UAVs in Russian Armed Forces: News #2

Is it true that no domestic engine for the orion is even close to being ready?

they have cloned the Austrian/Canadian Rotax engine 912-914 .... something like that
Russian clone
APD-115 - its only an air-cooled flat-4 .... hardly a challenge for people who can build rocket engines
apparently a company called Agat make them

CIAM have also made a 150hp Wankel engine for drones .... to be used from 2024 apparently ... PD150T
(seems Israelis and Iranians have been using wankel engines in drones for years
it suits them well Wankel engines love just sitting in a rev band
and drones .... well they just drone at the same speed .....
much smaller and lighter )

there's also a Russian clone of the 85hp engine used in the Forpost-R - another flat-4 air cooled engine

the issue was never whether they could make the engines
it was always about - recovering the capital investment via decent production volumes - in a commercial sense

but that is all irrelevant re national security .... and the defence dept's deep pockets

Gazputin wrote:they have cloned the Austrian/Canadian Rotax engine 912-914  .... something like that
Russian clone
APD-115 - its only an air-cooled flat-4  .... hardly a challenge for people who can build rocket engines
apparently a company called Agat make them

CIAM have also made a 150hp Wankel engine for drones .... to be used from 2024 apparently ... PD150T
(seems Israelis and Iranians have been using wankel engines in drones for years
it suits them well Wankel engines love just sitting in a rev band
and drones .... well they just drone at the same speed .....
much smaller and lighter )

there's also a Russian clone of the 85hp engine used in the Forpost-R - another flat-4 air cooled engine

the issue was never whether they could make the engines
it was always about - recovering the capital investment via decent production volumes - in a commercial sense

but that is all irrelevant re national security  .... and the defence dept's deep pockets

So they can make the engines, but there are still no factories for them?

They don't need thousands and UAVs are easy to make...

UWCA make 2 different UAVs

Forpost is made in their Urals factory
Altius is made in Kazan ...

Kronstadt has a new factory in Dubna
they make Orion UAV
2-3 others under development

Novosibirsk branch of Sukhoi
Sukhoi Su-70

that's your larger surveillance and attack drone factories

there are several different helicopter UAVs - like the VRT-300 and BAS-200

then there all the smaller ones like the Orlan-10 which directs artillery - really prolific

and then Kalashikov makes a few loitering/suicide drones under their Zala brand
eg Lancet

Russia has had drones for many years - Forpost and Orlan
but they have mostly been used to direct artillery fire
as Russia has always had lots and lots of artillery .... just ask Hitler

only recently have they shown interest in using them to attack directly
mostly for use in areas with weak air defence

so you are talking 6 or more UAV factories probably more

article on Rus drones

https://charly015.blogspot.com/2020/09/cuantos-modelos-de-drones-ofrecen-los.html

then you have the lastest fun items like glide bombs ....
it is endless ....

Do the Russians have any domestically produced quadcopter electric drones? They have been very useful in correcting fire on Ukrainian trenches, are tiny and have decent endurance and cameras.


So far, DJI has sanctioned Russia, so they might be in shortage. However I have no idea if Russia has the ability to produce Li-ion batteries for such drones. That's where china leads.

Orlan 10 using small bombs.

previous post re Oplan
just the thing for those idiots that have trained to use those American 155mm howitzers ..... with no top cover
is it just me but those "dispensers" look remarkably similar in mechanism to the detergent dispensers in dishwashers ?
ie flip open hatches ....

VK-800S
this is a bit odd
but then in a post a while ago I found stuff that said the VK-800S could be redesigned to be easier to build and perform better
in the UEC thread
its actually a really good idea to have UWCA involved in the design phase .... as they have a background in maintenance
so they can steer the design towards easier maintenance - great idea in a huge country

anyway .... seems odd that the military wanted ... think it was 18x Altius before 2023 ?
ok .... build the aircraft and the systems .... wait for the engines

https://en.topwar.ru/196470-nazvany-sroki-pojavlenija-predserijnogo-obrazca-rossijskogo-dvigatelja-vk-800-dlja-samoleta-lms-901-bajkal.html

pilot build March 2023 .... probably late 2023 for service delivery
maybe earlier for a drone with no pilots
doubt any piloted aircraft like an L-410 would get any before 2024

in any case it does appear that they have signed-off on "design frozen"
only changes to be made via testing issues

In the near future, the Russian Armed Forces should receive strategic drones

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that modern complexes with operational unmanned aerial vehicles continue to be supplied to the Russian Army and Navy.

MOSCOW, May 20. /tass/. Strategic air drones should enter service with the Russian army in the near future. This was stated on Friday by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at a meeting of the board of the military department.

"In the near future, it is expected to deliver strategic drones [to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation]. Their use will save flight personnel and significantly reduce the cost of solving reconnaissance and fire tasks by reducing the consumption of ammunition and the resource of aircraft, " he said.

Shoigu noted that modern complexes with operational unmanned aerial vehicles continue to be supplied to the Russian Army and Navy.

"Unmanned aerial vehicles are actively used by the Armed Forces [of the Russian Federation] to solve a wide range of tasks. Over the past 10 years, the intensity of their flights has increased seven-fold, and the annual flight time has increased 23-fold, " the minister said.

He said that since 2015, unmanned aircraft have been monitoring the situation around the clock in almost the entire territory of Syria and since the beginning of the Syrian operation, more than 58 thousand flights have been performed, while the total flight time exceeded 377 thousand hours.

"During a special military operation in Ukraine, unmanned aerial vehicles conduct aerial reconnaissance and carry out selective pinpoint strikes against enemy targets in dense urban areas, preventing damage to civilian infrastructure and the death of civilians. During the operation, the raid has already amounted to more than 25 thousand hours. The information obtained with the help of drones is transmitted to consumers in real time. This allows the troops to quickly respond to changes in the situation and act as efficiently as possible," the head of the Defense Ministry stressed.

Shoigu also said that the board meeting will consider a draft program for equipping the Aerospace Forces and the Navy with complexes with medium-and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles until 2030.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/14682023

Hole wrote:

What kind of ballistics computer does the orlan have for dropping these grenades?

It will have a laser range finder built into the optics, and probably has a ballistics computer built in to the home station, where the flight speed and altitude and other information can be used plus the ballistic properties of the munition being dropped to allow reasonably accurate munition drops.

It will be recording the free fall and impact of the munition and so over time it could analyse results and improve accuracy depending upon ground conditions... it wont be dropping from enormous altitudes... 2-3km altitude would be safe from most small arms fire and few MANPADS will get a lock from that range considering the small size and low IR signature of the drone.

During the testing of the system they likely had plenty of time to determine the optimal release parameters at different speeds and altitudes, so depending on the flight speed and altitude an aim point could be projected onto the video image as the drone is flying along... when that cross or circle overlaps the target you send the release signal... you would always want a human in the loop for releasing deadly weapons to ensure it is a genuine target and not friendlies or civilians.

These grenades look like modified 40mm grenades of the new type for use with the new 40mm auto grenade launchers... but with plastic tail fins for stability.

They should pack quite a punch in terms of fragments so hitting someone on the top of their head would actually be less effective than landing beside them because as you can see the fragmentation rings are along the sides of the grenade rather than on the end... so most of the lethal fragments will be heading sideways...

This is still mediocre. Meanwhile iran is actually producing more MALE drones. If russia can't produce more than half a dozen drones per year, it should buy from iran, or at least outsource production of piston engines to iran.

limb wrote:This is still mediocre. Meanwhile iran is actually producing more MALE drones. If russia can't produce  more than half a dozen drones per year, it should buy from iran, or at least outsource production of piston engines to iran.

It allows them to trial the concept

Of course it's obvious that this is an ad-hoc modification and the grenades will only tickle the heels of enemy soldiers. But they can come up with a better suited UAV and munition in the same class by analyzing the data from these missions and determining how the set-up can be improved.

As for MALE drones and heavier UCAVs, they have several models in the pipeline already. At the moment they are trialing the Orion in the conflict. Again, this may not end up as the final model adopted. Almost certainly not in fact. There will be new iterations and other drone models and manufacturers will incorporate lessons learned into their own offerings

One little off topic question, can the thermite by used in drones munitions to burn a tank from the top and thus send burning material inside ?

I've seen videos of it, it's not an explosif but more like a molotov coktail which need a high temperature to be started (a normla flame can't). It also needs some time yo operate and would need sticky munitions.

The thermite is wonderful at burning metals and 3 or 4 grenades like the ones above used by orlan would burn easily a tank and touch vital parts.

So what I concluded is that using it isn't easy but if you manage to use it then the result is very good.

flamming_python wrote:

limb wrote:This is still mediocre. Meanwhile iran is actually producing more MALE drones. If russia can't produce  more than half a dozen drones per year, it should buy from iran, or at least outsource production of piston engines to iran.

It allows them to trial the concept

Of course it's obvious that this is an ad-hoc modification and the grenades will only tickle the heels of enemy soldiers. But they can come up with a better suited UAV and munition in the same class by analyzing the data from these missions and determining how the set-up can be improved.

As for MALE drones and heavier UCAVs, they have several models in the pipeline already. At the moment they are trialing the Orion in the conflict. Again, this may not end up as the final model adopted. Almost certainly not in fact. There will be new iterations and other drone models and manufacturers will incorporate lessons learned into their own offerings

The thing is that the inokhodets and lancet are already proven. They just need more, and dr. snufflebug made a post that its the drone factory thats being built at a snails pace, and that russia needs at least 5 more years toi be able to replace the rotax engines.

One of the reasons the axis lost was lack of technical cooperation. Russia and iran should definitely cooperate. There should be a "drones for S-400s and Su-30s" scheme, because there are never enough MALE drones to bait ukrainian air defence and to locate ukrainian artillery.

This is still mediocre. Meanwhile iran is actually producing more MALE drones. If russia can't produce more than half a dozen drones per year, it should buy from iran, or at least outsource production of piston engines to iran.

I can understand why Kiev needs thousands of drones... because they lose them as fast as they are using them, but Russian drones don't seem to be getting massacred like Orc drones are... or they would be showing endless footage of their success.

Another factor is that having thousands of drones means having thousands of drone support vehicles and staff in a combat zone... how many do you think they can have before they become vulnerable to direct attack?

They don't need blanket coverage of all of the Ukraine.... no country has ever managed that... even much vaunted HATO didn't have enough eyes in the air to prevent IEDS being set or ambush attacks being made by enemy forces.

I think you massively over estimate the effect of having more drones would have and seem to think they don't have enough... which seems to be based on the views of other internet warrior commentators.

Of course it's obvious that this is an ad-hoc modification and the grenades will only tickle the heels of enemy soldiers.

This bomb arrangement is not intended to make Su-25s redundant or Su-34s for that matter... but as shown in the video of the M777 attack... it managed to stop an M777 battery from firing and made them move on and take cover while counter battery fire was organised and used... with the drone far more use finding the enemy forces and getting them to bug out and then following them to where they thought they could wait it out and to observe the strike on their position to allow corrections to make it effective... without the bombs they would have had to deal with them out in the open but would have less time to prepare for the counter artillery attack. By forcing them to bug out they eliminated the immediate threat of the shelling by the enemy and also gave the Russian artillery the time to prepare suitable rounds for the job... airburst for out in the open but impact fuses for inside a forest where imacts on trees and branches create an airburst effect.

But they can come up with a better suited UAV and munition in the same class by analyzing the data from these missions and determining how the set-up can be improved.

That munition looks like a 40mm grenade but would not need the propellent section or primer, which is covered by the plastic fins, but it would need different safety fuses including a pin safety and impact fuse.

Normal 40mm grenades require the shock and acceleration and spin of firing to arm the fuses so they don't explode if you just drop them or bump them if they are in a bag you are carrying and you dive onto the ground or fall. A pin safety attached to the plane so as the grenade falls the pin is pulled and the fuse is armed is a normal way of doing it.

Would be interesting to see if the new 57mm grenade launcher/gun grenades might be used for the same thing as it would have rather more HE and be in mass production so relatively cheap and available.

At the moment they are trialing the Orion in the conflict. Again, this may not end up as the final model adopted. Almost certainly not in fact. There will be new iterations and other drone models and manufacturers will incorporate lessons learned into their own offerings

They had drones in Syria launching Kornets so its capacity to hunt targets like artillery vehicles like 2S1 or 2S3 or Grad vehicles is rather good... they have a range of different weapons as shown at arms shows including bombs and guided missiles.

The thermite is wonderful at burning metals and 3 or 4 grenades like the ones above used by orlan would burn easily a tank and touch vital parts.

So what I concluded is that using it isn't easy but if you manage to use it then the result is very good.

Once burning it can burn through all sorts of different materials, but shaped charge warheads and self forging fragment warheads punch through too and are much faster and possibly lighter... requiring less material.

One of the reasons the axis lost was lack of technical cooperation. Russia and iran should definitely cooperate

You do understand that the Russians are killing the Orcs as fast as they can and a few extra drones is not going to make a huge difference.

The number of enemy targets a drone can kill is rather less than the number a Ka-52 or Mi-28 or Su-25 can kill, and their sensors are far better too.

No one fears shooting at a drone, but shooting at Hokums and Havocs and Su-25s can be hazardous to your health...

Drones for Russia is more about finding Orcs than about killing them... they have air power and artillery.... that is more than enough to deal with the targets they find.... they don't need a lot of Kamikazi drones or murder bots as used in the west.

They can buy motors from China and the can buy drones from Iran... but would you buy new equipment and then send it to war without testing it inside and out?

Anything they bought would not be delivered for a month or more and 5 to 6 months to test it and train with it... why bother...

Makes more sense to increase production of their own stuff and test and train with that.

limb wrote:

flamming_python wrote:

limb wrote:This is still mediocre. Meanwhile iran is actually producing more MALE drones. If russia can't produce  more than half a dozen drones per year, it should buy from iran, or at least outsource production of piston engines to iran.

It allows them to trial the concept

Of course it's obvious that this is an ad-hoc modification and the grenades will only tickle the heels of enemy soldiers. But they can come up with a better suited UAV and munition in the same class by analyzing the data from these missions and determining how the set-up can be improved.

As for MALE drones and heavier UCAVs, they have several models in the pipeline already. At the moment they are trialing the Orion in the conflict. Again, this may not end up as the final model adopted. Almost certainly not in fact. There will be new iterations and other drone models and manufacturers will incorporate lessons learned into their own offerings

The thing is that the inokhodets and lancet are already proven. They just need more, and dr. snufflebug made a post that its the drone factory thats being built at a snails pace, and that russia needs at least 5 more years toi be able to replace the rotax engines.

One of the reasons the axis lost was lack of technical cooperation. Russia and iran should definitely cooperate. There should be a "drones for S-400s and Su-30s" scheme, because there are never enough MALE drones to bait ukrainian air defence and to locate ukrainian artillery.

Yes.... I write all the time. I don't understand why this is not done. It is best to do with iran operating teams!

Mig-31BM2 Super Irbis-E wrote:

limb wrote:

flamming_python wrote:

limb wrote:This is still mediocre. Meanwhile iran is actually producing more MALE drones. If russia can't produce  more than half a dozen drones per year, it should buy from iran, or at least outsource production of piston engines to iran.

It allows them to trial the concept

Of course it's obvious that this is an ad-hoc modification and the grenades will only tickle the heels of enemy soldiers. But they can come up with a better suited UAV and munition in the same class by analyzing the data from these missions and determining how the set-up can be improved.

As for MALE drones and heavier UCAVs, they have several models in the pipeline already. At the moment they are trialing the Orion in the conflict. Again, this may not end up as the final model adopted. Almost certainly not in fact. There will be new iterations and other drone models and manufacturers will incorporate lessons learned into their own offerings

The thing is that the inokhodets and lancet are already proven. They just need more, and dr. snufflebug made a post that its the drone factory thats being built at a snails pace, and that russia needs at least 5 more years toi be able to replace the rotax engines.

One of the reasons the axis lost was lack of technical cooperation. Russia and iran should definitely cooperate. There should be a "drones for S-400s and Su-30s" scheme, because there are never enough MALE drones to bait ukrainian air defence and to locate ukrainian artillery.

Yes.... I write all the time. I don't understand why this is not done. It is best to do with iran operating teams!

Iran was angling for a nuclear deal to be concluded when this conflict broke out

It was assumed that Russia can handle its own affairs. And indeed it can

But now Israel has objected to a new nuclear deal with Iran, and Washington tabled the issue shortly after
Israel has also gradually taken a more pro-Ukrainian position in the conflict, although still not at the level of allowing its weapons to be transferred, over fears of what Russia might give Iran or Syria

So given all this is so - what does Iran have to lose by offering to send some of its UAVs & operators, or pilots to form volunteer squadrons against NATO and pro-NATO forces in the Ukraine?

limb wrote:

flamming_python wrote:

limb wrote:This is still mediocre. Meanwhile iran is actually producing more MALE drones. If russia can't produce  more than half a dozen drones per year, it should buy from iran, or at least outsource production of piston engines to iran.

It allows them to trial the concept

Of course it's obvious that this is an ad-hoc modification and the grenades will only tickle the heels of enemy soldiers. But they can come up with a better suited UAV and munition in the same class by analyzing the data from these missions and determining how the set-up can be improved.

As for MALE drones and heavier UCAVs, they have several models in the pipeline already. At the moment they are trialing the Orion in the conflict. Again, this may not end up as the final model adopted. Almost certainly not in fact. There will be new iterations and other drone models and manufacturers will incorporate lessons learned into their own offerings

The thing is that the inokhodets and lancet are already proven. They just need more, and dr. snufflebug made a post that its the drone factory thats being built at a snails pace, and that russia needs at least 5 more years toi be able to replace the rotax engines.

One of the reasons the axis lost was lack of technical cooperation. Russia and iran should definitely cooperate. There should be a "drones for S-400s and Su-30s" scheme, because there are never enough MALE drones to bait ukrainian air defence and to locate ukrainian artillery.

Inokhodets proven?
AFAIK it hasn't flown yet. But AFAIK it's just an Orion variant in any case

As for the Lancet, it's a different class of drone

You are mixing apples and oranges here

The Orlan-10 is a tactical recon drone with some ad-hoc grenade chugging ability added. With both the Orlan and the grenade pending replacement by superior models/munitions. As these are drones we're talking about, and not the most sophisticated ones - they can be rapidly designed, prototyped and trialed, and by many different design bureaus - so it's not unreasonable to expect a new model every half a year even.

The Orion and Inokhodets are both MALE drones. More sophisticated than something like an Orlan, but still not manned aircraft we're talking about with all the according requirements. There are several models proposed at the moment and new models, iterations can be introduced on a yearly basis to improve on the previous generations.

And finally the Lancet which is something like the Orlan-10 in terms of complexity but with the difference that it itself is the weapon. This is basically just a small guided missile with loiter time for the operator to find a target.

Russia is after Iran for 5-8 years in terms of drones. The Schahed 129 is the best example. Iran has more than 5 years of combat experience. The Qods Mohajer-6 or Yasir are also all combat-tried drones including controler crew. See Yemen VS Saudis and other places like Israel. See also the copy of the RQ-170 with the name "Saeqeh".

Russia has to learn a lot here and should Iran ask for drones and operator.