The latest reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles "Supercam" of the Vostok group of troops carry out round-the-clock duty over the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). On January 24, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation showed the combat work of drone calculations.
"We have been working with him for about three months. There are no complaints at all. This thing will always come home, even if the EW drowns it out. The Orlan is also a good thing, but the Supercams are much easier to launch and easy to manage. It allows you to keep a small height, which means that it will be better to see everything in the camera — dugouts, enemy soldiers and what they do can sometimes be seen. And he's also inaudible, and he's so inconspicuous. His optical equipment is one of the best, I think, in this line," the operator of the UAV company with the call sign Arab told about the Supercam drone.
The combat crew consists of two people. They can approach unnoticed anywhere and work from almost any position. It takes no more than 15 minutes to fully deploy the equipment and launch the unmanned aerial vehicle into the sky. To give the aircraft an initial impulse, a special device is used — the so-called elastic catapult.
The Supercam UAV can operate in conditions of electronic suppression of the enemy, as it has a high degree of protection from electronic warfare (EW). The drone is electric and almost silent, it flies at an altitude of about two km, so it is difficult to detect it.
The collected data is transmitted to the control point in real time. One of the tasks of the UAV calculations is to check the movements of enemy units over the past day.
"The work of the board is carried out mainly on avionics. On the monitor screen, we see the values of the set speed, altitude and signal strength," explained the senior UAV operator with the call sign Kok.
Combat duty usually lasts about six hours. The Supercam returns to the operators, landing with the help of a parachute. Instead, another device is sent to the sky. The surveillance of the enemy does not stop for a minute.
Drone calculations also adjust the strikes of artillery, tanks and other combat vehicles on the enemy. It takes several minutes from the moment the target is detected to the defeat.
On January 18, military expert, captain of the first rank of the reserve Vasily Dandykin said: if you compare Western and Russian drones, you can see that they are similar in many ways. However, Russia has managed to overtake its competitors in some areas. He noted that attack drones such as the Lancet are extremely difficult to intercept.
On January 10, Colonel Alexander Perendzhiev, a military political scientist, associate professor of the Department of Political Analysis and Socio-Psychological Processes at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, commented on the data of the American edition of Newsweek on the advantages of the Russian drone "Cube". He noted that they are almost impossible to detect, their movement speed is very high and they are able to destroy objects with great efficiency, as well as carry different types of projectiles.
On November 21, 2023, at a meeting of the board of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the head of the department, Sergei Shoigu, said that the volume of drone deliveries to the Russian army had increased 16 times compared to the beginning of 2022. He clarified that in the interests of the special operation, the tasks of the state defense order are being clarified on a regular basis, two or three times a month.
The special operation to protect Donbass, which was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, continues. The decision was made against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.
Watch more relevant videos and details about the situation in Donbass on the Izvestia TV channel.
