Sukharevsky reported the presence of laser weapons in Ukraine and the use of a drone-“matt”
Ukraine today has laser weapons, its name is “Trident”, and also a project for the use of a drone “matt” with two FPVs, said Colonel Vadim Sukharevsky, commander of the Forces of unmanned systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“We can state that today Ukraine is, if I am not mistaken, the fifth country that can say that it has a laser. Today, we can shoot down aircraft at an altitude of more than 2 km with this laser,” he said during an appeal to the participants of the conference “European Defense Industry: Prospects for Cooperation with the Ukrainian Defense Industry, organized by the analytical center We Build Ukraine.
According to Sukharevsky, the Forces of unmanned systems are now on its way to scale and enhance the laser. “He really works, he really is,” he said.
Separately, he drew attention to the development of drones-“matts”, which carry light impact drones.
"Today we use so-called drones-“matts”, FPV carriers, with a depth of more than 70 km. They carry 2 FPV under them and actually act as a repeater and impress the enemy’s deep objects. “It’s a real breakthrough,” the colonel said.
As Sukharevsky noted, the scaling of this project is one of the most promising elements in its work.
Speaking about the Unmanned Systems Force, the commander noted that “We are not within six months”, and at this stage there are already combat and scientific units “which close the component of air, land and water.” According to him, the group of the SBS works on the entire front line.
“We can state that today Ukraine is, if I am not mistaken, the fifth country that can say that it has a laser. Today, we can shoot down aircraft at an altitude of more than 2 km with this laser,”
Is it really only 4 other countries that have this? I kinda expected more.
UK, US, Germany, and Israel afaik.
I highly doubt Ukraine’s are that far advanced yet though. Most of those 4 countries still are mostly prototyping or just coming out of the prototype phase, meaning we’ll see proper deployments probably within the next 5 years. Germany afaik still had issues with heat generation and battery capacity some months ago. Hard to imagine that Ukraine somehow surpassed all of them and completely out of the blue.
To my knowledge, Turkey has also developed laser weapons, and they have seen action in Libya.
As for possibilities of fast development - when need is great, people do things faster.
But I’m skeptical of laser weapons myself. They depend so much on weather. Air defense is expected to be reliable, not “it is snowing, we can’t shoot”. They can be used, but they always need a backup option if weather works against.
The drone “motherships” are a real thing with real benefits, however. They get around line-of-sight issues (single FPVs cannot go beyond obstacles without losing singnal, but with a mothership they can even go beyond the curvature of Earth).
you’d be surprised how when your life depends on it certain engineering challenges become easier to prioritize. i’m not saying this weapon is more advanced than the other four countries. i’m just saying Ukraine may have made compromises the other countries would have considered jank ass bullshit that out in the field for Ukraine have been successful enough for what they need to do even with considerable downsides
I’m not sure how many shortcuts you can make with such sophisticated tech like lasers. Afaik all those “small” mobile ground models are around 30-50 KW and I’d assume you cannot go too much further below that without drastically affecting the actual effectiveness against a target. At some point they just become too weak to actually destroy anything within a feasible time, if at all.
Sukharevsky reported the presence of laser weapons in Ukraine and the use of a drone-“matt”
Ukraine today has laser weapons, its name is “Trident”, and also a project for the use of a drone “matt” with two FPVs, said Colonel Vadim Sukharevsky, commander of the Forces of unmanned systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“We can state that today Ukraine is, if I am not mistaken, the fifth country that can say that it has a laser. Today, we can shoot down aircraft at an altitude of more than 2 km with this laser,” he said during an appeal to the participants of the conference “European Defense Industry: Prospects for Cooperation with the Ukrainian Defense Industry, organized by the analytical center We Build Ukraine.
According to Sukharevsky, the Forces of unmanned systems are now on its way to scale and enhance the laser. “He really works, he really is,” he said.
Separately, he drew attention to the development of drones-“matts”, which carry light impact drones.
"Today we use so-called drones-“matts”, FPV carriers, with a depth of more than 70 km. They carry 2 FPV under them and actually act as a repeater and impress the enemy’s deep objects. “It’s a real breakthrough,” the colonel said.
As Sukharevsky noted, the scaling of this project is one of the most promising elements in its work.
Speaking about the Unmanned Systems Force, the commander noted that “We are not within six months”, and at this stage there are already combat and scientific units “which close the component of air, land and water.” According to him, the group of the SBS works on the entire front line.
Thanks
Is it really only 4 other countries that have this? I kinda expected more.
UK, US, Germany, and Israel afaik. I highly doubt Ukraine’s are that far advanced yet though. Most of those 4 countries still are mostly prototyping or just coming out of the prototype phase, meaning we’ll see proper deployments probably within the next 5 years. Germany afaik still had issues with heat generation and battery capacity some months ago. Hard to imagine that Ukraine somehow surpassed all of them and completely out of the blue.
To my knowledge, Turkey has also developed laser weapons, and they have seen action in Libya.
As for possibilities of fast development - when need is great, people do things faster.
But I’m skeptical of laser weapons myself. They depend so much on weather. Air defense is expected to be reliable, not “it is snowing, we can’t shoot”. They can be used, but they always need a backup option if weather works against.
The drone “motherships” are a real thing with real benefits, however. They get around line-of-sight issues (single FPVs cannot go beyond obstacles without losing singnal, but with a mothership they can even go beyond the curvature of Earth).
you’d be surprised how when your life depends on it certain engineering challenges become easier to prioritize. i’m not saying this weapon is more advanced than the other four countries. i’m just saying Ukraine may have made compromises the other countries would have considered jank ass bullshit that out in the field for Ukraine have been successful enough for what they need to do even with considerable downsides
I’m not sure how many shortcuts you can make with such sophisticated tech like lasers. Afaik all those “small” mobile ground models are around 30-50 KW and I’d assume you cannot go too much further below that without drastically affecting the actual effectiveness against a target. At some point they just become too weak to actually destroy anything within a feasible time, if at all.
It could be as simple as a longer cool down time between shots.
Made up numbers but let’s say a US prototype could hit 5 targets a minute due to heating problems, maybe the Ukraine one is 1 per minute.
That’s still 1 less expensive missle used per shot.