Ukraine blows up Russian tank column with drone swarm

Spectacular blow against Russia's steely aggression: Ukraine's drones blow up a Russian tank column – and thus also expose the Bundeswehr to dangers.

Solodke – Andrey Nemtsev makes a depressed impression on the journalists. The battalion commander orders departments with German “miracle weapons” and is deeply saddened by their largely ineffectiveness. The Hamburger Abendblatt Nemtsev observes how Ukraine tried to turn the tide in the Ukrainian war against Vladimir Putin's troops – and got stuck in its counteroffensive against Russia's aggression.

However, perhaps only the high expectations of Western European high-tech have fizzled out; But with its do-it-yourself solutions, Ukraine seems to be able to meet its enemy at least on an equal footing, as a video on social networks now seems to show. The content is so shocking to Russians that even bloggers are on the side of Russia's campaign on the battlements, like them Picture writes. The invading army is said to have lost a tank column because it apparently underestimated the Ukrainian drones. Death came out of the blue.

The footage from late January shows a column of eleven armored vehicles marching westward near the village of Solodke in the Donetsk region; including three main battle tanks, one armored personnel carrier and seven armored vehicles. They march at midday without any cover or infantry support or without monitoring the airspace. Your goal should be according to information from Picture may have been to flank the contested town of Novomichajlivka to the south and advance to the strategically important road to Wuhledar.

In fact, neither vehicles nor many Russian soldiers arrived there. Apparently, due to good intelligence about the breakthrough attempt, Ukraine had smelled a fuse and sent a swarm of around 20 FPV (First Person View) drones at the attackers – the Russians had no way of defending themselves against the grenades thrown at the vehicles, which was obvious to the Russia-friendly military bloggers Reason enough to condemn the suicidal tactics of the Russian officers. “I don’t know what to say,” Blogger writes Facing the Z-Warloud Picture“how the hell can you ignore that the enemy has FPV drones available?”

Blogger criticizes Russian leadership: “Everything we put on the vehicles is outdated.”

Furthermore, the blogger, who has a wide reach on Telegram with around 720,000 followers, is said to have openly criticized the military leadership: “We currently have no protection against these drones. Everything we put on the vehicles is outdated and doesn't stop the drones.” The video will also have caused an earthquake in Berlin; The helplessness of NATO and especially German tanks in the face of the threat from the hardware store drags on over the years and becomes all the more precarious for Western countries as the war in Ukraine progresses. War against the West is becoming more likely, and Russia is currently having a dress rehearsal.

“The Defense Minister admits there is an 'acute capability gap' in the Bundeswehr when it comes to protecting against drones. Because: They had abolished their anti-aircraft defenses. “Now she urgently needs a replacement because of the danger of drone attacks” – that’s what she wrote Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung almost three years ago, long before the cold war between East and West suddenly heated up again. The German armed forces were in a pitiful condition at the time. “But the admission that the Bundeswehr is almost defenseless against drone attacks was surprising,” wrote the FAZ. There was an “acute capability gap,” the then Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) admitted literally. The short war between Armenia and Azerbaijan made their own powerlessness clear. During the fighting, Israeli and Turkish-made Azerbaijani drones destroyed more than 190 Armenian tanks and armored vehicles.

Shock for the Bundeswehr: defenseless against attacks from the air

Reports about this caused a shock in the Bundeswehr. According to the, the Defense Minister was under high pressure FAZ Therefore, proposals should be prepared to quickly close the gap and redesign air defense as a whole. Little to nothing has happened in this regard so far. In the future, the danger will actually arrive in swarms: drones will become smaller and cheaper, and their number will increase. So far, the most effective killer has been the most effective: the German Gepard anti-aircraft gun tank.

For the German veterans, the issue was also clear long before the Ukraine war, as Björn Müller wrote in their magazine loyal writes: “During the Cold War, the Bundeswehr’s mobile anti-aircraft defense system was a highlight within NATO. Optimized for its main mission – delaying a major Soviet attack – the Bundeswehr was primarily a tank army. To protect them against air attacks, a powerful anti-aircraft defense system was built for the ground troops. These units were equipped with the 'Gepard' anti-aircraft gun tank and the 'Roland' missile system. But that was a long time ago.” Today there is nothing left of it, the Bundeswehr is almost completely bare in the face of a threat from the East.

Drone defense: Expert warns urgently against believing in simple solutions

The German military historian Sönke Neitzel argues similarly in an interview with the taz to the question of whether Germany needs to be prepared for Russia to launch massive air attacks: “Exactly. This is the anti-aircraft debate. What happens if Putin launches missile attacks on Berlin? Are we ready for this? “We’re not completely bare-bones, but we’re not well prepared either,” answers Neitzel.

Protecting individual vehicles against drones seems techni
cally difficult to implement, as told the military magazine cpm Defense Network The managing director of Krauss Maffei Wegmann recently admitted – Ralf Ketzel's armaments factory, for example, produces the Leopard in its various versions – according to him, effective defense against small missiles can only be achieved with linked weapon systems: “In my opinion, we have to move away from the idea that all tasks could be implemented in one system. At KMW we have demonstrated very successfully that the Puma infantry fighting vehicle can be used to combat drones. This means that the Puma and Leopard tandem would have very good protection against drones at the front. The Leopard provides penetrating power, the Puma – or another vehicle – provides protection from drones.”