Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Bezpilotniy Letayuschiy Apparat - BPLA
From 2024, the national project “Unmanned Aircraft Systems” will be fully operational in Russia. It should become the main management mechanism for implementing the development strategy for domestic UAVs, which was approved by the government last summer. According to the document, over the next six years, a new branch of the economy related to the creation and use of drones should appear in the country.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin, at an extended meeting of the Ministry of Defense, announced the need to increase the production of UAVs. “We need to seriously increase the production and supply of high-precision projectiles and various types of drones. I know that changes are happening, they are happening quite quickly, I will say more about this, but we still need to work on it, we need to consolidate this trend,” the Kremlin website quotes the head of state.
“It is important to continue to increase the supply of the most popular models, as I have already said, including the formation of a serial line of unmanned aerial vehicles - from heavy strike and ultra-small vehicles,” the president said. The Russian leader also noted the need to involve high-tech businesses and engineering design companies in the development and production of UAVs.
The class of drones that caused the most controversy among Russian experts were heavy UAVs. These include such Russian devices as Forpost-R and Inokhodets, which is also known under the factory name Orion. Industry specialist Denis Fedutinov said “They are slow, unmaneuverable, and due to their weight and size characteristics, they are quite noticeable to air defense systems”.
"If we accept that in the future our geopolitical and possibly military rival is the United States or Europe, acting directly or through their proxies, we need significant adjustments in the development and use of UAVs. For effective use in counter-countermeasures, other drones are needed. These could be devices that use visibility reduction technologies, or technologies that use group interaction as part of unmanned systems or mixed manned and unmanned aerial vehicles,” suggests Fedutinov.
And even in conditions close to those that we observe within the framework of the SVO, a number of functions are retained for them,” the interlocutor is sure. “So, they can conduct reconnaissance while outside enemy-controlled airspace. The United States actively uses its heavy Global Hawk and even Reaper drones in flights in international airspace, collecting intelligence data a couple of hundred kilometers deep into our territory,” the analyst says. “In the future, the use of the same high-altitude Altius or other devices close to them in capabilities in order to look into a significant depth of enemy territory, collecting information on ground targets, would be a very useful addition,” the expert argues. Military expert and co-founder of the Vatfor project Oleg Makarov has a slightly different point of view. “Before the start of the special operation, when FPV drones were not yet in use, it was believed that a drone was a brigade-level, or at most battalion-level device. The brigade had a UAV chief, who had at his disposal several heavy vehicles capable of performing reconnaissance to great depths,” he says. “Today this concept has been revised. Despite the fact that the emphasis is on small copters, heavy drones have not disappeared anywhere. Otherwise, units with such drones would simply cease to exist. And their task is still the same – conducting reconnaissance behind enemy lines,” the analyst adds. "Unfortunately, Russia has a much weaker satellite constellation, and it is necessary to carry out reconnaissance deep into enemy territories. And in order to have situational awareness of what is happening along that front line, we need to fly as deep as possible,” the analyst emphasizes. Russia was a relatively late entry in the field of modern unmanned aerial vehicles for military use. However, by 2020 engineers from major defence firms were working on a range of projects, including a heavy drone bomber, long-and-medium range reconnaissance UAVs, and smaller systems for local recon and defence.
Despite its standing as a major military power, Russia’s developments in the field of drones had been limited, until recently, with the United States, China, Iran, Britain, and South Africa developing and fielding drones in the 2000s and early 2010s as the Russian military did without. After the Great War and before the Great Patiotic War, for a time the Soviet Union led the world in tanks and combat aircraft. But the Soviets modernized prematurely, and found themselves with largely obsolete equipment when war came. a similar pattern of leading and then lagging development emerged with respect to unmanned air vehicles.
During the Cold War, Soviet engineers developed a series of unmanned tactical reconnaissance aircraft, fitting the turbojet-powered UAVs with cameras and TV datalinks to enable them to snoop on enemy activities. Moscow was an undisputed leader in this field: In the 1980s, it manufactured 950 Tu-143 reconnaissance UAVs alone. However, the Defense Ministry then wound up drone production, since it no longer had either the money or ideological reasons to commission this type of aircraft.
In the 1990s, efforts to modernise these systems and create new ones were beset by overwhelming financial difficulties. It was the Americans who prompted the Russian military to revive the program. Successful U.S. operations with the use of UAVs in Afghanistan and Pakistan had shown that no war of the future can be conducted without drones. Another impulse behind Russia’s drive to develop its own UCAVs was the 2008 war in South Ossetia. When the Russian Defense Ministry saw that the Georgian side was using Israeli drones, it concluded that this type of aircraft was essential for the new century.
UAVs had been actively developed in the world, and Russia had to make great efforts to speed up work in this area. The price of an unmanned aerial vehicle is far less than that of a piloting plane. This type of plane can fly for several dozens of hours non-stop. This is impossible for manned aircraft. One major advantage of the use of UAVs is that it doesn’t put the life of a pilot on the line. Russia had lagged far behind in the sphere of unmanned aircraft from the United States, Israel, a number of Western countries and even China. At the same time, the intensive efforts of the Ministry of Defense and the OPK will at least reduce the distance to 5-10 years, and the testing ground in the form of a Syrian operation will help test the latest technology in real combat.
Russia resumed research into drones in the late 2000s and early 2010s, with the Sukhoi Design Bureau at work on the "Okhotnik" ("Hunter") flying wing combat UAV, and OKB Sokol developing the Sokol Altius long-endurance reconnaissance, strike and electronic attack drone for use by the Air Force and Navy. Other companies are working on a number of other projects, ranging from a drone wingman for the new Sukhoi Su-57 fighter, to artillery projectiles that can launch small UAVs. In late 2020, the Russian Defence Ministry announced that the military would begin taking delivery of long-range strike drones fitted with guided missiles and specialised ammunition in 2021.
- Light UAVs of medium range . A number of domestic samples can be attributed to this class of UAVs. Their mass varies between 50-100 kilograms. These include: T92M "Chibis", ZALA 421-09, Dozor-2, Dozor-4, Bee-1T.
- Medium UAVs . The take-off weight of medium-sized UAVs ranges from 100 to 300 kilograms. They are designed for use at ranges of 150-1000 kilometers. In this class: M850 “Astra”, “Binom”, La-225 “Komar”, T04, E22M “Berta”, “Berkut”, “Irkut-200”.
- Medium-weight UAVs. This class has a range of application similar to the UAVs of the previous class, but they have a slightly higher take-off weight - from 300 to 500 kilograms. This class includes: "Hummingbird", "Dunem", "Dan-Baruk", "Aist" ("Julia"), "Dozor-3".
- Medium-range heavy UAVs. This class includes UAVs with a flight mass of 500 and more kilograms, designed for use at medium ranges of 70-300 kilometers. In the heavy class the following: Tu-243 "Flight-D", Tu-300, "Irkut-850", "Nart" (A-03).
- Heavy UAVs of long duration flight. The category of unmanned aerial vehicles, which is quite popular, includes the American UAVs Predator, Reaper, GlobalHawk, Israeli Heron, Heron TP. There are practically no samples in Russia: Zond-3M, Zond-2, Zond-1, Sukhoi unmanned aerial systems (Bass), within which a robotic aviation complex (RAC) is being created.
- Unmanned combat aircraft (UAF). Currently, the world is actively working on the creation of promising UAVs capable of carrying weapons on board and intended for strikes against ground and surface stationary and mobile targets in conditions of strong opposition from enemy air defense forces. They are characterized by a range of about 1,500 kilometers and a mass of 1,500 kilograms. By 2020 in Russia in this class are two projects were presented: "Proryv-U" and "Skat".
To change the situation at the front, drones alone are not enough, although about a thousand of them will be produced by the end of the year. “It is necessary to change the contour of combat use. Until recently, we had discord in our command. Commanders are accustomed to holding everything in one hand. From receiving information to making and executing a combat decision, it often took up to 1.5 hours,” said military expert Vladislav Shurygin in broadcast of the program "Time will Tell" on 27 October 2022. According to him, "The latest algorithms have reduced the time to 10 minutes. If we connect all the intelligence data, we will get a new information field. It is necessary to further implement digital management . Then any commander will be able to see the whole picture of the battle in real time."
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the list of instructions following the events on the development of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) held on April 27, 2023. The document set the task of integrating UAVs into the single airspace of the country, including through the digitalization of the industry. The UAS National Project was initiated personally by the President, who on April 28 said that "the success achieved here will mean a qualitative change in our economy and qualitative changes in the lives of our people, a strong, confident, forward movement of the whole country" .
In general, in Russia it was necessary to expand the introduction of unmanned aircraft, including by eliminating administrative, technical and other barriers, to consolidate the purchase of domestically produced UAS in the state civil order until 2030, attracting leasing companies with state participation. Together with the Ministry of Defense and the FSB of Russia, the government should change the approaches “to carrying out measures that limit the use of digital geospatial data” from UAVs in order to significantly increase the efficiency of using such information. The deadline for the execution of the order was set to 01 August 2023.
The government was also instructed to take measures aimed at stimulating the use of domestic digital platforms and solutions in the field of personnel training, design, production, certification, operation of UAS and control over their use. The report to the president must be made before August 1, 2023, then once every six months.
President of the Kalashnikov Concern Alan Lushnikov on 26 May 2023 announced the creation of a division of unmanned aerial vehicles, the consolidation of development and production capacities and the expansion of production. According to the head of the concern, the task will be everything that is necessary for the effective functioning of the UAV.
The cluster being created by the Kalashnikov concern (part of Rostec) will multiply the production of reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the industrial director of the cluster of conventional weapons, ammunition and special chemicals of the state corporation Bekhan Ozdoev said 13 July 2023. "We are expanding in those areas where demand has grown manifold and current capacities are not enough. For example, Kalashnikov is creating a division of special vehicles. This structure will multiply the production of reconnaissance drones and loitering ammunition. The same Lancets are very much needed today, during the NMD they had proven their effectiveness more than once. It is not for nothing that foreign media call them the most massive killer of the Armed Forces equipment," Ozdoev said. He explained that in addition to the drones themselves, the division will produce ground-based means of launching them, as well as test vehicles, mobile command posts from the complexes for adjusting precision-guided munitions, and maintenance equipment for special-purpose equipment.
The special military operation finally confirmed the critical need for the development of the domestic sphere of production of drones: daily reports from the fronts about the success of Russian troops in the use of drones, aircraft-type drones and loitering ammunition show in which direction the armed forces will inevitably develop. From January 1, 2024, the national project "Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)" would be launched in the country. The final documents on the national project would be signed in September 2023.
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