2025, The War of the Spear and the Shield, Ukrainian Edition

13 January 16:27
OPINION

Drones are one of the factors that have greatly influenced the course of hostilities.

This is largely due to the lack of mines and shells, the desire of private individuals to make money by carrying equipment from the Asian market, the ease of entry (in fact, it is a civilian product that is then used to collectively plant IEDs or make conventional anti-tank mines with initiation fees), corruption schemes, and so on.

But there are also global advantages.

Decentralization of assembly – apartments, offices, garages are hard to hit with cruise missiles. In fact, there is no classic factory assembly.

A wide range of civilian spare parts, boards, cameras. If you don’t have one thing, you can get something else.

Logistics – it is quite possible to deliver to the red zone without risk to the delivery people, and it is easier to “smear” drones with convoys of ammunition, food, and water at the operational level.

Yes, drones have limitations: the weather (especially fog, gusty winds, snowfall), crew reaction time and approach to the battlefield, and obstacles.

There is a niche. You can, for example, send a flamethrower UAV to burn down a landing site with termites along with belongings and ammunition, or send a thermobar to a dugout. But you can’t set up a fire fringe, conduct disturbing fire, or react quickly if motorcyclists or buggies appear.

There are cases when crews take up positions on the contact line – there are no JV garrisons or veils physically in front of them. It shouldn’t be like that, but there are many things that shouldn’t be like that in war. It’s better to have a neighbor on your right, a few FPV teams that have placed a minefield in front of you with their own drones, than an empty space where prisoners from Storm or motorcyclists are flowing in.

In general, the enemy reports the use of 100-120 thousand UAVs of the Defense Forces per month.

Probably, it’s all a “collective effort”: a coalition of drones in the West, the state, volunteers, and private citizens. Naturally, this is not a panacea, but without them, we would hardly have waited for the West to scale up its military-industrial complex in terms of shells and other heavy weapons.

There is a lot of work to be done

And the “eyes” – the adjustment of light and cheap mortar ammunition, 40mm grenade launchers, 105mm shells (this is a key thing for the stability of the line, more important than killing a single infantryman or “dripping” bombs).

And the strike component is essentially an over-the-horizon ATGM, searching for heavy and heavily defended targets. As it turned out, even for a turtle tank additionally covered with electronic warfare plates and antennas, a dozen FPVs will be enough.

And bombers – dropping at the request of tactical commanders on attacking infantry, airborne troops, and finishing off vehicles.

And night hunting for dugouts and heavy weapon positions from heavy quad- and hexacopters. The pinnacle of evolution is the head-mounted anti-tank mine.

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Various attempts are underway to create a UAV fighter.

We’ve already seen various nets, we’ve seen a drone carrying an electronic warfare module on board, turning it on when the enemy is spotted through the cameras, and now we have a flying shotgun.

A beam of shot or buckshot allows for aiming errors, is cheap, simply saves missiles and scarce Cheetah shells, and can capture small targets.

Together with anti-aircraft drones (a video has recently appeared of a Gerbera simulator drone being hit by one), this will give us a chance to shoot down small FPVs, hit reconnaissance wings, and, most importantly, prevent our air defense from being overloaded by Shaheds.

The advantage

One and a half to two or three thousand missiles in terms of the number of warheads and ballistics that Russia is capable of producing is what Western countries have under the palliative air defense program, the new facilities for Patriot products in the EU, and various stockpiles of two dozen countries.

Whoever is the first to deploy fighters to the front line will have a key advantage.

In adjusting artillery.

In the protection of ground units not only by “air defense platoons” with backpack jamming generators, anti-UAV guns, pump-action rifles, but also by drones in the air.

Isolation of the battlefield during offensives and counterattacks – along with electronic warfare and shelling of crews with high-precision weapons in the early hours, meeting pilots approaching from the rear with “fighters”.

Strategic bombing is in progress.

There is a constant race. “Shahids” launched at our critical infrastructure were met by mobile groups. The enemy gained altitude, but received anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, helicopter crews (it takes a long time to deploy and train them, especially in terms of detection), and Cheetahs. The enemy began to launch deceptions to overload air defense systems, and in response, penny-pinching drones powered by civilian components flew.

War of the Spear and Shield 2025, Ukrainian Edition, continues.

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Kyrylo Danylchenko, military expert

Остафійчук Ярослав
Editor