UAVs in Russian Armed Forces: News #2

Mir wrote:
Yesterday you left Afghanistan in the middle of the night without as much as a good bye to your host for the last 20 years +

Maybe they were a bit scared about a warm goodbye fiesta arranged by the friendly hosts

I read somewhere that during the Soviet-Afghan War the Afghan opium exports captured 60% of the US market - mainly due to the covert actions of the CIA.

We've all seen how the US military guarded those assets during this campaign - not to mention plundering the rare minerals that's probably depleted by now.

Isos wrote:Their missile are not powerfull at all and people will escape from the area wheb they see it going down.

 Small UAVs will not carry missiles. They will carry a 5lbs - 10lbs munition and drop it on the target.

Isos wrote:And it is very likely that the missile explode in the air when hit and burning.

No, it doesn't happen that way. Once the UAV is hit and it falls on the ground the explosive it was carrying will go off.

UAVs are most dangerous if they enter a major urban center, especially when they are carrying an explosive.

Actually UAVs are most dangerous when they are used to make indirect fire and attacks more accurate and effective.

The amount of explosive most UAVs carry is pathetic... perhaps a couple of hand grenades worth of ordinance which is difficult to deliver accurately without getting very close to the target.

In comparison a higher flying UAV you might never even notice could be delivering sharp clear video to the enemy firing rockets or gun artillery on to the target allowing them to correct their fire and really be very very effective... they could keep firing all day and kill enormous numbers of people.

Such tiny drones are hard to spot and even harder to shoot down as their IR signature and radar signature might be tiny... and operating above about 4km most MANPADS wont get a lock anyway.

For Russia they have a wide variety of missiles that could deal with such problems and more missiles on the way, but for the west it is a very serious problem.

Let's say you shoot it down with a Verba or Pantsir. It still falls to the ground. The explosive goes off it will kill many civilians in the city.

Probably not Verba because it would likely lack range against such a tiny low IR target, but Pantsir would obliterate it and likely destroy the munitions.

Most munitions have multiple safeties so they don't explode when you are handling them or loading them or flying around with them... when you are about to use them you arm them and then release them... if you get shot down you can't generally arm your weapons so if they don't explode in the fire ball when you get hit they generally wont explode when the wreckage hits the ground.

If there is a lot of fuel or the wreckage is seriously on fire and continues to burn then weapons with explosives in them will also burn but not normally explode.

Just coming down in an urban area might start a fire but the odds of it killing lots of people are pretty low unless you get unlucky.

Small UAVs will not carry missiles. They will carry a 5lbs - 10lbs munition and drop it on the target.

Different UAVs will have different capacities, but as I said the most useful item a UAV can carry is a camera and sat navigation device so it knows where it is and what it is looking at.

Tiny bombs reduce speed and endurance of small drones and make them less effective... and are difficult to use efficiently...

The best compromise would be a drone optimised for spotting targets but with a HE payload to be used as a suicide drone when done... but they tend to be bigger and therefore easier to deal with.

Once the UAV is hit and it falls on the ground the explosive it was carrying will go off.

That would never happen... for the reasons I explained above. Munitions that just go off on impact are too unstable and too unsafe to use and handle.

Actually, all the ordnance is designed in a way not to just cook off unintentionally. So this would be hardly a case.
The bigger threat is generated by the falling debris, still, it is acceptable as we can see, even in such casualty sensitive countries as Israel.

GarryB wrote:Actually UAVs are most dangerous when they are used to make indirect fire and attacks more accurate and effective.

I was describing how UAVs will be used by hostile forces in cities/towns.

Where is the need for indirect fire in an urban setting?

Very Small UAVs like our Black Hornet for instance can barely be detected by any radar because they are so tiny. Swarms of Black Hornets can enter a city undetected and target vulnerable areas.

For example they can hit the turbofans of wide-body aircraft just a few minutes before they land.

Soon these tiny UAVs will be able to fire a bullet. Now imagine hundreds of Black Hornet type UAVs carrying out one shot one kill across the city.

GarryB wrote:The amount of explosive most UAVs carry is pathetic... perhaps a couple of hand grenades worth of ordinance which is difficult to deliver accurately without getting very close to the target.

Counter example. Meet the DJI AGRAS T20 https://www.dji.com/se/t20.

It has a two hour battery life, a 4G network connection, and a 20L tank to store whatever chemical weapon you want to spray over your target.
At 20mph, someone could fly this thing from 20 miles away, then have an additional hour to crop dust.

RTN wrote:

GarryB wrote:Actually UAVs are most dangerous when they are used to make indirect fire and attacks more accurate and effective.

I was describing how UAVs will be used by hostile forces in cities/towns.

Where is the need for indirect fire in an urban setting?

Very Small UAVs like our Black Hornet for instance can barely be detected by any radar because they are so tiny. Swarms of Black Hornets can enter a city undetected and target vulnerable areas.


For example they can hit the turbofans of wide-body aircraft just a few minutes before they land.


Soon these tiny UAVs will be able to fire a bullet. Now imagine hundreds of Black Hornet type UAVs carrying out one shot one kill across the city.

Any small size UAV is extremely hard to detect with radar - primarily because it's made of plastic. Your Black Hornet is not so unique.

It is also a bad idea if an entire mission is dependent on just one bullet - unless it's a super smart bullet!

Currently Russia has such a vast range of anti-drone weaponry that I doubt these drones would ever see their targets, but I'm sure you will have some success in a Third World environment.

There has been numerous swarm attacks on the Russian bases in Syria - all ended in failure.

Saudi Arabia on the other hand suffered at the hand of many such attacks - despite the Patriot missiles.

Mir wrote:Any small size UAV is extremely hard to detect with radar - primarily because it's made of plastic

UAVs made of plastic can't be detected by radar? What a joke except everyone is laughing at you, not with you.

I know you are not the brightest chicken in a henhouse, still, I will try to help.
Start with radar transparent materials. Education is gold, lad.

RTN wrote:

Mir wrote:Any small size UAV is extremely hard to detect with radar - primarily because it's made of plastic

UAVs made of plastic can't be detected by radar? What a joke except everyone is laughing at you, not with you.

"Any small size UAV is extremely hard to detect with radar - primarily because it's made of plastic"

I think the joke's on you dude!

But I'm pretty sure your Black Hornet is made from some super special stealth compound that cost an arm and a leg, but if you look closer you will see made from "Made in China" plastic.

Mir wrote:

But I'm pretty sure your Black Hornet is made of some super special stealth compound that cost an arm and a leg, but if you look closer you will see made from "Made in China" plastic.

And the plastic itself is made of Iranian polymers
That is a hell of a supa dupa plastic, as Agent Orange used to say

Radar signals will pass through plastic. However, reflective components of the drone are the batteries and motors of the blades. That might reflect off the surface and captured by the radar receiver.

I was describing how UAVs will be used by hostile forces in cities/towns.

Where is the need for indirect fire in an urban setting?

Where is the need for a UAV.... just rig a fuel truck with internal explosives that can be set to go off by remote control... drive it to a location and boom.

Very Small UAVs like our Black Hornet for instance can barely be detected by any radar because they are so tiny. Swarms of Black Hornets can enter a city undetected and target vulnerable areas.

You mean F-35 undetected or B-2 undetected?

Any attack by sophisticated American swarm UAVs will be obviously American and be considered an attack which will get a response... which is what deters attacks of other types.

For attacks on countries like Iran or Syria... why spend billions on tiny UAVs when more conventional methods already in service remain effective.

For example they can hit the turbofans of wide-body aircraft just a few minutes before they land.

So America is going to openly become a terrorist state... about time they came out of the closet, but every future airliner crash will be blamed on them... plus the obvious problem of actually managing to get in the way of a jet engine in the first place.

Radio wave radars of the current common type struggle with such small targets, but Lidar and IIR systems don't struggle at all.

Soon these tiny UAVs will be able to fire a bullet. Now imagine hundreds of Black Hornet type UAVs carrying out one shot one kill across the city.

And when the US personnel who recognise the evil of such systems start exposing yet another American murder programme, I rather suspect the victim country will endeavour to respond in some way.

It has a two hour battery life, a 4G network connection, and a 20L tank to store whatever chemical weapon you want to spray over your target.
At 20mph, someone could fly this thing from 20 miles away, then have an additional hour to crop dust.

The fact that it is big enough to carry that sort of fuel and that sort of payload will make it visible to the eye and the air defence sensors, and its signals can be intercepted and jammed and used to locate those monitoring and operating the system.

There has been numerous swarm attacks on the Russian bases in Syria - all ended in failure.

Saudi Arabia on the other hand suffered at the hand of many such attacks - despite the Patriot missiles.

Yes, the irony is the contrast of Soviet/Russian air defence performance compared with the best western money can buy air defence performance... in many ways they are opening Pandoras box by creating a weapon to deal with an enemy that is actually better positioned to deal with the results than they are... made all the more interesting because a swarm would need to be cheap to be affordable... otherwise they could just make lots of Tomahawk missiles and have a swarm of those. But those missiles are too big and expensive to buy sufficient numbers to actually create an effective swarm, so they go tiny.

The result is that Russia is going to first of all develop all sorts of defensive systems, from jammers and energy weapon systems to disable these electronic electrical devices (can't do that with Grasshoppers, but you can do it with UAVs), through to airburst HE rounds from guns of all types and of course missiles and also other drones.

Next they are going to develop their own drones so they can return the favour and that is where it gets interesting because western defences can't even effectively stop cruise missiles let alone small elusive drones.

The west is going to have to invest trillions in their air defence systems because fighter based systems would be dreadfully inefficient in dealing with drones of any type.

Radar signals will pass through plastic. However, reflective components of the drone are the batteries and motors of the blades. That might reflect off the surface and captured by the radar receiver.

Not so much batteries, but motors, yes.

Electric powered UAVs might be quiet enough that you don't even hear them, and lack if the heat source of a internal combustion engine running would make them impossible targets for old generation IR guided missiles, but newer missiles don't require a super hot spot to guide to...

list of exhibitors updated since july 6 2021, see roscosmos, sukhoi, rti and alot of other great companies. https://aviasalon.com/assets/download/2021/list-of-exhibitors/List%20of%20Exhibitors_MAKS-2021_06.07.2021_eng.pdf

Several technologies that are currently maturing on Russia's cruise missiles will eventually find their way into UAVs.

The Turkish Bairaktar UAV is getting serious competition from Russia in the from of Orion-E. The Orion-E has superior
characteristics and is going to be much cheaper than the 3 million dollar Bairaktar:

1) The control range is 300 km vs 150 km.

2) The flight persistence is 24 hours instead of 12.

3) The payload is 250 kg vs. 150 kg.

4) The selection of ground attack missiles and bombs is much larger than, including equivalents of US munitions.
This includes the KAB-50, UBAB-50, KAB-20, an AGM 114 Hellfire analogue the Kh-50. The Bairaktar so far
is limited to two semi-guided bomb types and a guided anti-tank missile. As demonstrated on the battlefield
both have enough to do the job anyway.

5) The Orion has all Russian components aside from the engine, which will soon be replaced by a Russian variant.
The Bairaktar is only Turkish in terms of its fuselage and the wiring. About 80% of it (including the avionics and
remote control system) are imports. So the Orion-E can escape sanctions, where the Bairaktar cannot.

6) The Orion-E is EW hardened to a much higher level than the Bairaktar. This has been demonstrated in Syria
and Nagorno-Karabakh.

kvs wrote:

The Turkish Bairaktar UAV is getting serious competition from Russia in the from of Orion-E.   The Orion-E has superior
characteristics and is going to be much cheaper than the 3 million dollar Bairaktar:

1) The control range is 300 km vs 150 km.

2) The flight persistence is 24 hours instead of 12.

3) The payload is 250 kg vs. 150 kg.

4) The selection of ground attack missiles and bombs is much larger than, including equivalents of US munitions.  
This includes the KAB-50, UBAB-50, KAB-20, an AGM 114 Hellfire analogue the Kh-50.   The Bairaktar so far
is limited to two semi-guided bomb types and a guided anti-tank missile.   As demonstrated on the battlefield
both have enough to do the job anyway.    

5) The Orion has all Russian components aside from the engine, which will soon be replaced by a Russian variant.
The Bairaktar is only Turkish in terms of its fuselage and the wiring.   About 80% of it (including the avionics and
remote control system) are imports.   So the Orion-E can escape sanctions, where the Bairaktar cannot.

6) The Orion-E is EW hardened to a much higher level than the Bairaktar.   This has been demonstrated in Syria
and Nagorno-Karabakh.

On secret projects I read that the turks routinely lie about their UAVs' endurance, giving sometimes 10 fold exagerrations. Turks also claim the bayraktar was completely immune to russian Pole anti drone jammers which were allegedly deployed in armenia.

In this case I doubt that the Turkish drone only has 1.2 hours of endurance. It should be at least six hours based on its volume and apparent
fuel tank size. As for EW resistance here I think they are just bald faced lying.

Turks also claim many things, like being able to produce a 5th Gen fighter that will be unveiled in 2 years time, amusing but we'll see if that 5th gen fighter stays after BAE drops out of the program .

(I'm speaking from my own experience) but it's fascinating really, talking to Turks always made me realize how big of a mistake i committed and how much they lash out, it's as if they live in their little box where presenting facts leads to mothers and sisters being brought up into the convo, it's a world where reality is bent by the will of the neo Ottoman schmucks and their sheep's and worshippers,  it's unbelievable how much they lie and how many would believe it, claims of flying into Crimean airspace and over Russian air bases and being resistant to EW inside Russian territory, and how they don't need fighter jets as Drones are a perfect substitute ...

Many of them honestly think TB2 is a "Deterrent" against Russia and how it would roll the Russian army if a war ever breaks out .

but yes please do keep telling me of the 100% Turkish made technology that is definitely not US, Canadian, UK or Israeli tech, and your amazing indigenous Drones that have 80% imported components, it's not like they had to resort to Ukraine of all people for their newest one and thier little heli , DEFINITELY not desperate .

Orion with Vikhr-1 missile at maks 2021.

ironically I want to know more about the Su-70s weapons of use(if anything new) from air to air to air to ground along with talking about its avionics and such, more than I am interested about than the newer aircraft as a matter of opinion.

Russia unveils new deadly attack drone variant, as military-industrial chief says country to become major player in export market, 20.07.2021.

Details of a high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with bombs and rockets that will allow it to take out enemy installations, troop formations and moving vehicles have been released by Russian developers on Tuesday.

Speaking to RIA Novosti on Tuesday, Dmitry Shugaev, director of Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said that a full reveal of the new combat version of the Orion-E drone would take place this week at the MAKS-2021 military air show.

It will come equipped with a range of armaments, including both unguided and targeted bombs that will allow it to destroy stationary emplacements, as well as tanks and armored-personnel carriers. The Orion is capable of flying seven kilometers above the ground, has a wingspan of 16 meters, and a maximum payload of 200kg of deadly explosives. The drone is currently used by the Russian military, and has been deployed for airstrikes in Syria against the Islamic State (a terrorist group prohibited in Russia).

“Previously, the unmanned system was available for sale only in surveillance version,” and without armaments, Shugaev said. Nine have been ordered by foreign customers since it became available in 2019.

In terms of Russia’s share of the drone market, the arms-export official said that “in the medium term, we expect to occupy up to 10% of the international market with our reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicles.” In addition, a number of new drones, including a heavily armed version, are currently under development.

In April, Russia’s Kronshtadt Group weapons firm, which developed the Orion, revealed it would spend $52 million on a new factory, billed as the country’s first-ever manufacturing plant solely for the manufacture of drones. Last year, Moscow news agency TASS revealed that over 900 Russian unmanned aerial vehicles have entered into active service since 2012.

https://www.rt.com/russia/529734-deadly-attack-drone-variant/

Rosoboronexport implements contract for export supply of Orion drones.

Rosoboronexport (part of Rostec State Corporation) is fulfilling a contract for the supply of Orion-E unmanned aerial vehicles. This was announced to journalists during the MAKS-2021 air show by Alexander Mikheev, General Director of Rosoboronexport.

"The first contracts have already been signed and are being implemented. The reconnaissance and observation option has been signed and is being implemented, " Mikheev said.

According to him, the appearance of the export-oriented strike UAV Orion-E is being formed now. "We will present it in the near future. Negotiations are underway on udarnoye, "the head of Rosoboronexport added.

"This is a trend," he concluded.

Source: 

Orion attack drones to be armed with Vikhr (Eng: Whirlwind) missiles. 

The Kalashnikov Concern is working on adapting the Vikhr-1 guided missiles for use on Orion-E attack drones, as well as Mi-28NE and Mi-35P helicopters , the concern's press service reported. 

According to Kalashnikov, the Vikhr guided missile is capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to ten kilometers, and its speed is more than 600 meters per second. "The tandem cumulative warhead of the missile penetrates 750 millimeters of homogeneous armor behind dynamic protection" the developer noted. 

Source: https://www.aex.ru/m/news/2021/7/23/232469/