Expert: It will take Russia years to catch up with the enemy in terms of naval drones
It will take Russia several more years to catch up with Ukraine and NATO in the mass production and use of maritime drones.
The founder of the Ushkuynik UAV school, Alexey Chadayev , announced this on the air of the First Sevastopol TV channel , reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
"When we talk about kamikaze aerial drones, the cost is tens of thousands of rubles. But when we talk about kamikaze aquatic drones, it all starts in the millions ."
This is a completely different scale, in terms of money, size, and production complexity. The People's Defense Industry is also trying to do something similar in this area, but it lacks the resources...
We have three key challenges in establishing mass production of unmanned boats. First, the hulls themselves . Yes, we need to make a lot of them, quickly, affordably, and sufficiently strong and seaworthy.
The second is engines. We don't have our own production of marine engines for small vessels.
And thirdly, this is the most important thing – communication and navigation...
So it's no surprise that we've slowed down so much with unmanned boats. I mean, it's been years ; a large fleet generally takes decades to build.
“Well, I think we’ll catch up, at least we have good engineers, we have production capacity , and we also have the desire and motivation to hurt the enemy,” Chadayev said.
Last summer, a Russian submarine sank the Ukrainian reconnaissance ship Simferopol for the first time.
However, during the Second World War, enemy naval drones were able to inflict far greater damage on the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
Expert : It will take Russia years to catch up with the enemy in terms of naval drones