Have they really build something on Snake island or Ukraine just destroy their own captured infrastructures ? They probaby destroyed what have been left behind...
The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
At least they can reinforce that front... Kherson is way more isolated for the Russian with only 2 bridges to bring supplies if they are still up. I would not try to bring stuff by boats...it would not end well like we have seen.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
We should take care not to draw the wrong conclusions from this war.
Blitzkrieg is very much still a valid and vital military strategy, as was demonstrated during both Gulf Wars, and by the Russians themselves against Georgia.
The blunderings of the Russian military in Ukraine is very much a problem with how the Russians fought the war at the start, rather than an issue with the concepts of Blitzkrieg itself.
We do know what drones are being used. Drones have high failure rates. That's true whether they are Russian, Chinese, Turkish, American, etc. Even the latest tech American ones have had losses in deployment. Compared to piloted craft they are at least an order of magnitude more accident prone.
If they aren't being lost it's safe to say they aren't being used. The lack of MALE/HALE Russian drones being captured/shot down by Ukrainians tells me they aren't being used, or they don't exist.
We had a few days worth of Orion footage, then one was shot down. Since then I've not seen any more footage.
Or that Ukrainian air defenses no longer exist. The prodigious and precise Russian artillery bombardment you described against Ukrainian concentrations, ammo and supply depots and command outposts, are conducted with the required aid of Russian drones. Even higher ones would be needed to strike strategic targets deeper into West Ukraine, and they would be needed not just for the aim adjustment but damage and kill verification. The Russian MOD reports can be precise in reporting the number of destroyed targeted units and even human casualties, which if these reports are true, suggest the drones stay around long enough to assess damage and count casualties with optics that are sharp enough for the task.
An example would be soon after the Bayraktar drones destroyed those two patrol boats, the drones were quickly tracked to their airfield. The logistics center was identified with foreign weapons from the US, UK, etc,. Oniks missiles were dispatched and took out the center and drones. Such activity would not be made possible if the Russians don't have their own drones.
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Drones can fail even against militias without air defences. See the drones downed in Yemen, Syria, Kurdistan etc. Likely because of loss of communication with the drone, but it could be other reasons. The more sorties you have, the more drones you will lose due to technical issues. Look at the number of downed Orlan-10s for example.
Unless Russia has succeeded where every other national drone manufacturer hasn't.
Most of the Russian strikes on targets announced by the Russian MOD seem to be from missile attacks.
So what? At about $2 million per piece for non-western drones, they can fail all they want as long as they do their job
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I wasn't saying whether they are a good idea or not.
My point is if you want to know what drones each side is using, look at what the other side is capturing.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
That’s a conclusion based on a lot of unsubstantiated assumptions.
Firstly, you are assuming that all crashed drones will be found. That’s clearly not going to be the case here, especially when we are talking about small commercial stuff that both sides are using in large numbers.
Also, it’s noteworthy to stress that in the overwhelming majority of cases, crashes stuff are first discovered by local civilians who both know the area well and have the luxury of time and freedom of movement to come across them. In the Ukraine case, with the lion share of small drones being used on the frontlines, the likelihood of them being discovered is much reduced since most of the civilian population would have fled and those who haven’t wouldn’t be wondering an active battlefield; and because soldiers are probably too busy fighting or taking cover to notice or care about falling UAVs. Even if they did notice one falling, getting to it is potentially going to be difficult and dangerous.
Most commercial drones have a return home feature when contact is lost with the controller, and it’s a feature Orlan-10 also have. That means that even if contact is lost with Orlans, they will either be able to return to their launch points, or will crash in Russian controlled territory where the Ukrainians will not be able to document their loss.
You are also making the assumption that the Russians and Ukrainians are using their drones in the same way, which they are not.
The Russians are showing strike footage from missiles because that’s what they are using for most of the big strategic strikes, for tactical strikes, they use artillery. The Ukrainians don’t have that option, which is why they are reduced to releasing drone footage of tactical strikes against individual vehicles or soldiers.
There is going to be a vast difference in failure and attrition rates of drones from using them for stand-off recon compared to jury-rigging release mechanisms and strapping external loads they were never designed to carry to do poor man UCAV strikes.
You also have to consider the very different detection and AA assets both sides are using.
The Russians are publishing detailed breakdowns of their shootdowns of drones because they are using SAM and other air defence radars to track and engage these drones. The Ukrainians are almost certainly limited to MK1 eyeball for the most case. That means that their ability to detect Russian drones is going to be massively weaker compared to the Russians.
Rather than the Russians not conduction lots of drone operations, it’s more likely that a combination of the Russians using their drones primarily for observation rather than strike, and the lack of effective detection means on the Ukrainian side is creating the false illusion of safety, where the Ukrainians are not even aware that drones are being used against them most of the time.