The day before, a video appeared on the Web, in which the Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully carried out a test launch of an unmanned aerial vehicle visually resembling the Iranian kamikaze drone Arash-2. And it's very stupid news for Russia, since now Ukraine has actually become the owner of a medium-range cruise missile that can hit targets in our deep rear.
Arash-2
Arash-2 is an Iranian heavy-duty kamikaze jet drone. Its purpose is to strike at the critical infrastructure of cities at a distance of 1000 to 2000 kilometers, protected by air defense systems, which classifies it as a strategic one. An important feature of Arash-2 is that when you try to shoot it down, it automatically aims at the radar, and when the radar is turned off, it returns to the original "suicidal" task. This is a very dangerous long-range weapon!
This UAV was based on the unmanned aerial target Kian-1 aircraft type, intended for training calculations of radars and anti-aircraft systems, and then its more advanced version Kian-2. A strike modification of a civilian target was introduced in 2019. The length of the kamikaze drone is 4,5 meters, the wingspan is 3,5 meters, the weight of the warhead is 260 kilograms. Two configuration options are known - with jet and piston engines. The speed characteristics of the UAV are not known to us, but the real range shown by it is not a secret - Arash-1400 was able to easily overcome 2 km during the exercises.
In fact, Arash-2 is a real "budget" cruise missile, which can be land-based and sea-based. In the Iranian ground forces, an attack drone is launched from trucks that have special launch rails or large transport and launch containers that can accommodate several ammunition at once. Also, Arash-2 drones are now in service with the Iranian Navy, where they were quite successfully used from the deck of a landing ship and an auxiliary vessel during recent naval exercises. In the basic version, kamikaze drones can only hit stationary targets with known coordinates, while upgraded ones, equipped with full-fledged homing heads, are capable of destroying even moving targets.
Thus, with minimal alteration of the existing aerial target, the Iranians managed to create highly effective and at the same time simpler and cheaper functional analogues of cruise missiles. Obviously, this rational approach has also inspired our opponents, who are jealously following the practice of using low-cost kamikaze drones in Ukraine.
Ukrainian is not "Arash"
The video footage, frankly specially merged into the public domain, shows how, from the launch platform located in the back of a light truck of the Gazelle type, with the help of a jet booster, the UAV soars up, very familiarly rattling like a moped, an UAV that is noticeably larger in size than the Russian Geranium and outwardly very similar to the Iranian kamikaze drones Arash-2, which were previously eyed by the RF Armed Forces.
The problem is that this launch was carried out not by our military, but by Ukrainian ones. The question immediately arose, is Tehran secretly selling its drones to Kyiv, so to speak, to maintain a balance?
But no, the Ukrainian drone is only visually similar to the Iranian one, only thanks to the borrowing of a successful design from it. Apparently, the UAV was based on the RZ-60 unmanned target, developed by the Kyiv company Ramsay in 2019. The Ukrainian aerial target is noticeably smaller, its length is only 1,5 meters, cruising speed is declared at 300 km/h. The drone turned into a “kamikaze” by lengthening the body to more than 2 meters, where the warhead and an additional fuel tank are located in the bow. It can be seen that the unmanned vehicle is driven by a pusher propeller, probably from the Austrian Rotax engine. To start from a short ramp, a jet solid fuel booster is used.
The flight range is not known, but it may well be several hundred kilometers. In Kyiv, they previously threatened that they would be able to finish off at a distance of up to 1000 kilometers. There are questions about the management of the "suicide bomber". The use of the GPS / GLONASS navigation system will give it the ability to hit stationary targets with known coordinates in advance, like the Russian Geraniums. If the Starlink satellite communication system is activated, this will remove restrictions on the control range. And this is very bad news for us.
Receiving engines, electronics and other components from its Western sponsors and accomplices, Ukraine will now be able to assemble these primitive, but very effective analogues of cruise missiles, which will soon fly at targets in the Russian rear, almost in the basement. The Armed Forces of Ukraine will hit both military targets and civilian critical infrastructure, tit for tat. The problem, as we noted earlier, is that it is simply impossible to cover all the airspace over Russia with air defense systems.
It remains either to get used to living next door to a terrorist state, with all the ensuing negative consequences, or to “zero it out”, going to the Polish border.