The massive use of new military technologies by the Kiev army affects the balance of forces in the conflict. The strategy of the resistance and foreign suppliers. The kinship that leads to Ankara
ROME. Three days after the Russian invasion, a video, released by the Ukrainian armed forces, begins to spread on the web, showing a Russian anti-aircraft system BUK M2 (SA-17 Grizzly in NATO code) first framed and then destroyed by missiles from a remotely controlled aircraft. The images, unexpected to say the least, quickly bounced around all social media, generating unprecedented enthusiasm among staunch opponents of the military campaign waged by Moscow. A small and cheap armed drone achieved a result equivalent to what could have been achieved with an air raid by aircraft designed for ground attack (CAS – Close Air Support) and / or SEAD (Suppression Enemy Areal Defense) , much more complex to organize and certainly more risky to complete, with a certainly higher cost / effectiveness ratio.
Weapon systems
Sometimes it happens that some weapon systems, in the past underestimated or ignored, forcefully return to the fore in a conflict, in some cases even determining the outcome. This was the case in the past of the AT 3 SAGGER anti-tank missiles supplied to the Egyptians – a weapon already used with little success since the Vietnam War – which inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli armored forces in the 1973 Yom Kippur conflict, bringing them one step away from defeat, while today in a similar discourse it can certainly be proposed again for UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles). These drones are certainly not a novelty in the panorama of weapon systems in use in the various armed forces, as their use has taken place quite extensively for several years in various conflicts around the world; however, their use mainly concerned “asymmetric” conflicts or for selective eliminations (think for example of the multiple episodes of members belonging to terrorist organizations eliminated by guided aircraft armed with precision missiles or the much more sensational one of the Commander of the “Quds Force” Qasem Soleimani – eliminated at Baghdad airport by Hellfire missiles launched by a US MQ9 Reaper drone); in recent years, on the other hand, we have witnessed an increasingly widespread use of them even in conflicts around the world, now used by one hour by the other faction in combination with more conventional weapon systems to obtain decisive results in clashes.
Air sorties
In this sense, the UAVs have in fact replaced a considerable part of the air sorties, thanks to a higher rate of availability, a higher efficiency and a better “spendability” on the battlefield. And the confirmation of the tremendous effectiveness of these drones was immediately obtained even at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, with the images of Russian armored vehicles destroyed by guided aircraft that came directly from the war theater. The undisputed protagonist of a large part of the destruction of tracked and armored vehicles has until now been the BAYRAKTAR TB2 drone supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces; developed by the Turkish company Baykar Technologies for use by its Armed Forces, this drone represents the first completely Turkish-built hunter-killer UAV, conceived for long range and medium altitude surveillance purposes; one of the first foreign customers was Ukraine, which bought an unspecified number before the war and ordered a total of 54.
Control station
The BAYRAKTAR system consists of a UAV, ground control station with pilot and observer, ground data terminal, remote display terminal, advanced base with generator and trailer modules. The dimensions of the aircraft are 6.5 meters in length by 2.2 in height, with a wingspan of 12 meters, while the weight is 650 kg. The propulsion is ensured by a 100 opposed Rotax 912 4-cylinder engine. power shp (105 horsepower), which allows it to reach a maximum speed of about 220 km / h with a flight range of about 27 hours. Under the wings, the 4 pylons can be coupled with guided ammunition of the MAM-C and MAM-L type, laser-guided anti-tank missiles or 70 mm Cirit rockets, all produced by the Turkish company ROKESTAN, for a maximum payload of 150Kg. The drones are equipped with rangefinders and laser designators designed to engage the target from a remote control position that can be up to 185 miles away from the device. From a structural point of view, the Bayraktar have a monocoque design and are complemented by a tail structure formed by two inverted V-shaped fins. The fuselage was made of carbon fiber, Kevlar and other hybrid composite materials with the intention of making the aircraft extremely light and performing.
Costs
The Bayraktar TB2 represents a relatively inexpensive and relatively low-cost attack platform (each specimen costs $ 5 million) and has already been widely tested in the conflicts in Libya, Syria and Nagorno Karabach (where, however, it was criticized for ease with which it could be knocked down). But in the ongoing conflict it has returned to the fore, even earning the nickname of “life donors” from the Commander of the Ukrainian Aviation, General Mykola Oleshchuk.
Success
The great commercial success of BAYRAKTAR is also due to the CTO of Baykar Technologies, Selçuk Bayraktar, (brother-in-law of Recep Tayyip Erdogan), who after a degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a scholarship awarded by MIT in the United States, has returned at home and since 2007 he has been able to carry out research on UAVs that have allowed the company he directs to accumulate experience in the fields of avionics systems architecture, flight controls, development of navigation algorithms, kinematics and dynamics system, hardware and software development. Allusions have been made from many quarters to the fact that the great commercial success of the drone may not be unrelated to the relationship between the CTO of Baykar and Erdogan, who, even in conflicts that do not concern Turkey, always manages to be a protagonist “on the ground”.
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