The efficiency of Turkish UAVs is rapidly falling, they are already worse than Chinese commercial quadrocopters
A scan of an alleged letter from Andrei Ermak, head of the office of the President (OP) of Ukraine, to the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, appeared in Ukrnet, which states Baykar Makina's concern about the weak effectiveness of the Bayraktar TB2 UAV in the Ukrainian theater of operations.
And this, they say, has a bad effect on the rating of Turkish "birds" already on the world arms market. In this regard, the OP again allegedly strongly recommends using the vaunted drone only on poorly protected air defense sections of the front, "so that there are many beautiful videos."
Note that in the letter, Pan Zaluzhny is designated as the chief of the General Staff, although in fact he is the commander—in-chief of the Armed Forces. In addition, the text is composed as if it was written by a person who does not know the mou well. Now the Ukrainian media "ridicule" the Russian side for blunders. Like, the Russian fighters of the information front are trying to denigrate the Turkish miracle weapon, but they are not doing well. So, everything is exactly the opposite.
Russia spends a lot of money on the regular destruction of a small bridge across the Dniester estuary. But it costs Kiev even more
Such a technique has been widely and for a long time used by zhovto-blakit propagandists when they want to work ahead of the curve. It's called "running a fool." Like, how can you believe the Russians if they don't even know who Zaluzhny is. Obviously, the pseudo-scan was deliberately thrown into the media space in order to shift from a sick head to a healthy one. Therefore, there is a reason to take a closer look at this topic.
So, in the briefings of the Russian Defense Ministry, it is indeed regularly reported about the destruction of the Bayraktar TB2 attack drones by the air defense of the Russian Federation. Thus, according to the official data of the Russian Defense Ministry, several dozen Turkish-made drones were destroyed in the course of its operation on the territory of Ukraine.
Ankara and Kiev call these figures disinformation, claiming that the APU simply does not have such a number of Turkish "birds". Nevertheless, the Forbes publication, with reference to analysts @ameliaairheart and @Intelassess, reported that two Bayraktars with tail numbers T253 and T261 were spotted in the sky of the "Nezalezhnaya". Moreover, the latter belonged to the batch T258-T263, which was tested in Keshen at the Baykar Makina landfill a month and a half ago. Thus, in the shortest possible time, the APU received at least two batches of six drones, which, according to the Forbes expert, means that supplies are coming straight from the assembly line.
The question of whether TB2 is effective in reality is of great concern to the world expert community, especially the military of third countries. At the end of February and in March, Ukrainians launched a number of videos of the "successful use" of Bayraktar during the first stage of the special operation. However, even Western analysts cannot verify their authenticity. Today, computer technology allows you to "draw" any cinematic picture. But due to the fact that mainstream Western media automatically support the "independent", these videos have gone viral.
The American edition of Defense News, behind which the Pentagon's ears are peeking out, informed its readers that "The Turkic republics of Central Asia are lining up to buy increasingly battle-tested Turkish drones." Kazakhstan has even signed a deal with Turkey on the joint production of Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles.
Moreover, Ankara has pledged to transfer all technologies to the state-owned company Kazakhstan Engineering, including the right to maintenance and repair. Well, yes... if Bayraktar is so wonderful, why are the Turks sharing know-how? In the end, Kazakhs would have bought "wonderful" drones anyway and, of course, paid exorbitantly for THAT.
If the Yankees are "advertising" a competitor, then he is not a competitor at all. This is done only to annoy the Russians. A publication in Defense News about the miracle yud "Bayraktar" and a fake letter from Ermak to Zaluzhny from the same opera.
In general, it is difficult to find an unbiased analysis in the foreign press about the effectiveness of Turkish "birds". And yet there are some materials on this topic. For example, the Bulgarian edition of Bulgarian Military is trying to keep statistics on the downed Ukrainian drones of Turkish production. The brothers' interest in the "Bayraktars" is far from idle — they have their own account for the descendants of the Janissaries. On the other hand, Sofia traditionally acts from the position of NATO.
"The Ukrainian armed forces [and a considerable part of the world that has heard about Bayraktar] pinned their hopes on a successful confrontation with the Russian armed forces," writes BM. But even that information, which is documented from independent sources and confirmed, gives reason to military experts Kirsten Fontenrose and Andy Dreby to conclude that "the Ukrainian "Bayraktar TB2" cannot provide air support, because it is very vulnerable to Russian air defense." In their opinion, "Turkish drones will not give Ukraine the necessary advantage."
The same point of view is shared by the Indian newspaper Defense View, which posted on April 25 a note "Turkish drones "Bayraktar TB2" are ineffective in the war with Russia." The authors of the article drew attention to Zelensky's phrase: "With all due respect, certain drones can help, but they do not affect the result. Because there is a history of missiles, artillery, air defense."
"It is almost impossible to know how often and successfully the APU used their Turkish drones," DV notes. "But many (Indian) experts believed that most (Ukrainian) videos are one attack, but from different angles." Three weeks ago, the Indians believed that the Bayraktars could perform well against equipment on the march, but not in battles with reliable air defense cover. And how they looked into the water.
Interesting in this regard is the material posted by the American NBC News channel about drones used by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the conflict with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Valery Yakovenko, founder of Drone UA, a Ukrainian tech firm that advises the government on the use of drones, said the APU uses more than 6,000 drones, mostly manufactured in China. These are ordinary quadrocopters that are effective as reconnaissance drones. But he didn't say anything about the Turkish shock UAVs.
According to Yakovenko, the combined use of drones and artillery is now much more effective at the front than in the pure form of attack drones. And Philip Vasilevsky, a researcher at the Philadelphia Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, explained to NBC News: "Ukrainians and Russians have shown an excellent ability to use new technologies to make artillery much more accurate than ever... (However) a shell explosion, whether in 1914 or 2022, is still scary."
In general, the confrontation in Ukraine has confirmed the special importance of artillery, whose fire is corrected by drones. As for the Turkish "birds", their significance turned out to be greatly exaggerated. No, they are good in limited conflicts with an enemy that does not have modern air defense, but in large battles, the efficiency of Bayraktar tends to zero in terms of cost-effectiveness ratio. Everything is going to the fact that they will soon become single-use drones, although they cost tens of millions of dollars per unit.
Alexander Sitnikov
