When the Geran/Shahed drones first appeared, I figured Russia would use them smartly in a classic SEAD/DEAD role: send waves of them to force Ukrainian IADS to light up radars and reveal positions, then follow up with VKS aircraft, with anti-radiation missiles to systematically dismantle those defenses. Russia instead has chosen the most brain-dead and wasteful approach, by treating the Geran/Shaheds s as nothing more than slow, low-cost cruise missiles hurled directly at static infrastructure targets, while leaving the overwhelming majority of Ukraine's air defenses intact and free to keep operating. They're banking entirely on brute-force volume and saturation to get a few through, completely abandoning any effort at SEAD/DEAD. But the thing is that they're not even achieving any kind of saturation effect since, the launches are scattered haphazardly across random cities, regions, and targets all over Ukraine that changes every night (some they they go after energy infrastructure, some other go after some depots, some others they try to hit some cities...), instead of making up their minds and concentrate them single high-value area, frontline sector, or even one major city at a time, and keep hitting them until achieving disruption or collapse. This is also precisely why so few targets are actually hit despite hundreds being launched every night, and so many of them are intercepted.By contrast, even in the recent U.S. operation in Venezuela, the LUCAS drones (the American Shahed clones) were properly integrated into a coordinated SEAD/DEAD package.
>>64749431Because anything done in Russia in an official capacity will be done for show, to prove something is being done, that you put in the best feasible effort, and (very important) that any failures are someone else's fault.Whether the project actually succeeds or brings measurable results is at best secondary to all the above, and more often irrelevant.
>>64749431>When the Geran/Shahed drones first appeared, I figured Russia would use them smartly in a classic SEAD/DEAD role: send waves of them to force Ukrainian IADS to light up radars and reveal positions, then follow up with VKS aircraft, with anti-radiation missiles to systematically dismantle those defenses.the problem here is that this would mean risking their jets and russia simply cannot afford that ...
>>64749431>Russia>aircraft>anti-radiation missiles>systematically Have you lost your mind? They use whatever is in working order on the day monke screeches chimpout now!Also it's clear they don't intend to win in war. They either want to cripple Ukraine enough something starts to fall apart or hurt population so much it agrees to anything that isn't whatever is now. But his idea is he can take all Ukraine by "chess". Militarily he should've destroyed major bridges and take everything east of Dniepr on day one. Then bomb out foothold and move forward.
When you claim to have Wunderwaffen but all you got is Vergeltungswaffen
>>64749466Except they're not even achieving any proper disruption of Ukrainian infrastructure, since they keep changing their targets every day and never fully commit. Do they want to destroy the Ukrainian energy infrastructure? Do they want to destroy their cities? Do they want to destroy their weapon depots? It's as if there's a Russian officer who throws a dice and then decides to launch the Shaheds towards whatever side It came out every night.
>>64749472Shaheds do their job just fine as a cheap loitering munition, there's a reason why even the US has adopted the LUCAS drone. It's just the Russians are the most retarded people alive. You could give them F-22s and F-35s and they would just use them to drop FAB bombs without glide kits instead trying to conduct SEAD/DEAD and achieve air superiority
>>64749490That's what happens when every damage assessment claims 100% destruction every time. Why hit something you already destroyed. That would be admitting you failed to your boss. Also the Ukrainians are probably just good at repairing stuff at this point.
>>64749510It would have been way more efficient and easier to conduct BDA if they actually chose and focused on a specific city or region until they achieved whatever result they set up. From just the pics from OP you can clearly see that the Russians attack:- Lviv hunting for supply depots of weapon shipments that come from Poland.- Odessa by attacking the ports and shipments from there.- Kyiv, attacking either the civilian infraestructure or energy- Random targets in betweenThey keep rotating these targets every night, not achieving anything. The fact that the Russians have been doing this same shit for almost 4 years, is really just pure insanity.
>>64749431>Why the Russians keep using these Geran/Shahed drones in such an inneficient manner?Because this is the best that they can do
>>64749579>>64749431If you attack only one city ukies can concentrate their mobile air defence assets there. Doesn't work.
>>64749631But if Ukraine concentrates SAM systems into a city, means that then they are more at risk of being targetted by either FPV drones and even FAB, which would unironically allow the Russians to perform SEAD/DEAD, despite them being completely incompetent at it, since they're incapable of actually locating them when they were dispersed.
>>64749431By and large the Ukrainians do not use their ground based SAMs and radars against drones for the precise reason you mentioned. They increasingly rely upon interceptor drones, helicopters, jets, EW, manpads, and even vehicle mounted AAA to deal with the low end threats. SAMs are mostly reserved for higher-end missiles and aircraft.The bigger issue is that Russia doesn't have a well developed SEAD/DEAD doctrine, which is also hampered by their lack of stealthy aircraft. Instead, they rely on difficult to intercept missiles. By all accounts the most devastating strikes are TBMs hitting Ukrainian energy and rail infrastructure. The Geran/Shahed strikes are designed to stress lower end Ukrainian AD, forcing those assets away from the front.
Weren't Shaheds based of Israeli Harpy drones which literally antiradiation warheads?
>>64749654Yet still the Russians never even tried to perform SEAD, most likely due to their inability to coordinate large amount of air assets due to the lack of AWACS planes, due to fear of FF. The fact that they couldn't deploy Flankers with Kh-31P's during the combined missile/Shahed drone strikes to hunt down Ukranian IADS tell you everything.This inability to either coordinate large amounts of air assets, and also ground assets is literally the main reason why the SMO failed so hard, and they haven't been able to fix It 4 years into the war.
>>64749851And those are knockoffs of Dornier DARs which are a German-American project. Dornier did the flying and hardware bits and Texas Instruments did all the electronics.>Dornier unveiled its Mini-RPV at the Paris Air Show in May 1977 (Jane’s 1979, 619). Constructed of a fiberglass shell, the tailless, delta-winged Mini-RPV was designed to serve as an expendable anti-radar weapon, though it could be equipped with a parachute for recoverable missions such as reconnaissance and target acquisition (Wassum 1977, 24). The anti-radar version of the Mini-RPV became known first as the Dornier KDAR, following the convention of naming aircraft after the title of an acquisition program. In October 1978, the company concluded a three-week long flight test campaign 20 at the Meppen Test Range (Heise 1978, 14). The KDAR was initially equipped with a passive radar seeker developed by Texas Instruments, the US firm responsible for the guidance systems in the AGM-45 Shrike and AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles (Dornier Post 1986). Both MBB and VFW produced competing designs to the Dornier Mini-RPV. In 1978, MBB displayed its Locust/DAR drone at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) exhibition (IDR 1979, 74). MBB developed the Locust in cooperation with Teledyne Brown Engineering, the US firm responsible for the Firebee family of drones, and initially incorporated a radar seeker from Motorola. The MBB Locust featured a tubular fuselage and a cruciform wing. VFW, meanwhile, unveiled an early prototype of its Tucan drone at an air show in Hanover in 1979 (Munson 1988, 49). Like the Dornier Mini-RPV, the Tucan featured a tailless delta-wing design. VFW would offer a variant of the Tucan, the RT-910, for the joint US-German antiradar drone program.
SEAD is pointless now, everything they destroy will be replenished by the West, also there radars in Poland, Romania and AWACS in the black sea sharing intel to Ukraine.
>>64749851Correct and Azerbaijan literally used them to do SEAD against Armenian IADS during the Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020
>>64751014So western SAM and radars grow on trees and can be teleported?
>>64749505What military tasks do they perform?Terrorize civilians?Shahed's attacks on civilian targets have no impact on the front lines.
>>64751249Don't worry about the children. The teachers hid them in a bomb shelter and they all survived.Because we are ready for attacks.
>>64751249>What military tasks do they perform?>Terrorize civilians?Kinda yes. Also a huge wave of drones approaching the city is often timed with ballistic/cruise missile strikes, probably to make use of "big" AA systems inconvenient.
>>64751242#>So western SAM and radars grow on trees and can be teleported?That isn't what anon said, your reading comprehension is abysmal.Though from a Russian perspective, what you wrote must seem true. I suppose you're just outing yourself as a zigger.NATO trains in this cooperative stuff all the time, they're pretty good at it and are well resourced and it's not like they're going to lose any air defence assets that have NATO written on them, so they're effectively free, as if they grow on trees.And they have high level planning that puts them where they're needed and logistics that quickly and easily moves them around, so it probably feels to the Russians like they're teleporting.
>>64749643>Russia is going to FAB a SAM systemGo look up the effective range on these two weapon systems and consider why that might not work
>>64751283Tonight they dropped 20 ballistic missiles, with almost no drones.Only Patriot missiles can shoot down ballistic missiles. But most likely we no longer have any Patriot missiles left.
Most drones are intercepted by simpler systems.
>>64749631>Doesn't work.Only if your aim is to go for strategic indiscriminate bombing.But if the enemy does in fact concentrate all its AA in a single small area, it is giving you a target-rich environment for SEAD.Not as ideal as spreading them when you have such a lopsided advantage in air power that you can afford to take them one by one without them supporting each other.But since Russia doesn't have many capable strike aircrafts and AWACS to track AA in real time, better have the enemy concentrate their AA, fly your aircrafts near that area, target whichever AA fire at your drones then go back to Russia.Here, what they do is really slow to bear fruits because, as the amount of interceptors isn't going down, the rate of interceptions stays the same.Hence wasting hundreds of drones as decoy/bait just do a few dozens can hit something that might not even be among the main targets.
>>64749866They did try SEAD.But then something led to :>the lack of AWACSAnd it was glorious.
>>64749579> not achieving anythingThey're affecting energy infrastructure and causing evacuations. -15°C without power or heating is no joke. I assume it's supposed to affect the economy and make the population war-weary, whether that'll actually win them anything remains to be seen.I hope ukraine will return the favor when moskow is covered by some -30° weather.
>>64749431>smartly in a classic SEAD/DEAD roleah yes, classic sead against an opponent with constant supply line of air defense assets from a whole continent sized block of countries in its near and immediate vicinity. the more strategic and long term approach, of course, would be to simply the exhaust said opponent with cheap and mass produced drones. demilitarizing not just your direct enemy, but a whole conglomerate of countries behind him.>while leaving the overwhelming majority of Ukraine's air defenses intact and free to keep operating.not the impression you'd get from kiev, odessa, dnepropetrovsk, krivoy rog, and whole host of other big cities pounded with impunity every night now. ukrainian air defenses have been mostly absent or imponent repelling attacks even on those. doesn't really bode well for the countries operating those same exact types of systems, with a lot smaller industrial base, much weaker power grid and far lesser human resources to spare.
>>64751303>Most drones are intercepted by simpler systems.Even simpler these days, interceptor drones are basically FPVs optimised for a2a pursuits. They're cheap enough to be widely deployed, so relatively few drones reach the capital these days.
>>64749851>>64750979Israel and Iran both licensed the design from the South African company that ended up with the rights to the Dornier DAR. Iran evidently couldn't come up with the necessary electronics or really needed a shitty cruise missile, because they designed the Shahed as a prop powered cruise missile rather than an anti radiation drone.
