Mir wrote:These things are mainly constructed from plastic if I'm not mistaken with very few metallic parts. I would also expect that some of the drones are semi-submersible, which would make them even more difficult to either spot or track.
The one of Turkish origin they have intercepted, and that was the one we saw lately, is made of glass fiber that is radar transparent.
Most of the parts like engine, shaft etc is hidden underwater.
Water itself is radar reflective, in real terms, radar waves are disrupted by water particles, fog, sprinklers, etc.
That reduces the range and accuracy of the radar by a huge factor.
Some naval radars are specialized for that task and are mostly used as a part of the SAR system.
With the proper algorithms, they can "mark" the water as the overall radar characteristics are kind of different.
Aside from that, nobody pier a ship with the radar turned on, for multiple reasons.
Ships at the harbor are secured by different means, and there are some of them in the Sevastopol naval bay for sure - some of the drones were reported to be caught by the protective nets.
The system worked, the damaged ship was a minesweeper doing its job - taking out the drones. Russkie have a real serious minesweeping fleet, on a peak of modernization - those Alexandrit are being ordered in some insane number (40?!?).
It will be soon a very interesting part of the arms race, as that type of warfare is not widely spread. Everybody invests heavily in naval drones lately. US-made drones harrasing the Chinese or Iran are being caught in a quite regular manner.
Edit : by the way, the Ukr revealed material with the approach of naval drone towards Admiral Makarov documented one quite interesting thing. Take a look at it. The whole ship is extremely well thermal protected - the only visible heat source are exhausts, and that is not massive either.
I remember a few years ago when the Brits publicized a footage of some 11356 frigate being assisted by Type 23 frigate.
The pic was astonishing - a cold blood hulk of a Russian vessel that is hardly visible in TI spectrum, while the Type 23 was glowing like a fuckin' Xmas tree.
This is what a generation advance is in real lads.
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