Eight new UAV strike companies are ready for battle – they have been given pickup trucks, attack copters and FPV drones. UAVs for the Army purchased drones within the framework of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s UNITED24 platform and at the expense of the state budget.
It is important that all drones are Ukrainian-made. We continue to remove obstacles for the development of Ukrainian companies. There will be many more changes. So that Ukraine produces thousands of drones every month, which the Defense Forces need right now.
The creation of strike companies is an unprecedented and timely step. I am grateful to the General Staff, the Ministry of Defense and the State Intelligence Service for the innovative approach to decision-making. The three shock companies that we launched a few months ago are already having successful results at the front.
Comment: So announced Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, on his Telegram channel. These photos accompanied the announcement. Ukraine and the Ukrainian Military are taking the drone revolution seriously. They’re also tying this all together through the apps they develop and constantly improve. These fit perfectly into the total national defense strategy that I’ve mentioned a few times. But I do wonder how they’re preparing to address the drone jamming problem. These comments by Trent Telenko encapsulate most of what I’m thinking about these new strike companies.
And there is no such company of similar military capability inside the US or any other Western military. There are orders of magnitude differences between masses of drones as expendable information/lethal munitions versus drone “platforms” costing 1,000’s of times more.
The unit cost of a MQ-1C Grey Eagle system was US $21.5M (FY2013) US$31.2M (inc. R&D). That was 4 MQ-1C drones and the command unit. Everything in those Ukrainian photos was had for around $2 million at the outside. Which of those two drone unit options do you think has more front line combat capability in surface to air missile contested airspace? Which unit do you think is easier to replicate in numbers? Which unit do you think can continue operating at 30% drone loss rates a week?
The age of unquestioned Western air dominance and low air platform attrition that the MQ-1C was developed in is gone. Ukraine’s drone companies can provide more combat capability in deeply attritional peer conflict. It is replacing most of the roles of both jets and artillery. Small drone airpower answering more often to sergeants than flag rank officers is the present reality of peer level conflict. Western militaries ignore this development at their peril.
The larger drones are the eight engined R18 (20 shown) and the quadcopter Bat (18 shown). Even the pickups are interesting . They are Peugeot Landtreks produced in China in partnership with a Chinese company to be marketed exclusively to third world countries. Accordingly, they are rugged, reliable and perfect for poor road and off road conditions. These drone carrying Peugeots are the next evolution in the army of technicals that appeared in North Africa decades ago.
TTG
This war is the best thing that ever happened to the military industrial complex. A country the size of TX to test new tech in real action without sending US troops to the frontline. Add to it the media putting the average American in a trance with budweiser sales, evil white nationalists and Trump in every other headline. If they planned it this way brilliant. If not they won the lottery.
Babeltuap,
This war is good for the MIC, both here and in Russia. For us, munitions production is seeing a massive revival, from 155 shells to long range strike and air defense missiles. The drone sector, though not as lucrative, will definitely take off. For the Russian MIC, this is even a bigger wake up call. The Gerasimov-Shoigu modernization program was built on an industrial base of corruption and thievery. In the future Russian weapons will be built with Russian components That industrial base will be watched and not left in the hands of the thieving oligarchs. They may go back to their old mobilization system.
TTG
I think the big wake up call for Russia out of this is that they need China. We finally see Russia accepting a subordinate position to China (perhaps similar to WWII forcing the UK to accept a subordinate position to USA). War is certainly good at dispelling people’s delusions of grandeur.
TTG,
“This war is good for the MIC, both here and in Russia. ”
Civilizational Potlatch. Too bad about all the killing.
Fred,
Civilizational Potlatch. That’s good. I’m saving that one.
Is this the censored version of the real story: “Mr Big calls Musk says kneecaps are on special this week and Legs Diamond is arriving on the 6:15 from Toledo.”
———–
The billionaire has announced that he’s found a new CEO to run the social media platform.
https://www.rt.com/news/576143-musk-new-twitter-ceo/
Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced on Thursday that he would be stepping down from the post in six weeks to make way for an unnamed female chief executive. The billionaire, who still owns the social media platform, said that he would switch to “overseeing product.”
Seems like .50 cal close-in self defense weapons are the answer?
https://unherd.com/2023/05/ukraines-path-to-victory/
I agree with Edward Luttwak that the current attritional warfare will be inconclusive. A decisive outcome will come sooner only with maneuver warfare. Both sides are girding up. There will be many lessons learned on the battlefield that military analysts will study for years. I’m certain US military analysts are studying and analyzing and possibly even recommending strategies and tactics. The key would be the ability to evaluate across a number of performance axes – force allocation, people performance like morale, training, motivation, organizational procedures and of course weapons systems performance & combined arms coordination.
There will naturally also be political outcomes from the decisive outcome of the war. Will this be the end of Putin or Zelensky or both?
Ukraine is in a similar circumstance to the Confederate States fighting an opponent twice as large, industrialized with plentiful resources. Towards the end of the American Civil War defending troops firing rifles from behind fence and log barricades that they built almost instantly repulsed the attacking close drill marching troops attacking them. At Cold Harbor on May 31st to June 3rd 1864 Ulysses S. Grant ordered repeated attacks against entrenched Confederate positions. 170,000 troops fought the battle. There were 12,737 Union and 4595 Confederate casualties. This is one example where the 3 to 1 difference in number of deaths between offense and defense comes from.
The big difference in the 21st century is the privatization of the military in order profit from the endless wars. In their arrogance, the ruling global oligarchs no longer think that they need the support of the people to fight their conflicts. They drone opponent leaders. In the Armenia Azerbaijan and Ukraine Wars, drones identify and attack enemy positions, heavy weapons and apparently are able to stop WWII maneuver warfare with armor in its tracks. The side that figures how to counter this ends the stalemate. The question is how to end the war with an UN Armistice and a DMZ along the Line of Contact before the proxy world war III escalates to the use of tactical nuclear weapons when one side finally breaks though or flanks the other side.
I’ve been saying since 2/24/22 that Russia gets the Donbass and a N-S line is drawn through Crimea w/Russia getting the eastern half. The useless UN Observers can be put on a Ukr/Rus DMZ. But 99% of people miss Russia’s objective. It will never be content w/part of Ukraine. Putin/Russians do not believe Ukrainians are a people or Ukraine a country. They believe Ukraine is a colonial region owned by Russia and want a restoration of their empire. They “get off” on the notion of their superiority over Ukrainians and other western neighbors. This is naked colonial aggression. Russians want to rtn to 1914 b/f the Great War. Ukraine must be obey Moscow. It’s that simple.
VV,
You actually think “the ruling global oligarchs” don’t control the UN, it’s independent of them and actually run by the 213 member states?
Fred,
Unlike the Korean Armistice signed in 1953 when nations were still sovereign to get a Ukraine-Russian Armistice approved under UN auspices today; yes, the real rulers (Russian, Ukraine, European, Asian, and Anglo-American Oligarchs and their paid professionals — Global Corporations, NGOs and the Chinese Communist Party) would all have to agree first. Good luck with that. But once one side or the other clearly breaks the stalemate, and conventional arms are unable to stop the advance, there will be literally hours before a nuclear war starts which the UN Armistice and a DMZ would have prevented, like they did last century.
MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is still in effect although it is ignored to keep replaying the Great Game.