Hundreds of Drone attacks on Russian convoys and supplies in Ukraine

[TonyO]

I read this several days ago and could not work out how this could be possible when the Ukraine only had 20 to 50 Bayraktar TB2 drones which were bought from Turkey before Putin’s war started, Bayraktar TB2 drones have a good performance in key parameters range altitude as well as sensors and communication system but are vulnerable to anti-air defence systems, to be effective they need to be employed in a savvy way, in coordination with other electronic warfare systems that ‘blind’ enemy radars and adopt appropriate tactics,

That Ukraine could strike some Russian ground forces with TB2 suggests either that Russian forces are advancing without air defence due to the hurried start of the war which is very well possible, in light of the logistical and organisational problems Russia has encountered so far. Or that Ukrainian forces acquired advanced electronic warfare systems from elsewhere.

Jack Watling of the London-based Royal United Services Institute said the drones carried out successful attacks in the early stages of the invasion before Russia was able to set up its air defences, The drones have also been praised by the UK's defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who told Parliament that the TB2s have proven "incredibly important in order to slow down or block the Russian advance".

If reports of hundreds of attacks are true then the USA is probably covertly behind the huge increase in the available numbers in use along with their electronic warfare support systems such as radars and satellites, these drones fly at extremely low altitude and are hard to spot on radars and other early warning systems.

This might explain why Russian forces have retreated from the city’s and built up areas as shoulder launched missiles have stopped them dead in their tracks there with huge troop casualties, the number of drone attacks suggest that there are now hundreds of drones available to the Ukrainians which means, NO AIR COVER....NO WAY FORWARD.

There will be no peace deal to be had with the Soviet Union, a bitter seething resentment and hatred of what they have done will not allow this, Putin will have achieved the exact opposite of what he set out to do, he will have forced the Ukraine into the western sphere of influence and defence structure if not in name but in practise that is where they will be.

[whompus]

This gives more info _https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/28/the-drone-operators-who-halted-the-russian-armoured-vehicles-heading-for-kyiv

[TonyO]

(The Guardian article is a pay job so heres the text of the article)


Ukraine - The drone operators who halted Russian convoy headed for Kyiv

Ukrainian drone brigade claims to have stopped 40-mile column of Russian tanks

Julian Borger
Mon 28 Mar 2022 05.00 BST
Last modified on Mon 28 Mar 2022 21.41 BST

One week into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia massed a 40-mile mechanised column in order to mount an overwhelming attack on Kyiv from the north.

But the convoy of armoured vehicles and supply trucks ground to a halt within days, and the offensive failed, in significant part because of a series of night ambushes carried out by a team of 30 Ukrainian special forces and drone operators on quad bikes, according to a Ukrainian commander.

The drone operators were drawn from an air reconnaissance unit, Aerorozvidka, which began eight years ago as a group of volunteer IT specialists and hobbyists designing their own machines and has evolved into an essential element in Ukraine’s successful David-and-Goliath resistance.

However, while Ukraine’s western backers have supplied thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment, Aerorozvidka has been forced to resort to crowdfunding and a network of personal contacts in order to keep going, by getting hold of components such as advanced modems and thermal imaging cameras, in the face of export controls that prohibit them being sent to Ukraine.

The unit’s commander, Lt Col Yaroslav Honchar, gave an account of the ambush near the town of Ivankiv that helped stop the vast, lumbering Russian offensive in its tracks. He said the Ukrainian fighters on quad bikes were able to approach the advancing Russian column at night by riding through the forest on either side of the road leading south towards Kyiv from the direction of Chernobyl.

The Ukrainian soldiers were equipped with night vision goggles, sniper rifles, remotely detonated mines, drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras and others capable of dropping small 1.5kg bombs.

“This one little unit in the night destroyed two or three vehicles at the head of this convoy, and after that it was stuck. They stayed there two more nights, and [destroyed] many vehicles,” Honchar said.

The Russians broke the column into smaller units to try to make headway towards the Ukrainian capital, but the same assault team was able to mount an attack on its supply depot, he claimed, crippling the Russians’ capacity to advance.

“The first echelon of the Russian force was stuck without heat, without oil, without bombs and without gas. And it all happened because of the work of 30 people,” Honchar said.

The Aerorozvidka unit also claims to have helped defeat a Russian airborne attack on Hostomel airport, just north-west of Kyiv, in the first day of the war, using drones to locate, target and shell about 200 Russian paratroopers concealed at one end of the airfield.

“That contributed largely to the fact that they could not use this airfield for further development of their attack,” saaid Lt Taras, one of Honchar’s aides.

Not all the details of these claims could be independently verified, but US defence officials have said that Ukrainian attacks contributed to the halting of the armoured column around Ivankiv. The huge amount of aerial combat footage published by the Ukrainians underlines the importance of drones to their resistance.

The unit was started by young university-educated Ukrainians who had been part of the 2014 Maidan uprising and volunteered to use their technical skills in the resistance against the first Russian invasion in Crimea and the Donbas region. Its founder, Volodymyr Kochetkov-Sukach, was an investment banker who was killed in action in 2015 in Donbas – a reminder of the high risks involved. The Russians can latch on to the drone’s electronic signature and quickly strike with mortars, so the Aerorozvidka teams have to launch and run.

Honchar is an ex-soldier turned IT marketing consultant, who returned to the army after the first Russian invasion. Taras, who asked not to use his surname, was a management consultant, who specialised in fundraising for the unit and only joined full-time as a combatant in February.

In its early days, the unit used commercial surveillance drones, but its team of engineers, software designers and drone enthusiasts later developed their own designs.

They built a range of surveillance drones, as well as large 1.5-metre eight-rotor machines capable of dropping bombs and rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades, and created a system called Delta, a network of sensors along the frontlines that fed into a digital map so commanders could see enemy movements as they happened. It now uses the Starlink satellite system, supplied by Elon Musk, to feed live data to Ukrainian artillery units, allowing them to zero in on Russian targets.

The unit was disbanded in 2019 by the then defence minister, but it was hastily revived in October last year as the Russian invasion threat loomed.

The ability to maintain an aerial view of Russian movements has been critical to the success of Ukraine’s guerrilla-style tactics. But Aerorozvidka’s efforts to expand, and to replace lost equipment, have been hindered by a limited supply of drones and components, and efforts to secure them through defence ministry procurement have produced little, partly because they are a recent addition to the armed forces and still considered outsiders.

Furthermore, some of the advanced modems and thermal-imaging cameras made in the US and Canada are subject to export controls, so they have resorted to crowdfunding and asking a global network of friends and supporters to find them on eBay or other websites.

Marina Borozna, who was an economics student at university with Taras, is exploring ways of buying what the unit needs and finding routes to get the supplies across the border.

“I know there are people who want to help them fight, people who want to do a bit more than the humanitarian aid,” Borozna said. “If you want to address the root cause of this human suffering, you’ve got to defeat the Russian invasion. Aerorozvidka makes a huge difference and they need our support.”

Her partner, Klaus Hentrich, a molecular biologist in Cambridge, is also helping the effort, drawing on his experience as a conscript in the German army.

“I was in an artillery reconnaissance unit myself, so I immediately realised the outsized impact that Aerorozvidka has. They effectively give eyes to their artillery,” Hentrich said. “Where we can make a difference is to rally international support, be it financial contributions, help to get harder-to-find technical components or donations of common civilian drones.”


The unit is also looking at ways to overcome Russian jamming, part of the electronic warfare being waged in Ukraine in parallel to the bombs, shells and missiles. At present, Aerorozvidka typically waits for the Russians turn off their jamming equipment to launch their own drones, and then it sends up its machines at the same time. The unit then concentrates its firepower on the electronic warfare vehicles.

Honchar describes these technological battles, and Aerorozvidka’s way of fighting, as the future of warfare, in which swarms of small teams networked together by mutual trust and advanced communications can overwhelm a bigger and more heavily armed adversary.

“We are like a hive of bees,” he said. “One bee is nothing, but if you are faced with a thousand, it can defeat a big force. We are like bees, but we work at night.”



© 2022 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)

[mrdude]

There will be no peace deal to be had with the Soviet Union, a bitter seething resentment and hatred of what they have done will not allow this, Putin will have achieved the exact opposite of what he set out to do, he will have forced the Ukraine into the western sphere of influence and defence structure if not in name but in practise that is where they will be.

And yet 99.X% of the people that live in Russia are innocent and have done nothing wrong. I feel sorry for the conscripts that have been forced into a war they had no choice in. Imagine being 18 or 19 or a young adult, you don't get a choice whether you want to be in a war or not and are told you have to be in one. Many of these young people are being sent to their deaths for no other reason than their corrupt president (who they can't get rid off) sent them. These conscripts have families and girlfriends etc - these are innocent and yet have to suffer as well.
Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for all the innocents in Ukraine as well - it's terrible what is happening to them. But blaming the entire population of one country because a mad dictator (which kills his political opponents) is pretty wrong. There's many decent Russians that just want to live in peace and have a semi decent standard of living. People are the same all over the world, no matter where you come from - it's just a pity that some of the dictators in charge of their countries are mental.
It's not just in the East/Asia/Africa etc - we also have crazy dictators in the west, they are held to different standards though.

[TonyO]

While it is true that 99.% of the people that live in Russia are innocent they still are commiting crimes on behalf of their despot leader, The Russian Empire has a 100 year track record of murder corruption and aggression, they are unpleasant by any standard.

[mrdude]

While it is true that 99.% of the people that live in Russia are innocent they still are commiting crimes on behalf of their despot leader, The Russian Empire has a 100 year track record of murder corruption and aggression, they are unpleasant by any standard.

When you look at any population anywhere in the world you have x% that are murderers, thief's, rapists, drug addicts, megalomaniacs and just general twonks. When you have a conscripted Army you are going to get some of these types of people carrying a gun and going about murdering people. We in the UK have prisons full of people like that - that doesn't mean that the rest of the innocent people not in prison are just as bad as the prison population. Tarring innocent Russians that's only crime is to be born in Russia as unpleasant is racism at it's finest. This is the kind of thing that racists say when they accuse all white people as having owned slaves and all black people are victims. The basic truth is that there are good and bad in every part of the world - even in Ukraine (not that the main stream media will tell you that with its biased news). I've seen videos on the net of Ukrainians committing war crimes as well - so many of these fighters are just as bad as the other ones.

Also maybe you should read some history books, there's been many empires (at least 70) and they didn't become empires by nicely asking people to bend to their will. The British empire spanned a third of the world at one point. When you look at the population of the USA only about 1% are native Americans - the other 99% are basically invaders and have stolen the land. What I am saying is that everyone is as bad as each other - ask anyone in the middle east who the bad guys are and no doubt you will hear it's USA and GB - because we have done our own fair share of invading countries and killing many civilians (by accident).