UAVs in Russian Armed Forces: News #2

I am sure any design company worth its salt has been testing in Syria and now in the Ukraine to get things working right, and a UAV able to use hand grenades is easy to use and keep supplied with ordinance...

You could even think outside the box and put grenades with their pins left in and fly at night to supply special forces with extra grenade supplies by dropping them with their pins still inserted.

Those older images with the bigger bomblets in that faired in capsule on the wing looked a lot better though... it looked like it had an impact fuse, which means no exploding 20m up in the air harmlessly because the drone was flying too high when it released.

A hand grenade has a fixed fuse of about 3 to 7 seconds... too low and they might have time to kick it away, and too high and you get an air burst that is too high up to be effective.

Of course with the dedicated camera you can record all your attacks and if it includes GLONASS information like location and speed and altitude then you can probably work out a manual guide for using it with very precise instruction to get effective use first time even from newbies.

Well they have tons of missiles and bomb prototypes but never produced them.

They showed plenty of bombs for drones but used only kornets.

They showed plenty of gliding bombs but never used them.

Not sure how you can say that... they were using Kornets on UCAVs for a month before we saw any videos of their use in that way, and the LMUR missile was shown blurred in a TV show and then we see it being used in combat.

That photo of faired in bomb containers for mounting on wings of UCAVs has never been shown at any Arms show I have seen pictures of... the first we see is it being used in a conflict zone.

In the past, before Syria and Ukraine there were lots of things that only went to arms shows and never progressed because there was no money and no interest and that would include any drone model before 2008, but equally actual aircraft.

These days however I would say most things shown at arms shows are being tested by someone in Syria or Ukraine or both and feedback from the troops is rather more likely to lead to orders and contracts than some general seeing something at an arms show.

The fact that we don't see all this is because they are not ready to show us yet, and why would they... they are probably using most of it at production capacity and have nothing for export just yet. Let orders and interest come in and production can be further ramped up too.

Of course with most of their drones being unarmed and observation drones then the wide scale deployment of drone focused weapons is obviously going to be limited.... as they increase the number of heavy drones they deploy the number of custom designed drone weapons they produce will of course increase.

Why bother with a glide bomb if you use a drone to drop weapons from altitude anyway, and of course new standoff weapons also make drones a little redundant too...

Their real problem is the range of options they have to hit targets is enormous and so far effective too...

Artillery seems to be a real killer and drones with cameras appear to be key to that success... an artillery battery carries more ammo than any UCAV could carry.

Gliding bombs are good at hitting in deapth for a lower price than a tactical missile. They mostly use kh-29 which according to various sources cost 300k$. A gliding bomb shouldn't be more expensive than a krasnopol shell since it's more or less the same technology.

So what it comes down to is you are unhappy they are wasting money.

The Kh-29 entered service in the 1980s and the Kh-38 is already supposed to be replacing it, so it might still be in production, but they will have stocks of those weapons that would make sense to use up in this conflict.

You would not use a Kh-29 on just any target like a enemy SUV or light vehicle... the Kh-29 has a 320kg warhead for destroying the heavy foundations of bridges and well built buildings, for lighter targets I would expect they would be using up their Kh-25 stocks instead... half the weight at 300kgs and with a 90kg warhead that is 1/3rd the size... in fact the Kh-25 and similar missiles are the weight of the warhead of the Kh-29...

You would use the Kh-29 when you would otherwise be using 500kg bombs, whereas the Kh-25 would be more like a 100kg bomb replacement (the Kh-38 is a 250kg bomb replacement but like the other missiles would be more effective as they have precision and standoff range that iron bombs don't have generally).

Thry have shown various prototypes of gliding bombs.

They certainly have, but the fact that we don't see videos of them being used by either side does not mean they are not using them.

Kh-38 is also not used. They keep using the older kh-25 which was also widely used in Syria.

I have no evidence... just like you... but I would speculate they have tested the Kh-38 in the Ukraine and Syria, but they likely have enormous stocks of the Kh-25 that gets the job done too... why not use the old stuff up first?

However now I agree they experiment many of the new products like izd 305 missile, or kinzhal and so on. But that doesn't necessarly means they have set up production lines for all of them and plan to replace older weapons.

They likely have enormous volumes of the older weapons which still get the job done... it is cheaper to use ordinance that has already been paid for and is in storage than to make new weapons urgently, but obviously they know the old stocks of stuff wont last forever so production of new stuff as well as old stuff for export customers just makes sense.

The Russian MIC is about defending Russia, not about max profit.... they gave weapons to Syria but they didn't dump everything they had on them, their Soviet era stocks were enormous and some of it probably needs to be used up soon... when Russian forces get to Moldova there is probably thousands of tons of ordinance sitting there that needs to be either used or destroyed in place...

They still use dumb rocket from ka-52 when they have projects for guided rockets.

I understand that western MICs want to brainwash experts to think it is better to load machine guns with sniper ammo because it makes them more effective and you can hit precise targets with single shots like a sniper rifle, but a machine gun is a support weapon that is not supposed to be used against precise single targets most of the time.

Dumb rockets from a helicopter are HE Fragmentation and have an effective radius of about 10m... if they all hit the same spot then your volley of 5-6 rockets is lethal over a 10m radius and everything in that circle gets hit 5 to 6 times with 5 to six different rockets... and those precision rockets are not cheap.

When the target is a group of enemy soldiers or soft vehicles or towed artillery deployed and ready to fire then a scatter of 80mm rockets is vastly more effective than a single ATGMs which attack helicopters carry for point targets too BTW.

A competent enemy will not keep their trucks next to their towed guns so firing guided rockets means getting the guns but not much else.

A good scatter of rockets means you get guns and troops and trucks hit with fragments which is vastly more useful... those lofted rockets come down almost vertically which is excellent against troops hiding in forests thinking the trees will stop horizontally fired bullets and rockets (which they will), but near vertically descending rockets will hit upper branches and shower the area in fragments making them even more dangerous that if they just hit the ground.

Overall Russians were not betting on guided tactical weapons and kept the old doctrine of dumb cheap and massive use of unguided weapons for a long time and are now implementing them in their strategy.

They seem to be doing both... those helicopters have rocket pods but also ATGMs so point targets and hard targets can be engaged, but area and soft targets can also be engaged with rockets and cannon fire too.

A retreating or advancing enemy will not bunch up so precision weapons are too expensive to be effective... a scatter of unguided rockets or artillery shells with no guidance but with target coordinates being provided and the targets being observed to check accuracy and if follow up shots are needed make more sense.

Against point targets direct fire rockets from helicopters can be quite accurate, but they need to be fired up close from a very fast very low flying helicopter.

When the coordinates of the enemy are known and you get told they are bolting and which direction they are headed lofting rockets in that general direction is not a waste of ammo and the reported number of Orcs being killed suggests they rather know what they are doing.

The chief designer of Zala Aero offered to re-equip the shopping center for the production of drones

What a great idea... reverse the destructive westernisation of Russia... and build useful drones in good numbers.

Russia had enormous stocks of old weapons in storage for just such an event as this conflict... getting to use up old stocks is a very good thing.... they have millions of old AKs in storage they can hand out to allies, and in combat weapons get damaged or in this case likely worn out.... most of their tanks in the cold war had DShKM HMGs with stacks of barrels for each... the target wont notice the difference between receiving HMG rounds from the different guns they have... wear out older ones first... lots of other weapons like that.

Note the grenades used in these UAVS are the old RGD-5... I would think the F-1 defensive grenades would also be useful for such a job, but they are not using their 1980s era Afghan war era RGN and RGO grenades with more sophisticated time and impact fuses..


They are just using up old stocks... they will increase production of new stuff, some of which will be used but also some will go into storage to replace the older stock being used up.

Some jobs will benefit from the new stuff being used, but for some targets it wont matter that the ordinance is probably older than the soldiers using it.

Having a wasteful consumer society is part of the problem in the west... even if your phone does not break or get damaged you replace it every other year because there is a new better one just come out...

Things are not things any more, they are related to ego and self worth, so if you are not using the latest there must be something wrong with you... or maybe you just want a phone to be a phone so even an ancient one will do.

As na old commie I use smartphone as long as softare works and hd is not broken. Something is wrong with me definitely.

I grew up at a time when things were not cheap, but they were worth it... they were normally well built and built to last, and if there was a problem you fixed it, you didn't just throw it away.

That is why I like PC clones instead of Apples... when an Apple is obsolete you throw it away and buy a new one, with PCs you can take out the obsolete bits and replace them with newer components.

As Hard drives get bigger and turn into solid state drives you can swap around drives for speed and capacity... Some AMD CPU motherboards are backwards compatible with cheaper older CPUs so you can spend a bit extra on the motherboard and get an older CPU and a single RAM card... and a decent video card... and then in a year or twos time you can upgrade the CPU with something faster and with more cores, and fill a few more RAM card slots and buy another video card... the CPU is newer so wont be super cheap, but you don't have to buy a new motherboard so you can spend more on the CPU for the upgrade, and the RAM will be cheaper by then too as will that video card so when you slot a second video card and all that extra memory and a boost in CPU power it will be like a new computer but not for a new computer price.

I have an old Huawei cellphone that was one of the first touch screen phones that was affordable... I think I paid $120 for it and got about $300 worth of free texts and minutes on it.

The advantage of UAVs is that they are useful for all sorts of things... military and civilian... the civilian models don't need encrypted video and control feeds... but both benefit from good quality day and night cameras and other equipment.

The models with the downward facing camera for dropping grenades or light bombs could be used to drop supplies into inaccessible places, or even deliver medicine to someones back door where it might be more secure and less likely to be stolen, while bypassing any dangerous dogs that might be on the property.

Those reduced size weapons would be ideal for smaller cheaper attack aircraft based on light aircraft like the armed version of the Ansat:



Or light patrol aircraft like the SM-92P:



With perhaps new versions based on new aircraft like the new LMS-901 Baikal and other new types which likely will now have more promising futures now that western companies are leaving the Russian market.

Actually I would think the Baikal would be ideal... you could mount a couple of twin barrel 23mm guns outboard of the propeller level with the troops compartment and have belt feeds for the 23mm ammo lead into the troop compartment with enormous 23mm ammo boxes in there with a few thousand rounds of ammo for each gun...

The ammo is slightly bigger than HMG ammo and the twin barrel gun design has a high rate of fire so a very short burst sends a dozen or so rounds in a cluster like a shotgun blast, making dodging the shots difficult.

Add a couple of rocket pods and it would be an excellent gun ship.

The bigger size of the aircraft over the smaller types means more fuel for better endurance, and good ammo capacity.

You could reduce the internal ammo capacity for the guns and carry troops or door gunners.

You could also use the same setup with Kord and HMG ammo instead.

BTW I should add that while laser guided unguided rockets makes sense against some targets it is a much better idea for the west than for the Russians really, because Russian ATGMs are affordable, while western ones are not, which makes the laser homing rockets a cheaper alternative even though they are more expensive than Russian ATGMs.

The Russians really are spoiled for choice...

You need this size drone or bigger to be carrying around the sort of guided weapons, missiles, and bombs and rockets that we have been shown developed especially for drones.

The smaller drones they currently use would take too much of a hit carrying 40 plus kgs of weapons (2 x 20kgs bombs) or more.... and lets be honest... the really small bombs are pretty useless flash bangs unless you get direct hits.

I think the use of drones in this conflict shows drones are useful and can be effective but tiny warheads can make them appear more useful than they actually are.

kh-29s are useful and used because often a really big warhead can be decisive whereas tiny warheads might not be effective at all depending on the target.

You need a decent sized HALE or MALE for these drone weapons to be useful... certainly something Forepost or bigger... if carrying two 50 kg bombs reduces your flight range to 30-50km then you are actually better off just fitting a laser target marker and using your cameras and target marker and operating with artillery units to deliver tons of ordinance over and over every hour against everything you see rather than two shots of 50kgs at two of the most important targets you see on your flight.

Forepost is too easy to shoot down to use in enormous numbers...

Depend where and what you hit, the warhead doesn't need to be huge. But it always need to be precise.

A grenade inside of a tank with ammo will destroy it.

That is the problem to get that level of precision from a hand grenade you need to fly very low, which means getting shot down is vastly more likely.

Having a bigger custom designed bomb like a 10kg bomb with a HEAT warhead that will penetrate top armour you can hit anywhere on the tank and do damage... a much bigger target.

A 10kg HE FRAG bomb is vastly more effective than a hand grenade that might have a 100 gramme HE charge...

As you increase precision and weapon size the size and cost of the drone goes up and they become less expendable.

HALE and MALE drones are not cheap but can spot targets at enormous distances with powerful optics and direct fire on target and check results for damage assessment and determining if follow up attacks are needed in real time.

Things like trench lines can be harassed 24/7 by small drones... but if you want to take them then you need heavier weapons like TOS... or even 30mm cannon armed robot vehicles.

(interesting that those complaining there are not enough drones ignore ground based drones... the air power orientation sounds very westernised in its view... perhaps Boeing and Northrop are sponsoring Trolls at the moment...)

You have to balance cost with effect... if you want to be able to fly high and barely noticed but also hit targets like an individual tank then a laser guided glide bomb is probably your best bet.

Dropped from 8km plus even a 10kg bomb will accelerate to a decent speed which should allow control fins the ability to manouver quite well... falling from 8km you need guidance and laser mark homing (sometimes called semi active laser homing or SALH, where the target is marked with a laser beam), but if the target is a trench line or a group of troops spread out in a matrix of trenchlines then guided weapons become too expensive to hit every single soldier with one guided weapon each.

When the target is troops spread out the solution then becomes smaller lighter munitions... maybe 500 grammes of HE and fragments dropped in enormous numbers to cover an area of terrain with lots of fragments.

The Soviets and Russians have KGMU-2 dispensors which are bomb shaped weapons that contain cassettes of submunitions... the bombs remain on the platform but open and release their payload of munitions when activated in flight, showering the target area with munitions and fragments of different types for different jobs.

I would think the length of the body of a large drone could be designed to do the same with the full length belly containing thousands of munitions ready for release over the right target... the wing pylons for the guided bombs.

When you see the 80mm rockets fired in a lofted trajectory by attack helicopters you can see they spread them over a significant area because 80mm rockets have big warheads so a good spread means a large kill zone for fragments.

Munitions from the belly of a large drone could be released in sequence... you could release smoke bombs first to calibrate your aiming system to get rather good accuracy on target and then start dropping individual munitions on specific targets... they have HEAT and HE Frag and ground penetrating anti runway, as well as top attack smart munitions with MMW radar and IR sensors and a parachute descent system with a self forging top attack warhead.