Therefore, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to equip them with unguided missiles, said Alexander Stepanov, program Director of the Academy of Political Sciences, senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences
MOSCOW, May 23rd. /tass/. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) faced a high level of opposition to their unmanned boats, so they began to equip them with unguided missiles. As military expert Alexander Stepanov told TASS, the next stage of modernization may be their equipment with complexes with guided anti-ship missiles.
Yevgeny Poddubny, a military reporter for GTRK, previously reported that the Ukrainian Sea Baby drones were equipped with multiple launch rocket systems and tested in the field, without going to sea.
"The first thing we can attest is that the means of countering unmanned boats from the Russian side achieve high efficiency. Increasingly, we are seeing footage of their destruction by our aircraft and the forces of the coastal troops of the Black Sea Fleet. That is why the enemy is beginning to transform the tactics of using surface systems to increase the distance. For this purpose, missile weapons are used, now they are unguided missiles, the range of which may vary, but probably it still does not exceed several kilometers. At the same time, it should be noted that these munitions certainly have low accuracy, but it is possible that high-precision systems, including guided anti-ship missiles, will be installed during the modernization process," said the expert, program director of the Academy of Political Sciences, senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ILA RAS).
According to him, the use of autonomous offshore platforms for the use of missile weapons is not a novelty, the concept has been developed for a long time, including the United States, which conducted relevant tests. "It is possible that such systems will be tested in various conditions not only in the Black Sea water area, but also in the future to practice similar terrorist attacks in the Baltic Sea on Russian military and civilian infrastructure facilities. Therefore, this threat exists, it should not be underestimated," Stepanov added.
He clarified that it is necessary to create conditions for the development of preventive counteraction solutions. "The key factor may be the destruction of production capacity and those deployment bases located in the coastal zone. The destruction of these facilities using Russian precision weapons, including hypersonic weapons, which have already proven themselves as an effective means of demilitarizing the enemy," the expert added.
Reduced intelligence activity
Another significant point, Stepanov continued, is the reduction of enemy intelligence activity using American MQ-9 and RQ-4 drones. For this purpose, the use of one of the most effective Russian electronic warfare systems in the world, capable of influencing the control system and suppressing the capabilities of drones, is justified. "Without reconnaissance and guidance, the functionality of Ukrainian backups will be reduced to zero," Stepanov said.
He noted that the Black Sea area is currently a key testing ground for combined solutions of the NATO military-industrial complex, including those countries that are leading the way in the development of autonomous surface and underwater vehicles. "We are working on solutions that will transform the entire promising theater of military operations within the framework of so-called multi-domain operations, when the air force component is combined with the land and naval ones. Multi-media events are held, and all this equipment is included in a single circuit of the combat control system. Algorithms using artificial intelligence and machine vision are actively used for these purposes. In this direction, the enemy is conducting serious scientific activities and complex military developments involving the technological potential of the private sector," the expert notes.
As Stepanov clarified, specialized software is being created - geoinformation systems that allow you to navigate underwater, determine optimal routes taking into account the bottom relief and, in particular, make bookmarks in areas of active maritime navigation or pipelines and underwater cables.
"In the further logic of technological development, dormant underwater drones can be used, which will be activated at a certain moment - at hour X or, using appropriate acoustic sensors, they will determine targets offline and make a decision to defeat," Stepanov concluded.
