Follow-Up on Ukraine’s Kamikaze Drones

Given that the original video generated doubts as to its veracity, I thought I would post this followup that goes into more detail about Ukraine’s low-cost suicide drone/loitering munition.

  • These look considerably less jury-rigged than the previous drones.
  • “These are publicly funded…Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense made a public appeal for donations to buy 1,000 of these.”

  • There seem to be different types with different warhead sizes. “The technical details are a bit vague. I’ve seen mentioned ranges of just two kilometers to over 10 kilometers.”
  • We see the successful attacks, but not the failures.
  • “These cost around 200 to manufacture, so they’re also extremely cost effective.” Indeed, even more cost-effective than my original estimates.
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    4 Responses to “Follow-Up on Ukraine’s Kamikaze Drones”

    1. Bigfire says:

      With munition so small, they have to hit it in just the right place. Fortunately, AFU have plenty of experience with most of Russian mechanized vehicle.

    2. John Oh says:

      Another tool and one that’s affordable. Col. Boyd always argued against buying aircraft that were so expensive command would be afraid to use them. The suicide drones are so inexpensive they can be used liberally and hope for the best. It’s very creative and hope they make a difference.

    3. ruralcounsel says:

      If I can’t buy them for me, I’m sure as hell not going to buy them for a foreign dictator.

    4. Kirk says:

      This is exactly what I foresaw about the time I played around with a friend’s drone some ten-fifteen years ago.

      Somewhere in Ukraine, right now, someone is writing the swarm software that’s going to use flocks of these things to blunt or destroy the next major Russian operational assault. I’d wager that even in the notional developmental stage, it’ll be about like running horse-mounted cavalry up against dug-in machine guns behind barbed wire.

      I was shown a Boeing promotional piece, years and years ago, where they were predicting a land mine that would basically get up and follow you home, then pick the absolute worst place for you to detonate, like in your fueling/rearming point. They had the notional software and hardware already laid out, and it would have been a big-ticket item to actually develop. These days? I wouldn’t be surprised if a smart high-school kid could use off-the-shelf items and do it all by their lonesomes.

      One thing I think will come out of Ukraine is that odds are pretty solid that going forward, small nations aren’t going to be easily bullied by bigger ones, so long as they have the necessary technical skills to support efforts like these.

      The proof will be in the pudding, come March-April time frame. I would not want to be a Russian soldier for the undoubtedly coming Spring Offensive. I have a feeling that effort is going to go down in history as yet another major Russian self-defeat on the scale of Tannenberg or the Brusilov Offensive. I highly doubt they’re going to achieve anything at all like a victory, and even if they do, the result is going to be entirely Pyric in nature.

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