With Ukrainian manufactured winged drones -- small, low-powered aircraft – shattering modern high-rise office and residential buildings in Moscow, the lowly unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has at least symbolically turned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine back on itself. In a small way, attacking Russia’s capital retaliates for the almost endless nightly powerful strikes by Russia against nearly all of Ukraine’s cities. Ukraine has hit Moscow six times and Sevastopol and other Russian occupied places. But Russia assaults Kyiv, Odesa, vital Danube River ports, and critical cities closer to the front lines with impunity. Overall, even as wrenching battles from trench to trench across terrain filled with land mines are reminiscent of World War I futilities in Western Europe, so drones are the very modern embodiment of electronic combat in today’s wars. Potentially, they are game changers. Ukraine needs bigger, sturdier, and more robust ones.
The use of Turkish drones altered the trajectory of the Ethiopian war between Tigray and the central government in 2021. U. S. special forces have employed drones to attack jihadists in Somalia for years. Thousands of Iranian-made sizable drones have enabled Putin’s forces to menace Ukraine’s people and installations for months. Both sides try to defend well against drones but, as the assaults on Moscow and Odesa indicate, a few get through and cause damage and death. Ukraine claims to have shot down 75 percent of the Iranian drones, but some always arrive. And they cause damage when their remains plummet down, plus spreading constant fear among civilians.
Drones are altering the nature of combat. They range from hand launched 18-inch miniature helicopters imported originally by consumers and warriors alike from China to unmanned aerial vehicles with strong if stubby wings and one or two propeller engines, some rear-mounted, some in front or overhead. The consumer drones are used by both sides (and in Myanmar, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo) for surveillance of enemy detachments, and for old-fashioned reconnaissance during close-quarter assaults. Trench warfare in the Donbas -- eastern Ukraine – is largely dependent upon information relayed back from the front lines by small scale drones. According to some reports, Ukraine’s troops have already lost more than 10,000 small drones, with hundreds of new ones deployed nightly.
Chinese hobbyist-style drones, now copied locally in Ukraine, originally cost about $2,000 each on the Internet. China says that it has stopped exporting such models, because of the war in Ukraine, but enthusiasts everywhere can easily procure similar models and then modify them to hold and drop grenades or small explosives. They can be dropped with great precision into a Russian trench, or even into the open top hatch of a tank.
One of Ukraine’s new, locally fabricated, drones has a range of 25 miles and can carry a 7-pound bomb. On the front lines, Ukraine uses such drones to obliterate expensive Russian artillery and tanks. The Russians fight back – often effectively -- with electronic jamming that cuts the signal between the Ukrainian drone operator and his/her drone. Ukraine, in turn, says that it's working on software that can prevent Russian electronic jamming.
Ukraine is now manufacturing several models of medium-size propeller driven drones that can slowly fly 500 miles at 75 miles an hour to Moscow or other Russian cities, dropping bombs or acting as kamikaze explosive instruments. More than a dozen factories are making drones non-stop in Ukraine. Allegedly, more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have been trained as drone controllers and are active attacking Russians locally or at a distance. Ukraine’s prime minister said that he would be spending about $1 billion on drones this year, up from $108 million in 2022.
Ukraine also makes sub-sea drones capable of hitting Russian ships in the Black Sea or striking bridges leading to and from Crimea. Las year, home-crafted Neptune missiles skimmed the sea from land launchers to destroy the Moskva, the Russian’s heaviest cruiser, 60 miles off Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
Drones are critical to Ukraine’s defense of its realm on the ground and also in its attempt to shatter the calm of Russia’s civilian heartland. Useful as they are, however, they are no substitute for more formidable air power, in the form of the F-16s that have been promised but have been slow to materialize. Only with such modern aircraft will Ukraine be able to reinforce its efforts to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and fuel depots, obliterate missile and drone launching sites, and cut Russia’s land bridge to Crimea.
Making those advances will require real aircraft, but also a steady supply of American, Turkish, and home-made drones. The defensive war in Ukraine cannot be pursued successfully, much less won, without more powerful equipment, antiaircraft batteries, and new-found abilities to halt Russian attacks from the air. But more powerful drones will also help.
.
I hope Ukraine will acquire the military equipment it requires to defend itself and respond to Russian aggression asap. While peace negotiations appear to be developing, without Russian involvement, Putin will never stand down. He must be well and truly exorcised.
interesting