Russian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

gelgoog said:

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It seems to use a custom GNSS system with multiple sensors. I also would not be surprised if they took into account GPS, Glonass, and Beidou signals simultaneously to compute the position.

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GNSS + INS + kalman filter can give good relative accuracy but the civilian error of a gnss signal can put you a few meters away even if the software thinks if in the correct position.

Chilled_k6 said:

I watched a Liu XiaoFei video recently where he speculates Shahed-136 may use Millimeter wave Active Radar Homing. Possible that Shahed-136 doesn't have a "man-in-the loop" function unlike Harop. Maybe someone who knows more about the drone types and guidance can expand more on this.

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Millimeter wave Active Radar Homing could be an explanation.

Abominable said:

It's strange, even a plain optical camera would have been useful and not added much cost or weight. I imagine the Iranians struggled to integrate the electronics or datalink.

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An cheap optical sensor with a few algorithms would have made this drone even more dangerous, with the ability of hitting moving targets.

Either way or they are using military grade GNSS reciver or some kind of sensor. If is the first then it could be a problem for the Russians once they run out military chips, they will have to downgrade to civilians Chinese GNSS receivers reducing accuracy. Lets see what happens.

gelgoog said:

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It seems to use a custom GNSS system with multiple sensors. I also would not be surprised if they took into account GPS, Glonass, and Beidou signals simultaneously to compute the position.

Click to expand...

Very interesting. Is really just a waypoint guided bomb.

tokenanalyst said:

GNSS + INS + kalman filter can give good relative accuracy but the civilian error of a gnss signal can put you a few meters away even if the software thinks if in the correct position.


Millimeter wave Active Radar Homing could be an explanation.

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An cheap optical sensor with a few algorithms would have made this drone even more dangerous, with the ability of hitting moving targets.

Either way or they are using military grade GNSS reciver or some kind of sensor. If is the first then it could be a problem for the Russians once they run out military chips, they will have to downgrade to civilians Chinese GNSS receivers reducing accuracy. Lets see what happens.

Click to expand...

They will only need access to military GLONASS, the build quality of the chip isn't important for something disposable.

Far more likely its only using combined GPS+GLONASS+Galileo+Beidou like many smartphones and civilian drones do.

gelgoog said:

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It seems to use a custom GNSS system with multiple sensors. I also would not be surprised if they took into account GPS, Glonass, and Beidou signals simultaneously to compute the position.

Click to expand...

Interesting...so it does confirm the drone uses INS which would explain why jamming hasn't been able to stop them.

No mention of the airframe composition here, but I saw pictures that showed it's basic construction. I can't find them now, but it looked to be composite laminate with an inner honeycomb.

Overall the design doesn't seem to be very efficient for its purpose, It does the job, but it could be better. The delta wing design is probably what gives it the relatively low payload for it's weight. I think the Iranians have captured an American or Israeli drone and copied the design.

The Iranians or Russians need to look at some of the latest Chinese drones.

Tam said:

They will only need access to military GLONASS, the build quality of the chip isn't important for something disposable.

Far more likely its only using combined GPS+GLONASS+Galileo+Beidou like many smartphones and civilian drones do.

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Yes, is now difficult to know if the use of civilian GNSS receivers in this drone will benefit one side or the other in this conflict. Looking the datasheets and doing lab testing of commercial receivers could help the Ukrainians to develop counter defenses like jamming or sending confusing signals. In the other hand the Russians could built thousands upon thousands of this drones really cheap, because the parts are really common in the electronics market.
Unless this is a Software Define GNSS receiver,the article only mention that uses TI micro-controllers but do not mention any known commercial receivers, if that is the case then Iranians may have built defenses in software along with filtering algorithms for the INS units to work coupled with the GNSS to increase accuracy.

Abominable said:

Interesting...so it does confirm the drone uses INS which would explain why jamming hasn't been able to stop them.

No mention of the airframe composition here, but I saw pictures that showed it's basic construction. I can't find them now, but it looked to be composite laminate with an inner honeycomb.

Overall the design doesn't seem to be very efficient for its purpose, It does the job, but it could be better. The delta wing design is probably what gives it the relatively low payload for it's weight. I think the Iranians have captured an American or Israeli drone and copied the design.

The Iranians or Russians need to look at some of the latest Chinese drones.

Click to expand...

On the other hand, does China actually have an exact version of this type of suicide drone?

They have CH-901 in swarm configuration, but these drones don't seem to have as good range as Shahed-136

GB-6A and WS-43 seem to fit the bill in some ways, but I don't think they can be launched en masse from 1 truck.

Theres so many drone variants in the PLA its hard to find a specific one lol. But most Chinese drones focus on EW and ISR.

tokenanalyst said:

Weird because is seems too accurate to be using just a civilian GNSS signal and a INS system, errors could be up to 5-10 meters, good to hitting buildings but not vehicles. You could navigate the drone using way-points but hitting a target that accurate I think some sort of fixing is needed, maybe they have a cheap camera under the belly that allow the drone to fix into a target.

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Or maybe they use the GLONASS or BeiDou military channels.

There is a high chance for a russian acces to the BeiDou and general satelite inteligence of the Chinese, and Iran should have full access to the GLONASS now.

Probably the drones could have Russian navigation equipment - should explain the different markings compared to the original Iranian drones.

tankphobia said:

Looking at the PLA UAV thread, LQ-302 comes to mind for something of similar/better capability, with swarm capability of up to 25 combat units and you can probably flatpack 50 of them in a truck seeing as the wing folds. It's probably a fair bit more expensive tho, since it will also have some ISR capability compared to the Shahed-136 which is really just a rudimentary cruise missile if you want to be pedantic about it.

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The Iranian drones are probably as good as they could be given the limitations of being sanctioned. Russia will now have the same limitations. They will learn from Iran how to use civilian tech to build simple weapons that work. Hopefully Russia will now serve as a conduit to trade Chinese electronics via Russia to Iran and North Korea

tokenanalyst said:

GNSS + INS + kalman filter can give good relative accuracy but the civilian error of a gnss signal can put you a few meters away even if the software thinks if in the correct position.

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The best accuracy can be down to centimeter level. The measure is to have another ground station (as small as a SLR camera standing on a tripod) on an accurately measured know location near the target area. The base station would then send its measurement to users such as the drone in the area. The users will use the measurement for correction. The accuracy improvement is determined by the distance between the ground station and the target area.

In case of this war, Russia can put many such stations near the frontline.

taxiya said:

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The best accuracy can be down to centimeter level. The measure is to have another ground station (as small as a SLR camera standing on a tripod) on an accurately measured know location near the target area. The base station would then send its measurement to users such as the drone in the area. The users will use the measurement for correction. The accuracy improvement is determined by the distance between the ground station and the target area.

In case of this war, Russia can put many such stations near the frontline.

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Could be but using base stations sounds logistically complicated because most of those stations cannot be more than a few dozen of kilometers. Another option is that they are using Russia own GNSS augmentation system that overlaps over East Ukraine. That will put the accuracy of this drones into the sub-meter range.