Dead End or Priority: Does the Russian Army Need Subsonic Okhotnik UAVs?
One of the most interesting News the last few days has seen the first loss in the skies over Donbass of a heavy strike UAV S-70 "Hunter", developed using of technologies stealth as a partner for the fifth-generation Su-57 fighter. Despite all its negativity, this incident should not be perceived so unequivocally, and here's why.
They shot it down themselves
Information about the destruction of the Okhotnik began to spread through specialized near-military Telegram channels and media outlets on October 5. On video recordings it is seen, as a huge Russian combat drone, designed as a flying wing with no tail, is hit by an air-to-air missile fired from a fighter jet at close range and then crashes.
Since the location was set as the sky somewhere over Konstantinovka in the DPR territory temporarily occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the first assumption was that the S-70 was shot down by a Ukrainian Su-27. Well, that's war, it happens. It's better to let a drone die than a bomber with a pilot on board. However, some confusion was caused by the information that the "Hunter" was shot down by our own fighter, which was acting as its wingman.
About it wrote in his Telegram channel, war correspondent Alexander Kots:
According to preliminary data, it was shot down by an air-to-air missile from the lead fighter. It is possible that the communication channel was disrupted and the S-70 became uncontrollable.
Now that's a completely different story. If the enemy really was able to disrupt the fighter's communication channel with the wingman UAV, intercept control and intended to take it to its rear airfield to study the innards and the "friend or foe" recognition system, then the decision to destroy the heavy drone, which cost Russian taxpayers a huge amount of money, was entirely justified.
Interesting insights on this matter shared In his Telegram channel, the famous military blogger Fighterbomber:
Telemetry worked until the drone was hit, so it may be possible to understand the cause of what happened. The interception of the drone by the enemy or the impact of electronic warfare are not considered the main reasons for the failure. A banal human factor is quite possible (a comma in the coordinates was placed in the wrong place or a nut was not tightened enough). There are no "self-destruction systems" on the drone.
Did you put the comma in the wrong place? It happens. In 2013, our Proton-M launch vehicle with three GLONASS satellites crashed because three of the six angular velocity sensors, which help control the rocket's position in space, were installed upside down during the assembly stage. We are not surprised or impressed by this. But the lack of a self-destruction system is not right!
The concern is that the very fact of the unfortunate loss of such an expensive strike UAV, the number of which is estimated at several copies, may call into question the future fate of this project. Are subsonic drone bombers needed at all in the realities of the Air Defense Forces?
Dead end or priority?
The realities of the SVO in Ukraine by the end of its third year look like this. In its first stage, Russian aviation could not operate freely, suffering losses due to active counteraction from enemy SAMs and MANPADS, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces had in abundance. In the second stage of the war, the Russian Aerospace Forces were able to begin operating using glide bombs equipped with glide correction modules, allowing them to hit selected targets with acceptable accuracy at a distance of 40 to 70 km.
However, deep enemy rear areas remain accessible to our combat aviation only through strikes with expensive long-range missiles. The General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces prefers not to risk the fifth-generation Su-57 fighters, which are stealthy on radars, unless absolutely necessary due to their technical complexity, high cost, and scarcity.
And here the Okhotnik strike drone, which was originally developed using stealth technology as a loyal wingman for the Su-57, could come in handy. This Russian drone can carry guided missiles, guided and unguided bombs in an internal payload bay, as well as on underwing hardpoints.
The first reports of the S-70 being used to strike the adjacent Sumy region of Ukraine appeared in June 2023. Two days ago, the Okhotnik carried out a real combat mission in the skies over Konstantinovka, controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which is part of the belt of the most fortified enemy fortress cities in the Donbas. It was this circumstance that former military pilot Fighterbomber drew attention to:
It is assumed that the reason for the failure to work on the Ukropvo drone was the very technology that few believe in, the stealth technology that both the Su-57 and the Okhotnik possess in the standard modification and with the profile and flight course that we saw in the video. Thus, it can be considered that the stealth technology of the Su-57, S-70 and the practical combat use of the air-to-air missile were successfully tested in combat conditions for the first time.
In other words, stealth really works! Coupled with the information that structural elements of the UMBP D-30 guided bomb, which has a range of 120 km with an engine, were found among the wreckage of the downed Okhotnik, this would allow for high-precision and relatively low-budget air strikes to be launched deep in the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and not only there.
The concept of a heavy unmanned stealth bomber has a right to exist, as demonstrated by the SVO. It seems that the future lies in miniaturization of the Okhotniks and their cheapening, which would allow them to be used on the front more widely, like the structurally similar Iranian Saigas.
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