“Cheetah” is faster than “moped” 💨
This morning, one of the air defense units, which received over 10 million hryvnias of aid from us, successfully shot down an enemy drone. That’s how it works - we help, they protect 🫶
SPAA is going to come back in a big way in the coming years. The effectiveness of these things in Ukraine is crazy.
I don’t think the Gepards support the round type, but some of the new precision-fused airburst rounds (the fuses are wirelessly individually set as it passes through the muzzle, AFTER round velocity is measured a dozen or so cm back (!!!) for maximum burst precision) are crazy. It’s like flak, but it knows EXACTLY where it needs to pop to frag the target, instead of “1000m +/- 100m”.
And then there’s directed energy, which is also going to get interesting.
AHEAD ammunition, part of the Skynex, Skyrangers, etc. which Ukraine has a couple and getting more of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwjcayPuag
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Most autocannons are. Soviets took the guidance radars off their Shilkas (older equivalent to Guepard but with quad cannons) and called the radarless AAA vehicles “Afghanis”.
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I’ve updated my comment to clarify they, it’s the vehicle with the cannons they’ve kepted. Not much need for the radar against the Taliban air force.
Awesome to see the effectiveness og the Gepard like this. It seems perfectly suited for these kinds of slow-moving low-cost targets that you really don’t to send expensive interceptors at.
Especially when the leading drone tactic seems to mostly be “send enough to saturate the air defences”, having stuff like this that can rapidly burst down a bunch of drones at low cost, using ammunition that’s quick and easy to produce, seems perfect.
I think the lasers are better suited, because their ammunition is electricity. It’s cheaper, but we have yet to see them on the battlefield.
Lasers are probably going to come out of testing to be the go-to defence against drone swarms in not too long. As you say, they would do what the Gepard is doing, but even better (at least against small drones), they just need to be finished first.
They’re still in a prototype phase, as they still have issues with power supply and heat.
