This thread🧵will lay out the reasons I think the Russians blew the technological development necessary to deal with drone threats in Ukraine & elsewhere.
Like all really important problems, it starts with how badly you treat people...in this case, Russian engineers.👇 1/
Drones costing maybe $100,000 put between $50 million to $400 million in high tech aircraft out of action for months. There are a -lot- of implications in those numbers.
I wrote a blog post on that attack and 23 others between Jan & Aug 2018 here:
And while Russia is in a nasty situation regards up to date IC ships. The real issue with the TOR and Pantshir-1 isn't chips. It is the software processing it's radar returns.
Soviet era electrical engineers wrote really tight tight code that maxed out their systems performance compared to Western code practices.
They had no choice and were well rewarded when they did.
An electronically scanned radar has the ability to track a small, slow drone's doppler shift returns with the right software code using older IC chips, _IF_ you have the right engineering talent.
That talent left Putin's Russia.
Whatever Russia's corrupt military procurement system did in that time with the Pantshir-1 radar software.
It didn't involved anyone competent, assuming anything was done, other than someone stealing the money.
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The Coyote I was a propeller interceptor like the Ukrainian FPV's, but it wasn't "enough" for the higher end drone threat like the TB-2 Bayraktar.
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So the US military abandoned kinetic solutions the lower end drone threat.
And it has to pretend that high power microwave weapons and jamming will be the answer to fiber optic guided FPV's at weed height and grenade dropping drones behind tree lines.
The arrival of the Ukrainian Gogol-M, a 20-foot span fixed-wing aerial drone mothership, with over a 200km radius of action while carrying a payload of two 30km ranged attack drones under its wings, underlines the impact of low level airspace as a drone "avenue of approach."
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The Gogol-M flys low and slow, below ground based radar coverage like a helicopter.
It opens up headquarters, ground & air logistics in the operational depths to artificial intelligence aided FPV drone attacks.
This is the main example of one of the most unprofessional delusions held by the US Navalist wing of the F-35 Big/Expensive/Few platform and missile cult.
Russian fiber optic FPV's have a range of 50km - over the horizon!
Drones simply don't have ground line of sight issues like soldiers do.
Drones can see in more of the electromagnetic spectrum than humans.
And the US Army refuses to buy enough small drones (1 m +) to train their troops to survive on the drone dominated battlefield.🤢🤮
2/3
"Just send a drone" is the proper tactic for almost everything a 21st century infantryman does from patrolling, raiding enemy positions, sniping and setting up forward observation posts.
3/3
The odds are heavily in favor of the IDF having parked Hermes drones with "Gorgon Stare" technology over Tehran to hunt Iranian senior government officials.