Part one.
Why is the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation A. E. Serdyukov against domestic unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)?
Automatically guided weapons began to appear as early as the 19th century, when the mechanization of mass production began. Military experiments with cars that move without a driver (including even radio-controlled airplanes) began during the First World War. In World War II, warring parties used several types of unmanned devices in battle, including remote-controlled bombs. This was followed by a period of rapid development of discrete (highly specialized) analog and digital ("computer") devices, up to modern solutions based on integrated circuits (at the beginning of 2008, the "central processor" already contains more than two billion transistors *.
During the Cold War, especially at its end, interest in robotic technology noticeably faded away, since for the success of research it was often not technical achievability that was much more important, but the ability of inventors to overcome bureaucratic slingshots, and often it was banal to master the budget.
In the absence of interest from the authorities of the USSR and minimal funding for military robotics in the 1960s-1980s, there were only single projects with UAVs in our country, which gave very modest results. Leading positions in this market sector were taken by other countries, in particular Israel, Japan and the USA.
In the 21st century, when the degree of "intelligence" of weapons has increased dramatically and the demand for modern types of weapons has skyrocketed, all conditions have been created in Russia for the emergence of a military robotic industry. In our time, billions of dollars are annually invested in this area in the NATO countries, and the number of companies operating in this field has long exceeded a thousand.
The topic of equipping the Armed Forces of Russia with unmanned aerial vehicles is difficult to name a new one. But the Ministry of Defense has not yet been able to work out the criteria that UAVs must meet - applicants for service in the RF Armed Forces. Surely now we can only say that the Russian army intends to buy tactical and operational-tactical UAVs from all foreign manufacturers who agree to sell such a modern attribute of the armed forces to our Ministry of Defense. It is worth noting that in terms of the production of modern UAVs, foreign designers have largely outstripped our current level of domestic production of unmanned aerial vehicles, both in design and equipment. It should also be said that in Russia all research and development work on strategic UAV projects is currently either not being carried out at all, or any, and previously small, funding from the Ministry of Defense has been discontinued.
Experts argue that the new operational-tactical unmanned reconnaissance complex for the Russian Air Force must be tasked with conducting aerial reconnaissance to a depth of 700 kilometers, from low and medium altitudes, in simple and difficult weather conditions, at any time of the day and time of the year, in conditions of strong countering air defense and a complex electronic situation with the ability to transmit the received intelligence information over secure radio channels in real time with a flight range of 1800-2500 km and a duration of up to 17 hours.
In addition to the Air Force, experts assess the large requirements for UAVs from the Ground Forces, where there are no such at all now. In particular, they are considering the use of UAVs as part of an automated control system of the tactical level, the project of which has also been repeatedly announced, but apparently failed miserably (we will consider the problems of the domestic automated control system of the tactical level in one of the following publications). It is believed that UAVs of at least three more types are needed. Thus, UAVs of the first type are necessary for patrolling areas of the terrain, searching for sabotage and reconnaissance groups of the enemy, detecting targets in the brigade's reconnaissance zone, which requires drones with a combat range of up to 50 km.
According to various experts, approximately the same parameters of UAVs are necessary for the actions of ground forces as part of peacekeeping contingents or during counter-terrorism measures. Also, according to experts, a UAV with a radius of up to 100-150 km is needed.
In Russia, a number of structures are engaged in the creation and manufacture of UAVs, among which there are both serious design bureaus and completely new organizations that have appeared with their proposals for drone models, so to speak, in the wake of increased interest in these aircraft among Russian government agencies.
The experience of creating unmanned aerial vehicles has been accumulated in various domestic design bureaus, among them there are those who have been actively involved and are engaged in developments in this area, for example, the Tupolev Design Bureau, the Sukhoi Design Bureau, or the V. I. A. I. Mikoyan. Back in 2007, its specialists proposed the Skat unmanned reconnaissance and strike aircraft. To date, a full-size model of the Skat UAV has been built, intended for testing design and layout solutions, as well as for assessing and optimizing its characteristics. According to information from sources close to the Ministry of Defense, all further work on this UAV has been curtailed and this project is not funded at the expense of the state.
Among the relatively new developments, we can mention the unmanned aerial vehicle Tu-300 ("Korshun-U"), which was practically created "from scratch" in the OKB im. Tupolev. The employees of the Yakovlev Design Bureau made their contribution to the development of the UAV. They, practically "on a voluntary basis", are conducting research work on a number of promising interspecific multifunctional unmanned aerial complexes. But I would like to emphasize that if we analyze the sites of all our leading aircraft design bureaus (both civilian and military), it turns out that none of them can find the slightest mention of the fact that these organizations conduct any research or development work in this direction. One gets the impression that over the past three years, domestic design bureaus have withdrawn themselves from this topic.
The situation is a little different for completely new companies that have entered the modern Russian UAV market with their projects of small and medium-sized aircraft. We will not make premature conclusions about the capabilities, advantages or disadvantages of their devices, we will try to focus on what exactly these companies offer our market. A whole series of various UAVs weighing from 5 to 240 kg was created in the company "Unmanned Systems" of the AERO HALL under the leadership of A. V. Zakharov. By the way, ZALA AERO is the only company today in Russia and the CIS that produces unmanned aircraft and helicopters. One of them, ZALA 421-20, has a wingspan of more than 2 meters and a flight speed of up to 200 km / h. It can be equipped with various engines, is capable of carrying up to 50 kg of payload and staying in the air for up to 8 hours. This UAV is equipped with a stabilized electro-optical camera and can be effectively used for reconnaissance and surveillance, both over land and over the sea. One of the advantages of this UAV is the ability to take off and land both as a regular aircraft and using a catapult and a parachute, which is especially convenient, for example, when ship-based or used from mobile platforms. Among other developments of the AERO HALL, the ZALA 421-02 and ZALA 421-02X drones can be noted. They are capable of lifting up to 40 kg of weight into the air, and flying for up to 6 and 4 hours, respectively. All UAVs produced by ZALA AERO are equipped with an on-board computer for flight and payload control and are capable of performing a flight according to a program with the ability to quickly change it and transmit video images in real time.
The Luch Design Bureau has created the Tipchak air reconnaissance complex, one of its missions is to conduct reconnaissance at any time of the day in the interests of various law enforcement agencies to search, detect, recognize and determine the coordinates of objects in real time at ranges of up to 70 km from the ground control point. In addition, OJSC "KB" Luch "declares that this UAV has a wide potential for solving peacetime problems, for example, monitoring the routes of trunk pipelines and forest tracts. There are other domestic manufacturers of small and medium-sized UAVs, and there are not so few of them as it seems at first glance.
Realizing the potential prospects of the Russian market, a number of foreign structures are actively lobbying for cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Some sources note that recently certain officials of the Ministry of Defense have been more and more persistently raising the issue of purchasing foreign products, citing the technical imperfection of the products of the Russian defense industry. In particular, the Russian Defense Minister said: "If our defense industry is able to produce such UAVs, then please, we are ready to buy them." And also: "in any case, you can assemble drones on the territory of Russia."
In general, nothing has been heard about the possibility of integrating UAVs into tactical ACS systems or into systems of technical protection of important military facilities. Another scandal related to the UAV is also planned: the subjective view of the leadership of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on promising domestic developments of weapons and equipment led to the fact that the Minister of Defense was slipped (in the literal sense of the word) a document of dubious content. In any case, he confirmed the purchase of several Israeli UAVs, focusing on their "high performance". Indeed, an Israeli UAV is not the worst option. But far from being the best. You can also debate for a long time about its compliance with the criterion "efficiency / cost". At the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry does not want to remember the need to support the Russian defense industry at all, some argue that now this topic has become generally forbidden and not subject to any discussion.
Apparently, the officials of the Ministry of Defense, not having had time to finally "reform" themselves, have already begun to lobby for the interests of "foreign" manufacturers.
Oddly enough, questions arise. For example, why, in fact, the Russian Defense Ministry in general, and the Russian Defense Minister Serdyukov, in particular, so persistently oppose Russian-made UAVs? And also - into what oblivion did the rather big money allocated for the Russian drone project sink?
These issues will be discussed in more detail below.
On May 24, 2010, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation (Serdyukov) publicly announced that "a special center for the use of drones will be created in Russia." And, allegedly, only after that will the representatives of the "military" begin to formulate requirements for unmanned aerial vehicles that are planned to be purchased.
This is, forgive me, some kind of schizophrenia. At first, these people say that the Russian UAVs "do not meet the requirements of the military."And now it turns out that we do not have any requirements yet - they are just going to be "formed". So what, then, "requirements" (and who exactly, for that matter), did the domestic UAVs "not satisfy"?
Five billion (!) Rubles were spent (“mastered”) on the development and testing of Russian UAVs. And what happens - this happened in the complete absence of specific, strict requirements of the customer - the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for these same UAVs? And all the tests were conducted without any "mandatory army standards" to the test objects? Hard to believe.
It should be noted that Russian firms engaged in the production of unmanned aerial vehicles can already offer Russian military vehicles comparable in performance to world standards. For example, the St. Petersburg company "Transas" has developed a heavy UAV "Dozor-600", which is a kind of analogue of the American MQ-1 "Predator", widely used by the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By the way, I would like to dwell on this UAV in more detail. There is an opinion on the Russian Internet that this UAV, including our Ministry of Defense, has killed the very same five billion.
In fact, "Dozor-600" is the first more or less successful reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle of Russian production.
The first preliminary information about this drone appeared during the Interpolitex exhibition in 2008. The Dozor-3 UAV (later called Dozor-600, in accordance with the maximum take-off weight) was first presented at the MAKS-2009 air show. Now the complex is at the final stage of development.
The manufacturers of this UAV stated that it belongs to the class of heavy medium-altitude UAVs of long duration, although its classification is still a matter of debate. The manufacturers also stated that the Dozor-600 UAV solves the problem of detecting and identifying objects in real time, in any weather conditions and at any time of the day. The data is transmitted via a satellite communication channel or a direct radio channel (within the line of sight).
Unfortunately, the inertia of the Russian (Soviet) military is one of the problems of the Russian army. Even Leskov in Levsha made fun of it.
Another thing is also interesting. Why the Ministry of Defense calmly watched how billions of rubles were wasted, and did not conduct any stage tests to assess whether the designers were working in the right direction or not.
I'm not going to accuse the Defense Ministry of embezzlement - it seems to me that this is the responsibility of the Prosecutor General's Office. And at the moment, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, represented by Popovkin, accuses ALL Russian designers that they allegedly spent 5 billion and did nothing to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Defense.
However, according to the creators of the UAV, the military has never clearly formulated the requirements that must have been implemented in drones. The industrialists had the impression that no one in the Ministry of Defense simply understood what kind of UAVs the Russian army needed and for what exactly.
But everything seems to be not as bad as it seems at first glance, and Russian manufacturers of civil and military unmanned aerial vehicles will catch up with their “foreign colleagues” by 2013. This was stated by the CEO of the Vega concern, Vladimir Verba. “In the next two or three years, there will be a breakthrough in the domestic market for this technique,” he said in the same way.
According to him, in the next few years, the volume of the Russian market for unmanned aerial systems will be about 300 million rubles. Verba noted that Vega has developed a comprehensive program for the creation and development of UAVs in Russia from 2025, which was created on behalf of the military-industrial commission, given in May 2008.
Of course, I want to believe Vladimir Verba, but, nevertheless, in April 2009 the Russian Defense Ministry purchased 12 Bird-Eye 400, I-View MK150 and Searcher Mk-II devices from Israel for $ 53 million. Later, a second contract was signed for the supply of 36 Israeli UAVs worth $ 100 million, and in April 2010it became known about the purchase of another 15 devices from Israel. Now these UAVs are undergoing comprehensive tests and are used by the Russian military to train.
More recently, Defense Minister Serdyukov announced the deployment in Russia of the production of UAVs of various types, in which foreign companies will also participate. According to the Minister of Defense, France can become one of the partners in the production of UAVs - such a proposal was made by the French side within the framework of the forthcoming plan of military-technical cooperation for 2011.
But here, too, everything happens as predicted by most experts. As the saying goes, "it was exactly on paper, but they forgot about the ravines." So, negotiations on the sale of some of the Israeli drones to Russia are frozen. This happened after the intervention of the Israeli government. Moreover, the Israeli authorities are not only interfering, they are actively blocking a deal to sell a large consignment of unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia for military needs and to build a joint venture.
The reason was the fear of the Israeli leadership about Russia receiving technologies to create silent UAVs. The transfer of technology to Russia, which, despite attempts, failed to uncover the secret of silent drones, has become a sensitive issue. Although no one is talking about handing over blueprints for the most advanced UAVs from the Israeli Defense Ministry's arsenal to Russia, the deal would still be a technological breakthrough for the Russian side.
At the same time, it is no secret that attempts by Russian specialists to copy technologies, including Israeli ones, have not been crowned with success.
However, as the head of one Russian UAV company admitted, the state, represented by the Ministry of Defense, has not made a single order for the entire existence of the UAV production. The lobbying capabilities of Russian manufacturers are not comparable to those of Western manufacturers. Thus, Russia simply buys old imported drones instead of stimulating its own production.
Now I think it has become clear that Russia will buy foreign military equipment. This decision is final and irrevocable and, apparently, is not subject to discussion in the near future.
* Intel has released a microcircuit containing more than two billion transistors - habrahabr.ru/blogs/hardware/31409
