07:40, 10.04.24
American drones are fragile and unable to overcome Russian jamming and GPS disabling technologies. And sometimes they couldn’t even take off.
The American company Skydio allocated hundreds of its best drones to the Ukrainian Armed Forces to help fight the Russian occupiers, but they performed poorly.
According to The Wall Street Journal , Skydio pilotless pilots were thrown off course and lost due to Russian electronic warfare. The publication added that most small drones developed by American startups failed in combat conditions. This is also bad news for the Pentagon, which needs a reliable supply of thousands of drones.
U.S. drones are expensive, faulty and difficult to repair, say manufacturing executives, Ukrainian military personnel on the front lines, Ukrainian officials and former U.S. military officials.
Lacking solutions in the West, Ukraine has turned to cheaper Chinese products to bolster its drone arsenal.
Skydio CEO Adam Bry admitted that his drones were useless.
The publication, citing Ukrainian authorities, notes that American drones are fragile and unable to overcome Russian jamming and GPS disabling technologies. Sometimes they were unable to take off, complete the mission, or return. American drones often cannot fly their advertised distances or carry significant payloads.
The heads of American drone manufacturing companies said that they were surprised by the deployment of electronic warfare in Ukraine.
However, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have found ways to obtain a large number of drones, as well as spare parts for them, from China. The military uses off-the-shelf Chinese drones, mostly from SZ DJI Technology.
In addition, as the WSJ writes, Ukraine has developed its drone industry using components from China. Ukrainian factories produce hundreds of thousands of small, cheap drones that can carry explosives. It also produces larger drones that can strike deep into Russian territory and hit Russian ships in the Black Sea.
The publication noted that the Ukrainian Armed Forces spend about 10 thousand drones per month, and they could not do this if they were forced to buy expensive American drones.
(C)UNIAN 2024
Keep your junk at home.
The huge embarassment is that the Pentagon actually seems to have believed that this cheap plastic junk was hightech, state-of-the-art superduper cyber technology instead. How removed from reality are them bureaucrats in those long halls of power? All common sense lost there, so that they fall for every shady startup owner who tries to sell plastic toys at gold prices? 😠
Knowing how the Pentagon works, these toys probably cost tens of thousands of dollars each, or something ridiculous like that.
While it’s good that combat use proved the failings of US drone variants, preventing the Pentagon from wasting more money on them, the AFU has too much on their hands to be a test center for failed developments. Drones with such obvious shortcomings should have never made it into the inventory! There’s something wrong with the procurement process of the DoD if such amateurish products are rewarded with highly proftable contracts. Sure, there’s a huge need to equip Nato forces with this new technology, but it shouldn’t be done by throwing lots of money at every half assed startup. There has to be reality based testing, based on the experiences from Ukraine!
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I guess not every weapon system from the US is as successful as a HIMARS, Bradley, or Javelin. For drones, the Pentagon should go shopping in Ukraine. They seem to be doing this much better.