The rapid evolution of Russian attack drones "Geran-2" and "Italmas"

Jumping on the bandwagon of a departing train, Russia hastily began to develop its unmanned aircraft, mastering Chinese and Iranian Technology, improving them and creating your own. This rapid evolution can be most clearly seen in the family of kamikaze drones of Iranian origin, known as Geranium-2.

Iranian "flower"

“Kamikaze” drones with a flight range of more than 1000 km appeared in Russia quite suddenly last summer, when the need arose to launch massive air strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure in the deep rear. Due to the presence of a serious air defense system in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Russian Aerospace Forces cannot operate freely in the skies over Nezalezhnaya, glide bombs with correction modules appeared quite recently, and the stock of expensive missiles in the warehouses of the Russian Ministry of Defense is far from unlimited.



The Russian General Staff is forced to keep in mind the possibility of further escalation of the conflict and the involvement of NATO countries in it on the side of the Kyiv regime. Therefore, a reasonable decision was to try out Iranian strike drones to break through the enemy air defense/missile defense system with massive combined strikes. Shahed 136, called “Geran-2” in Russia, was almost ideal for this task.

These attack drones have many more advantages than disadvantages. Their 2-stroke engine is MADO MD 550 (a clone of the German aircraft engine Limbach L550E) with a power of 50 hp. With. capable of delivering a warhead weighing half a centner over a distance of 1000 to 2000 km. The cruising speed of an aircraft projectile is 150-170 km/h, and it flies at an altitude of 4000 to 60 meters, which makes it difficult to detect and intercept.

By the way, the term loitering ammunition for Shahed 136/"Geran-2" is not entirely applicable, since the drone does not have a patrol mode, setting off on its first and last suicidal flight to the target at given coordinates. What is important is the extreme technical simplicity and low cost of the attack drone, which allows them to be produced using a conveyor belt and used en masse, which has recently become very noticeable.

The disadvantages of the Shahed 136/Geran-2 are equally well known: relative to any missile, low speed and a specific, clearly audible “moped” sound during flight, as well as the absence of a loitering mode. Apparently, domestic designers were able to solve these problems by radically increasing the tactical and technical characteristics of attack drones.

Russian selection

A couple of days ago it was published on Reporter publication, which spoke about the prospects opening up for domestic drones after the launch of a family of small-sized gas turbine engines developed at the Samara National Research University named after Academician S.P. Korolev. In particular, it was indicated that the installation of more powerful engines will increase the performance characteristics of “kamikaze” drones such as “Geranium” and “Lancet”.

Surprisingly, there were people who knew better from their sofas and sharply condemned the intentions of the Samara developers of the MGTD. Their reasoning and fascinating discussion can be found in the comments. I had to return to this topic so soon after an interview with the Sputnik agency of the honored military pilot of Russia, retired Major General Vladimir Popov, in which he spoke about the emergence of a new generation of “kamikaze” drones, already equipped with a jet engine:


Here are those times, and here are those two. Real, and not armchair, military experts rightly point out that such a significant increase in the speed of an aircraft projectile by 2,5 times reduces the time “window” for timely detection, establishment of routes and capture for accurate auto-tracking of drone data using radar detectors and multifunctional TRML-4D radars and AN/MPQ-64F1 Sentinel, included in the radar architectures of multi-element air defense systems IRIS-T SLM, NASAMS-2, etc. Also, remotorization will increase the operating ceiling of the Geranium jet to 8500 m, which will allow it to operate beyond the high-altitude limit of intercepting self-propelled vehicles SAM Crotale-NG, Stormer HVM and ZAK Gepard. Not a bad increase in performance characteristics.

The disadvantages include the reduction in the combat radius of the drone from 1000-2000 km to 600-850 km, but this is enough for the conditions of the Northern Military District. The problem of increasing the infrared signature in connection with the emergence of a high-temperature jet stream can be solved by giving the tail section with the nozzle block a “beaver tail” type layout with a top-oriented cut, as well as by installing an additional cooling circuit filled with the oncoming aerodynamic flow through specialized air ducts associated with the air intakes in leading edges of the wing. Thanks to this technical solution, the infrared signature from the jet engine will be slightly higher than that of the MD550 engine. At the same time, the absence of a radio-contrast engine crankcase will even make it possible to reduce the image intensifier when irradiated into the rear hemisphere of the UAV.

In parallel with the remotorization of promising drones, experiments are being conducted with new types of warheads. One of the most promising areas can be considered the installation of a thermobaric warhead on the Geranium, which burns everything around with a temperature of several thousand degrees. Why do we need drones with such warheads if we have Solntsepeks and MLRS?

Then, the destruction range of the TOS-1A Solntsepek and TOS-2 Tosochka MLRS is only 6–7 km and over 20 km, respectively. “Smerch” can launch a rocket with a thermobaric warhead at a distance of up to 70 km. The flight range of the Geranium can reach 2000 km, depending on the type of engine. At the same time, the weight of the drone’s warhead is comparable to that of Tosochka and is only half that of the thermobaric charge of the Smerch MLRS.

As for the problem of the absence of a loitering regime, it seems to have been solved by the younger brother of “Geranium” in the flower family - “Italmas”, about which we will discuss in detail told earlier. Judging by a number of signs, the Russian drone will be a functional analogue of the Israeli Harop reconnaissance and strike drone, capable of conducting reconnaissance and patrolling, attacking detected enemy air defense systems, and also returning back to base if it was not possible to find a worthy target.

Thus, the domestic unmanned aerial industry was able to make a huge evolutionary leap in just over a year.