Missile R-60 avvistato su Shahed per la prima volta: la Russia arma i droni con armi aria-aria
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/r-60-missile-spotted-on-shahed-for-the-first-time-russia-arming-drones-with-air-to-air/
di Mil_in_ua
Missile R-60 avvistato su Shahed per la prima volta: la Russia arma i droni con armi aria-aria
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/r-60-missile-spotted-on-shahed-for-the-first-time-russia-arming-drones-with-air-to-air/
di Mil_in_ua
12 commenti
….So they put an air-to-air missile on a disposable drone missile. What. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of making a cheap, long-range surface-to-surface terror bombing weapon?
This is an even stronger case for using interceptor drones.
If Russia wants to waste missiles, let them. That’s one less they can use to defend their own country.
How does the drone decide when to fire the missile? That would require some kind of trigger or even remote control…. also how heavy is this whole thing with pilon, it certainly didnt help the shahed flying too well
Cobra Commander forgot to paint them all bright red first.
(If you didn’t have G.I. Joe or Action Man growing up, it was a comic book/cartoon/toy line from the early 1980s, and most of the toy vehicles launched giant missiles that were painted bright red)
Another way to extend the range of short range missiles. Ukraine should adapt this.
Maybe they’re getting low on Shahed stockpiles, so they maximise the potential effect of a swarm with one or two short range missiles in the mix.
Isn’t the R-60 basically a Russian Sidewinder?
2017 MQ-9 shot down a drone with an AIM-9 and later a shot down a simulated cruise missile in tests with an AIM-9X
Recently a Turkish drone did a BVR shot with a radar guided missile and killed a jet powered target drone.
In theory the US tried that when they armed a reaper with stingers. It didn’t work but it’s not an unprecedented tactic. Fire the missile when a suitable heat source appears. Force the pilot to evade and waste time and fuel. Maybe you get lucky.
This indirectly shows the unforgivable idiocy of the slow-drip of NATO’s military aid and talking heads in the West who think that they’re so tough with the mantra “For As Long As It Takes™”.
The Russians are demonstrably stupider than the average Ukrainian, *but they still do learn even if slowly*. This is something that too many Westerners refuse to grasp when they scrupulously hyperventilate over Russian Escalation™ and think that the Ukrainians can hold off the Russian hordes indefinitely with one hand tied behind their back.
This kind of battlefield experimentation would have been unthinkable in late 2022 when even mass drone attacks at long range were unheard of. Note that the R-60 or AA-8 “Aphid” dates from the 1970s so it’s not that absurd or costly for the Russians to experiment on their plentiful inventory Shaheds this way.
If fresh off their triumph in liberating Kherson in late 2022, the Ukrainians had instead started to get the NATO-grade military help that they had been (and still are) screaming and dying for, it’s then very doubtful that the Russians would still be in Ukraine in 2025 and had this much opportunity to gain first-hand experience and experimentation with massed drone warfare – elements conspicuously absent in every other military apart from the ZSU.
A little bit related to tgis idea, which I have described here before, is drones using other drones as the intercept method.
My suggestiom was that Drone A, which is more likely larger, has decent cruise speed and range, is equipoed with the sensor platform for hunting drone targets.
Drone B, which may be carried aboard Drone A and / or joins it from the ground or other carrier, is designed to be as low cost as possible, flying in front of the detector drone, using beam riding, optical or radio control, and a low cost terminal engagement / proximity intercept method. It doesnt even need higher end infra red cameras.
Drone A would be the most expensive part, such as possessing halfway decent radar costing tens of thousands of dollars. Therefore we dont want to sacrifice it.
Drone B may possess simple, low cost very close proximity sensors and steered in front of drone A at a fixed distance then can intercept via a low cost sensor and terminal guidance system / proximity fuse.
Now if the interceptor is ground launched then it may use battery or a low cost pulse jet, as may drone A, which may also use other engine technologies, so when the enemy attempts to swarm gaps in defenses you can shore up an area.
Battery drones work… but only barely. Due to limited energy they cannot close large distances, have to be launched from fairly ideal location, and struggle to reach higher altitude. They dont have much time to catch the target area and then seek and find the target, hence about 3 are needed to do the job. It wont be long before enemy drones use higher cruise speed and altitude to evade these. Its a different story though if they are launched by the detector drone which uses higher energy density propulsion systems. The terminal drone could be battery, rocket, pulse jet etc. Pulse jets have demonstrated decent thrust and range for larger medium range drones.
A carrier drone could also be battery powered and have larger size, carrying interceptor drones, there is a scale advantage that going bigger reduces aerodynamic drag proportionately to payload at a high speed so it could intercept incomming drones with onboard interceptors up to a few tens of km away, launch last km interceptor drones and return. This would bridge between current battery interceptor drones and longer range and bigger platforms like conventional aircraft, in range. More expensive power plants could extend range and cruise speed considerably.