I thought maybe the thumbnail was just some generic small plane, but nope. That's the same model that keeps making successful attacks in Russia. The Aeroprakt A-22. That little prop plane. Top speed 127 mph/204 kph. That's what Russia can't find and shoot down.
Girkin is in jail, you know, so now they have issues shooting down civilian aircraft
Which is most effective at evading Russian air defense? The F-35, an exquisitely designed $110M jet with among the best stealth that Lockheed Skunkworks can create, or the Ukrainian equivalent of a Cessna trainer aircraft?
It has always been the Cessna, if anyone has not heard of Mathias Rust. It is worth reading. He flew a light aircraft to Moscow and landed it in the middle of the cold war.
Depends heavily on what air defense it's stacked against and who coordinated the mission.
Low speed, low altitude aircraft are excellent at evading higher end air defenses, particularly if you've scouted out the anti-air surveillance in advance.
Riminder the Bismarck wasnt critically damaged by top of the line aircraft, it was sunk by a bunch of biplanes which were effectively immune to its AA.
A great example, setting aside the fact that battleships have always been more trouble than they were worth.
Although, modern aircraft carriers are approaching that kind of outdated-ness. I'm genuinely curious to see what happens when America loses it's first $50B floating fortress.
Battlships filled roughly the same position heavy tanks once filled, big heavy hitters that could take a beating. But with the march of progress came their downfall, that and the adoption of different fleet tactics.
I suspect that the big Carriers will be replaced with something more akin to smaller carriers, kinda like what Japan uses. Though those are definitely just destroyers no carriers here. But yeah with VTOL large aircraft carriers will most likely end up being decommissioned or turned into portable hospitals or soemthing specifically the nuclear ones.
Is this essentially a piper cub or something entirely different?
Similar, yeah. More modern construction and side-by-side seating instead of tandem. But otherwise, similar size and weight.
They must have done something to it, because Wikipedia puts its max range as 680 miles.
Adding a 5 gallons gas tank isn't that hard.
Empty weight 260 kg. So a normal Pilot 70-80 kg adds 25-30% weight on top. Plus the weight for seat, steering wheels etc. So with a small payload they probably safe quite some weight.
Plis adding extra fuel tanks in spota for cargo/pilot etc. prob helps and striping it off anything unnecessary like seats breaks etc...
We aren't talking about the weight of the payload though. Don't you need a fairly hefty bomb to meaningfully damage a refinery?
If the answer is no, I would love to see this strategy implemented in a longer ranged plane. Russia's main tank production factory is about 2000 miles from the nominal Ukrainian border.
Total weight is crucial for how far a plane can fly. So - Pilot weight + Payload weight needs to be considered.
In terms of damage, if you hit the right spot without redundancies you can shut down or severely limit operations of a plant even with only a small material damage. Even if there is no visible damage, reducing the structural integrity of pressure pipes and the like can force a shutdown of that equipment until the damage is properly investigated.
In 2019 Houthis successfully attacked two Saudi refineries with a small swarm of drones, forcing a shutdown.
A refinery has a tank with millions of liters of gasoline. It already has the bomb. All you really need is a penetrator and an igniter.
If Ukraine told me I could bring my own drone over there and blow up an oil refinery in Russia, I’d schedule a vacation.
Fr The 400 H War thunder have to pay out after all.
Large scale long range highly clandestine professional military operation -> Headline: Guy With Children's Toy (and tons of military grade explosive) Just Defeated Russia!
:-/
Accurate.
This is kind of news I like to read. Go Ukraine!
Awesome
Good. Fuck the blyats.
The raids have somewhat throttled Russian gasoline production, but probably not enough to have an immediate impact on the economy—and thus on the long-term war effort. “These are spot strikes,” energy expert Hennadii Rіabtsev told Ukrainian Pravda. “They are painful and affect logistics, but they do not significantly impact annual total refining volumes.”
What? I thought they have reduced their oil refining? Not to mention, they've started to restrict oil exports(refined oil i believe) since these attacks have taken place all while increasing their unrefined oil exports. It feels like this is actually causing an impact, though definitely not something that directs directly to the front line, but this is long term damage and will make it harder for Russia to generate money.
How come they can't shoot it down before it arrives?
They're flying these in very low and slow, which is hard for SAM radars to detect and lock on to unless you're right up next to them -- and once they're past the front lines Russia doesn't have many (if any) point defense installations.
In fact I imagine that the economic impacts of these attacks may be a secondary goal, and the main intent is actually to force Russia to pull SAM systems off the front line and redeploy them across the Russian interior to defend facilities they thought were safely out of Ukraine's reach. The fewer defenses on the front line, the more capable Ukraine's air force is to support efforts on the ground.
Ukraine playing pro dota and forcing dire to ward their own jungle.
Ideally, they redeploy and still can't shoot the fuckers down lol
Russia's air defense had a backbone of Cold War era tech before the war started. Ukraine has been consistently plinking away at it. Most of it is naturally positioned near borders to prevent penetration. If you sneak past the coverage thins out quickly. Russia is a huge country so it's also understandable to not have high density coverage throughout.
At one point Russia had a great setup. But that time was long ago. And oil money going to modernization efforts means less yacht money. Air defense also isn't that critical when you're mostly concerned about beating up on small countries like Georgia and Chechnya that can't fight back.
I imagine it's too small, and perhaps made mostly of plastic and/or wood, so they might not show up on radar
Wood generally has enough water in it to show up on radar. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a point to expensive composite materials for stealth.
It's made of mostly metal, though.
Too bad I would have loved to see a nice oak framed fighter jet. We could even skin it with a nice thin birch ply. Put on a little wood oil and a ceramic top coat. That would be a great looking machine. Plus the Amish could become defensive contactors.
On 24 November 1989, while doing his obligatory community service (Zivildienst) as an orderly in a West German hospital, Rust stabbed a female co-worker who had rejected him.
ffs
I thought the exact same thing! At the time, I'd heard rumors that the entirety of USSR's air defense was smoke and mirrors. This isn't helping to refute those decades old rumors, if there is anything to refute.
It is also possible that they chose not to shoot down the plane back then, because they didn't want a third world war and it became clear not to be a war plane.
The difference there is that it didn't cross the border of a country where Russia was in the middle of an active invasion.
Again??
One more down, how many left?
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