Warplanes: Stealth Drone Disappointment
Ezoic
January 5, 2025: In late 2024 Russia sent one of their new Su-57 stealth fighters into Ukraine accompanied by an S-70 Okhotnik-B stealth drone. The Su-57 pilot was controlling the drone and tested the concept of drones acting as what the USAF calls Loyal Wingman for jet fighters. The SU-57 pilot lost control of the drone and shot it down to prevent it from being captured by the Ukrainians. The pilot then called for a missile strike on the S-70 wreckage to prevent anyone gathering wreckage and determining what the S-70 was built of. This did not work because Ukrainians were able to gather drone components that were blown far from the crash site as well as components still near the crash site despite the missile strike.
In 2020 Russia announced that its 20-ton jet-powered Okhotnik stealth drone successfully dropped unguided bombs from its internal bomb bay. This was not a prelude to Okhotnik dropping smart bombs or guided missiles, but rather the first step in using Okhotnik with unguided bombs and fire control systems that can put unguided bombs on target very effectively. Not as accurately as GPS guided bombs, but at much less cost per bomb. Russia made heavy use of these modern computerized fire control systems in Syria where Russia gave its latest GPS and laser guided smart bombs a lot of combat experience. While Russia was known to have such guided bombs and missiles, the West was surprised to discover how few of them the Russians had stockpiled.
Many details of how Russia uses its annual defense budget are still top-secret and that included how few of these modern guided bombs Russia actually purchased. Russia could not afford a large stockpile of such expensive weapons. The Syrian experience also revealed that Russia had kept up on developing computerized fire control systems for using unguided bombs. These types of fire control systems were increasingly common in Western air forces during the 1980s and 90s but were eclipsed as smart bombs and guided missiles largely replaced unguided bombs, at least in fighter-bombers, after 2001. American pilots still used these systems for the rare occasions that an F-16 was allowed to carry out a strafing mission with its autocannon. Currently such missions are avoided because they are too risky, especially when the F-16 can deliver a laser guided missile at a target while flying above any ground fire. Often these strafing attacks are about demoralizing the enemy rather than trying to kill them all.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/2025010505948.aspx#gsc.tab=0
