Ukraine plinking a Russian GPS-jammer with a GPS-guided bomb. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian drone-jammers. Ukraine’s cruise missiles striking Russian air-defense sites whose missions include, you guessed it, shooting down cruise missiles.
Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine has seen a lot of ironic, darkly-hilarious clashes. The latest was also one of the quickest between setup and punchline.
On Tuesday morning, Russian media announced the deployment, to Ukraine, of Russian forces’ latest high-tech counterbattery radar. A few hours later in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainians blew it up … with artillery rockets.
The irony deepens. In theory, a Russian Yastreb-AV radar would help to protect Russian troops from Ukraine’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers—its HIMARS. Now guess what the Ukrainians used to destroy that first Yastreb-AV.
That’s right: HIMARS.
Drones are incredibly sneaky, so long as they’re high up. They’re tiny and basically impossible to detect by radar. Once they get close you can hear them, but keep your distance and they should be stealthy enough - particularly if you’re is in a vehicle with a noisy engine.
This. I have a DJI mini 2, and while that isn’t a combat drone used by anyone’s military, it’s pretty much impossible for me to see it at it’s “maximum” altitude of 122 meters and at that height I can get pretty good real-time video. I’m pretty sure it will exceed that altitude limit if I wanted it to, and there’s no way I could see it or hear it at 200 meters. And it would still get me useful video.
I have to assume that the drones being used by the UA are better than my silly little camera drone.