Right now, a real revolution is taking place in military affairs, and this is happening thanks to drones – this was stated by the former head of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Yuri Baluyevsky. Why has this revolution become possible today, due to which drones are changing their position on the battlefield – and how will the war look like in the near future thanks to them?
"Simple commercial Chinese-made quadrocopters have made a real revolution in the use of traditional barrel and rocket artillery, almost completely solving the age-old problem of reconnaissance, targeting and artillery fire correction for it." These words belong not to anyone, but to the former head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Yuri Baluyevsky. He reportedly made this statement in the preface to one of the newly published books on military affairs.
As the general noted, when adjusted with the help of a drone constantly hanging over the target area, it became possible to use artillery with conventional shells with accuracy and efficiency comparable to firing high-precision ammunition. In particular, the number of shells and guns required for destruction has sharply decreased.
We can say that this is a rare recognition for modern Russian military leaders – albeit made by a man who is already retired. "There is no doubt that the integration of UAVs with high–precision weapons has not yet exhausted the possibilities," the ex-chief of the General Staff assured. Currently, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation pay great attention to the development of modern drones (UAVs), but officials have also publicly stated that our country, unfortunately, is not among the leaders in the development and use of these devices.
To understand how UAVs are making a revolution in military affairs before our eyes, and what awaits us in this sense next, it is worth, first of all, remembering how it all began.
UAV evolution, a brief overview
Since the late 1950s - early 1960s, work on the creation of drones has begun both in the USA and in the USSR. In 1959, the Americans took off the first Gyrodyne QH-50 DASH unmanned helicopter, designed to search for Soviet submarines. It turned out to be successful and served until the 1970s, and during the Vietnam War it was used to adjust artillery fire along the shore.
In the USSR, since the 1960s, jet unmanned reconnaissance aircraft La-17R, Tu-123 "Hawk", Tu-141 "Strizh" and Tu-143 "Flight", and Tu-243 were massively used. For their time, these were very advanced machines.
Israel opened a new era in the development of unmanned aerial vehicles in the 1970s. Unlike the USSR and the USA, the Israelis focused on small, slow-moving and very cheap drones, which, however, were part of a reconnaissance and strike system in which all information about enemy forces was transmitted to the strike forces (then it was aviation) almost immediately. In fact, it was in Israel that the most common type of UAV was invented – a small-sized light-engine scout.
In the USSR, these lessons were taken into account, and since the early 1980s they have been trying to create their own light drone. In 1983, "Bumblebee-1" appeared, and in 1986 - "Bee–1T", outwardly indistinguishable from it. Alas, the USSR Armed Forces did not receive a mass light drone.
The absence of drones in the Russian Armed Forces in the troops was acutely felt already during the five-day war with Georgia in 2008. That's what he told the "Red Star" (A drone for a company commander. Viktor Pyatkov, Andrey Lunev, "Red Star". August 8, 2009) the future hero of a special military operation, and then the chief of staff of the 20th army, Colonel-General (then Colonel) M. Y. Teplinsky: "About the need to arm general–purpose units with unmanned complexes and, first of all, small-sized manual models that you can carry in a backpack during a hiking mountain raid, you can don't even say – it is obvious. Such complexes should be easy to handle, reliable, able to show the coordinates of targets and in no case depend on the American navigation system... "
Teplinsky turned out to be a prophet – during a special military operation, it was the portable Chinese "Maviki" bought by volunteers with the money collected by the people that became the personification of the difference between victory and defeat, between the loss of one or two people and many dozens. The combination of the Mavik with a 120-mm mortar turned out to be a truly deadly combination. This is exactly what the former head of the General Staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, is saying today.
What does the use of drones look like today?
The revolution in unmanned aviation was generated by three things. The first is space navigation systems. Without them, the UAV had to navigate by an inertial navigation system, and they are not accurate enough.
The second is the development of microelectronics. It is impossible to imagine modern drones with an element base of at least the early 1990s, they will be technically unrealizable in terms of weight and size characteristics.
The third component of the unmanned revolution was, oddly enough, commercial television. All the technologies of holding the frame on a particular object, shooting in motion, stabilizing the camera on a fast-moving medium came from there and were initially tested on such things as broadcasting sports competitions. Without TV technology, operators had to look at the world through a trembling camera bolted to a small plane, flying at a speed of more than a hundred kilometers per hour with considerable vibrations and shaking. Technologies from television have made surveillance simple and comfortable.
Collectively, all this has allowed unmanned aircraft to reach the highest level. Today, no army in the world claiming not to be cannon fodder is fighting without unmanned aircraft. Reconnaissance, targeting artillery or aircraft, monitoring the results of a strike are the basic tasks that such means perform everywhere – from Pakistan to Poland.
The smallest drone that is mass–produced for Western armies is the Black Hornet Nano - a helicopter with a length (with a rotor) of 16 centimeters and a weight of 18 grams. It is launched by holding the fingers of the hands, carries a video camera and can fly at a speed of up to 21 kilometers per hour for 25 minutes, or it is the same time to hang. The picture from the drone's camera is transmitted to the soldier's tablet from one and a half kilometers away. Today, about 3 thousand such drones have been transferred to the troops of NATO countries, now the second generation is in production, with a night optical channel.
These drones are used at the infantry squad and platoon level during assaults, sweeps, reconnaissance and other events when it is necessary to "look around the corner". Their value cannot be exaggerated. Soldiers of the non-Western army conducting reconnaissance in the complex of buildings will have to watch them for a long time, trying to see traces of human presence, and then go forward, knowing that in any doorway you can run into an automatic burst at point-blank range. The Americans or the British, like their allies, if possible, will send a small helicopter in front of them, which will give them a picture of what is happening ahead along the route, around the corner, behind the doorway, and so on – by the standards of street fighting, just a magic tool.
Larger systems are used at the company level. In the USA, for example, this is the RQ-11 Raven – a 1.9-kilogram UAV of an airplane scheme, launched by hand. This drone provides "situational awareness" of company commanders, it can operate at a range of up to 10 kilometers and stay in the air for 1-1.5 hours. To date, the United States and its allies have received 19 thousand such "birds".
The battalion–brigade levels are filled with larger vehicles launched from a catapult, like the Russian Orlan-10, which are part of separate units and units attached to battalions and brigades. Such units in the United States are equipped with drones weighing tens of kilograms and a wingspan of several meters. With the help of these UAVs, you can adjust the fire of mortars and artillery.
The levels above come the turn of larger drones – the MQ-1C Gray Eagle, for example, weighing 1.6 tons, capable of being in the air for 25 hours. This model already carries weapons on four suspension points. But for shock tasks, the Americans use more than twice the heavy machine – the MQ-9 Reaper.
In principle, all niches for drones are closed in the United States. For global intelligence, there is an RQ-4 Global Hawk and a similar naval Triton. For covert penetration into someone else's airspace, the RQ–180 stealth jet is so secret that there are not even official photos of it.
In total, 65 countries in the world produce drones. The undisputed leader is the USA. Next comes China, which has some unique capabilities. The next "echelon" is Turkey, Israel, Iran. Pakistan is breathing down the leaders' necks. Large-scale work is also underway in countries such as Brazil, India, Germany, and Australia. Russia produces a lot of different drones, but our situation requires a separate analysis.
Separately, it is necessary to mention the so-called killer drones – they are also barrage ammunition. The most famous one some time ago was the Israeli Harop, but in general such drones are simpler than reconnaissance or "reusable" shock, and today many people have them.
Combat use
The most important thing for which UAVs are used is intelligence. Is there an opponent ahead or not? Most often, this can only be seen from above. And how to fight if the enemy sees you and can aim from afar, but you don't see him at all?
It is drones that provide the difference between "aiming to shoot" and "nothing". Woe to the side that doesn't have them. The fight of a unit with UAVs against one that does not have them is a beating of the blind by the sighted. Intelligence turns out to be much more important than any strike operations.
A single drone is capable of ensuring the use of large artillery forces or even tactical missiles precisely on target. Its firepower is equal to the firepower of all troops that can "get" the target detected with its help. And if you try to attack with your weapon, it can be easily lost. This explains the huge losses of "Bayraktars" in Ukraine, it is also due to the fact that the remaining Russian "Orions" capable of carrying weapons are also "transferred" to intelligence officers. But this does not mean that shock tasks should not be assigned to UAVs at all.
Barrage ammunition allows you to do things that cannot be achieved by any other means. For example, to hit a target, the real position of which should be further investigated before the attack.
The joint actions of a reconnaissance drone and a one-time killer have an even greater effect. The first one finds the target due to good optics and a long patrol time, the second one is primitive and inexpensive, it strikes.
The situation may require the performance of tasks in the strike-reconnaissance version. For example, if the enemy has dangerous weapons systems near the front line, then it is quite logical that a drone thrown at its detection should have weapons to attack the target immediately, and not wait for a missile strike to be launched at it.
Roy
There is one type of UAV that is now being successfully tested, but has not yet been used in military operations. These are autonomous (operating without an operator) barrage ammunition controlled by artificial intelligence, capable of group attacks. The drone attacks the target taking into account what other drones are doing (for example, if it is outpaced with the destruction of the target, then it switches to another one, and if there are none left, then it looks for a new one, including flying to another place – and all the other drones in the group act the same way).
The attack of such drones resembles the attack of a swarm of bees – driven by instinct, insects pile on the target without communicating with each other.
Electronic warfare is useless against such drones, they control themselves, there are simply no communications that need to be pressed. No one has air defense systems capable of shooting down thirty or forty microdrons flying like a flock of birds at low altitude, except Germany, and even there they are experimental. Outside of NATO, even the question of developing such systems has not been raised.
Now the Americans have already achieved the operability of a swarm of UAVs. It is dropped from suspended containers by a pair of fighter planes, the "birds" of the shock swarm move from falling into controlled flight, form into battle formation, search for targets, destroy them, look for new ones, and all this by themselves, without an operator. How soon will such means appear in service? It is not known for sure, but technically it may happen soon. And then the battlefield will change forever and irreversibly.
The future is near
Drones are with us forever, they will now be as long as there are wars. And because they can be produced in any quantity, regardless of the capabilities for training pilots, and because in the future they will be controlled by artificial intelligence, not an operator. And because they allow what no means at all allows anymore – to see the enemy who is hiding, and to play out the battle of the sighted with the blind. They allow you to plan attacks that nothing else can do.
Combat manned aviation is an extremely expensive pleasure, not every country can afford to maintain an air force. However, drones – both in development and in use – are much cheaper, they are improved much faster. We are waiting for the appearance of drones in the armies of countries that previously could not even dream of air power. And this, in turn, can even affect the political map of the world.
UAVs, with a high probability, will radically change the tactics of using artillery – perhaps artillery will use only high-precision ammunition guided by drones. Tanks will become easy prey for UAVs, and their use will also have to be reviewed.
All these changes will require enormous changes in military theory, military practice, and military education. Officers, from lieutenants to generals, will have to be able to use this new type of weapon, each at their own level.
When a drone is lost, a person does not die – and this is especially important. And drones, for the most part, are cheaper than anti-aircraft missiles, and attempts to defend against them by anti-aircraft missile systems (SAMS) will ruin any country. Electronic warfare (EW), which could easily land any American UAV somewhere in 2011, turned out to be useless already in Karabakh - communication could not be suppressed.
A new era in military affairs has already arrived. The statement of the ex-head of the General Staff says exactly that – and gives hope that our country already takes this into account in its military planning.
Alexander Timokhin
