Thread by @noclador

Ouch.
This thread was written by someone, who has never heard of the ScanEagle, RQ-7B Shadow, or RQ-20 Puma, which are the US military UAVs comparable to the Orlan-10.

To compare the Orlan-10 to the MQ-1C Gray Eagle is like comparing a scooter to a truck.

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Let's dissect Trent's thread:

russia says it built 1,000+ Orlan-10. Even if they built just half of that, then the loss of 50 isn't a problem for the russians, as there are at least 450 left.
The Orlan has a wingspan of 3.1m, is launched by catapult & lands by parachute.

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The MQ-1C Gray Eagle has a wingspan of 17m - you need to place 5.4x Orlan-10 wings next to each other to get the wingspan of a Gray Eagle.

These are two entirely different systems for entirely different tasks. To compare these two makes no sense at all.

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Then Trent writes: "US Army ... needs a drone 1/5 the cost, five times the numbers and about 70% the capability of a Grey Eagle."

The US Army already has such a drone. Since 2002. And 500+ pieces of it. The RQ-7B Shadow has a wingspan of 4.3m and s launched by catapult.

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The US Army also has 325+ RQ-20 Puma, which has a wingspan of 2.8m and is launched by hand.

This is basic level information about the US Army. Every brigade has Puma and Shadow, and the combat aviation brigades have more Shadows and the Gray Eagles.

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And the Marine Corps uses the Shadow, the Puma, and the ScanEagle. The ScanEagle has a wingspan of 3.1m and is launched by catapult too.

To dare fault the US Army for not having a drone like the Orlan-10 is not knowing anything about the US Army's equipment and drones.

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Next Trent mentions the S-60 57 mm anti-aircraft gun as something to use to shoot down russian drones like the Orlan-10... which flies at 5,000m... while the S-60 can reach only to 4,000 with luck.
And if you open all 50 images of @oryxspioenkop's excellent list of
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russian Orlan-10 loses you will see that most of the Orlan's came down undamaged. They fell out of the sky because they ran out of fuel, flew out of range, or got jammed by the Ukrainians.

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Last but not least... the whole Hellfire missiles on the Gray Eagle vs. the MAM glide bombs on the TB2 part... that makes no sense... because again two systems are compared that have different uses and exist for different reasons. And the TB2 part totally ignores the

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development of the TB2 successor Akıncı, which is even bigger than the Gray Eagle and carries up to 8x Hellfire clones.

Enough now. I know there are many twitter users, who know even more than me about the US Army's drones and I would love to hear their take on this topic.

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