

[MarkSheppard]

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/...62908430008813

More drones proliferating, this one is Ukranian

Ground drone with 7.62-mm PKT in service of the 🇺🇦61st Separate Mechanized Brigade.

Combined effects warhead for FPV drones

https://twitter.com/GrandpaRoy2/stat...22462576713729

Ukraine is expanding the variety and lethality of warheads for its FPVs. Here we see a HEAT/ball-bearing fragmentation ammunition with roller bearings added to the front as additional fragmentation pieces. The copper cone to form the explosive jet is nicely visible.

Another thing to note is that when FPVs are used; they're used en masse -- i.e. as of late 2023 / early 2024, instead of lone or triplet FPV attacks, we're seeing swarming attacks; many of them going after a single target.

[MarkSheppard]

Remember that UGV I posted about a few pages back carrying a demolition charge to blow a bridge some 4 km from the operator?

We've gotten the scaled down version

https://twitter.com/War_Gang_/status...67779889119274

Translated from the Polish

Probably the first published (?) use of a robot (UGV) to paralyze 🇷🇺 positions.

The ground unmanned aircraft was - according to the description - carrying a TM-62M anti-tank mine, which was detonated remotely.

This will complement FPV drones to some extent. Why? Because the structures currently used cannot support the weight of the TM-62M (over 9kg); and the drones that can do this only fly at night because they are big and slow.

It is therefore possible that, to some narrow extent, UGVs will be able to complement the activities of drones and multiply each other's actions. FPV drones as fighters covering the way to the target for their driving colleagues 😉

UxV combined arms 😉

And yes - we are aware of the limitations of equipment, terrain, and enemy actions 🙂

[MarkSheppard]

More evolution!

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/s...09659927162966

Ukraine is now using WWII bomber escort solutions for drones -- the slower, bigger "Baba Yaga" carrying heavy munitions is escorted by swarms of smaller FPV drones.