Small UAS / Drones and related general thread - NOT Swarming ones.

So another SA-11 Gadfly launcher (And its' missiles) bite the dust. Are there any figures available on how many SA-11/17/27 systems have been destroyed so far?
 
Shahad struck a bridge
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Also for my own self-interest, which is the correct map of Ukraine? A or B? google image search is showing me a lot of different results.
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Polish Shahed 131 unveiled at the 33rd international Defence Industry Exhibition (MSPO) in Poland.
It is intended as a dual use system with a variant for training AA/AD crews against OWA drones,but is also capable of being deployed as a OWA drone with a range of 900kms & a warhead of 20kgs
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Named PLargonia,perhaps for the genus Pelargonium that includes Geranium [Geran];)
 
 
NMaude said:
I'm not certain but I think that Ukrainian drones and missiles have now put out of action ~25% of Russian oil-refinery capacity.
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Problem with calculations like these is they always assume damage is massive , permanent or at least long term, but so far troughout this war most disruptions to rafineries did not even last a month, very few over 2 months and rare exeptions took longer. Many of these rafineries were attacked multiple times already due to plants resuming production after a short hiatus.

Other thing is hiatus at rafineries makes more crude availible for export , export of crude is not affected at all.

Of course Russian retaliation on thermal power plants will in many cases not be repaired for years if ever. 70% of Ukrainan power generation is off line and they are pissing of their largest electricity provider.

Now we wait and see if Ukraine goes for full FAFO , its attacking druzba pipeline to Slovakia and Hungary while being reliant on Hungarian electricity in like 40% . and It could turn of the Druzhba flow if they wanted in Ukraine.
Meanwhile buying Russian oil from India. And all on not their own money.
 
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Some news agencies tried to calculate production loss based on outputs and how many cracking lines were down. I would be extremely careful with those numbers since information is scarce, not all lines (or indeed most) run at full capacity and have production slack, and there is incomplete information as to when repairs are made.

But it is fair to say there is a real impact from this campaign compared to last year’s attemp. That probably does not mean much long term unless the current tempo of operations against refineries can be maintained.
 
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As to Hungary, Ukraine may get 40% of its electricity from there, but Hungary in return gets something like 80-100% of its oil through the same pipeline that runs through Ukraine. It it is a little baffling why they are targeting it in Russia, but I think they can get away with it.
 
Mr.T said:
Problem with calculations like these is they always assume damage is massive , permanent or at least long term, but so far troughout this war most disruptions to rafineries did not even last a month, very few over 2 months and rare exeptions took longer.
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Until recently the Ukrainians have been hitting these Russian refineries that were within drone range with small drones that would knock their cracking and/or distillation towers offline for a few weeks before moving on to the next refinery (They basically appear to have been testing out their attack strategy) which were working (Why else was Russia pressuring the previous Biden administration to get Ukraine to stop those attacks). But now Ukraine has changed its' Russian refineries attack strategy where they are now repeatedly striking the same refineries to keep them offline (Also those distillation and cracking towers use western (Mostly German) tech and technical help (Since pulled out) which they great trouble maintaining with the sanctions in place) and they're now starting to attack with cruise-missiles which carry far larger warheads.​
 
I do not think any FP-5 usage has been confirmed outside the initial location in Crimea. I suspect it will be rather obvious when that particular UAV/missile hits something; they are 10-20x larger warheads than almost every other munition/drone Ukraine deploys.
 
Josh_TN said:
I do not think any FP-5 usage has been confirmed outside the initial location in Crimea.
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That particular mission appears to have been a field test so there will no doubt be some adjustments done before we see more strikes using it, as for future uses the impression I get is that the Ukrainians are in the process of stockpiling these new missiles in preparation for mass missile raids.
 
NMaude said:
Until recently the Ukrainians have been hitting these Russian refineries that were within drone range with small drones that would knock their cracking and/or distillation towers offline for a few weeks before moving on to the next refinery (They basically appear to have been testing out their attack strategy) which were working (Why else was Russia pressuring the previous Biden administration to get Ukraine to stop those attacks). But now Ukraine has changed its' Russian refineries attack strategy where they are now repeatedly striking the same refineries to keep them offline (Also those distillation and cracking towers use western (Mostly German) tech and technical help (Since pulled out) which they great trouble maintaining with the sanctions in place) and they're now starting to attack with cruise-missiles which carry far larger warheads.​
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What Russian pressuring of Biden admin?Biden admin did not talk to Russians at all. No need to make shit up , pressure was purely due to US domestic politics pre elections.
https://www.politico.eu/article/report-us-urges-ukraine-stop-attacking-russian-oil-refineries/
US was pressuring Ukraine in fear of higher gasoline prices in the US election year and because trade off for ukraine was extremely bad , 2 weeks offline in a refinery for a power plant that went offline permanently to be rebuilt in a decade or two.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries have been ongoing since 2022 were hailed as hail Mary already then . Like everthing else in this war turned out not to be a gamechanger and no its not some super duper German tech that is irreplaceable, what Russians can't China can replace.


Ukraine war information space 101
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Mr.T said:
Biden admin did not talk to Russians at all.
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I stand corrected.

Mr.T said:
No need to make shit up
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I wasn't making stuff up that's the impression I had got and heard.

Mr.T said:
pressure was purely due to US domestic politics pre elections.
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Typical and unsurprising but the US doesn't seem to understand that forcing Russia to export crude-oil actually depresses the crude-oil price/barrel if they can't export refined petroleum products (Such as petrol, diesel and kerosene) which is where they really make their money.
 
Mr.T said:
Problem with calculations like these is they always assume damage is massive , permanent or at least long term, but so far troughout this war most disruptions to rafineries did not even last a month, very few over 2 months and rare exeptions took longer. Many of these rafineries were attacked multiple times already due to plants resuming production after a short hiatus.
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Is there organized information on refineries repairs posted somewhere? Does the public have information on production volumes?

And there is the question of cost of repairs. Sanctions means few supplier choices and one wonder how much Russia have to pay for it.

Mr.T said:
Of course Russian retaliation on thermal power plants will in many cases not be repaired for years if ever. 70% of Ukrainan power generation is off line and they are pissing of their largest electricity provider.
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I don't think Russia would *not* pressure Ukrainian forces via efficient vectors, there is no agreements here and it doesn't make sense game theory wise in a largely zero sum conflict.

Mr.T said:
Like everthing else in this war turned out not to be a gamechanger
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War of attrition and public support is years long grinding affairs where there are no gamechangers. What gamechangers did the talibans pull off?
 
I don’t see any reason you cannot just use longer fiber optic lines, though there is a weight penalty for the more you pack in.
 
What is so hard to create a lancet(nearly 4000 video recorded destruction of armored vehicles on lost armour) or a geran equivalent drone? It's not like we are rebuilding the nuclear bomb. Ukraine could have literally caused some bigger issues to the Russians, 3 in a half fucking years and still nothing.
 
Null said:
What is so hard to create a lancet(nearly 4000 video recorded destruction of armored vehicles on lost armour) or a geran equivalent drone? It's not like we are rebuilding the nuclear bomb. Ukraine could have literally caused some bigger issues to the Russians, 3 in a half fucking years and still nothing.
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Ukraine does have a rough Geran equivalent, the FP-1.

They are more resource limited than the Russians and had poor experience with US Switchblades apparently, so they seemed to not have subscribed to the long ranged tactical loitering munition in favor of more FPVs.
 

MASS nova ship protection system breaks cover at DSEI UK 2025​

https://www.navalnews.com/event-new...otection-system-breaks-cover-at-dsei-uk-2025/
In addition to the MASS nova launcher, Rheinmetall has also developed a new decoy technology. MASS nova launches a swarm of drones, the 3DDS (3D Decoy Swarm), from the platform. The drones act as a swarm and generate a three-dimensional radar signature that will be indistinguishable even from future threats. The swarm can separate from the ship, acting independently to generate ship-like manoeuvres, regardless of the wind or conditions.
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Josh_TN said:
I don’t see any reason you cannot just use longer fiber optic lines, though there is a weight penalty for the more you pack in.
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Those fibre-optic cables are vulnerable to snagging and on both sides soldiers have simply neutralised drones from the other side by simply using a pair of scissors to cut the cable.
 
NMaude said:
Those fibre-optic cables are vulnerable to snagging and on both sides soldiers have simply neutralised drones from the other side by simply using a pair of scissors to cut the cable.
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I suspect given the shear quantity of fiber optic cables draped across the landscape that the number of times an active one is manually cut mid mission is fleetingly small. Snags/pulls I assume do happen. In particular I would think fixed wing fiber deployment a little problematic.

I wonder if these wires would reflect anything if you could shine a suitably energetic laser on them. They are mostly invisible, but if you could detect an active drone dispersing one and had a means for visualizing the wire itself, following it back to the source would be pretty trivial. Likely you could almost immediately determine bearing, and perhaps back tracking several would triangulate a small area sensors or artillery could focus on. But there would need to be some way of rapidly detecting the fibers, which I suspect are invisible to normal radar, IR, and EO sensors.
 
Mr.T said:
Problem with calculations like these is they always assume damage is massive , permanent or at least long term, but so far troughout this war most disruptions to rafineries did not even last a month, very few over 2 months and rare exeptions took longer. Many of these rafineries were attacked multiple times already due to plants resuming production after a short hiatus.

Other thing is hiatus at rafineries makes more crude availible for export , export of crude is not affected at all.

Of course Russian retaliation on thermal power plants will in many cases not be repaired for years if ever. 70% of Ukrainan power generation is off line and they are pissing of their largest electricity provider.

Now we wait and see if Ukraine goes for full FAFO , its attacking druzba pipeline to Slovakia and Hungary while being reliant on Hungarian electricity in like 40% . and It could turn of the Druzhba flow if they wanted in Ukraine.
Meanwhile buying Russian oil from India. And all on not their own money.
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Exclusive: Russia close to cutting oil output due to drone attacks, sources say​

https://www.reuters.com/business/en...put-due-drone-attacks-sources-say-2025-09-16/
 
I had this old belief that pre-dominant white and Asian countries will always be the ones that get credited for high end military technology. I feel like Iran has never got enough credit that what they created few years ago was revolutionary enough to change the fundamentals of current modern warfare and change my old belief.

1. Pumping out 500 Gerans a day (according to Ukrainians) any airbase with air defenses can get overwhelmed and destroyed based on their ranges.

2. Have not seen the drones be used this way but I think Geran-3s come with turbo jet engines meaning you can overwhelm other countries air force even those using 5th gens. Imagine launching 1000 Gerans and each of those have luneberg lens that match a sukhoi aircraft. They also have emitters to confuse RWRs and even the Sukhoi's can just operate using RWRs to see how close they are before turning their radars on targeting the adversary 5th gens or using IRST. Those Sukhoi's in the swarm can carry either air to air missiles or air to ground missiles following the swarm.

I honestly would not be surprised if some countries either slowed down on 5th gen aircraft production or orders, because their ranges are slightly more than the combat radius of military aircrafts being hosted in airbases. using million-dollar SAMs or air to air missiles on 10k dollar UAVs is not really sustainable for an actual war.
 
Null said:
I had this old belief that pre-dominant white and Asian countries will always be the ones that get credited for high end military technology. I feel like Iran has never got enough credit that what they created few years ago was revolutionary enough to change the fundamentals of current modern warfare and change my old belief.

1. Pumping out 500 Gerans a day (according to Ukrainians) any airbase with air defenses can get overwhelmed and destroyed based on their ranges.

2. Have not seen the drones be used this way but I think Geran-3s come with turbo jet engines meaning you can overwhelm other countries air force even those using 5th gens. Imagine launching 1000 Gerans and each of those have luneberg lens that match a sukhoi aircraft. They also have emitters to confuse RWRs and even the Sukhoi's can just operate using RWRs to see how close they are before turning their radars on targeting the adversary 5th gens or using IRST. Those Sukhoi's in the swarm can carry either air to air missiles or air to ground missiles following the swarm.

I honestly would not be surprised if some countries either slowed down on 5th gen aircraft production or orders, because their ranges are slightly more than the combat radius of military aircrafts being hosted in airbases. using million-dollar SAMs or air to air missiles on 10k dollar UAVs is not really sustainable for an actual war.
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Geran 2 likely is significantly more than $10,000, and certainly any turbojet version is far more expensive. So far Geran 3 has only been encountered in handfuls, not thousands. If you are talking about jet powered decoys, those already exist, ADM-160 being the first that comes to mind. Going forward, low cost cruise missiles with flexible payloads like Baracuda 500, Rusty Dagger, green/Red Wolf, etc likely take on the decoy and stand off jammer roles. All of these are ~$200,000 and have high subsonic speed. In the future these likely are directly controlled by software agents integrated into CCA operations.

Inexpensive UAVs/missiles definitely are a defense challenge, but traveling at 100 mph/150 kph also allows for a lot of low cost weapons to be brought to bear. The U.S. already has fielded a loadout for its F-15Es that includes 42 laser guided rockets. It’s worth pointing out that an F-15 is sufficiently faster than a Geran 2 that it could potentially land, rearm, and have another go at a formation of UAVs traveling at about 1/5th its cruise speed for a 1000 km (5-6 hour flight time). UAVs are a problem but they have limitations.
 

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