Development of barrage ammunition in Israel and TurkeyBarrage ammunition has become one of the dynamically developing trends in unmanned vehicles, which has already formed a separate class of corresponding systems.
The main idea underlying the barrage ammunition is the creation of relatively inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) capable of conducting not only reconnaissance and surveillance, but also hitting detected targets with the help of a warhead integrated into the design. This approach has several key advantages, including a reduction in the execution time of the detection-defeat cycle and an increase in the effectiveness and efficiency of actions in general.
STRIKING "HARPY"One of the first barrage ammunition in the world was the Israeli Harpy.
This all-weather kamikaze UAV was created by the Israeli state aircraft manufacturing association Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in the late 1980s. The name of the device comes from the ancient Greek harpies (in English pronunciation) – mythical half-women, half-birds, vengeful and evil creatures that swoop like the wind and steal human souls.
The Harpy UAV with a maximum take-off weight of 125 kg was designed to combat enemy radar stations (radars) and was equipped with a passive radar homing head, being, in fact, an analogue of an anti-radar missile. The device was able to perform a programmed flight with subsequent barrage over a given area and search for sources of radar radiation. If a target was detected, Harpy swooped down on it, hitting it with a built-in high-explosive warhead.
Formally speaking, the Israelis were not the first to propose the concept of barrage ammunition. For example, in the USA, since the early 1980s, the AGM-136 Tacit Rain-bow jet anti-radar barrage munition has been developed. This project was plagued by technical problems, including with the management of UAVs, and in 1991, the US Department of Defense, not seeing any prospects in it, decided to close it.
The first customer of the Harpy system was the Israeli Air Force. Back in the early 1990s, the first product of the family was brought to the market, and soon foreign orders appeared. In 1994, a contract worth $ 55 million was signed for the supply of 100 Harpy to China. In the future, these kamikaze UAVs entered service in several more countries.
EVOLUTION OF ISRAEL'S BARRAGE AMMUNITIONThe "golden age" in the development of barrage ammunition began in the 2010s.
It was associated with a departure from the original narrow task of combating air defense (air defense) in favor of increasing the universality of the devices.
A breakthrough in this direction was the Harop system, created by the Israeli IAI based on the Harpy model. It was already a full-fledged multi-purpose UAV with an integrated warhead and a command guidance system through an installed electron-optical system. Tests of the Harop system, which began in 2003, lasted several years, after which the product entered service with the Israeli Air Force.
In the late 2000s, the international marketing of the system began. The first foreign customer was India, which signed a contract in September 2009 for the purchase of ten complexes worth about $ 100 million. In the same month, Germany agreed to purchase a batch of Harop UAVs. Rheinmetall group had to participate in adapting the systems to the requirements of the Bundeswehr.
Azerbaijan has become another customer of the Harop system. The Azerbaijani army used Harop for the first time during the escalation of the Karabakh conflict on April 3, 2016. On the same day, the Ministry of Defense of Armenia announced the destruction of a bus with volunteers by this device.
In 2016, at an exhibition in Singapore, IAI presented a model of a light barrage ammunition of the Green Dragon aircraft type, as well as a Rotem multicopter. Another barrage munition of the Mini Harpy aircraft type, first shown in February 2019 at the Aero India exhibition in Bangalore, filled a niche between the Green Dragon and Harop devices.
The second most important developer of unmanned systems in Israel, Elbit Systems, is also involved in the work on the subject of barrage ammunition. This company created the Sky Striker device, first introduced in September 2016, which is based on the SkyLark 3 unmanned system and inherits some of its characteristic features and subsystems.
The device with a maximum take-off weight of 35 kg can stay in the air for up to two hours, carrying a cumulative fragmentation warhead weighing from 5 to 10 kg. The system was acquired by the Israeli Ministry of Defense. It has been suggested that in January 2019, the Israeli forces used Sky Striker barrage ammunition to destroy the Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and cannon complexes on the territory of Syria.
The third largest company in Israel's unmanned industry, Aeronautics Defense Systems (acquired by the Israeli state defense company Rafael in 2019), did not stay away from the subject of barrage ammunition. Here, in the wake of the trend for the development of kamikaze UAVs, the Orbiter 1K apparatus was created, designed to combat enemy infantry.
The device is based on the Orbiter 2 drone. It was first demonstrated during the Paris Le Bourget Air Show in 2015. The duration of the barrage is about two to three hours. The range is up to 100 km. The barrage ammunition is capable of carrying a high-explosive fragmentation warhead weighing about 2.2 kg, which contains 4 thousand striking elements made of tungsten.
In early August 2016, Aeronautics announced that soon the first customer received the Orbiter 1K barrage UAV. With a high degree of probability, we can say that this country is Azerbaijan, since it later became known that the assembly production of this system was organized in Azerbaijan at the AZAD Systems joint venture on the basis of the Sharg production association.
Other Israeli companies are also engaged in barrage ammunition. For example, a small private company uVision, established in 2011, specializes exclusively in this area of development. The company offers a family of HERO systems (previously called Wasp), which includes devices of various classes. There are nine systems in its catalog, some of which probably have not yet reached the level of mass production.
Four unmanned vehicles – HERO-30, HERO-70, HERO-120 and HERO-400ES – are made with an X-shaped wing, the planes of which are laid out at launch, and a cruciform tail. Four other types of unmanned vehicles – HERO-250, HERO-400, HERO-900 and HERO-1250 – are implemented according to the normal scheme with wing consoles folding into flight position and a cruciform tail. The company offers its HEROES with a standard universal combat unit of its own design. However, according to its representative, it is ready to integrate the combat load of third-party manufacturers.
APPLICATION OF ISRAELI SYSTEMS IN NAGORNO-KARABAKHIn August 2017, after the publication in the Israeli newspaper "Maariv", a loud scandal broke out related to the supply of Israeli systems to Azerbaijan.
According to the published data, during the visit of the delegation of Aeronautics representatives to Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani military asked Israeli engineers to demonstrate barrage ammunition in action, striking positions in Nagorno-Karabakh. Despite the refusal of operators to participate in such a "demonstration", the company's management agreed to it, fearing to disrupt the deal for the supply of the next batch of systems.
In January 2019, it became known that Azerbaijan had acquired a batch of Sky Striker. They were used in July 2020 during a border clash between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In general, unmanned systems, including barrage ammunition, were widely used by Azerbaijan during the escalation of the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, including against artillery, air defense launchers, as well as against armored vehicles. However, for most of the episodes known in the public field, there is insufficient data both on the types of devices used and on the actual damage.
TURKISH KAMIKAZE DRONESTurkish developments in the field of barrage ammunition are represented by two systems created by STM.
These are Alpagu aircraft type and Kagdi Block II quadrocopter type.
The Alpagu kamikaze UAV is launched from the container, after which the wing and tail are opened to the flight position, the electric motor turns on, rotating the pushing screw. The wingspan of the drone is 1.25 m, the take–off weight is 1.9 kg. The device is equipped with a two-channel guidance system, and the ground control system has software that helps the operator identify targets. To defeat them, Alpagu carries 0.5–0.6 kg of shock load in the form of a hand grenade manufactured by the Turkish company MKEK. At the same time, it is possible to equip with combat parts from other manufacturers. The range of the device is 5 km, the duration of the flight is 10 minutes.
The Kargu Block II ammunition is a quadcopter with a take-off weight of 5 kg. The batteries provide the UAV with 25 minutes of being in the air. The range of action is about 4 km, STM has developed a new target suspension for Kargu, including with a fragmentation warhead weighing 1.3 kg and a thermobaric warhead of a similar mass.
Allegedly, Kargu Block II can form a flock of more than 20 aircraft. It was reported that barrage ammunition is operated in the Turkish army and special police detachments.
CONCLUSIONS AND GENERALIZATIONSThe emergence of multifunctional systems of barrage ammunition stimulated a significant increase in interest in this technique from customers from the Near and Middle East.
For many countries, they have become an opportunity to obtain "quasi-shock" UAVs without investing astronomical financial resources in the purchase and subsequent operation of the corresponding systems.
In parallel with the technological improvement of existing systems, tactical methods of their application are also changing. Thus, the reduction in the dimension and the reduction in the cost of unmanned vehicles stimulated the emergence of a new concept – "flock", or "swarm" application. Currently, the "flock" application is one of the main directions of the development of barrage ammunition in the near and medium term.
Vasily IvanovVasily Ivanovich Ivanov is a journalist.
