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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

Look how it folds out in Libya:

1. Kaftar has all fancy jet fighters from Russians, and Egyptians. $50m apiece, tear Turkish drones left, and right.

2. The government has Turkish drones, $2m apiece. By the time Kaftar's Mig inflicts a single loss, a swarm of 5 drones already bombed that Mig's airfield to smithereens.

Government forces can expend all of their drones to get an enemy airfield, and they would still win the trade.

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FYI: Most Russian military aircraft don't need much of an airfield - grass or gravel is fine.

Source?

Not sure where one would find definitive information on it but it seems to be 'common knowledge' that the Russian air force has to have such a capability because of the lack of development in distant parts of the country.

Anyway there are videos of aircraft doing it like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVJWm0lf9v4.

And this one is on a proper runway but illustrates the toughness of Russian/Soviet designs: a landing gear failure where the aircraft was apparently flying again after two or three days

Of course the A10 can also use dirt runways.

АН-2 is not exactly a military aircraft.

So 5 drones big ones which will be sub sonic - lets say so 5x 500kg - you might do some damage - but not that much - and who Is painting the targets for the drones

A single 100kg bomb, well placed, will do the airstrip, making it unusable from hours, to days.

As I understood, they are mostly targeting planes on the ground, and equipment

Not from WW2 experience in the Battle Of Britain the RAF manged to repair air strips very quickly - and the Black Buck raids on the Falkland's by V Bombers was only partially successful

Satellite imagery of the location yields LAT/LONG coordinates that are then used for INS/GPS guided bombs. No need to paint an un-moving target nowadays. Also, if the electronic signals environment allows it, drone operators can use FLIR/TV guided munitions like Mavericks and Hellfires or buddy-lase using a targeting pod.

Jamming that stops signals to drones is an iffy proposition since it makes the jammer an easy target for anti-radiation and home on jamming capable missiles like the HARM and the AAMRAM.

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