Unmanned Vehicles
A community for news and discussion around various types of unmanned vehicles whether they be UAVs, USVs, UGVs or otherwise. The scope of this community includes civil and military contexts.
News and discussion of all types of systems designed to counter and protect from unmanned vehicles are welcome too!
Not to be pedantic, but I also include any kind of practical robotics, even if it is stationary, part of "unmanned vehicles", so a stationary turret is fine to post here.
Anyone is welcome to post here, and the scope of content can include anything from sharing an unmanned vehicle you made yourself to articles about the political implications of unmanned vehicles in society.
Rules: Follow the spirit of Sopuli moderation rules, unmanned vehicles are like most other things inherently political but please keep in mind the focus of this community!
view the rest of the comments
tldr; According to the last year leaks it costs around $75k first localized versions were around $50k. Shahed isn't a low tech or cheap drone.
A 30mm cannon on attack helicopter with say 600 rounds of airburst ammunition could conservatively down 100 shaheds with 6 shots per kill on average costing the enemy $75k per shahed*100 shaheds = $7.5 million in a matter of minutes. Thus an attack helicopter used for c-uas even when factoring in logistics, per hour flight costs and fuel costs could pay for itself in a handful of mass shahed attacks... and not it is not a disposable tool, using an advanced attack helicopter for c-uas tricks the enemy into financing an extremely advanced hands on helicopter pilot training and R&D program.
Given an AH-64 costs somewhere between $30 million to $70 million, you can see how the costs quickly run out of control for an enemy employing the shahed strategy against a competent c-uas tool such as an attack helicopter. Further in the case of using helicopters after the war is over all of that institutional expertise in pilots in low altitude difficult flying (and associated logistics) with a helicopter can be translated to search and rescue, emergency airlift, firefighting and any other number of emergency/natural disaster contexts.
Additionally if a helicopter like a UH-1Y or AW149 is used than that same C-UAS armed helicopter that took down a shahed could be used as an emergency airlift vehicle to bring victims to a safe evac point/a hospital helipad. Thus you are making the enemy eat even more efficiency cost because your "counter" is just a further investment in the general quality of your emergency response services whether they be for war or for other things.
There is definitely an affordability myth here with Shaheds. What makes Shahed like flying bombs radically different than other aircraft is that kids can build them and fly them and they can be deployed from almost anywhere with very little infrastructure. They are however, when you take into account the natural efficiencies of scale that come from more imaginative, coordinated solutions than mass producing small shitty flying bombs, NOT cost efficient. They are in a way, maximally cost INEFFICIENT because you have atomized everything about your strategy and can't extract any efficiency of scale from focusing advantages into systems other than sidetracking your entire economy to focus on producing the same model of flying bomb over and over again that is only useful for terror and murder.
If you doubt an attack helicopter could knock out shaheds/flyinb bombs at a high rate, see this example of video of an AH-64 eating shaheds for breakfast from the last couple of days.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?__goaway_challenge=js-refresh&__goaway_id=e352439154746d31b8813ae8095d2607&__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Finv.nadeko.net%2F&v=q-MC8B4fjfc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-MC8B4fjfc
This is presumably without airburst 30mm ammunition either.
Another from the UAE
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=Q_gvkeRNFX4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_gvkeRNFX4
Tap for spoiler
Great wall of text there m8.Anyway, yes - helicopter can down shaheds, no - it can't down them every 6 shots. Everything else assumes that m*scovites and iranians are regarded (they are but not in this), shaheds can do a lot of things including working as retranslators for other shaheds, working as a small mothership, working as an fpv. And unless your country is bigger than average ~~dick~~ israel helicopters would be even more ineffective. Yes they are extremely ineffective when talking raw numbers, but when used against static targets with limited air defence they work.
I literally posted video montages of AH-64s doing precisely that.
The larger the area the more effective helicopters are? ....? That is kind of the point of helicopters in the first place?
...and a helicopter can do all of them better, faster, more decisively and far more cost efficiently.
Sure if you only need to lift a small payload, use a shahed or two, but if we are talking major military operations, shaheds are vastly inefficient when seen from a materials standpoint.
That's the funny part.
That doesn't follow, like at all? No the larger your country the more helicopters you need just in time near the place where they are going to attack. And how many AH-64 were made since 40(?) years ago like 4000? The point of helicopters is questionable and niche in modern warfare.
They can't be disposable remotely controlled cruise missiles disguised as a drone, nor can they be made by thousand a day, nor can they work as a retranslator for other helicopters, nor can they launch small disposable remotely controlled missiles. So they literally can't do any of the mentioned things.
Shaheds are inefficient in how high tech they are for the purpose. Everything else they do just fine, you don't hate the fpvs and aerial bombs as much as shaheds.
The larger the country the more space there are for helicopters to intercept shaheds, and the far greater amount of time is spent flying over territory where the shaheds can be detected and destroyed. The larger the country the more efficient it is to deploy large amounts of static acoustic sensors quickly over an area using a heliopter.
The only platform more efficient in fuel use for hunting down shaheds are fixed wing aircraft, but they suffer major unsurmountable problematic shortcomings such as high stall speeds and the tactical rigidity of needing to come up directly behind a flying bomb to destroy it, putting the aircraft right in the path of debris from the resulting explosion. Further, fixed wing aircraft rely on highly vulnerable static infrastructure that is trivially easy to spot with satellite imagery or other kinds of reconnaisance, and long range shahed-type flyinb bombs are nearly ideal for striking airbases from long range from unexpected directions. Helicopters do not.
No but helicopters are a nearly ideal launch platform for large salvos of long range cruise missiles.
No but a small fraction of the world's military helicopters can very easily shoot down a thousand shaheds a day and do so for a far less of a cost than all the shaheds cost as disposable assets.
You have clearly not heard of APKWS missile capability on helicopters such as the AH-64 and AH-1Z nor Martlet missiles on British Helicopters such as the Merlin and Wildcat, nor of any number of missile-helicopter pairings all over the world?
The certified launch capability of guided munitions from a AH-64 or AH-1Z is a dictionary of guided missile development, they can shoot anything and everything essentially, so you are horrifically off point here.
I guess you have never heard of Link16 capability with AH-64s and AH-1Zs? That is one of the primary purposes of a military attack/scout helicopter as a tool.
Shaheds are inefficient because they are glorified overly expensive target drones for helicopter pilots, that is my whole point. It isn't a monetarily superior strategy, hyperfocusing on shahed development is mathematically a losing proposition even before you factor in all of the other benefits that come from investing in helicopters and helicopter pilots over raw shahed production.
The idea that this is some new super cost efficient way of war is an illusion partially sustained by the truth that it makes close air support and long range air attack actually affordable and realistic to a degree for impoverished, poorly trained irregular forces such as the russian military in 2026 that cannot hope to reliably sustain more sophisticated aeronautics programs.