[GK3]

While drones have been used in past conflicts, I think this is the first where basically you can be very effective by just making hundreds of cheap drones with small pay loads.  The skies of Ukrained must be filled with them.  I wonder what the big, high powered radars see, anything?

Part of the reason for the success of drones is that much of the conflict is fairly static and the forces are in close proximity to each other. That makes drone warfare much more effective, if you can fly them. They are vulnerable to ECM and going forward I expect that will also become ubiquitous. It is also inevitable that anti-drone suicide drones will become very common eventually. Lasers are in the wings but IMO simpler approaches will become more common.

There are many different sizes of drones. Generally, the bigger the drone the higher it flies (because it can). The drones that are blowing up tanks and the like generally operate at low altitudes. They also have lots of non-metal parts. This makes them relatively "stealthy". The big, powerful ground based radars can't see anything at low altitude unless it is "close". The radar cross sections of the mostly plastic drones are low enough they are hard to see even best case. On top of that, nobody seems to be using these types of radars very much. I doubt large radars are playing a significant role in the drone war.

I would assume from your information, that you would not put any kind of expensive piece of equipment close enough to the enemies MLR that its little drones can find it.  From what I have read they have a range of 5 to  20 Km.  I don't know if those figures are one way or return.  I would also assume that if you had decent cameras, including IR, and flew at night or dusk/dawn it would be very hard for the other side to hide much of what it is doing.  Of course things change a bit if  you are in heavy cover, which I think is limited in Ukraine.

[GK3]

While drones have been used in past conflicts, I think this is the first where basically you can be very effective by just making hundreds of cheap drones with small pay loads.  The skies of Ukrained must be filled with them.  I wonder what the big, high powered radars see, anything?

Part of the reason for the success of drones is that much of the conflict is fairly static and the forces are in close proximity to each other. That makes drone warfare much more effective, if you can fly them. They are vulnerable to ECM and going forward I expect that will also become ubiquitous. It is also inevitable that anti-drone suicide drones will become very common eventually. Lasers are in the wings but IMO simpler approaches will become more common.

There are many different sizes of drones. Generally, the bigger the drone the higher it flies (because it can). The drones that are blowing up tanks and the like generally operate at low altitudes. They also have lots of non-metal parts. This makes them relatively "stealthy". The big, powerful ground based radars can't see anything at low altitude unless it is "close". The radar cross sections of the mostly plastic drones are low enough they are hard to see even best case. On top of that, nobody seems to be using these types of radars very much. I doubt large radars are playing a significant role in the drone war.

I would assume from your information, that you would not put any kind of expensive piece of equipment close enough to the enemies MLR that its little drones can find it.  From what I have read they have a range of 5 to  20 Km.  I don't know if those figures are one way or return.  I would also assume that if you had decent cameras, including IR, and flew at night or dusk/dawn it would be very hard for the other side to hide much of what it is doing.  Of course things change a bit if  you are in heavy cover, which I think is limited in Ukraine.