undefined | Better HN

0 pointsardit334y ago0 comments

Um... you are way off the mark here. You just missed the latest war of Azerbaijan vs Armenia, where the azeri forces had these drones, that just hovered in the battle field for hours, and when the Armeni forces turned their radars off their would just home on them and destroy them immediately.

They were acting like moving air-landmines. They key part of this is that they are super cheap to make (cost of a car), and operate, and work autonomously. Thousands of them launched, can wreck havock even on a sophisticated military like the US of Russia.

That's why there is a return of modernized cheaper ww2 type of anti aircraft guns.

China’s New Air Defense System Looks Similar To American ‘Stryker’ SHORAD https://eurasiantimes.com/chinas-new-air-defense-system-look...

0 comments

ethbr04y ago

>> Drones (as used so far, in the remote suicide version) solve a key problem many states have: lack of effective tactical ISR. The US and major powers do not have this problem

That describes Azerbaijan and Armenia's war precisely.

> work autonomously

The TB2 [0] is not capable of autonomous engagement. It's remotely operated for weapons release. And half its key components rely on foreign technology (regardless of what Turkey claims).

The Israeli Harop platform [1] does have autonomous engagement, but intended for the S/DEAD role and is in a different class of technical sophistication and price.

Calling Russian export military equipment "sophisticated" is a bit of a stretch, considering modern delivered models are circa-1995 designs, only recently realized.

Maybe 30 years ago, but they haven't been able to even afford to modernize their own forces, and basically lost 20 years of progress to post-Soviet upheaval and kleptocracy.

We'll see what happens when drones go up against a military keeping pace with the times.

[0] https://baykardefence.com/uav-15.html

[1] https://www.iai.co.il/p/harop

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse