Syrian War: News #22

Modern jet powered attack drones like Cloud Shadow is huge compared to Su-25 and carry much heavier payload including stand off missiles. If Russia used drones in Idlib then wouldn't lost Su-24 and Su-25 pilots to ground fire. Modern drones can be directly controlled from hundreds of km away where pilots are safe in mobile control trucks. Also drones are much cheaper to service and build. Almost all planes used in Libya war for instance are attack drones. Manned jets days are numbered. Russia is no longer developing anymore manned combat planes. All combat planes under development are drones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIC_Cloud_Shadow

Do you even read what you post?

The Cloud Shadow is huge and is a HALE... a High Altitude Long Endurance armed drone that could never off CLOSE Air Support... based on the link you provided this drone weighs less than the weapon payload of the Su-25... the entire drone is 3.2 tons with an amazing weapon capacity of 400kgs... that is pathetic.

Sure if Russia had used drones they wouldn't have lost any pilots... but they also would not have hit any targets either and would have spent rather more money for that pathetic return. Drone pilots are not safe... the terrorists could easily determine where they are and attack them with IEDs.

Drones like this Chinese drones are much more expensive than a cheap simple fighter aircraft. The war in Libya is a civil war and meaningless for the Russians who face HATO and the US. Russia is currently introducing Su-57s... a manned aircraft... they are also introducing lots of transport types, a bomber type and also they are working on a replacement for the Su-25 in the CAS role and a high speed replacement for the MiG-31 interceptor.

MRAP is just a very bad design - The height and steepness of the dropdown stairs, not sufficiently effective against Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) etc.

Russia should develop an MRAP with T-72 type protection but not follow the bad design of the MRAP.

MRAPs have their purpose, but that purpose is patrol in environments where the main threat is land mines and IEDs and small arms rather than RPGs and ATGMs.

Russia is in the process of transitioning into a new group of families of vehicles... heavy vehicles, medium vehicles, and light vehicles. Their Typhoon family of vehicles would benefit from development of MRAP platforms in terms of mine resistance and light weight armour options, but would not be MRAPs as such.

Russian paramilitary forces would benefit from MRAPs but the Army not so much as they really do not replace BTRs or BMPs.

The Su-34 has the same or even better armor then the Su-25. That´s why it can be used for CAS. But it is much more expensive then the Su-25, so the best choice for such missions are upgraded Su-25´s.

The Su-34 is a medium to deep strike aircraft and is designed for low level very high speed penetration to attack specific targets, which is completely different from the Su-25 that flys low and slow and loiters around the front line attacking targets causing ground forces problems.

The Su-34 is Iskander that flys low and fast, Su-25 is a 152mm artillery piece attacking targets that hold up the advance or cause problems for ground forces moving forward.

MRAP´s were developed as cheap substitutions for APC´s and AIFV´s. A truck with some armor, nothing more. And it has to be so high to be safe from mines.

Sort of... MRAPs were developed to better protect troops who would otherwise be operating in unarmoured vehicles like humvees. Before they were used in combat most Humvee crews assumed because of their size and weight that the Humvee was armoured and had bullet proof glass. It is not and does not so while they were driving them like they were bullet proof they were not. Step one was to put armour on them which make a heavy big vehicle even heavier and unusable, so they looked to alternatives and MRAPs were the solution short of using APCs which had better protection from small arms but were not necessarily better protected from land mines and IEDS which would immobilise them and kill the contents.

MRAPs are also generally wheeled vehicles so have better mobility on roads and lower operating costs than tracked vehicles like BTRs and BMPs.

MRAP is not at all effective against Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP), which use an explosive charge to propel a specially shaped metal plate at high velocity while simultaneously deforming it into an armor-piercing projectile. In Iraq MRAPs have been blown to bits.

EFP are very exotic weapons that terrorists in Iraq have no access to... don't confuse EFPs with IEDs which are just lumps of explosives with rocks and bricks and nuts and bolts packed in with them to create shrapnel.

An example of an EFP would be in a sensor fused submunition used by Soviet and Russian artillery in cluster bombs and rocket artillery where the EFP is released in mid air and deploys a parachute to slow its fall and then it scans the ground below it for metal targets... when it detects one it explodes which deforms a metal plate in the warhead into a shuttle cock shaped projectile that is directed down at the top armour of the target at about 2-3km/s or so.

Such penetrators are blunt and obviously because they are formed during an explosion can't be made from hard penetrator materials otherwise they would shatter.

They can penetrate the thin upper armour of vehicles but are not ideal and certainly not as effective as an RPG HEAT warhead... though they do have the advantage of being effective from a distance away like from 200m above the target whereas most HEAT rounds need to detonate close to the surface they are to penetrate.

Makes more sense for Russia to develop technologies that can detect and neutralize IEDs before Russian paramilitary, Army enters that area.

They already have... they attach them to their ICBM truck brigades to clear the way of mines and IEDS... Combat Approved has a video on them:



They also have other mine clearing vehicles...



Either way it makes sense to have mine and IED resistant vehicles anyway...

IMO MRAP in russian army will replace some truck that used to carry troops. BTR and BMP are not menat to be replaced by such vehicles.

MRAP are patrol vehicles in places where small arms fire and mines are the primary threat... they are not really troop transports.

The FSB or MVD are more likely to use MRAPs than the Russian army.

Official US military = will be in cushy think tank job in a couple of years time... he just got the time scale wrong...

$150 million dollars of US taxpayers plane supports Illegal occupation and invasion force and supports terrorist annexation of oil fields... so someone in the US who is already a billionaire can make a little more money... meanwhile thousands of Americans are dying because they spent more money in one year on military adventurism than the rest of the world spends combined that could have been better spent to give americans healthcare and education they clearly so desperately need...

Would be more accurate...