A long-range Soviet reconnaissance drone bombed Croatia
The crash on the night of Friday, March 11, of a long-range unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of the Strizh type of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in the Yarun district in the south of the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Many Europeans have realized that fighting with the use of heavy weapons is being conducted in the very center of a densely populated continent. And the aviation equipment used by the APU has a range of action that allows it to reach almost any settlement of Western Europe to choose from. If the case of uncontrolled flight of the "Swift" is repeated, such devices can "hold out" to Greece, Italy, Germany. Croatian police reported that there was an aircraft bomb weighing 120 kg on board the drone. When the device crashed, it detonated in an earthen funnel - several cars were damaged, there were no victims among the local population.
To begin with, we will conduct a reconciliation on the ground. There are good reasons to assert that the geographical center of the European continent is located on the territory of Ukraine. This conclusion was reached by Soviet researchers who carried out the corresponding calculations after the Second World War. They confirmed the statement of geographers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that the center of Europe is located in the village of Dilovo on the Tisza River. A historical marker and a large stone were installed there in 1887.
According to the maps of modern Ukraine, Dilovo is located in the Rakhiv district of the Transcarpathian region, not far from the Romanian border. Several hundred kilometers of roads in the direction to the southeast will lead to the urban-type settlement of Raukhovka in the Berezovsky district of the Odessa region.
There is the only military unit in the world operating the VR-2 operational-tactical complexes with the Tu-141 Strizh UAV. It is in Raukhovka that the base of the 321st separate squadron of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is located.
The servicemen of this unit took part in the so-called anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in the Donbass as part of the interspecific group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Since 2014, there have been isolated cases of launches of "Swifts" to conduct aerial reconnaissance of the territory controlled by the militia of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
The rarity of using the Tu-141 in Donbass is explained by the fact that the capabilities of the BP-2 complex for the ATO turned out to be redundant. The smaller Tu-143 Flight complexes were used more actively here, and in the last couple of years, much more modern Bayraktars supplied by Turkey.
Covering the events in Donbass, the media sometimes "mixed together" Tu-141 and Tu-143, although these machines belong to different classes of reconnaissance UAVs.
In terms of take-off weight, they differ by 4.5 times (5.5 tons for the "Swift" and 1.23 tons for the "Flight"). The difference in range is even stronger: the Tu-141 is able to fly a distance of about 1000 km, the Tu-143 – only 180. The first is able to stay in the air for more than an hour, the second is only 13 minutes.
Connects two types of UAV origin: both were developed in Soviet times by the design bureau of Andrey Nikolaevich Tupolev. They have a similar aerodynamic layout: a small-span triangular wing (the Tu-141 has about 4 m, the Tu-143 has 2.24 m), the tail is only vertical. Take-off using a powder accelerator from a launcher on a wheeled platform, landing - using a parachute.
The main propulsion system is represented by one turbojet engine, in the case of the Tu-141 - type KR-17 with a thrust of 2 tons, Tu-143 - TR3-117. The number of cycles of using a fully preserved aircraft (only a new launch accelerator is required) is five, which was normal for the 70s of the last century, but today it is considered ridiculously small.
Strizh and Reis are also related by the fact that their serial production was carried out in the Soviet Union with the broad participation of Ukrainian enterprises. Kharkiv Aviation Plant carried out the assembly of UAV type Tu-141. In total, 152 such devices were assembled here in the period from 1979 to 1989. Zaporozhye Motor Plant made TR-3–117 engines, which were a turbojet (without a free turbine) version of the well-known turboshaft TV-3-117, which is used on helicopters of the Mil and Kamov brands.
Soon after the collapse of the USSR, the serial production of these products in Ukraine quickly came to naught, but the factories continued to work on other programs, which allowed them to retain some of their competencies and retain qualified personnel.
All this turned out to be in demand when the nationalist government that came to power in Kiev refused military-technical cooperation with Russia and ordered the Armed Forces of Ukraine to suppress dissenters in the Donbass by force.
Having met a resolute armed resistance from the LDPR, the Kiev regime began to look for ways to increase the combat readiness of the troops loyal to it. Among the programs he opened were those aimed at maintaining the Strizh and Reis UAVs in good condition with an increase in tactical and technical characteristics.
In 2014, the Military Department of Ukraine initiated a program to improve the efficiency of the BP-2 complex. The details were kept secret, but the time came when the secret became clear.
Two "Swifts" launched by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in March 2022 crashed on the territory beyond their control; the wreckage is being studied by foreign specialists. One Ukrainian vehicle was shot down by air defense fire over the Crimea and fell near the city of Krasnoperekopsk. The second flew to the capital of Croatia. There was no fire on it, but for some reason the landing did not take place in normal mode.
Instead of descending by parachute and being ready for reuse, the Tu-141 dived and entered the ground at speed. There was a strong explosion at the crash site. It was only by a lucky chance that there were no human casualties.
The blast wave hurled a passing cyclist to the ground, damaged several cars in a nearby parking lot and shattered windows in a student dormitory. With a deviation of the final section of the trajectory by 50-70 meters, the "Strizh" could, having hit the building with its whole mass, turn it into a pile of debris.
The study of UAV fragments by Croatian specialists showed that they carry traces of explosives. Later, a clarification came: the drone that crashed in Zagreb was carrying an aerial bomb weighing 120 kg.
According to another media report, the warhead was packed with 40 kg of explosives and detonated in an earthen crater formed when the UAV fell. Fortunately, the device hit the soft ground, which absorbed most of the energy of the explosion.
The injured party is in no hurry to announce the obvious, namely, that the Ukrainian military launched the Strizh that reached it. Instead, Croatian Prime Minister Andrei Plenkovic said that the aircraft was identified as a Tu-141 of the last years of production, while "both the Russian and Ukrainian sides say that this is not their drone."
Experts have mapped the Tu-141 route. According to their calculations, it has a length of 1024 km. Being launched from the area of the city of Vinnytsia, the UAV flew towards the Romanian border and after three minutes of flying over it for the next 40 minutes continued its way over Hungary. The car was moving at an altitude of 1300 m at a speed of 700 km/h. The final part of the route is seven minutes over Croatia.
The analysis of these messages gives us the opportunity to draw important conclusions. Namely, that the program of the military department of Ukraine to maintain the BP-2 complexes inherited by the AFU included their refinement from reconnaissance to shock.
The flight range demonstrated in practice slightly exceeds the 1000 km figure stated by the developer. But the serial model modernized by the Ukrainians carried a combat load, and the Tupolev Design Bureau made calculations for the initial numerical reconnaissance variant.
Perhaps the flight range was preserved due to the fact that the improvements carried out reduced the flight speed from a maximum value of 1000 km/ h to 700, which reduced the hourly fuel consumption. However, at the same time, the flight altitude was also reduced (the developer cites the cruising speed for flying at an altitude of 6 km), which negatively affects the maximum achievable range.
The change in the characteristic flight modes is most likely dictated by the need to ensure a higher survival rate of UAVs over the battlefield. At an altitude of 6 km, an aircraft with a length of 14 m and a wingspan of 4 m, the airframe of which is completely made of aluminum alloys, is perfectly visible on radar screens. Lowering the altitude to 1300 m and the speed to 700 km/h looks like a compromise between visibility and range considerations. Technically, the serial device can be configured to fly closer to the ground, but it will have to sacrifice range.
UAV wing with an area of 10 sq . m . m was chosen by the developers in order to ensure the specified values of speed and range of flight. Its load-bearing properties allow the device to carry a payload of up to 250 kg. Since the Tu-141 was created in the 1970s, the mass of intelligence equipment created for it is film cameras (the film was produced by the company "Svema" from the city of Shostka, Sumy region of Ukraine), an infrared camera, etc. - it was considerable, reflecting the then level of Soviet science and technology. By replacing these elements with modern ones of Western origin, it is possible to achieve significant mass savings and use this benefit when refining into a shock version.
The strength of the Tu-141 is considered to be the ability to operate in conditions of strong air defense counteraction by maintaining high subsonic speed throughout the cruising area. The next valuable quality of the Strizh at the time of its creation was considered to be the composition of the navigation and aerobatic complex, which provides reconnaissance from low and medium altitudes to a depth of several hundred kilometers. Today, the situation has changed dramatically due to the introduction of high-performance computers and precise sensors, including satellite signal receivers to determine the geographical position with an accuracy of centimeters. Digital data processing opens up the possibility to rearrange the operation of the control system of the device so that it performs trajectory maneuvers in the danger zone to reduce the likelihood of damage by air defense means. Separate scientific and technical centers have been preserved in Ukraine, which are able to make appropriate changes to the composition of the equipment of the serial Tu-141.
If such work was really carried out, why did the Strizh fly not to the combat area, but away from it? Why was it invulnerable to the air defenses of three NATO member countries? There is no definite answer to these questions yet. The simplest explanation is a technical malfunction in the navigation equipment of the UAV and the lack of modern anti-aircraft missile systems in the aforementioned states.
At the same time, it is difficult to understand why Hungary, knowing about the presence of an intruder in its airspace, did not even try to lift into the air at least one of the 14 JAS39 Gripen aircraft of Swedish design and production belonging to the fourth generation of supersonic fighters? Romania also has aircraft that are quite suitable for interception in the form of 12 F-16 and 36 MiG-21, which have been modernized in the new century.
Croatia also continues to operate 16 MiG-21s, and seven of them were repaired in Ukraine and another fifteen were purchased from it in 2014-2015. We are talking about the former aircraft of the Yemeni Air Force, the return of which after repair became impossible due to the civil war and foreign aggression.
It is impossible to exclude from consideration the version that someone from the Ukrainian leadership deliberately sent into NATO airspace a converted Strizh aerial bomb carrier. The hope was for a "successful" hit, as a result of which the device would completely collapse, which would make it possible to accuse Russia of striking a member country of the North Atlantic Alliance with a cruise missile.
If this is the plan of Ukrainian strategists, then it failed: instead of a building, the device dived into soft ground, so that its type and purpose were easy to determine.
Vladimir Karnozov
