L’esercito ucraino ha installato un lanciatore di granate anticarro su un drone. Il primo drone del mondo lavorerà contro gli attacchi di carrozzeria e fanteria russa

Flying rocket launchers, absolutely crazy

This was something that right at the beginning of the conflict I thought made sense, essentially a delivery system for systems like the NLAW.

The issue with man portable ATGMs and AT grenades is that you have to get people dangerously close to tanks.

The first idea was to devise a winged drone possibly with Vtol capability that can aim and shoot from behind a tree line, for example.

In the case of the NLAW, there is a reusable component, so the computer and optics tells the missile how far away the target is, estimates the time taken to reach the target, and adds in the predicted location. From this the computer plots the flightpath for the missile. All this can be reused, slashing cost.

The missile has sensors on it in look down mode and flies at a set height over the ground. One of the sensors is a magnetic field detector. Then it top attacks when it thinks it’s over the target.

As such a missile can travel 2km, with a drone carrier we might only need 1km or even less. This slashes rocket motor and system weight.

Since those are still expensive, I suggested also unguided weapons like the PARM mine which have a very fast burning rocket motor and are accurate out to 100m, and very cheap. Most EW jamming system effect is under 100m based on accounts I’ve come across. I also suggested to look at the SPIKE rocket motor from the 60s and 70s, which was very accurate and about a 2 second burn time, also just over a kg and using cheap materials. This could be connected to a grenade for launch against less armoured targets. Somebody is actually building their own SPIKE on YouTube. It uses a kevlar wound rocket motor and a fast burning propellant, although you could make it a bit slower. The kinetic energy round was hypervelocity, and our payload mass is higher. This suggests UA can make rocket motors for drones.

But the closest thing I’ve yet seen to a carrier designed for such tasks is the Jackal, and RPG cases used as bodies for multicopters is in fact a several years old idea, I believe Belarus had designed one. It would fire RPGs.

At low altitude a winged drone should be difficult to spot, and it’s approach and exit is faster, so reducing the odds of being seen.

Countershading is a simple technology that can hide areas of the body against the sky.

Another suggestion is the use of view through AI and machine vision. The guided rocket, or glide bomb dropped from a drone, in the future can have a simple camera and object tracking, which is cheap. The carrier vehicle through a feed to its computer, designated the object in the terminal device using object recognition AI, so it can approach further into EW denied zones. The expensive part comes back.

Damn… even a recoilless launcher will have some kick for a drone.