Drone Battle over Ukraine: How “Orion” Mercilessly Beats “Bayraktars”

According to Western experts, the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will cause great damage to the Turkish unmanned program

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Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff
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In the photo: the Russian multifunctional unmanned system "Orlan-10". (Photo: Vadim Savitsky/press service of the RF Ministry of Defense/TASS)

ALERT:  Sourced from Russian State-Controlled Media

SVPressa.ru – The very popular foreign magazine “National Interest” published an article “Russian drones play an important role in the battles in Ukraine.”

In it, Sam Crannie-Evans, formerly a leading military expert at Jane’s Information Group, a British publishing house specializing in military subjects, and now an analyst for the C4ISR Internet resource, gave out a bitter truth for yellow-black fans.

He believes that if at the beginning of the special operation Russian reconnaissance and strike drones were almost invisible, now the situation has changed dramatically.



In particular, “…reports now point to three key roles for the Orlan-10 in Ukraine: convoy support and counter-sabotage, artillery fire detection and correction, and intelligence support,” Crannie-Evans explains .

According to him, the Russian Armed Forces in the special operation widely use artillery strikes coordinated with the help of UAVs, mainly with Orlan-10. 152-mm corrected laser-guided high-explosive fragmentation projectiles, such as the 2K25 Krasnopol, are used. The result is predictable: the counter-battery fight usually ends in favor of the Russian “gods of war”. Even the Zhovto-Blakit telegram channels write that soon there will be nothing to fight with: all the guns and tanks have been smashed.

If in the first week Russian convoys were attacked by sabotage and reconnaissance groups (DRGs) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which sometimes led to the destruction of transport, then this threat disappeared. “It is difficult to assess the reason for this change, but it is possible that the increase in the protection of convoys with the help of UAVs allowed the Russian Armed Forces to forestall Ukrainian ambushes,” suggests Sam Cranney-Evans.

In general, small Russian drones, including small Tachyons that have conventional digital cameras and operate over 4G communications, although not as fancy as the American systems, have shown themselves to be very important assets, however.

Yes, at first they were shot down quite often by Zhovto-Blakit anti-aircraft gunners, but, firstly, by doing so, the Ukrainian crews revealed themselves, and, secondly, for our troops, there was little loss. This kind of good, it seems, is enough in parts of the RF Armed Forces, which cannot be said about the destroyed air defense systems and liquidated DRGs.

The NI author also wrote a couple of words about the Orion, which, in his opinion, quite satisfies a valuable military need for the possibility of timely precision strikes and reconnaissance, and also creates a feeling that the Russians can compete with the Turkish Bayraktar TB2, which is in service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

It is curious that Paul Iddon, a military expert from Forbes, believes that the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will have the most negative impact on Turkish unmanned aerial vehicle programs and even on Ankara’s military space projects. The battles in Ukraine are also a test for the lice of exporters of military equipment. It is no coincidence that the NATO members limited the supply of their weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine as much as possible.

On the one hand, ” Ze ” and Co. do not get tired of throwing reproaches to Washington and London, they say, the Yankees and the Britons supplied modern equipment to Afghanistan, but it turns out that it is impossible for the hulks, but on the other hand, there are requests from the West to the Bandera authorities “slightly spread their brains “. The message is clear: the Russians will grind up high-tech military aid anyway, but then it will be difficult to even estimate the cost of image losses.

Of course, the “allies” do not say this openly. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace, in particular, said that Britain refused to supply tanks to Ukraine because their use requires skills that the Ukrainian military does not have. Social networks, of course, reacted with jokes: like, the APU has a level of development, like Neanderthals from the Stone Age.

In fact, Ukrainians would easily master NATO weapons, which are being developed with “the most intuitive interface possible” – that is, for an underdeveloped “John” who could not go to college. But that was not the case, although it is clear that the calculation is made on fools.

“The more weapons systems you improve, the more training you need to use them, which is why the focus should be on helping Ukrainians upgrade or find Russian or Soviet equipment that is already in their inventory,” he said. Wallace.

But the descendants of the Janissaries have nowhere to go, they have already delivered their Bayraktar TB2 UAVs to the hulks. Moreover, in 2021, Kyiv announced with pomp that it would build an entire factory for the joint production of TB2 drones with Ankara. Then, by the way, there was news that Ukraine would also supply Turkey with engines for Erdogan’s military projects. But more on that later.

“On the battlefield, one should carefully monitor how widely Ukraine is deploying TB2 against Russian forces, and if so, how effective are the drones against conventional Russian forces,” explained, in particular, Nicholas Geras, deputy director of the human security department at the Institute strategies and policies of Newlines.

In short, now all customers of Baykar Makina (the developer of Bayraktar), including future ones, are closely following the news from Ukraine regarding the use of drones in combat operations. Forbes writes bluntly: “Ukraine will be the toughest test for Turkey’s most hyped defense export.”

According to experts interviewed by the publication, they doubt that Ukrainian TB2s can play the same decisive role in a special operation as the same UAVs in the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.

“The Ukrainian crisis is not the same as the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh,” says James Rogers, assistant professor of military studies at South Danish University, for example. According to him, “Russia has much more experience in fighting drones… and has the ability to worsen the management and control of hostile drones… Therefore, it is not surprising that (Turkish) drones do not have the same success (in Ukraine) as in the Caucasus.”

The point, however, is not only the inefficiency of Bayraktar in Ukraine. After all, many Baykar Makina customers are not going to fight Russia. For their potential threats, the capabilities that Turkish drones have will be enough. It is much worse if the new peace treaty between Moscow and Kiev on the neutrality of the “square” includes a ban on all strike weapons systems for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In turn, the demilitarization of Bandera should put an end to any military programs in Kyiv. “Firstly, it will slow down the production of Turkish Akinci unmanned aerial vehicles (which are powered by Ukrainian-made AI-450 turboprop engines,” James Rogers explained to Forbes. “Secondly, it will slow down the development of advanced Turkish aircraft Bayraktar MIUS (which should have been powered by the Ukrainian AI-322F turbofan engine).”

In this regard, not a very good prospect is drawn for the leader of Turkish military exports, while Orion, on the contrary, will be considered the most effective and proven alternative to Bayraktar in real battles.

Source:  SVPressa.ru

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