The Russians are learning from Ukraine: Apparently they want to beat the defenders with their own weapons and are using autonomous drones.
Moscow – The explosives in the sky weigh just as much as a sack of potatoes: three to five kilos. What’s new is that a machine decides who or what death will rain down on. With revolutionary “Kamikaze” drones in his invading army Wladimir Putin now send the next generation of autonomous weapons to the front. Izdeliye-53 (in German: “Product-53”) is called Russia new type of drone, according to the magazine sputnik is built to fly in swarms and can coordinate with each other on what should be fought on the ground. Targets are primarily stationary and mobile air defense positions and, in principle, anything that moves. These drones are slender boxes – called lancets – that are used to counterattack the Ukraine could cause devastating needlesticks.
They are said to be identifiable by their distinctive x-shaped wings and thus vaguely resemble fighter pilots from the rebel army in “Star Wars” – but the Izdeliye-53 have long been a reality. Bitter reality, how sputnik writes because they have proven so effective, counteroffensive in Ukraine war to take the edge off that neither Western governments nor the Ukrainian public could ignore their threat. The Lancet drone, a square gray tube with two sets of four wings, has actually become an increasing threat to Ukraine’s front lines in recent months, according to Ukrainian soldiers. This is what the agency reports Reuters.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has, so Reutersan increase in lancet production was seized upon as a cost-effective way to attack high-quality Western equipment that Ukraine received for its counteroffensive, says Samuel Bendett, from Center for a New American Security. Bendett says that according to publicly available Russian sources, a Lancet drone costs around $35,000. Accordingly, Russia apparently has enough resources for an economic offensive.
New knowledge: Invaders now use drones differently
“Every day we shoot down at least one or two of these Lancets – but unfortunately the interception rate is not 100 percent,” says Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, admitting this Reuters stated that Russia’s increasing use of lancets was actually causing difficulties for the defenders. Ukraine had repeatedly proven, for example in Crimea against the deployment of the Black Sea Fleet, that it can stand up to the superior numbers of the Russian invading army with the massive use of drones. Now Moscow is apparently turning the tables, sputnik In any case, reports on the first successful missions of the latest generation of Lancets.
In the future, drones will not only be able to fly or swim, but also dive. They will appear on the water in schools and underwater; and also react autonomously above or below the water. This is what German Lieutenant Colonel Rüdiger Rauch, drone defense expert in the Ministry of Defense, predicts in the Bundeswehr podcast Inquired. According to him, the drones “have come to stay”. Rauch: “Drones play a major role in the Ukraine war that should not be underestimated – they have shown that the original assumption that drones can play a major role in small, asymmetrical wars is wrong; but that they actually play a major role in major conflicts,” he says.
New strategy: Putin’s drones will threaten military targets in the future
Lancet drones are flown by a pilot in real time. Adviser Yuri Sak says this distinguishes it from the Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone, which Russia has already used en masse to attack Ukrainian targets, because a Shahed flies to a programmed target and cannot be controlled in the air. This is why the investigative magazine suspects Oryx a change in strategy by the Russians in Ukraine: the rather statically operating Shahed drones from Iran posed more of a threat to the Ukrainian infrastructure and the civilian population; military objectives had been outside the Russian focus. The lancet-shaped drones developed independently by Russia, such as the now known Izdeliye-53, are intended to be able to combat moving military targets – for example the German Patriot units. But individual tanks or even isolated infantry are also increasingly being targeted by drone attacks.
New casualties: Ukraine plucks drones from the sky with guns
Drones flying low and relatively sluggish at around 50 kilometers per hour, such as the Lancet, tend to confuse conventional air defense systems. These tend to target fast targets with a larger heat signature. The faster the bombs cross the sky, the less chance Ukrainians have of defending themselves with small arms. Automatic machine cannons have so far been considered effective. With the British MSI-DS Terrahawk Paladin, Ukraine has just received a real drone killer.
Ukraine’s most successful defense weapon against drones to date is the German Gepard tank with its two automatic cannons. According to the federal government, 46 Gepard anti-aircraft gun tanks have now been delivered to Ukraine from the Federal Republic. In addition, a total of at least 86,000 rounds of ammunition. The British MSI-DS Terrahawk Paladin works on a similar principle with a combination of radar plus self-guided cannon and is suitable for very short distances of around ten kilometers; According to the company, the system can also effectively combat drones almost the size of a palm.
New generation: Putin’s drones now find their own targets
However, with the Izdeliye-53, an opponent of a heavier caliber seems to be looming on the horizon. Alexander Zakharov, chief designer of Izdeliye manufacturer Zala Aero explains sputnik, that their operators would only have to determine in which target area which types of targets should be fought, i.e. either only tank, artillery, radar or air defense systems; The drones would then enter the target area and – this is new: based on a neural network – prioritize their respective goals with each other. That means: They decide for themselves what they ultimately throw themselves into from the sky.
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