A drone is assembled by the Aerorozvidka unit.
3D printing technology has been used to add fins to Soviet-designed anti-tank hand grenades, allowing them to be dropped from modified civilian drones.
Posted on 03/28/2022 2:45:51 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
The unit was started by young university-educated Ukrainians who had been part of the 2014 Maidan uprising and volunteered to use their technical skills in the resistance against the first Russian invasion in Crimea and the Donbas region. Its founder, Volodymyr Kochetkov-Sukach, was an investment banker who was killed in action in 2015 in Donbas – a reminder of the high risks involved. The Russians can latch on to the drone’s electronic signature and quickly strike with mortars, so the Aerorozvidka teams have to launch and run.
Honchar is an ex-soldier turned IT marketing consultant, who returned to the army after the first Russian invasion. Taras, who asked not to use his surname, was a management consultant, who specialised in fundraising for the unit and only joined full-time as a combatant in February.
In its early days, the unit used commercial surveillance drones, but its team of engineers, software designers and drone enthusiasts later developed their own designs.
They built a range of surveillance drones, as well as large 1.5-metre eight-rotor machines capable of dropping bombs and rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades, and created a system called Delta, a network of sensors along the frontlines that fed into a digital map so commanders could see enemy movements as they happened. It now uses the Starlink satellite system, supplied by Elon Musk, to feed live data to Ukrainian artillery units, allowing them to zero in on Russian targets.
The unit was disbanded in 2019 by the then defence minister, but it was hastily revived in October last year as the Russian invasion threat loomed.
The ability to maintain an aerial view of Russian movements has been critical to the success of Ukraine’s guerrilla-style tactics. But Aerorozvidka’s efforts to expand, and to replace lost equipment, have been hindered by a limited supply of drones
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Bkmk
Sounds good to me.
I’d love to see the Ukrainians get theirs hands on some anti-ship missiles and start doing a number on the Russian Navy.
Re the Maidan uprising, some people here, who rightly think that the Democratic claim that “Putin’s Facebook ads elected Trump” is utterly ridiculous, somehow totally buy into the idea that “Vicky Nuland’s pastries overthrew the legitimately elected government of Ukraine”. They should know better. Either both of these statements are true (you never know what might have tipped the balance) or neither is true (maybe they made some small marginal difference but deeply rooted domestic political movements cannot be conjured up into existence by an outsider with a few ads or cookies). Accepting these as true is based in the inability to see the opposition as legitimate – such evil people CAN’T possibly represent the TRUE sentiments of the public – if they appear to do so, it is only thru trickery AND upon projection – they know that they achieved their own legitimacy thru similar trickery so they assume that the other side must do the same.
If it really is possible to astroturf a Color Revolution, then Putin was a really weak ass guy who was not capable of outbribing the CIA right in his own back yard. But that’s not true – as we found out in Afghanistan, if the people you are bribing have no real domestic base, you might as well light the money on fire for all the lasting impact it’s going to have. Not only did Putin not learn this lesson in 2014, he STILL hasn’t learned it because when his troops got to Ukraine in February, none of the people he had supposedly “bought” were anywhere to be found.
You want to know whether Zelensky is popularly elected? The population of Ukraine rising up to resist the Russian invader despite being outgunned big time - that’s your evidence that Zelensky is the people’s choice.
But there are other considerations. Stalin wasn’t the people’s choice. We backed him because the alternative was Germany ruling Russia *and* the rest of Europe. Similarly, it’s not important who rules Ukraine - as long as it’s not Russia, just as we did not care who ruled Kuwait, as long as it wasn’t Iraq.
A drone is assembled by the Aerorozvidka unit.
3D printing technology has been used to add fins to Soviet-designed anti-tank hand grenades, allowing them to be dropped from modified civilian drones.
ok this story is propaganda. firstly nobody is building rocket launching drones in their garage. And the fact that you know about this guy means that some propaganda arm is circulating this story. They probably are trying to make a NATO led mission sound like its just some Ukrainian Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak sitting in their garage with a soldering iron. Its not. Its NATO weapons and probably its a Ukrainian special forces guy who is trained up with NATO forces. The drone may have even been flown by the NATO forces after the Ukrainian put it in place.
Excellent. Wish them well.
Yep.
They are drones that hover over the enemy and drop anti-tank grenades. Post 5 shows the drone and the modified anti-tank grenades. Lots of video on the internet of them in action.
They aren't launching rockets. The ordnance is gravity bombs.
“firstly nobody is building rocket launching drones in their garage.”
A couple of guys in our gun club could do this in an afternoon.
L
Kiev is a better name than Kyiv
After the Russians finish off the 60,000 Ukrainian troops in the cauldron in eastern Ukraine, these Maidan drone boys are going have more than their hands full.
—”A couple of guys in our gun club could do this in an afternoon.”
I had to patch my garage roof after the neighbor’s kids’ 4th of July drone drop was off target.
Think of what can be done with a “FREE” $2,000 octocopter!!!
And your life depends on it.
The Times of London reports that Ukraine is using $2,000 commercial octocopter drones, modified with thermal imagers and antitank grenades, ...
I think Azov is history now.
Drone On You
After the Russians finish off the 60,000 Ukrainian troops in the cauldron in eastern Ukraine, these Maidan drone boys are going have more than their hands full.
That's a tall order for the Russians, given the difficulties they're having right now. At 500 KIA (and presumably at least 1000 WIA) a day, how many more days can Russian formations remain combat effective before being completely hollowed out? Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are preparing to put the entire able-bodied male population from 18-60 in a support or combat role. That's presumably at least 10m men.
Re the 500 dead Russians a day number, Ukraine claims Russian KIA north of 15,000 after about 30 days of combat. I thought I'd do a sanity check, in view of the fact that this represents 500 Russian dead a day, extraordinarily high compared to US numbers or recent Russian numbers, although only 1/10 of the 5000 dead a day incurred by Russia (~8m over ~4 years) during WWII.
In recent years, it's hard to think of too many instances of high intensity conventional force-on-force warfare involving fairly well-armed adversaries - including one of the superpowers - that was stalled the way the Russian invasion is. For a few weeks, the Tet Offensive was one of them. It is a bit long in the tooth, but the closest thing I can think off. During a two-month stretch, the US and South Vietnam lost an average of 175 KIA/MIA a day, combined, compared to the NVA/Vietcong's 750 dead a day. Note that the US and South Vietnam were defending, and the NVA/Vietcong were attacking. The US had air supremacy and fire superiority, and the NVA/Vietcong lacked the expensive* man-portable PGM's, effective from a mile away, with which the Ukrainians have been supplied.
The NVA/Vietcong had the benefit of $3.6b in current dollars of equipment per year in Russian aid.
Under the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union initially supported North Vietnam out of “fraternal solidarity”. However, as the war escalated, Khrushchev urged the North Vietnamese leadership to give up the quest of liberating South Vietnam. He continued by rejecting an offer of assistance made by the North Vietnamese government, and instead told them to enter negotiations in the United Nations Security Council.[90] After Khrushchev’s ousting, Brezhnev resumed aiding the communist resistance in Vietnam. In February 1965, Premier Kosygin visited Hanoi with a dozen Soviet air force generals and economic experts.[91] Over the course of the war, Brezhnev’s regime would ultimately ship $450 million worth of arms annually to North Vietnam.[92]
They also received substantial amounts of Chinese weaponry and other equipment:
Military aid given to North Vietnam by China[3]: 379
Year Guns Artillery pieces Bullets Artillery shells Radio transmitters Telephones Tanks Planes Automobiles 1964 80,500 1,205 25,240,000 335,000 426 2,941 16 18 25 1965 220,767 4,439 114,010,000 1,800,000 2,779 9,502 ? 2 114 1966 141,531 3,362 178,120,000 1,066,000 1,568 2,235 ? ? 96 1967 146,600 3,984 147,000,000 1,363,000 2,464 2,289 26 70 435 1968 219,899 7,087 247,920,000 2,082,000 1,854 3,313 18 ? 454 1969 139,900 3,906 119,117,000 1,357,000 2,210 3,453 ? ? 162 1970 101,800 2,212 29,010,000 397,000 950 1,600 ? ? ? 1971 143,100 7,898 57,190,000 1,899,000 2,464 4,424 80 4 4,011 1972 189,000 9,238 40,000,000 2,210,000 4,370 5,905 220 14 8,758 1973 233,500 9,912 40,000,000 2,210,000 4,335 6,447 120 36 1,210 1974 164,500 6,406 30,000,000 1,390,000 5,148 4,663 80 ? 506 1975 141,800 4,880 20,600,000 965,000 2,240 2,150 ? 20 ? Total 1,922,897 64,529 1,048,207,000 17,074,000 30,808 48,922 560 164 15,771
* Note that expense is relative. A Javelin that kills a BMP-3 with its entire crew is relatively cheap, even if it takes 3 Javelins to do the job. A BMP-3 costs about $1m. Valuing the crew of 10's lives at $200K each (typical airline compensation that obviously undervalues those lives), that's another $2m. A Javelin is $175K. Spending roughly 3 Javelins, or $0.5m, to take out $3m of equipment and crew - that's not a bad trade-off.
Apparently, Ukrainians want it to be Kyiv.
Ukrainians are well known for their bad taste.
They are the new Ghosts of Kiev
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