Having Powerful Enemies - But Limited Resources - Focuses The Mind On Weak Spots To Exploit

What used to be called BDA . . . Bomb Damage Assessment, is now satellite reconnaissance imagery review. Based on what is seen, targets are identified as finished or in need of being hit again. This is why last weeks cruise missile attacks have been followed up with subsequent attacks at regular intervals. It takes only minutes to reload launchers. But it takes some hours to collect satellite imagery reflecting recent damage - and have those images reviewed for selecting the next targets.

Low Earth Orbit spacecraft have some memory aboard, but not very much. These are polar orbiting vehicles and the areas over the poles have higher radiation exposure, with memory being notoriously vulnerable to radiation. So, frequent and even perpetual downlinks for Russian assets, is the order of the day. 

Russian spacecraft traversing Ukraine sky north to south or south to north will have Russian receive stations line-of-sight for downlinks of imagery. Ground based jammers aren't heard by dishes pointed upwards from within Russia.

 It is clear that in-orbit assets have determined Russian tactics and strategy. Why Sergei Surovikin, commander of Russian Aerospace forces is now supreme commander of the mobilization to bring about Ukrainian capitulation.

Normal drones have a controller, since they are either surveillance drones or attack drones hunting particular targets.The so-called kamikaze drones do not have a controller and are subsequently immune to jamming. They are instead like low and slow miniature ballistic missiles. Flight path fixed at time of launch so as to hit a particular static target. 

They evade detection till they can be seen near the target because they are small, slow, and very low to the ground. They emit very little infrared so they can’t be detected that way. They don’t talk to the mother ship so they can’t be seen sending signals nor can they be signal jammed. They thus also take way less in the way of chips (simpler and fewer) and so can be made cheaply and quickly in large quantities.

 Kamikaze drones are far cheaper than but just as effective as high-cost precision missiles Best bit is that they follow one of the principles of war – economy of force – and they certainly get a lot of bang for the buck.

The kamikaze drone will bring old fashioned antiaircraft guns back. The ones Russia is using don’t produce enough heat for a MANPAD to lock to, small arms aren’t going to bring them down in most cases, and it sounds like they don’t show up very well on modern missile anti-air systems which is combined with the ridiculous cost of bringing down a $20K drone with a $100K+ missile.

The Ukrainian tactic of putting serious air defense systems inside populated areas is almost as kamikaze as the drones themselves. Having them on the White House or similar makes some sense, having them heavily used inside a city does not.

At the moment, the Ukrainian police, soldiers, militia, etc. are trying to shoot those drones down with rifles, pistols or anything else that shoots a bullet and the streets of Kiev are sounding like a firing range. Best to be inside or you might get hit by a falling bullet-the more real danger is a populated area getting hit by an exploding shot down drone rather than the drone hitting its energy infrastructure target. Except it’s not just bullets flying willy nilly. 

Ukraine has S300 and Buk missiles curving down trying to hit the drones and plowing into apartment blocks. The S300 packs 150kg of explosive to the Geran-2’s 50kg.

And on top of that, keen troopers with western-supplied ATGMs are trying to hit drones in the air. Often with unguided ATGMs. Even  with guided ones they’ve got a snowballs chance. All of those come down too.

Russia has begun flooding* Donbass with old, reliable S-60 anti-aircraft guns. They shoot 57mm shells with proximity fuses, and are mgreat against small drones – as per experience in Syria. They can also penetrate 90mm of steel, so work well also against an enemy largely down to APCs and civilian vehicles for mobility.

And being from the old Soviet stock, they can be easily integrated with the existing air-defense systems, like battalion/divisional radars for targeting information or even automatic targeting.

Designed in the late 40s, considered obsolete in the mid-60s, reinstated after Vietnamese experience in early 70s, finally removed from service to storage in 1990s only find a niche for use again today.

Anyway, once you do see the drone, the latest wisdom is that 57 mm ammo has longer reach (6000 m vs 4000 m), doesn’t rely on hitting the target directly (proximity fuse) and packs way more punch (3-4 times heavier shell) than a regular 30 mm (like Pantsir, Tunguska or BMP-2/3).

Which all apparently translate to a higher kill probability against drone type targets. Come to think of it, S-60 was designed 80 years ago to protect the troops against relatively low and slow flying, propeller driven aerial vehicles.