ABATTBQ11 said:
Waffledynamics said:
Seems like a waste of ammo, unless the drone and its munition are one of those dirt cheap ones.
Looks like a cheap quadcopter with explosives strapped to it. Probably a decent strike if it disabled the truck. Probably not sophisticated enough to take out armor, but a transport vehicle can be just at good. That would help limit that unit's ability to transport men and material, so more guys are walking and/or they're having fewer munitions.
The other thing to remember is that a disabled tank is worth little more than a destroyed one. A drone could take out a tank tread and stop it. If you're working in spotting teams, which the video at least implies that they are, then you're supplementing an attack on a disabled tank with artillery or hunter-killer anti-tank teams. A javelin has a published range of 1.5+ miles. If you know where you are and you know where that tank is you could put one on it from a good distance out.
And any drone and munition combo is going to be cheaper than a truck, tank or apc. And the Russians have lost a LOT of tanks (and everything else). At the start of the war published numbers were around 3500 active duty tanks and at least 10,000 in storage. They probably had more in deep storage depots and God only knows that number. But the Russians have lost almost 10,000 visually verified tanks killed or captured. Over 10,000 if you include damaged and abandoned. Hell Russia has been transferring T-54s which started service in the mid-50s as artillery pieces b/c of the lack of 125, 122 and 150 mm ammunition. I think those stopped being exported in the 70s.
Long story short a $250 or $500 drone and a munition that can disable and lead to a tank being taken out when the Russians are saying they only have ~2,000 active tanks is a huge win. The number of modern tanks left in the Russian inventory is probably south of 2,000 and they flat out don't have a way to replace them at a high enough rate. The best estimates I've seen from open source information is that at best the Russians can manufacture 20 tanks a month (they announced an increase to this in February but I don't think that's close) and refurbish 70 per month. That will back fill less than 13% of their monthly losses. If you're wondering why you haven't seen an extensive counter offensive you may have analysts telling the Uke general staff that if we keep up this erosion in their tank forces the Russians will be effectively out of tanks by October.
The Russians are building some extensive fortifications across southern Ukraine, to be sure, but if the Russians essentially don't have a tank force or any effective mobile reserve with real striking power that tanks represent then that could be a major reason for the Ukes to be holding off on a counter offensive to try and drive on Mariupol which would seem the most logical way to center an axis of advance to endanger Russian positions in Crimea.
Without a military intervention from China, the Russians can't afford for this to go on much longer. I'd check back with Oryx's blog every month or so to check on the run rate of Russian tank losses and that'll be a good indication of the remainder left. Get to 12,000 Russian tank losses or higher by this fall and yeah I'd say that the Russians are going to be effectively out of armor.
