As of: February 7, 2024, 5:18 a.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
Comments
Press
Split
They are as small as toys and crack battle tanks.
A successful drone attack by Ukraine has now caused a tremor on Russian television.
Novomikhailivka – Vladimir Solovyov spat poison and bile.
Russian military bloggers had reported that a Russian tank column had been completely wiped out by a Ukrainian drone swarm;
But that wasn't enough: They then criticized Vladimir Putin's military leadership.
“I don’t know what to say,” writes blogger
Dem Z-krieg
, according to
Bild
, “how the hell can you ignore that the enemy has FPV drones at their disposal?”
Reason enough for Solovyov, as host of an evening news program on the Kremlin-controlled television channel
Rossiya 1
, to demand that these bloggers be "destroyed - simply eliminated," as the
Kyiv Post
quotes him.
The bloggers tried to point out a change that seems to be becoming increasingly clear in the Ukraine war - at least as the author Stefan Korshak published on the
medium
blog .
To him, the Russian disaster on the Novomikhailivka battlefield seems symptomatic of the course of the Ukrainian war: in his opinion, the end result will be “that a drone team of four computer geeks will be sitting in a transporter, with a few flight controls and directional antennas on board, and just as dangerous “can become like several dozen attack helicopters”.
By being able to survey the battlefield and select exactly where to fly each explosive package, they can deliver more precision-guided firepower in almost every way than any other deployed weapon system from up to four kilometers from the front line;
and for a fraction of the price.
Milestone of the Ukraine War: The deadly drone swarm against Russia
The bone of contention is a video that shows the attack by Ukrainian drones on an armored Russian convoy - all vehicles are said to have been destroyed;
including three main battle tanks, one armored personnel carrier and seven armored vehicles.
They march at midday without any cover or infantry support or without monitoring the airspace.
According to
Bild
, their goal was to flank the contested town of Novomichajlivka to the south and advance to the strategically important road to Wuhledar.
The target was positions of the 72nd mechanized infantry brigade of Ukraine.
For the
Kyiv Post
, a milestone in the Ukrainian war: “The Battle of Novomikhailivka was important because it confirmed that Ukraine is experiencing a military-technological revolution.
At least at the moment,” as she writes.
Russian military bloggers quickly disputed Kremlin claims of a successful attack by the tank column, confirming Ukrainian reports of heavy casualties near Novomikhailivka from drone swarms.
According to many pro-Kremlin operators of military information platforms, the Russian army leadership's continued failure to develop effective defense measures against attack drones there and at other locations is simply negligent.
A Ukrainian soldier operates a quadrocopter drone - in the future this will also be possible from a transporter without much effort.
(Archive photo) © IMAGO/Ashley Chan
Forced to progress: Ukraine must defeat Russia as cheaply as possible
According to the
Kyiv Post,
most of the hits depicted show a light quad-copter drone with a Soviet-era self-flying RPG (Rocket Propelled Gun) anti-tank grenade attached to the underside of the flying object, covering the relatively thin side or rear armor of Russian T-72s -Tank or armored personnel carrier hits.
Russian vehicles are equipped with anti-drone shields, but the Ukrainian planes repeatedly avoid the shields by flying under them.
My news
Putin mocks Germany and its auto industry: “We should help them” read
Heavy fighting against Wagner mercenaries in Africa: Video shows interrogation by Ukrainian special forcesread
No immunity: Trump lashes out – read “So bad and so dangerous”.
Without Americans: Germany is working on Ukraine's liberation strike
Devastating reports from the front: Ukrainians are now building retreat facilities
Russia reacts to major NATO maneuvers – and threatens “tragic consequences” read
Ukraine is forced to progress because it could never afford a more conventional war, as Stefan Korshak also writes: If you compare our transporter with the Ukrainian drone pilots to a conventional NATO-standard 155mm howitzer that costs $100,000 per grenade with a precision-guided projectile, then the Ukrainian drone people will achieve a hundred times the effectiveness for the same money - and they will have more powerful, precision-guided firepower with less effort.
Putin's nightmare is coming true: Ukraine is on the way to becoming a world drone power
According to Korshak, the shells alone are costing Ukraine dearly, and the costs for the 155 mm artillery gun, the support vehicles, the logistics required to transport the 155 mm ammunition and the training of the howitzer crew add up to immeasurable amounts – “In addition to the pure material costs, there are the policies that the Ukrainians have to pursue in order to convince their Western allies to finance the guns from tax revenues or to raise additional money to continue the war.”
That is why Ukraine is preparing to become the world's leading manufacturer of drones and to set up a “drone army,” as Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has announced.
In the future, drones will not only be able to fly or swim, but also dive.
They will appear on the water in schools and underwater;
and also react autonomously above or below the water.
Ukraine is currently preparing to drive the Black Sea Fleet from Crimea using unmanned submarines.
“Drones play a major role in the Ukraine war that should not be underestimated - they have shown that the original assumption that drones can play a major role in small, asymmetrical wars is wrong;
“but that they actually play a major role in major conflicts,” says Lieutenant Colonel Rüdiger Rauch, drone defense expert at the Ministry of Defense, in the Bundeswehr podcast
Asked
.
The steel colossi are all the more sensitive to the correct leadership in battle, and the leopard is no exception;
Without escort protection against threats from the air, the NATO premium tank has little chance against killers from the hardware store.
The Leopard's Achilles Heel: Attacks from the air or from the flank
The Achilles heel of a Leopard quickly becomes apparent in an emergency, as the Ukrainian commander Andrey Nemtsev has just complained to the
Hamburger Abendblatt
: “Instead of attacking from ambush, we use the tank for direct attack operations.
We can't do anything else because we don't have any other battle tanks in our battalion.” The Ukrainians share this fate with their opponents.
Basically, the hatches are closed in an operation.
Perhaps the Russian troops were not yet in attack mode and had therefore left the hatches open.
In principle, tank crews want to keep their hatches open for as long as possible.
The reason is that visibility is limited when the hatch is closed and the driver cannot see as well, which would limit the mobility of the tank.
Through open hatches, trained drone pilots can place their explosive charges precisely inside the tank - an opportunity that increases with the falling training standards of the Russians, as
Forbes
writes: “As bad as Russian training was two years ago, it is much worse today.
In order to maintain the overall strength of its front-line formations despite catastrophic losses, the Russian military training establishment cut back on its already inadequate training – and sent inadequately prepared troops to the front.”
Apparently, the Russians have wedged themselves in after this failed attempt to break through near Novomichajlivka, as the
Kyiv Post
writes based on information from Ukrainian sources: A spokesman for Ukraine's 46th Mechanized Brigade, a combat formation stationed near Novomikhailivka, said that the Russians Armed forces shifted the focus of attacks about ten kilometers north to Ukrainian positions around the town of Maryinka, where there have been repeated Russian attacks since then.
These new Russian attacks continue to make little progress, the 46th Brigade news feed said Feb. 2.
Experts suspect that drones will eventually replace artillery
The independent Ukrainian military journalist Yuri Butusov judges the Ukrainian success: “This was probably one of the clearest proofs of the dominance of drones, which, in certain tactical circumstances, replace artillery on the battlefield.”
The Ukrainian group
tochnyi.info
reported in an analysis on January 27, according to the
Kyiv Post
, that videos published on the Internet show a sharp increase in the use of drones.
In less than four weeks, Ukrainian pilots of small drones launched 533 first-person view (FPV) attacks against Russian troops or combat vehicles in January;
that was almost twice as many as in October.
According to the report, the most intensive use of hobby drones took place in the Avdiivka sector in eastern Donbass, which has become Russia's current main target.
In a Jan. 29
Washington Post
column titled "Ukraine's hopes of defeating Russia are fading," analyst Ishaan Tharoor wrote that the battle lines in Ukraine were likely to stagnate due to the West's war weariness.
Without billions of dollars in Western military aid, Ukraine cannot assert itself against Russia.
Koshak is certain: “If the range of drones equals that of artillery, modern war will be turned on its head.”
Until then, moderator Solovyov will continue to rant against what Russia prefers to ignore.
Solovyov is perhaps the most prominent supporter of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its elimination as an independent state.
“These people need to be identified and locked up.
All these people on Telegram, bloggers... they are enemies and they must be fought with the most brutal methods.
If you spread disinformation, you should be destroyed – simply eliminated,” he says.