Ukraine's New Factory-Smashing Drone Is a $90k Sport Plane with a Robot At | Hacker News Reader

Ukraine's New Factory-Smashing Drone Is a $90k Sport Plane with a Robot At

forbes.com

22 pointsmywacaday29 comments

A small attack like this isn't very damaging in itself. But if it triggers a response that spreads air defense thinner and draws resources to the rear, it can have huge secondary effects. One of the effects could be added restrictions on air traffic or even friendly fire on civil aircraft when they are mistaken for attack drones.

Russian strikes in all of Ukraine are a common occurrence; in my newspapers those get hardly even summarized anymore. Looks like such attacks will become more common on the Russian side as well.

A lot of talk on missing air defenses for this topic. But I’m curious about the lack of radar detection and Air Force intercept on such a slow plane. It seems like this might be a weapon that can exploit Russian incompetence, but would otherwise be written off as too easily defeated to be worth considering.

Its not even incompetence. Its impossible to cover such a big area with radar and AA.

At 50 miles range each hound aviation radar, I’d of imagined a sort of screen, placing them every 100 miles towards the Ukrainian border. But perhaps that’s not something they’re equipped to handle?

Can low-flying defeat those?

I mean you don't have to cover the entire area of the country, you can cover the borders and then around key potential target areas, right?

In this case, they would of course want to focus on the border with Ukraine, unless Ukraine somehow starts launching these from entirely different countries.

Well they had airborne radar systems but the Ukrainians downed one A50.

Those aircraft are irreplicable - no longer manufactured and it took them a few years at great cost to build the 6 they have now never mind training the crew to operate it.

Actually they downed 2. First above Azov sea Jan 14th 2024, which Russians furiously claimed that it was work of their own SAM. Second 23rd of February, where was also a video of A50 dropping flares and then getting hit.

Furthermore there is one A50 getting attacked by FPV while on Airport in Belarus on Feb 26th 2023 and attack on Taganrog service airbase in March 2024 where hangar was targeted, according to satellite one A50 destroyed.

That makes 4 of 6 lost?

One FF more or less admitted, maybe two. In the later case we have the missile launch on tape. No Ukies anywhere close. Belarus a hilariously wasted opportunity. Taganrog on tape flying away the next day.

So in short, 1–2 destroyed, 0/4 destroyed by Ukraine. Also, even Budallo said six A-50U remaining.

Also, they are not “irreplacable”. A-50U production got restarted, there’s a number of airframes to upgrade/refurbish, plus there’s the A-100 project.

A100 project has been talked about for years and Ukraine already drone striked the plant where the A50 refurbishments happen (there is only one in Russia thanks to central planning).

It smacked into the hangar where the damaged A50 from Belarus was being repaired.

Cold war relic and in the mean time NATO is flying off in international waters near the Black Sea sending back telemetry and signals data to Kyiv - not the kind of war that Russia ever thought about.

Nice little touchdown it was. But that’s all it was. At least there was some doubt and ambiguity then; these days it’s just plain parallel universes: https://x.com/chronology22/status/1776661958827151663

>not the kind of war Russia ever thought about

Did the NATO ubermenschen of March ‘22 imagine getting themselves fried in musty old Soviet bunkers? Did they imagine they’d end up burning a cool quarter trillion and still lose? Did they picture their fancy schmancy hangar queens stuck deep in mud, being among the easiest prey for the new threats? Did they picture entire Patriot batteries gone in one strike? Did they unironically think they could “just drive around” or punch through the minefields? Did they ever consider the logistics of something that wasn’t a three week airland wet dream? Barrels? Shells?

Did Ukropians think twice before dooming themselves demographically and economically, for updoots and likes?

Good news, this isn’t even the funny part yet.

After 4 were destroyed, they stopped appearing in Azov sea. If it would be just a FF, they could have solved it by improving AA processes, but Russians stopped using A50 in general.

I think Russia doesn't have an unlimited supply of AA weapons. Most are close to the front, many around Moscow and St.Petersburg, and there are many factories and refineries in Russia to cover.

Why their drone factory is not defended properly though, beats me.

Also don't forget Mathias Rust, who landed near the Red Square with a Cessna in 1987, who was tracked, lost, tracked again and lost again.

Maybe they were defending them. Ukrainians have successfully used multiple waves to 'off load' AA defense in Crimea.

They dont have to have unlimited. They only need to be more than effective for their nukes to wipe American off the planet. Say 8K nukes delivered to USA with 95% effective detonation, while USA deliver just 30% effectiveness. And that is probably only less than 2K can be launched (30% out of 2K against a target area twice American size). Americans weapon effectiveness are at joke level these days. Russians will rewrite human civilizations and Americans will only be a minor Russian history footnote 200 years from now. And we havnt count in Indians and Chinese making Americans 300M truly irrelevant in future global populations even with nuke wars happening. Dont believe me, look at Solyndra competiting against Chinese solar panel. They are gone and no one even remember much. Or how about Segway? You probably know Xiaomi and Ninebot more. Motorola? A lot of Americans corporations now erased from public memory and dominated by Chinese one. American culture also significantly reduced compare to what it was in the heydays of 70s.

Afaik Russian air defense systems are geared towards intercepting fast moving ballistic objects and not slow propeller driven aircraft flying close to the ground hence why Ukranian drone strikes are so difficult for them to intercept.

You need air defense systems that are geared towards that like the Gepard and NASAMS and not Patroits.

Might be a slow moving, low flying civilian air craft isn't what the AA system is looking for as a possible threat.

Russia is big. They cannot cover the whole country so they prioritize what they think are high value/risk targets by moving protection to those places leaving less risk places undefended. In turn Ukraine is looking for places not protected.

Note that this factory was thought to be beyond Ukraine's reach. So considering it very low risk and thus not worth protected seemed like the right choice. Only in hindsight do we know it is in reach and thus not very low risk. Even now it is hard to know how Russia should assign risk.

I wonder how it navigates to target. Is it targeted like a cruise missile or piloted like a drone?

I'm confident it follows a preprogrammed course. Piloting it from remote would be hard to achieve in such a deep attack and the radio link would expose it to detection and jamming.

Ukraine's naval drones are a combination of automated and remote piloted using StarLink (with some lag). So it is possible that these aerial drones are some combination of automated and remote piloted.

Wow, so the naval drones carry a starlink terminal?

Yes, StarLinks have been used in Sea Baby drones[0]. Newer versions and drones are equipped with another method of internet access either in replacement of/in addition to StarLink.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Baby

What navigation does it use? GPS jamming seems common nowadays.

Besides satellite based navigation they could also use visual navigation to hit the target. I think I've read about development in this area. For the first parts of the flight, a compass and dead reckoning should work fine too. But I'm really just guessing.

I find the target a bit strange. Like what's the point? A dormitory for workers in a factory? Why not hit the factory or a warehouse?

At least one of the drones hit when most of the people were already outside. The mayor of the town made a video where he is angry that 2 people were wounded, he could be lying but even if it killed 100s that won't delay shaheed/geran building much, no? Apparently, at least some of the workers there were some highschool students, there is no shortage of those

Obviously the dormitory was not the target. First of all I guess they get limited precision with this drone, especially if it was not real-time controlled. Secondly maybe they didn’t know the building distribution, most likely their goal was hoping to hit the factory or start a fire

May it be that trained workers are more important than a production building?

But likely, 2 planes hit the factory, and one missed. Only the miss that hit residential area is reported by government. I see this type of news all the time in Ukraine: "russian rocket hits a maternity hospital", while there is a huge factory in 300 meters that gets hit regularly, with no reporting about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com