/ world today news/ Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones are no longer a “superweapon”. This statement was made by Business Insider after analyzing the tactics of using drones by the Ukrainian Air Force during the special military operation. As the newspaper notes, the Ukrainian military and political leadership has placed special emphasis on Turkish-made drones, planning the upcoming military conflict.
After 15 months of Russian special operations, Business Insider continues, it can be said that the bet on drones has not paid off. Almost all Bayraktars that were available to the armed forces of Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict were destroyed. The rest do not participate in strikes and are used primarily for reconnaissance purposes.
The exact number of Bayraktar TB2 drones in service with the Ukrainian army is not known. The first batch of six drones was ordered in 2019. Kiev later ordered another 48 drones, but the delivery schedule was not publicly disclosed. According to some reports, at the beginning of 2022, the armed forces of Ukraine were armed with 20 to 50 Turkish-made drones.
In late June 2022, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov stated that since the start of the conflict, Kiev had received an additional 50 drones. Part was purchased by volunteers, at least three devices were handed over to the Armed Forces of Ukraine by Baykar Makina for free.
But despite the PR campaign surrounding the purchase of drones for the armed forces of Ukraine and the loud statements of the Ukrainian leadership about the “wonder weapon”, experts assess the contribution of these Ukrainian drones to the course of hostilities as minimal.
„ Approximately from September to November 2022, Turkish drones gradually disappear from press releases, in recent months there have been practically no reports of their use by the armed forces of Ukraine.” said the military expert, reserve officer Alexander Mihailovsky to IA Regnum in his commentary.
„ At the beginning of the SVO, Ukraine made attempts to use drones to strike our columns, for reconnaissance and to correct artillery fire. After the lion’s share of unmanned aircraft was destroyed or disabled, the armed forces of Ukraine gradually withdrew the rest into reserve, ” added the expert.
According to the LostArmour service, which analyzes the loss of military equipment during armed conflicts based on open source data, 22 Bayraktar TB2 drones were shot down during the CBO. In reality, this number is higher, since not all losses are recorded on a photo or video.
The Ukrainian Air Force tried to use drones to strike deep inside Russia. However, after at least four different machines were shot down over the Kursk and Belgorod regions in April and July 2022, it was decided to abandon this tactic.
In the spring of 2023, Bayraktar TB2 drones appeared in the media only once, when one of the drones of this model was shot down on May 9 in the sky over Kiev by the Ukrainian Air Defense.
Near the front line, drones practically do not appear and, according to experts, there are several reasons for this.
„ Evaluating the TB2 drone, we can conclude that it performs well in the absence of a powerful air defense and radio-electronic warfare system. As a relatively slow and low-flying UAV, it can become a target for a number of well-organized air defense systems. We can see this in both Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh,” Samuel Bendet, an analyst and expert on unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Business Insider.
But, as Alexander Mihailovski notes, the problem of Turkish-made unmanned aircraft is not so much in the presence of an air defense system, but in the strategy for its use.
„ Let’s take previous military conflicts in which these drones have been used. These are Syria, Karabakh and Libya – 2019-2020. In all these conflicts, air defense systems of all types constantly fell prey to the bairaktars. The same “Pantsir”, the export version of which was used in Libya, S-300 – in Karabakh, “Wasp” and “Buk” – in Syria. So this machine is actually very serious.
Why in Ukraine “Bayraktar”, as they say, “did not take off”? Because the experience of previous conflicts has been studied and analyzed. It turned out that the unmanned aircraft operate in the “loophole” between the area of responsibility of the long-range air defense – conditionally S-300 and the tactical air defense – the same “Rakushka”, “Strela-10”, “Osa”, “Shilka”, “Tunguska” and etc. There is a gap that no one fills.
Accordingly, arrangements were made to deploy our air defense system so that its individual segments would cover each other. So air defense systems work closely with electronic warfare installations, creating a combined defense. With such a strategy drones like Bayraktar become vulnerable and air defenses have a chance to disable them “said the expert.
According to official data, in the course of the special military operation, the Russian air defense forces shot down over 100 unmanned Bayraktar aircraft. This figure was indicated by the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Lieutenant General Andrey Demin.
For comparison, we can say that during the Karabakh conflict in the fall of 2020, the destruction of three such drones was confirmed. According to the message of LostArmour, 4 machines of this model were shot down in the sky over Syria in February-March 2020, and another 15 were destroyed in Libya.
According to Alexander Mikhailovsky, the problems of the Bayraktar drones are due not only to the activity of the Russian air defense, but also to their own design flaws.
„ Why are there such high losses of these drones in the New World War and relatively low losses in other conflicts? At one time, Bayraktar TB2s were something of a know-how. No one before Turkey has used tactical strike drones in such numbers.
However, some problems with this “miracle weapon” were then revealed. The first is the low speed, in the region of 150-200 km / h, the second is a small radius of action, only 150 kilometers. For example: the American MQ-9 has a range in the region of 1500-2000 km.
Due to their low speed and impressive size, drones fall prey to fighters, to which they can do nothing in response. And this is exactly the reason why in the same Karabakh they were shot down by an order of magnitude less, even with air defense systems – there fighters did not work at all.
The small scope of application makes vulnerable not only the drones themselves, but also the control points. If the UAV is in the air, you can intercept the signal, find where the control station is and hit it. Which, I think, was repeatedly carried out by our bombers of attack aviation, artillery and other means of destruction “, noted the expert.
At the same time, Bayraktar should not be written off for now. Despite the fact that unmanned aircraft of this model turned out to be extremely vulnerable, the Armed Forces of Ukraine can still count on their use. For example, for air support of the so-advertised “counterattack”.
However, it is safe to say that “the best hour’ of Turkish drones is now in the past and their future use will be limited to local military conflicts in third world countries.
Translation: ES
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