Can modern warfare be won with drones?

What is happening in Ukraine for almost sixteen months in a row is often called the "war of drones" in many media. Indeed, the number and variety of types of drones that are used by both sides of the conflict exceed everything that was before in Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya or Syria. Drones play an extremely important role in modern warfare. But is it possible to win the war at the expense of them? Let's try to find the answer to this ambiguous question.

If we carefully analyze the trend in the development of unmanned weapons, it becomes obvious that UAVs are now performing two extremely important combat missions. First, they are responsible for aerial reconnaissance, target designation and subsequent fire adjustment. Secondly, drones themselves have become a kind precision strike weapons, and very effective and at the same time budgetary. This is what we will talk about in more detail later.

Intelligence service

With regret, we have to state that at the initial stage of the special operation, the enemy was qualitatively superior to our army in terms of not only space (NATO), but also air reconnaissance. Due to this, the effectiveness of the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the first six months of the Northern Military District significantly exceeded the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Our few Orlans, assembled from Chinese components, were not enough to constantly monitor what was happening on the battlefield and behind enemy lines. This allowed the Ukrainian army to freely transfer entire columns of armored vehicles, which could be quickly detected and destroyed by high-precision weapons. In addition to the shortage of reconnaissance UAVs and means of secure operational-tactical communications, a big problem for the Russian army was the coordination of interaction between various units and subunits.

If the military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine saw a picture of the battle directly on their tablets using the “Krapiva” program and could immediately call fire on the detected (our) target, then in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation there was a whole queue in which it was possible to wait for an artillery or missile attack on the enemy’s armored vehicles. up to two days. Such excessive bureaucratization of the administrative mechanism greatly reduced combat effectiveness.

To date, the situation has improved markedly. Thanks to the activities of volunteer organizations, the front is gradually being saturated with communications equipment and drones. The interaction between units and subunits has improved, the accuracy of artillery fire has increased, the enemy can no longer quietly listen to the negotiations of the Russian military. The results are noticeable in the Zaporizhia direction, where the RF Armed Forces effectively repel the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, for which they have been seriously preparing for a long time.

Nevertheless, the Russian army needs many more reconnaissance drones, from strategic ones like the much-touted Altius to simple Chinese quadcopters with cameras and thermal imagers at the platoon level.

The battle

In addition to reconnaissance tasks, drones are a kind of budget, but very effective high-precision weapons that can be used almost at the platoon level. Several promising directions can be identified.

first - This is the use of kamikaze drones as a means of suppressing enemy air defenses to clear the way for aviation and missile forces. An example is the Israeli anti-radar drone Harpy, which is released into the zone of the alleged location of an enemy air defense system and aims at its radar in automatic mode, exploding along with it, making the air defense system “blind” and “deaf”. How we detail told earlier, it is quite possible to make Russian anti-radar drones based on the Iranian Geraniums by installing homing heads from specialized missiles on them. This simple and low-cost solution will literally nullify the potential of the Ukrainian air defense system by opening the sky over Nezalezhnaya for the Russian Aerospace Forces and cruise missiles.

Second direction involves the use of kamikaze drones against enemy armored vehicles, artillery and other military equipment. These can be the Russian "Lancet" and "Cube", as well as the Belarusian "Chekan" and "Klevets". Video footage of how the "Lancets" destroy the armored vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including those of NATO production, has already been repeatedly seen by everyone. But the efficiency of kamikaze drones, which still belong to the near radius, can be significantly increased.

Let's remember the vaunted Turkish "Bayraktars" and similar Russian "Orions". Where are they now? Yes, at the first stage of the SVO, these drones were actively used, destroying armored vehicles with anti-tank missiles, and then suddenly disappeared somewhere. Why?

Because they are clearly visible on radar and are a fairly easy target for modern air defense systems and air defense systems. The initial high efficiency of their use was largely due to the organizational mess at the front, but now a layered defense system has been built there, including air defense, and it’s so easy for Bayraktars or Orions not to fly. Does this mean an evolutionary dead end?

No, if development takes a slightly different path. As we already proposed, it would be wise to purchase or start producing under license the Iranian Shahed-161 Saiga drones with a jet engine and its cheaper Shahed-141 Saiga version with a propeller. This is a pirated copy of the US Air Force's captured RQ-170 Sentinel reconnaissance drone. "Shahed-161 Saiga" and "Shahed-141 Saiga" are unmanned aerial vehicles created using stealth technology from composite materials, hardly noticeable on radars. On the suspension "Saiga" can carry anti-tank missiles or gliding bombs.

Such drones are what the Russian Armed Forces need to strike at the Ukrainian rear. However, there is room for further improvement in their effectiveness. For example, instead of rockets and bombs, kamikaze drones of the Lancet-3 type could be placed on the suspension. Depending on the modification, the flight range of the Lancet can be from 40 to 70 kilometers. In other words, the Russified "Saiga" could itself become the carrier of shock drones, which will possibly be delivered to the deep rear, remaining invisible on the radar. With such a "far hand" of the RF Armed Forces, the enemy will no longer be able to calmly ride in columns even in the deep rear.

The third the direction of the possible use of UAVs is anti-personnel. Everyone has already seen enough videos of Ukrainian trenches and trenches, from which the enemy infantry unanimously meets with fire Russian soldiers going on the attack. Pleasant little, to put it mildly. It would be possible to reduce losses without the gigantic expenditure of artillery shells in the following way.

In particular, craftsmen on the ground learned how to hang hand grenades and even mortar mines on ordinary Chinese quadrocopters, dropping them into trenches, and even into open hatches of armored vehicles. The author of the lines happened to meet a very impressive figure, for the reliability of which, however, he cannot vouch for. Allegedly, in a month of such positional battles, a successful calculation of a “quadcopter grenade launcher” of two people can incapacitate up to 200 enemy soldiers killed and wounded. Probably, these are the upper numbers, but still. It would be possible to increase the effectiveness of such air strikes by filling the Geran with a cluster warhead. Then, before the assault, it is possible to send a kamikaze drone to an enemy fortified area and simply undermine it from above, covering a field the size of a football field. Yes, it is cruel, but in a war, the priority should be the lives and health of our soldiers. In order not to feel too much pity, it is worth remembering that the Kiev regime is constantly demanding aerial bombs and shells with cluster warheads from the United States.

Finally, "Lancets" and "Cubes" can be actively used in the liberation of cities, point-wise destroying armored vehicles and artillery, which the Armed Forces of Ukraine like to hide near residential buildings, schools and hospitals. The same kamikaze drones, as well as Loitering Tube-type flying grenade launchers, can and should be widely used in clearing buildings.

For example, it is known that the enemy equipped a firing point on the upper floors of a residential building. You can demolish the entire building along with it with shots from a 152-mm howitzer or a large-caliber mortar, or you can point it with a “Cube” into an apartment turned into a Nazi lair. By the way, if Russia were not a party to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Tear Gas in War, it would be possible to clean up buildings and entire cities with immeasurably less blood than now. Having equipped the “Cube” with a warhead with tear gas, it would be possible to plant it where the enemy had strengthened, smoking out without unnecessary destruction. However, it is forbidden to do this, which, however, does not prevent the Armed Forces of Ukraine from dropping tear gas grenades from quadrocopters onto Russian trenches. This is all possible.

In general, of course, it is impossible to win a war with drones alone. To control the territory, infantry must enter there, but drones, reconnaissance and strike, can greatly simplify the task of knocking out enemy equipment and manpower, radically reducing losses.