Super hyped at the start of the war. A year later, role completely overtaken by cheaper drones.
Are non-stealth, medium/heavy drones obsolete against an army with AA?
Bayraktar
Super hyped at the start of the war. A year later, role completely overtaken by cheaper drones.
Are non-stealth, medium/heavy drones obsolete against an army with AA?
>Are non-stealth, medium/heavy drones obsolete against an army with AA?
yes
Speaking of, is there any possibility of creating stealth versions? Stealth UAV bombers would be incredibly scary.
>Stealth UAV bombers
Yeah, Turkye is working on one.
Loyal Wingman style drones are basically all stealth UAV.
They're all turbojet flying wings because props and spars just aren't stealthy.
Didn’t they switch to using them for surveillance instead since the cameras are apparently really nice and you can just drop artillery on whatever it spots?
If you can get close enough for surveillance you are already long ago in their AA range and might as well drop the bomb with it directly
Drop one small payload ensuring that everyone knows about UAV
Or
Keep covert surv and transfer intel for himars strike
Hmmmm that's tough choice
>Service ceiling: 7,620 m
That puts it out of range of all AAA and most MANPADS. A Pantsir's missiles can reach it tho, 15km max altitude and 18km range. But how far away can the optics of the TB2 see? I'd bet long enough that it's limited more by the range of most artillery.
Regardless, to actually protect something from a TB2, a Pantsir needs to be deployed forward of what it's trying to protect.
>TB-2 is obsolete, they can't kill us an-ACK
We haven't seen Bayraktars for almost a year, now suddenly a few videos pop up.
Either:
1) Videos of them working have been withheld for some security reasons
2) Gaps in Russian AA have started to emerge, allowing the use of Bayraktars again
i just thought they ran out of precision guided munitions for them or they had been all shot down/had no spares to make them fly.
Makes sense that they would be used in some random coastal strikes far away from the land frontline where all the AA is.
>2) Gaps in Russian AA have started to emerge, allowing the use of Bayraktars again
I think they lost a lot to AA and have now replaced them.
Maybe they grounded them to avoid losses at some point and now are able to use them in places.
It will be years before we really know.
Yes, the Russians probably updated their AD and search radars to identify drones so they wouldn’t suffer a repeat of Syria. Appears to have been successful.
needful post good sar
would you like ruble rupee or google card?
*dies to a drone*
The S stands for "shit"
At what altitude do big boy drones operate? Is it always their flight ceiling, or only when doing surveilence? Or almost never? Do they need to get closer to the ground when dropping munitions, like laser guided shit, or do you always maxrange?
It's Hurricane of Ukraine war. Vital and extremely important during early stages, surpassed by later tech, and subsequently forgotten by everyone except the people with understanding.
Hurricane was SHITE thoughever
Wagner is using Bayraktar in Africa. They're still good where war is not too hot.
Who are Wagner?
>Super hyped at the start of the war. A year later, role completely overtaken by cheaper drones.
>Are non-stealth, medium/heavy drones obsolete against an army with AA?
No, you seem confused, good lad.
So basically, at the start of the war, Ukraine had Bayraktar drones on standby.
They were the first real line on defense and counter-attack against the columns of invading Russian tanks rushing towards Kiev.
They did a fantastic job at stopping these tank columns.
Then, the days turned into weeks the weeks into months, and now it's been a year and a half since the start of the "spacial military operation".
The reality is that the Bayraktar drones were taken out one by one as the war progressed.
Ukraine ordered more TB2's and some of them have arrived recently in Ukraine.
Here's a tweet / video from 2 days ago showing a TB2 used by the Ukranian Navy
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1698366467379437763
So yes, Ukraine lost it's TB2's it has at tht start of the war to Anti-Air defenss and probably a few shoot down by air-to-air missiles from plans. It took around 6 to 9 months, (from what I've seen, can't confirm this) for all their TB2's to be shot down.
Ukraine also has been relying on smaller commercial drones, as OP pointed out.
But the B2's are back in business now.
They are recieving aid from the west, so they have diversified the drones they use, simply because Bayraktar is a a single Turkish company and they probably can't produce as a many drones as Ukraine needs, so obvously Ukraine uses other drones from other companies that they might recieve from he West on top of converting commercial drones into grenade-droppers and kamikaze drones.
So yes, the TB2 is a vry effective weapon.
The TB2 is the main reason for Ukraine slowing down the intial wave of tank columns, long enough to get their troops entrenched and ready to rock.
So no, the TB2 is everything BUT obsolete.
It's effective and very financially efficient.
There was a few crowd donation drives to buy TB2's as well, and I think it resulted in two being bought and paid for. Also, because it is a UAV it's a bit more expendable versus a fighter because pilots take ages and a lot of money to train.
TB2s are conducting ASW since it is the best they have against the russian subs
>Are non-stealth, medium/heavy drones obsolete against an army with AA?
No. MALE drones, regardless of stealth are a dead end. The drone game is either go high or go low. It's funny though since we just got new footage of a TB-2 last week.