Skip to main content

$5,000 killer drone & Russia buying North Korean missiles

This takes the cake, a $5,000 drone with a 5 kg carrying capacity made out of cardboard, invisible to radars is causing Russia real headaches, and military planners everywhere a rethink of their defence procedures.  These slow-moving cardboard Australian reconnaissance aircraft drones have been repurposed to become kamikaze attack platforms that can (and have probably) destroyed aircraft, radars and maybe even fuel depots.  

The key here is the cost.  If a Su27 aircraft can be disabled or destroyed (as seems to have been the case two weeks ago), for a cost of $5,000 (where the aircraft are worth $30 million each) the Russian Air Force has a real problem.  Moreover, these drones are easy to assemble, totally stealthy and have a range of nearly 70 miles.  The destroyed aircraft were nearly 400 miles from the front.  

Russia has been forced to position its aircraft even further away from the Ukraine front.

The way forward in the current war is hard to estimate.  There are many issues at hand.  Success for Ukraine is hard to quantify since this is not the first time Russian troops invaded the country (also in 2014).  Removing Putin is unlikely to change anything, considering that the Russian's position is one of protecting the homeland and re-establishing the old Soviet borders. 

The Ukrainians have learned valuable lessons over the past two years.  They have also been smart with their resources and deployed inventive solutions for dealing with the Russian army. 

The rumours are that the Russians have completed negotiations with North Korea and Iran to purchase missiles.  They are generally not very good, with a target error range of 200/500 meters, but the Russians can probably improve this performance.  The question is what did Russia offer in exchange, my educated guess would be satellite launch windows for both nations.  

The game is getting interesting, and the advantages won by Korea and Iran are potentially game changers.


BTW, and I am not a strategist.  I see no obvious win for the Ukrainian forces, the only thing I worry about is once the Russians win, what happens next, are they off to Poland next?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Janet Yellen from China supporter to Hawk...

There is rarely serious news in the world these days, it seems that most newspapers are filled with headlines and little else, and then Ms Yellen went to China.  Secretary Yellen has long been known in the Biden administration as the voice of moderation when dealing with China, yet as her trip which concluded yesterday a hawk was born:  She warned the Chinese against dumping goods in the United States.    fighting words! The American administration is very concerned about the lack of Chinese domestic consumption.   Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, there were already the beginning signs of a slowdown, automobile sales were off.   China is facing domestic deflation (a clear sign of collapsing demand) China imports few consumer goods, they import raw materials and intermediary goods.   It seems that the American administration is concerned that the Chinese administration will dump consumer goods abroad to keep its manufacturing machinery ...
Post a Comment
Read more