As Watling himself puts it: “Unhardened UAVs are disposable tools like munitions and get consumed very rapidly. You need them in your force and you need them to be cheap.”
For decades, Western armies have relied on a few expensive, ‘exquisite’ high-tech platforms, and that includes drones. This conflict of disposable drones may lead to a radical change in military procurement towards the many and the cheap.
“…even if the figure really is 10,000, this appears sustainable…10,000 DJI quadcopters at an average cost of about $1,000 would be $10m. Last week, Russia lost an Su-34 bomber, with a sticker price of something over $40m…
“And yesterday Russia apparently lost an even more advanced Su-35, which goes for around $85m. Together these two aircraft alone represent a loss ten times as great as all Ukraine’s drones for the month put together.“
The headline is pretty much clickbait. $10m is a drop in the bucket.
Yeah! I thought it was interesting that it’s not a big deal.
Great breakdown, very enlightening
This conflict has unique characteristics and will rewrite some “rules” for modern war.
Does this includes the kamakaze FPV units? The ones that are meant to be expended?
Good point. They are pretty cheap to construct. All in less than €400 per unit but will take a few hours each to build.
Pretty cheap for the damage they do, of course.
good question, idk
Wouldn’t we by now be seeing piles of dead drones being showcased daily if they were lost in such a high number? Like it was done with the recent loss of leos?
A lot of these drone losses will be little more than shrapnel strewn across the battlefield. Not much to show off.
If they get shot down sure, but jammed drones would either land or fall, in either way theres plently to go for a drone carcass surely.
True but then it becomes a logistics and organisation problem for a fairly meaningless photo op and Russia aren’t doing well with either of those things.
They’re not going to be in a pile, though. They’re still going to be individual drones lying in ditches in no-man’s land. Hardly a compelling photo-op.
We have reports that russia is running out of materials, surely if the drones are flying around they would be closer to their front lines, so easier opportunity to recover.
I mean just logically, russia is not doing so well in the information war, so I assumed they would use any opportunity to showcase their achievements, like they have done with the several bradleys/leos destroyed. They were milking that footage for a week at least.
So to me its weird that they have not tried to improve morale with such statistics. But I obviously have no clue on combat morale.
RUSI? Tried to look them up to see if theysharee more than just letters with Russia. Found this great assessment from 2019 UK would be ‘outgunned’ in Russia conflict - think-tank
So if not biased just incompetent?
@sexy_peach In one of Hromadske’s reports from Bakhmut a drone team did quote a fairly high number for drone losses. Not sure how accurate 10k a month is but it doesn’t strike me as completely unbeliveable in relation to that.
Drones are closer in attrition to ammunition than aircraft, so just need to be resupplied as such. They are undoubtedly helpful with all the mortar and artillery spotting, so we need enough resupply to make the attrition worth it.
Also, what think tank is this? Are they credible?
