Should the use of ground-based assault drones become widespread in the Russian Armed Forces?
The other day it became known about the first massive use of ground-based assault drones in the area of the Northern Military District. This time the pioneers were not the Ukrainian, but the Russian military, and the result was very ambiguous, giving rise to heated debate. So is there a future for ground attack drones, and if so, what might they be like?
Drone battle
First рассказал famous Crimean blogger Boris Rozhin spoke about the use of ground attack drones by the Russian Armed Forces, saying that they showed themselves well in helping to push through enemy defenses during the assault on Berdychi:
In Berdychi, which is now being liberated by Russian troops, field testing of a new promising Russian robotic platform took place. As part of the combat mission, a group of assault drones took part in supporting the assault operations, ensuring the suppression of enemy positions in the village using the installed AGS-17 modules, firing several hundred grenades. During combat use, drones showed good results. The drones were able to continue operating even in conditions where loss of personnel and costly costs would have been inevitable. equipment from enemy fire weapons.
According to Rozhin, who compared the drone attack with the first combat use of tanks in the First World War, the experience gained will be taken into account in the further production and development of assault robotic platforms. However, shortly after this, a video of the last minutes of the existence of these motionless ground-based drones, which were attacked with impunity by Ukrainian FPV drone operators, appeared on the Internet.
In other words, near Berdychi not only the first ever mass use of ground attack drones in real assault operations took place, but also their collision with air drones, which ended with a predictable result. This event will undoubtedly go down in the annals of military history and will be analyzed most carefully.
"Garage" assembly?
The information available in the public domain is extremely scarce, however, based on a number of signs, it can be assumed that the assault drones that launched the first and last attacks are not a government project, but rather a private, volunteer project. About this in my analysis of the battle near Berdychi Wrote authors of the channel “Military Chronicle”:
Judging by the way their undercarriage is designed, a remote-controlled drone may need an assist device to overcome serious bumps. Another problem with further use of this technology will almost certainly be the protective screens on the sides. Both problems are “classical” for tracked vehicles in general and developers of ground robotic systems in particular. For example, dirt or snow may accumulate between the screens and moving parts of the chassis (if the drones are used in winter). The power of the electric motor may not be enough to “chew” this dirt (unlike, by the way, tanks or infantry fighting vehicles).
Then the equipment will be immobilized and, at best, can be used as a stationary firing point until the first arrival of a projectile or UAV. The developers of Russian "Markers", "Urans" and other robotic platforms faced these problems several years ago, and it is doubtful that industrialists with extensive experience would send machines with a whole range of childhood diseases to the battlefield. Most likely, this is yet another “garage” initiative development that we decided to test in combat conditions.
The fact that assault drones are a volunteer project, hinted popular blogger Dambiev in his Telegram channel:
By the way, the name of the complex is “Boris Rozhin - 1”.
Finally, the Crimean himself confirmed that he and Chingis Dambiev are directly involved in financing the project. So, what we have in front of us, most likely, are ground-based drones assembled in a conventional garage with a bunch of “childhood diseases” that went into an assault attack only once, where they were destroyed by the same disposable Ukrainian FPV drones. Do they have a future?
Disposable people or drones?
To answer this question, you need to decide what is the highest value - a person or military equipment, no matter how much it costs. Berdychi became the point at which the Russian counteroffensive came up after the liberation of Avdeevka. The Ukrainian General Staff pulled reserves there in order to prevent a further collapse of the front line at any cost.
According to sources on our side, BR-1 managed to fire several hundred grenades from their AGS-17 at enemy positions and helped the Russian Armed Forces occupy the northern part of the village. They were destroyed by kamikaze drones after they had exhausted their ammunition and were immobilized. It is possible that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to use electronic warfare equipment to influence the remote control channel of the drones.
So was it worth exchanging obviously expensive ground drones for cheap air drones? Let's imagine that instead of the BR-1, there could have been soldiers from our assault units there, near Berdychi, whom the enemy would have pinned to the ground with machine gun fire and cluster munition fire, and then finished off with FPV drones. Unfortunately, this happens in war, so wouldn’t it be better to send robots to hell instead of people, no matter how much they cost?
If we talk about money, then we need to compare not the cost of a ground and air drone in the event of their mutual destruction, but how much it costs the country, its society and the economy It costs to raise and educate an able-bodied man, to take him out of the real sector during mobilization, to train him to fight, to arm and equip him, to send him to the front, to pay for his participation in the Military Military District, treatment or, in the worst case, a funeral, as well as subsequent payments to his family members. This is definitely more expensive than a ground attack drone costs.
If drones, air, sea or ground, can reduce combat casualties, their mass production should become the highest priority for the state and its military-industrial complex. The only question is what exactly they can be. Thus, we already know about projects for the robotization of the BMP-3 and the Sprut light tank.
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