Quote:They are useful for reconnaissance but are not capable of carrying enough weight to be a real "suicide drone". The kinetic effect of these drones is basically nil. Nobody is going to run away from them for that reason. There are lots of other things out there that are more probable to kill you and the Russian troops aren't fleeing those either. Being located OTOH may cause them to displace, but that may not be a retreat :-). Russian ECM is now making these drones almost useless, as the Ukrainian operators lose control of the drone after about 400 meters penetration into Russian territory. This is apparently nation wide and common now. Ukraine will undoubtedly develop new electronics to drop in these drones, which will require another development round of ECM by Russia. That hasn't happened yet and will create additional logistics/technical delays for Ukraine.
Every day there are probably dozens of videos of small quadcopter drones that Ukraine has used to either drop grenades or attach an explosive and fly directly at Russian soldiers or equipment. Russian ECM often means the last few meters are static on the video display of the FPV drones, but they get hits all the same. True these are not deep strike type drones, but they are having an effect. (Smart) Russians definitely run away from them, the dumb ones try to shoot them with their rifle and get blown up.
Here are some just from this morning
[Tweet]https://twitter.com/bigSAC10/status/1646119266289164288?s=20[/tweet]
[Tweet]
https://twitter.com/bigSAC10/status/1646...74216?s=20[/tweet]
[Tweet]https://twitter.com/bigSAC10/status/1646185679888556032?s=20[/tweet]
Hmmm are tweets no longer able to be embedded? Not working for me but here are URLs if you want to see.
https://twitter.com/bigSAC10/status/1646...64288?s=20
https://twitter.com/bigSAC10/status/1646...74216?s=20
https://twitter.com/bigSAC10/status/1646...56032?s=20
None are particularly gory FWIW but the poster does have many others that are.