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Comment by throw93232 | Hacker News Reader

This drones are almost useless against modern army with good anti air defense.

Here is Indian article with some technical details. https://www.defenceview.in/why-did-the-turkish-tb2-uav-sudde...

This seems superficially reasonable, but it looks like the TB2 Bayraktar was used to bomb the fuel depot in Bryansk less than two weeks ago and that's 150km into Russia. They seemed to have used the TB2 the other day on Snake Island. As of a week ago there had been 6 internationally confirmed incidents where a Tb2 was shot down. They were known to have had at least 20 when the war started and have received more sense. So it doesn't seem like they've disappeared at all. So one can only assume that either Russia's air defense isn't as good as everyone thought, they aren't using it effectively, or the drone is harder to shoot down as operated than people thought.

> So one can only assume that either Russia's air defense isn't as good as everyone thought, they aren't using it effectively, or the drone is harder to shoot down as operated than people thought.

All of the above I bet.

That's what seems to be the case, but I don't know enough to really make sense of it.

> So one can only assume that either Russia's air defense isn't as good as everyone thought

I think a big risk here is thinking that only Russia is less competent than advertised. My guess is that 90% of professional militaries (at least those without a LOT of active recent combat) are Potemkin villages wholly incapable of operating as advertised.

Against any of those militaries, things which really should not work, frequently will work fine.

It's a very solvable problem though. At least for countries other than Russia, which might not be technically nimble enough to adapt mid-conflict and under a strong sanctions regime. S-300s/S-400s/Buks and the somewhat rarer western equivalents like the Patriot system just aren't designed to target something flying that slow with that small of a radar cross section. That doesn't mean the drones aren't reasonably easy to detect and target, just that the targeting systems need to be fine-tuned a little.

I doubt NATO would have this problem, not only because Turkey is part of NATO but because US tactics would probably be more effective against similar drones. We rely on fighters to establish air superiority more than SAMs, while the Russians do the opposite. Worst case scenario, F-15s/16s/22s/35s can use cannons and pilots are more adaptable than radar systems. I also suspect that the F-35's sensors at least are far superior to whatever the Russians are relying on.

I am also somewhat suspicious of the reports we have heard about them striking deep within Russian territory. Not because I doubt their veracity, but because I am certain we are not getting all of the relevant information. I wouldn't be surprised to find out if there was some supplementary SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) going on that Ukraine and its western allies are remaining tight lipped about. It wouldn't shock me to find out that NATO has some clever trick for blinding Russian SAM radar in a way that the Russians haven't figured out yet. The Russians would never ever admit the existence of such a capability publicly because it would totally destroy demand for their military exports, and NATO wouldn't want to tip their hand in anyway that would give the Russians an opportunity to adapt.

The problem is that I think it is very hard for a modern fighter jet to engage a slow and low drone with a cannon. Probably it is easier with missles, but not very cost effective.

Probably anti-drone drones or some sort of CIWS is going more effective.

I mentioned cannons as the absolute worst case option in case US air-to-air missiles suffer from the same issues as Russian SAMs appear to, and from the perspective of extant US capabilities that could be adapted and rapidly fielded for immediate use. My ultimate point being that we're just way better positioned to handle these drones right now and into the near future than the Russians are or will be.

> We rely on fighters to establish air superiority more than SAMs, while the Russians do the opposite. Worst case scenario, F-15s/16s/22s/35s can use cannons and pilots are more adaptable than radar systems. I also suspect that the F-35's sensors at least are far superior to whatever the Russians are relying on.

Or just, ya know, shoot the damn thing.

The specs are well within what you can expect to hit with with an "old enough they give them out like candy" AA gun.

They really aren't. The TB2 can loiter at 18,000 ft, or about 5.5km. 20mm guns max effective range is about 1,500m. 40mm are better, but still max out at about 7,000m. You're not going to be able to hit it. That assumes you can even see it, which you probably can't.

The problem with using AA against drones is that saturating an area with very cheap drones is a great way to depleting the AA resources, as the Armenians unfortunately found out.

A Patriot missile - usually priced at about $3m (£2.5m) - was used to shoot down a small quadcopter drone, according to a US general. The strike was made by a US ally, Gen David Perkins told a military symposium. "That quadcopter that cost 200 bucks from Amazon.com did not stand a chance against a Patriot," he said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39277940 (2017)

Assuming 10,000 patriot missiles have been manufactured[1], it would cost only $2 million in quadcopters[2] to deplete the entire missile supply? What a bargain!

1. apologies for lacking a better source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot

2. i.e. 2/3rds the cost of a single missile

Not to mention the possibility of operating swarms of drones to overwhelm air defenses. If an attacker can launch one drone for $200, it isn't much harder for them to launch fifty for $10,000 -- and it's a lot harder (and more expensive) to defend against.

There are systems in the west that can counter drones much more economically. Heres Rheinmetals Oerlikon Skynex for instance ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DXpPmpmcak Long range missiles, Short range missiles, Lasers and electronic warfare modules in combination for static defence. I would assume that the U.S also has similar concepts.

From the article:

>"Military analysts had previously assumed that slow, low-flying drones would be of little use in conventional combat, but the TB2 can take out the anti-aircraft systems that are designed to destroy it."

The article describes how they’ve fared far better than expected against good air defense. For example flying an unmanned crop duster in, drawing missile fire, taking out missile battery.

That's funny because there is countless footage of TB2 blowing up the very systems that are meant to defeat them so easily. What's the obsession in India with Ukrainian ops? Is it just a government desperately needing to justify it's wholly Russian-built army?

From what I can see on twitter, there is a deep-rooted turkophobia in India. Add to that Pakistan's interest in the Bayraktar drones, you have a copium induced hatred.

> deep-rooted turkophobia in India.

Yeah, no. Turkey is too distant to take up any mindspace in India. The two countries don't really have an intersecting or conflicting interests.

Remember, most of what we read on the internet is written by insane people.[1] That's doubly true for Twitter. Any conclusions you draw from them will be hopelessly inaccurate.