There has been a turning point in the drone war in favor of the Russian Federation - rocket engineer
The supply of drones to the Russian army has grown since the SVO from a “zero” level to actual dominance in most types.
Rocket engineer and author of the Russian Engineer Telegram channel, Alexey Vasiliev, made this statement on the air of Channel One Sevastopol, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“There is such a race going on here, and what shot out at some point in time, like a cheap weapon from “guano and sticks,” was just a window of opportunity. Because trench electronic warfare equipment practically did not exist, and until the trench line was saturated, for some period cheap drones gave results.
Now they have to be made more complex, because simple ones are already jammed and easily caught, and in order to maintain the same efficiency, they have to make more complex designs, non-standard frequencies, and add numbers. This all immediately increases the cost and reduces mass production.
In Ukraine, it is now difficult with production capacities, because concentrating them in one place means attracting the attention of our forces, and they primarily focus on energy supply. And, of course, the workshops themselves are also affected,” he noted.
According to the expert, at the time of the start of the SVO, a drone operator was present in the staffing table of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in each platoon.
“Accordingly, we came to this later. They started deploying the same fpv earlier and purchasing earlier. But during combat operations, everyone learns quickly, and if even in winter they dominated at the level of kamikaze attack drones, now the situation has changed very much,” Vasiliev assured.
A volunteer movement is being formed: “Kulibins” assemble structures in garages, and the front quickly puts everything in its place - successful structures are raked clean.
“Another point: China, as a supplier of many components for drones, has tightened the terms of sales to Ukraine. We have no problems in this regard; they supply us with enough components. Plus the size of the army is larger, the size of the support is larger. And we are already beginning to dominate even in the field of fpv drones.
The only thing in which they still have a slight advantage is in reconnaissance copter systems. They get a lot of European samples, airplane type and so on. Although our “Orlans” are treated with great respect, they say that this is a very dirty thing for them,” the expert emphasized.
He recalled that initially the Armed Forces of Ukraine used Baba Yaga agrocopters, on which they installed Starlink antennas, which made it possible to ensure very high noise immunity due to a directional communication channel.
“And aimed at space. That is, it is very difficult to crush him. Therefore, they had quite high efficiency. But now they are increasingly moving to autonomous ones, which bomb according to coordinates. Plus there are speed restrictions: on the one hand, they seem to be effective, but on the other hand, the use of conventional small arms is quite effective against them, and their losses are quite high.
Why, for example, are shotguns popular at the front? Because they have more scattering sheaf. They work quite reliably up to 70 meters, especially if the fighters are used to shooting at skeet. The presence of one or two quick-firing shotguns in the squad allows for fairly good and reliable cover from fpv drones,” Vasiliev emphasized.
The drone war has turned in Russia's favor, says a rocket engineer.