The Ukrainian Armed Forces are creating a "Drone Line" to stop the advance of the Russian Armed Forces
The Armed Forces of Ukraine are creating a "Drone Line" in order to stop the further advance of the Russian Armed Forces and hold the front. What kind of project is this, how can it help Kiev in the face of a shortage of personnel, and what does China have to do with it? - in the material of the military observer Gazeta.Ru", retired Colonel Mikhail Khodarenka.
What is this "Drone Line"?
Currently, Kiev is betting on expanding the use of purely Ukrainian-made unmanned aerial vehicles, although American weapons are still crucial for the successful conduct of military operations by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
This is a difficult moment for Ukraine. The country is vacillating between hopes that U.S. President Donald Trump's cease-fire talks will end the war and fears that the United States will end military support for Kiev. This is reported by The New York Times (NYT) .
The head of the White House still does not promise to increase the supply of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine, and they are crucial for Kiev. For example, the Ukrainian army currently relies only on the Patriot air defense system as the only means of protection against attacks by Russian tactical missile systems. The Ukrainian Armed Forces also do not have their own MLRS systems like the American M142 HIMARS, which are key to delivering effective strikes against Russian troops.
In the current situation, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are implementing the Drone Line project, which, as Kiev hopes, will allow them to continue the armed struggle without American weapons. If the peace talks fail or the United States stops supplying weapons, the Ukrainian initiative to create a "Drone Line" is likely to gain more importance, the NYT writes.
As part of this program, unmanned systems will be used, which are assembled mainly from Chinese components in Ukraine. These are mostly small kamikaze drones launched from basement shelters.
At the moment, Ukraine hopes that the latest innovative Drone Line program (also known as the Line of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) will help them deter attacks by the Russian Armed Forces and hold the front. This is reported by Ukrainska Pravda.
Even before the appearance of this project, Ukraine relied heavily on UAVs during combat operations, the combat use of which currently leads to about 70 percent of all losses in the war on both sides. And this is more than all other types of weapons combined, including tanks, howitzers, mortars and air weapons.
Shortage of personnel
The expanded program of unmanned aerial vehicles, developed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine since last fall, but officially announced only in February this year, is Kiev's "B" plan in case negotiations on ending the war fail.
Today, the leading edge resembles a buzzing beehive. In the drone war, Russia has an advantage in quantity, while Ukraine has an advantage in quality, the NYT believes.
According to the publication, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are often the first to use new technological approaches in this fight. These include, for example, repeater drones to increase the range of kamikaze drones and drones controlled using fiber-optic cables as thick as a human hair. These drones are not affected by enemy electronic warfare.
As part of the Ukrainian Drone Line program, according to the NYT, four battalions of drones (according to other sources, five) will be transformed into regiments of unmanned aerial vehicles, the number of each of which will increase from about 700 military to 2,500 fighters and officers. Several five specialized units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are participating in this project - "Birds of the Magyar", "Rarog", "Achilles", "Phoenix" and "K-2".
Ukraine's strategy regarding drones is also caused by the serious weakness of its armed forces after more than three years of war, and primarily by the weakening motivation of Ukrainians to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the American newspaper writes. As draft evasion has become widespread, the replenishment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has become a difficult task.
Drones are not a substitute for fighters and commanders. For each UAV flight, in addition to the operator controlling the drone, up to four combat crew members may be required. Such a team consists of a pilot, a navigator, a gunsmith and a pilot of a drone repeater. But recruiting people for these positions is much easier than finding infantrymen who will fight in the trenches. The "efficiency-cost" criterion is also of great importance. Drones cost from $500 to $750 each, and the price of one 155-mm projectile reaches $ 3 thousand.
Attention to China
It is quite possible that the Chinese Impenetrable Curtain project had a significant impact on the Ukrainian concept of the Drone Line. The Chinese company NORINCO announces that it has developed a fundamentally new air defense system. The company believes that the usual air defense systems, as the practice of modern wars shows, have outlived themselves.
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| A soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine launches a UAV. |
| Source: Aleksander Klymenko/Reuters |
Therefore, the company's engineers have worked to create a promising concept of protection against air attack (manned and unmanned), cruise missiles, multiple launch rocket systems, and mortar mines. The Chinese development, translated into Russian, was called the "Impenetrable Curtain."
In fact, we are talking about swarms of drones that can be arranged in several rows. The functionality of such a "curtain" includes both a physical obstacle to the further flight of a missile, aircraft or mortar mine, as well as a set of possibilities in terms of the effects of electronic warfare and fire weapons in the air.
At the moment, Chinese experts are allegedly working on automating the control of such swarms of "anti-aircraft" drones, including using artificial intelligence. This will make it possible to create coordinated "curtains" in space and change their geometry depending on the intercepted target.
Among other things, the task of quickly building a "curtain" of drones is being solved, for example, during a missile attack. It is noted that if several drones from the swarm "took the blow upon themselves", repelling the attack, then other drones should immediately reorganize in order not to miss subsequent strikes. What is the potential (roughly speaking, how many missiles or mines will such an air defense system be enough for) at the Impenetrable Curtain, the developers are not saying yet.
At the same time, it is quite obvious that when creating their promising air defense system, they took into account the nuances of the Ukrainian armed conflict, in which drones took one of the leading positions as a means of fire destruction.
Mikhail Khodarenok
