> "1,500 to 2,000km (930-1,240 miles) inside Russian territory is no longer the 'peaceful rear'," Robert Brovdi warns. "The freedom-loving Ukrainian 'bird' flies there whenever and wherever it wants."
For comparison for the Americans, it's New York to Kansas City. For the Europeans, Copenhagen to Rome.
Crazy that the Ukrainians can keep up command-and-control for drones over such a distance. Probably most of it is via Starlink...
There are other technologies. GPS is an obvious one though it can be blocked. I think HIMARs used GPS with inertial backup if it's lost. Also with modern image recognition you can give the thing a picture of what it's supposed to hit for the last bit. I'm not sure which actual techs are used. Ukraine has a market set up where fighters can order the tech they need from defence startups. It's a significant advantage over Russia which has comparable tech but is bureaucratic and corrupt as to how it's allocated.
Some stuff from Google on FP-1 drones - the most popular long range one:
>Technological Features: They emphasize modularity, resilience to electronic warfare, and are developing optical navigation systems to reduce reliance on GPS.
Ukraine has concretely demonstrated their ability to perform deep missile/drone strikes (on the order of ~1500km) onto Russian strategic and economic assets.
Ukrainian drone capabilities in the near battlefield (up to ~20-30km deep) are also not contested. Russian milbloggers will openly talk about the difficulty of massing and movement in that area due to the saturation of drone coverage (and btw, this challenge is more or less symmetric).
So the article is not likely exaggerating any of their capabilities. However, it is exaggerating via omission.
In terms of deep strikes, the question is what the success rate of these missions are, what cadence can they sustain, what's the constellation of Russian lapses that have to line up for a successful strike, etc.
Another known area of weakness (that the Ukrianians are working hard on) is the middle range. How to strike quickly at targets of opportunity in the 50-500km range field. This was/is a capability that things like GMLRS and ATACMS provided, but I imagine the Ukraine is forced to ration those munitions carefully.
From my understanding it seems fairly accurate. A lot of the stuff is pretty public - if drones blow up Russia's stuff they obviously know about it. Also drones get shot down so both sides can have a look at the tech.
The reporting seems a bit misleading suggesting drones kill 30k Russians a month. I think that's total Russian casualties of which drones are a good chunk but not all.
And to replenish their losses Ukrainian regime snatches men on the street. There are thousands of videos made by bystanders.[0] Come and see.
P.S. I love the ad I see on that site: "Over 10 million Ukrainians suffer from anxiety due to the war. Free exercises with scientifically proven effectiveness." The most important exercise now is running - it saves your life.
They are going to lose, the question is how much. I don't see Russians losing the territory they occupy right now, unless some black swan event happens. It remains to be seen how much more territory Russia is able to conquer until they lose their appetite.
Ah, the periodic "Ukraine is winning the war" propaganda by western media to keep their citizens in a "warmongering" panic mode so that they don't oppose the hike in defence budgets. And to make the Europeans feel less guilty about not suing for peace ( https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/why-unjust-peace-bett... ) and egging the Ukrainians to keep fighting even though Ukraine is losing and being systematically deindustrialised and demilitarised ( https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/4-years-later-what-russia... ). History is repeating itself with the re-militarisation of Europe and it looks like we'll experience another World War. For all the progress they have made, the big 3 of Europe - UK, France and Russia (and emerging power Germany) - all still have a shitty imperialist mindsets which leads to this kind of repeated confrontation that drags us all into their muck. I am really beginning to believe the American pitch that they were the one who kept them all in check, after WW2 with their military bases in EU.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 33.7 ms ] threadFor comparison for the Americans, it's New York to Kansas City. For the Europeans, Copenhagen to Rome.
Crazy that the Ukrainians can keep up command-and-control for drones over such a distance. Probably most of it is via Starlink...
Some stuff from Google on FP-1 drones - the most popular long range one:
>Technological Features: They emphasize modularity, resilience to electronic warfare, and are developing optical navigation systems to reduce reliance on GPS.
Ukrainian drone capabilities in the near battlefield (up to ~20-30km deep) are also not contested. Russian milbloggers will openly talk about the difficulty of massing and movement in that area due to the saturation of drone coverage (and btw, this challenge is more or less symmetric).
So the article is not likely exaggerating any of their capabilities. However, it is exaggerating via omission.
In terms of deep strikes, the question is what the success rate of these missions are, what cadence can they sustain, what's the constellation of Russian lapses that have to line up for a successful strike, etc.
Another known area of weakness (that the Ukrianians are working hard on) is the middle range. How to strike quickly at targets of opportunity in the 50-500km range field. This was/is a capability that things like GMLRS and ATACMS provided, but I imagine the Ukraine is forced to ration those munitions carefully.
The reporting seems a bit misleading suggesting drones kill 30k Russians a month. I think that's total Russian casualties of which drones are a good chunk but not all.
P.S. I love the ad I see on that site: "Over 10 million Ukrainians suffer from anxiety due to the war. Free exercises with scientifically proven effectiveness." The most important exercise now is running - it saves your life.
[0] https://busification.org