Barrage ammunition of the Middle East countries
Today, barrage ammunition has become one of the dynamically developing areas in unmanned vehicles, which has already formed a separate class of corresponding systems.
The main idea underlying the spread of barrage ammunition was 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 of the drone. Such an approach has several key advantages, including reducing the execution time of the detection –defeat cycle, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of UAV actions in general.
THE ISRAELI FIRSTBORN
One of the first barrage ammunition in the world was the Israeli Harpy. This all-weather kamikaze drone was created by the Israeli state aircraft manufacturing association Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in the late 1980s. The unmanned vehicle 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 essentially an analogue of an anti-radar missile.
The drone was able to perform a programmed flight with subsequent barrage over a given area and search for sources of radar radiation. In case of detection of a target (radiating radar) Harpy swooped down on her, hitting her 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 United States, the AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow jet anti-radar barrage munition has been developed since the early 1980s. But this project was plagued by technical problems, including drone control, and in 1991, the US Department of Defense, not seeing any prospects in it, decided to close it.
Israeli experts saw a rational grain in the concept of barrage ammunition and successfully developed it, not only thereby increasing the combat capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but at the same time successfully commercializing the results of their own developments in the foreign market. And demonstrating once again his ability to be a kind of trendsetter in the field of unmanned vehicles.
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 drones entered service in several more countries.
RAPID EVOLUTION
The "golden age" in the development of barrage ammunition began in the 2010s. It was associated with a departure from the original narrowly understood task of combating enemy air defense in favor of increasing the universality of the devices.
A breakthrough in this direction was the Harop system, created by the same 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. Despite the fact that the unmanned vehicle remained in a dimension close to the prototype, the airframe and other parts, components and assemblies were significantly redesigned. 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 10 complexes with a total value of about $ 100 million. In the same month, Germany agreed to purchase a batch of Harop drones.
The second most important developer of unmanned systems in Israel, ElbitSystems, is also involved in the work on the subject of barrage ammunition. This company created the SkyStriker device, first introduced in September 2016, which is based on the SkyLark 3 unmanned system and inherits some of its characteristic features and subsystems.
An unmanned vehicle with a maximum take-off weight of 35 kg can stay in the air for one to two hours, carrying a cumulative fragmentation warhead weighing from 5 to 10 kg. The system was acquired by the Israeli Ministry of Defense. There are suggestions that in January 2019, the Israeli forces used SkyStriker barrage ammunition to destroy the Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and cannon complexes on the territory of Syria.
In January 2019, it became known that Azerbaijan had acquired a batch of SkyStriker barrage ammunition. They were used in July 2020 during a border clash between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Tavush region. 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, and armored vehicles. However, for most of the episodes demonstrated in the public field, there is not enough data for a full–fledged analysis - both by the types of devices used and by the actual damage.
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.
It is a well-known fact that Israeli engineers were the first to see the rational grain in the concept of barrage ammunition and successfully developed it, successfully monetizing the results of their own developments in the foreign market. At the same time, other countries in the Middle East region are also making attempts to increase their capabilities for the use of barrage ammunition. In the countries of the Middle East, it seems appropriate to distinguish two approaches used to achieve this goal: the first is the production of own samples (Turkey); the second is the import of military products from supplier countries (United Arab Emirates).
CHINESE ANALOGUES
Harpy systems sold in the 1990s by Israel to the People's Republic of China in 2004 were sent to the manufacturer for their repair and modernization. The United States, fearing that these systems would pose a threat to American forces in the Pacific, demanded that Israel cancel the contract, despite the absence of American components in the products declared by the Israeli side. Israel, fearing to lose the opportunity to interact with the United States on some key military programs, including F-35 fighter jets, succumbed to pressure, returning the Hurpy systems to China unchanged.
Such a turn of events did not remain without organizational issues on the part of China. He started his own developments in this area. So, on the basis of the Hurpy device, the specialists of the Research Institute of UAVS of the Northwestern University of China created an ASN-301 unmanned vehicle with similar parameters to the Israeli prototype. Later, the CH-901 and WS-43 barrage ammunition began to advance to the market of the Middle East countries.
Turkey
Turkish developments in the field of barrage ammunition are represented by two systems created by STM: the Alpagu aircraft-type system and the Rargu Block II quadrocopter-type system.
The Alpagu kamikaze drone is launched from the container, after which the wing and tail of the device open into the flight position, and 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 drone with 25 minutes of being in the air. Its radius of action is about 4 km. STM has developed a new target suspension for Kargu, including one with a 1.3 kg fragmentation warhead 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.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
In recent years, Ukraine has seen an explosive growth in the development of small-class unmanned systems, including in the segment of barrage ammunition. For example, the Kiev company DeViRo (the creator of the famous reconnaissance drone "Leleka") has created a drone-"kamikaze" RAM II UAV.
The device is made in a normal aerodynamic scheme with a high wing span of 2.3 m. The maximum take -off weight is 8 kg. The duration of the flight with a warhead weighing 4 kg is half an hour, with a 2.5-kilogram warhead – one hour. It can carry anti-tank, thermobaric and high-explosive fragmentation shells. The range of the system reaches 30 km.
In the absence of interest from the national customer (it was even before the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine), the Ukrainian company tried to bet on the foreign market. In particular, the device was promoted to the United Arab Emirates in partnership with the IGG group.
The previous version of the RAM UAV device was shown at the 3rd International exhibition of unmanned systems and simulators UMEX-2018 in Abu Dhabi in February 2018.
conclusions
The 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" unmanned aerial vehicles 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. For example, the reduction in the dimension and cheaper unmanned vehicles stimulated the emergence of a new concept – "flock", or "swarm" application. Currently, the development of this concept is seen as one of the main directions of the development of barrage ammunition in the near and medium term.
At the same time, it can be noted that different countries follow different paths in creating and equipping their own armed forces with such systems.
Israel occupies a completely unique position here, which is a kind of incubator of the corresponding systems – the state creates conditions for industrial companies, including through purchases (sometimes insignificant) of their equipment. However, the main focus is on foreign customers.
Vasily Ivanov
Vasily Ivanovich Ivanov is a journalist.
