If they are bigger and heavier why will they be less effective ?
Bigger and heavier means costs more to make, can carry fewer at a time, will be less in any swarm you generate, will be easier to detect both visually and electronically. Harder to deliver and require bigger platforms to deliver them. They will use more energy to move around with more drag which will reduce speed and range.
For instance China is employing a similar Swarm Drone strategy. Their drone of choice is a DJI built drone. Something similar to this
And of course Russia will be developing similar technology too, and my money would be on China and Russia doing a much better job because they know about making things simple enough to work in the field and cheap enough to mass produce in the enormous numbers needed.
Look at Metis-M1 and Javelin anti tank missiles. On paper the American weapon is vastly more capable... fire and forget... a simple choice really.
Except it is not that obvious... Javelin doesn't work on just any target... it needs to have a distinct IR signature for the mass produced IR seeker in the missile to get a lock, and you are not always going to get that.
If you can't get a lock then you have two rather slow ATGMs of similar range, with the Russian missile having better armour penetration, and costing a fraction of what the US missile costs. The Russian system can be fitted with a thermal sight so detection and engagement will be similar, but for the price of one Javelin missile you could probably buy 500 Metis missiles... the Javelins cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each, while Metis missiles cost about $5K each... so on a battlefield you can deploy 10 thousand Metis missiles or for the same price perhaps 1,000 Javelins.
In practical terms the difference is cost... in normal conflicts these missiles will be used against almost anything and everything... from a window in a building to a sniper in a tree, or MG position with sandbags, or a toyota truck with a HMG on the back and everything in between... none of which will care a jot whether it is hit by Metis or Javelin... in fact both missiles will likely be manually guided because locks on most targets are not reliable enough anyway.
Javelin is not a bad system.... it is just too expensive... in a few years with a digital video seeker chip that can see in IR and UV frequencies that costs a few dollars per sensor then it will be a good system, but for now it would make more sense to walk over to the taleban position and tell him through an interpreter that you are about to demolish the position he is hiding in with a half million dollar missile... would he accept $100K in cash to just go home and not fight any more... and I would bet more than half the time they would save $400K on that missile shot.
That aside, we cannot and should not judge how effective these systems are based on how effective they will be against Russia.
They don't really need them against anyone else... apart from Syria now....
Their attacks on countries are making those countries upgrade their defences and rendering attacks that used to work rather well impotent... they did the same with over prescribing antibiotics and are creating super bugs.
The amusing thing is that as I said before their development of these attack strategies will force China and Russia to do the same... Russia is already largely immune to their current attack systems and strategies, so when they start working on their own swarm systems and defences along with their hypersonic attack strategies and defences the west is going to be in trouble.
The west wasted all this time with stealth and ignored speed, now they are going for numbers... we shall see how it turns out, but look at UKSK launchers on Russian ships... they are going for numbers AND speed... and swarm technology was on Granit and Vulkan anti ship missiles in the late 1970s... it really isn't new... Zircon will already be part of a swarm...
It could take out major radar sites ahead of a swarm attack...
Probably against Russia they do not stand a chance, but US, NATO can use these Swarm Drones against Asia, African countries. They don't have the tech that Russia has. Consequently they will suffer.
Well of course the thing is that this will promote Russian air defence networks and IADS for a much wider range of customers... most of which right now would probably be vulnerable to conventional cruise missile attack... like most of Europe.
I rather suspect US/NATO will hand over such Swarm drone tech to various terrorist groups who can then carry out such attacks on the behalf of US/NATO.
Agree, they hand out Stingers and Javelins like they are lollies, but few terrorist groups could deliver a large enough drone swarm for it to be effective and as you probably already know the Russians have been working on detection and tracking systems to determine the origin of drone attacks and who they are communicating with... so they will end up handing inert samples of these drones to the Russians (after EMP effects) and also handing them an excuse to direct international attention at the west simply because no terrorist organisation could build these so called sophisticated micro drones with high tech swarm protocols... so local CIA and blackwater or whatever they are called now can be targeted for retaliation.
Russia needs a new global satellite system for ship detection. Legenda successor. Without it, it will be difficult to shoot targets beyond the horizon at 1000km. There is currently no successor to the Legend system.
You mean Liana which is being built up now and will consist of a system of advanced satellites for tracking ships and submarines all round the planet.
The only targets they actually care about are within range of Russia itself and their OTH radars would already detect them within 3-4K kms from Russian territory... which is plenty. Liana will enable them to track carriers anywhere on the planet when it is fully operational, but there is no real hurry at the moment... they are building up that capability.