Invisible drones: Ukraine attacks Russian airfields with cardboard "birds"
Date: 2023-08-31 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: WAR
Ukraine uses cardboard drones to strike Russian military aircraft.
The cardboard drone is easier to build than an Ikea package, according to The Telegraph. These "birds" destroyed at least four Russian aircraft, including during an attack on the airfield in Kursk.
According to the Security Service of Ukraine, this attack destroyed a MiG-29 and four Su-30 fighters, as well as damaged two Pantsir launchers and an S-300 air defense system radar.
A source in the SBU said that 16 drones attacked the Kursk airfield, only three of them were shot down. They were cardboard drones.
According to the publication, Australian drones, which come in the form of flat packs and cost only $3,500, Ukraine began receiving in March this year. In total, the developers pledged to supply 100 of these "birds" monthly as part of a $20 million deal.
This is not a bad investment, given the damage these drones have caused to the Kursk military airfield. They may have been involved in the recent attack on six military installations in Russia, including a military air base in Pskov.
“After a number of such attacks in recent weeks, the Russian air defense network has come under scrutiny as the military tries to understand how drones continue to bypass it. considered safe by the Kremlin to reinforce forces deployed in Ukraine, which could be one reason why cardboard drones can get past the most advanced air defense radars.
The secret is what happens when cardboard and foam are scanned by radar waves. Radar uses radio waves to determine the position, angle, and speed of a target. The transmitter sends out these radio waves in the hope that they will hit, for example, the sharp edges and flat surfaces of an enemy fighter.
The radio waves will then bounce back to Earth, where they can be picked up by a receiver, which is sometimes located close to the transmitter, but often, for safety reasons, located at a great distance.
However, if the enemy aircraft is covered with a special material that absorbs the radar, or the shape of the aircraft is such that the radio waves transmitted from the Earth are deflected in directions other than direct to the receiver, the resulting signal to the air defense computer will be poor.
It is believed that modern stealth aircraft form a radar response similar to a flock of birds, and no air defense operator is likely to fire expensive missiles at a crow.
With a wingspan of just over 1.8m, a foam and cardboard drone will be much less sensitive than metal to any radio waves.
This may be considered nonsense in some military circles, but by that logic, the cardboard drones that are currently causing so much havoc in Russia should be included in the global military family of stealth aircraft.
