Isos wrote:Attacking pickups inside enemy territory is useless and will push them to use adapt.
Yes, they can keep their heads inside their holes unless they want to get them smashed. Constant surveillance and immediate destruction of the targets renders the jihadists powerless to assemble the smallest offensive.
Against a conventional and well equiped enemy orlan 10 has more chances to be used. Orion would be just as easy to shoot down as US drones.
So what. I am talking about the means of war on the cheap US uses against Russia and her allies. Now Russia can also play that game...
The weapons used by drones are less powerfull than a Kornet. You can't hit building or underground targets and reloading them would take 10 hours.
You are precisely seeing what is probably a Kornet being launched from the Orion. I recommend you to check the caliber of weapons an Altius can carry, it has more than a ton payload...
A bomber like a su-25 will attack 10 different targets being monitored by 10 orlan 10 or cheap forpost in 1 sortie that will take 1h.
No it will not, because targets are not getting in line for you to kill them asap, that is what makes the use of high payload planes in such low intensity conflicts very uneconomical, unless they can stay on station for hours or days.
For a single Orion it will take 3 sorties with 4 atgm that can attack only vehicles or terrorists on foot and would take more or less 10h (flying at 120km, target at 100km, means 2h of flying multiply by number of sorties). And that's for close targets get 100km further and it becomes 20h.
My friend, Orion stays one day on station and Altius 2 days. The number of sorties they need is a low fraction of the number of sorties big jets would need, and each of them at a low fraction of the cost. See for yourself CPFH data from USAF where you can compare the cost of operating UCAVs vs fighter jets. Or look how many bombs the planes used in Syria carry, they do not attack 10 targets per sortie as if they had carefully made appointments with the terrorists.
If the enemy has an AD your drones are dead meat.
Nobody is talking about high intensity conflicts here, on the contrary, making the point that UCAVS are ideal for protracted low intensity ones like Syria.
The_Observer wrote:I still remember some 12 to 18 months back, seeing lots of terrorist drone videos of their "offensives". They'd launch relatively big offensives with columns of vehicles and their very own drones overhead recording videos for their glorious nasheeds...and I would wonder, "where's the VKS when you need them". But jet fighters and bombers don't have the luxury of hanging around in the air, waiting for the targets to pop up. They are perfect for this theater, active but low intensity. They can easily stay off Manpad range and still do their job like it's nobody's business.
Exactly. Such are also my thoughts when I notice VKS is there only sometimes and at some spots, while a constant presence of much cheaper air power assets would make the simple assembling of troops impossible.
Home
Latest images
Register
Log in
