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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| To counter drones, you will have to remember outdated military techniques |
| 2023-08-03 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Sergey Adamov [REGNUM] The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine over the past 15 months has adopted more than 30 models of various unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), says the head of the Kiev military department Oleksiy Reznikov . We are talking about drones "of various types - reconnaissance, strike, kamikaze drones and loitering ammunition, ammunition for UAVs has officially been created as a separate category," TASS quotes a statement that Reznikov made on August 2. Enemy drones featured in the latest UAF attack on the Belgorod region. Three recent incidents stand out from almost "background" reports of raids and UAV attacks. On Tuesday, July 18, Ukrainian unmanned boats attacked the Crimean bridge , seriously damaging the roadbed. Ukrainian drones twice attempted to raid the complex of high-rise buildings "Moscow-City". On the night of July 31 to August 1, surface drones attempted to attack the Russian corvettes Sergey Kotov and Vasily Bykov in the Black Sea. SVO have become a real debut of unmanned technologies, which are used by both the enemy and our military, experts say. Drones fight in the air, on the ground, on the water and underwater, changing the rules of warfare. Some drones are being adapted for precision missile strikes, others are conducting reconnaissance, and still others are learning to fight other drones. For the Russian Armed Forces and for the enemy, the use of drones by the other side has become a serious problem. Russian Lancet drones are successfully destroying military equipment of the Ukrainian army, while Geran kamikaze drones are delivering pinpoint strikes on infrastructure. The Armed Forces of Ukraine also use a wide range of drones - which, in fact, was reported by the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Reznikov. The growing number of attacks using small flying or surface vehicles raises the question of whether there is any defense against drones or whether they have become some kind of modern superweapon. THERE IS NO RECEPTION AGAINST THE DRONE? The success of unmanned aircraft is due to the fact that modern means of detecting and destroying air targets are not fully adapted to the fight against UAVs, military expert, author of the Telegram channel "Russian Engineer" Alexei Vasiliev told IA Regnum. According to him, the mass launch of drones is becoming a serious problem for modern air defense systems, which were developed to solve other problems. “Modern air defense systems were created to combat manned aircraft and missiles,” the source recalled. - If the plane costs, conditionally, 30 million, and the rocket costs one million, then its use pays off. However, if the cost of a rocket is a million dollars, and the cost of a drone is 5-10 thousand, it turns out that it is not economically profitable to defend. Moreover, there are no such large stocks of air defense missiles to reflect the mass launch of dozens of drones. But often air defense misses not mass, but, on the contrary, single launches of drones that can travel long distances and go unnoticed. According to the expert, the “inaccessibility” of drones is ensured by a number of factors. “Firstly, they operate at low altitudes. Secondly, drones are a small target. As a rule, it has a small reflective surface. Also, drones tend to be plastic. Which also makes it difficult to detect them,” the expert explained. As world experience shows, the “inaccessibility” of drones has become a problem not only for Ukrainian or Russian air defense. ECHOES OF THE MIDDLE EAST WAR Israel, which uses its own air defense systems, and the countries of the Persian Gulf, which rely on American-made air defense systems, are facing similar difficulties, military expert Maxim Tumbartsev noted in a comment to IA Regnum. “The Middle East, in a sense, is the cradle for the use of both reconnaissance and attack drones,” the expert said. - For the first time such a problem arose during the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Palestinians were among the first to develop civilian drones for military purposes. The bet was made on the fact that one missile of the Iron Dome air defense system is several times more expensive than a lone drone. And, as practice shows, the problem of drones has not yet been resolved by the Israeli army. Individual drones fly over their positions and go unnoticed, Tumbartsev noted. WILL AN ANALOGUE OF THE ISRAELI "IRON DOME" APPEAR IN UKRAINE? The real “drone revolution” took place during the military conflict in Yemen, the expert said. It turned out that even a relatively small formation can resist a coalition of large developed states and effectively use modern technologies. “The American Patriot air defense systems, which are used by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, could not do anything against the Yemeni drones,” the military expert said. - Moreover, the Yemeni Houthi rebels use not only kamikaze drones, but also surface and underwater drones. It was the Houthis who showed that modern means of protection require rethinking or reformatting . It turned out that now it is not necessary to have large aircraft, missiles in order to pose a serious threat to the enemy. “The same Houthis do not have an army as such in the modern sense, but they are a formidable force. And this process is now happening all over the world. Drones are changing the rules of the game,” the expert added. If not only the air defense systems of the Soviet-Russian school, but also the developments of other leading powers, are powerless against drones, then we can come to the conclusion: have modern armies become useless? However, experts are confident that in the near future the means of detecting and destroying air objects will learn to repel an unmanned threat. MOBILE TOWER LIKE A BEACON To effectively counter UAVs, it is necessary to develop modern specialized optoelectronic detection tools that will simultaneously combine acoustic and radar detection tools, emphasizes Alexei Vasiliev. There are several theoretical developments on the creation of drone detection tools using civilian technology, in particular using cell towers, the expert explained. “There were projects to create passive direction finding systems,” Vasiliev said. - A receiver is placed on the communication tower, which receives mobile communication signals. If the signal is broken at a certain height, then a drone is operating at that height. That is, the receiver becomes a kind of flashlight that illuminates all objects that fly at this height. "TAKE AN ORDINARY SOVIET HELICOPTER" Those who have now relied on combat drones are using a temporary window of opportunity until sufficient means of combating them appear, Vasiliev noted. Moreover, it can be not only modern developments, but also “obsolete”, which have now been forgotten. “With the advent of jet aircraft, machine guns and cannon mounts for air defense, which were used in World War II, were forgotten. However, now they can find a new life, - says Vasiliev. “ Similarly, acoustic detection tools can gain new life, because there are no silent drones.” However, “old proven means” like airships are unlikely to be effective, because the conditions that were during World War II have changed, the expert pointed out. “Even then they were not very effective, but they forced the planes to rise higher, which reduced the accuracy of the bombardment. Now you can program a drone to bypass airships. And so - visual, acoustic detection, searchlights, rapid-fire machine gun installations are quite suitable for fighting drones, ” the expert noted. According to Alexei Vasiliev, there is also a project to use Mi-24 attack helicopters as drone interceptors. When a drone is detected by means of detection, the helicopter can catch up with the drone and destroy it with an automatic cannon. Another "forgotten" method of warfare, which was put to fight against drones, is booms, which are already being installed in the bay of Sevastopol and on the outskirts of the Crimean bridge. Floating structures have already successfully shown themselves as a means of counteracting unmanned boats and underwater drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “There has not been a single case of successful use of drones on ships,” Vasilyev notes. - But there is a problem that we do not have AWACS (early warning radar system. - Ed.) as a class in the fleet. The stake is on the radars of the ships themselves. But in general, ships cope with such a threat, static objects in the coastal zone are protected . In principle, it is possible to break through the boom with the help of drones, but then you need to launch them in several waves. So that the first wave destroys the barriers, and the second breaks through to the target. But here the effect of surprise is lost, and the effectiveness of such an attack will be in question, Alexey Vasilyev noted. Although drones have become a headache for the armed forces of a number of countries today, the status of a “wonder weapon” was prematurely assigned to them, experts conclude. At one time, manned aircraft, rocket artillery and other developments had just as dizzying success. But sooner or later, military science found ways to deal with a new threat. This means that drones will become the same military routine as artillery or tanks. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #6 doubt their communications are very hardened against jamming or overload by jamming They aren't. Where jamming systems have been, commercial drones have failed horribly. The problem is, those systems are expensive, take a while to train on, and you can never have enough of them. The eggheads in weapons R&R will have to come up with something that is easy to use, fairly cheap for military gear, and mostly automated. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2023-08-03 12:35 |
| #5 Drones have to be able to talk to their operator. RETRO: AI Drones: How Artificial Intelligence Works in Drones and Examples Pan and I had a short thought experiment discussion about jamming autonomous drones. All the best location intelligence and tracking can be led astray by EMF acceleration of the clock cycles of the 555 timer chips. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-08-03 09:13 |
| #4 Both sides have upped their RF shielding to counter jamming techniques. As the jamming systems evolve, so have the counter measures. They both may use off the shelf components, but those can be 'hardened' by various means. You can tell this is happening as the early videos show the drones failing at a distance early on when targeted by jamming. Now the drones seem to be able to operate pretty close to the jamming source. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2023-08-03 09:09 |
| #3 /\ Yes, targeted or persistent surveillance via airborne drones is dramatically changing the battlefield equation. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2023-08-03 08:18 |
| #2 "Drones are changing the rules of the game,” the expert added." A decade from now they will be saying that robots are changing the rules of the game. And wars will be fought by sixteen year old gamers working out of Nellis AFB. |
| Posted by: Jerens Black9355 2023-08-03 08:12 |
| #1 I see no mention made of EMF jamming. Drones have to be able to talk to their operator. I seriously doubt their communications are very hardened against jamming or overload by jamming. Most of these drones are based off commercial ones or use very similar control systems. |
| Posted by: Silentbrick 2023-08-03 02:43 |