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Russian Military Base Attacked By Drones (bellingcat.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the flying-by-night dept.

A Russian military base in Syria was recently attacked -- 20 miles from the frontline. The only video of the attack is from a Facebook group for a nearby town, which identifies the noises as an "anti-aircraft response to a remote-controlled aircraft," while the Russian Ministry of Defence claims at least 13 drones were involved in the attack, displaying pictures of drones with a wingspan around 13 feet (four meters).

Long-time Slashdot reader 0x2A shares a report from a former British Army officer who calls drones "the poor man's Air Force," who writes that the attack shows "a strategic grasp of the use of drones, as well as a high level of planning." The lack of cameras on the drones suggest that they are likely pre-loaded with a flight plan and then flown autonomously to their target, where they dropped their payload en masse on a given GPS coordinate... The lack of any kind of claim, or even rumours from the rebels, indicates that whoever is producing these drone and launching these attacks has a high level of discipline and an understanding of operational and personal security...

Although some regard the threat from commerical off-the-shelf and improvised drones as negligible, they have the power to inflict losses at both a tactical and strategic level... Although the plastic sheeting, tape and simple design may belie the illusion of sophistication, it seems that the use of drones, whether military, commerical off-the-shelf or improvised, is taking another step to becoming the future of conflict.
The article notes there's already been four weaponized drone attacks in Syria over the last two weeks, which according to CNBC may be part of a growing trend. "Experts said swarm-like attacks using weaponized drones is a growing threat and likely to only get worse. They also said the possibility exists of terrorists using these drones in urban areas against civilians."

24 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. 4 meter wing spans? by ScentCone · · Score: 2

    A "swarm" of a dozen of these big beasts, as reported, should be pretty easy for modern radar systems to spot, no?

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    1. Re: 4 meter wing spans? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 2

      enough to damage planes on the tarmac to make them unable to fly. That's all you need.

    2. Re:4 meter wing spans? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Except, these drones were detected on radar and shot down by radar guided missiles and radar guided AAA.

      The myth of the "wooden plane" having no radar signature is stupid enough that people with any sort of technical background shouldn't fall for it. The An-2 is not only not stealth, it is a giant obvious beacon to AAA. Carbon fiber, metal struts, propellers, wing skin, wooden beams - all of this reflects radar.

    3. Re: 4 meter wing spans? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've always wondered what would happen if you dropped a bunch of tank seeking drones with a shaped charge warhead. Shaped charge warheads are small and light and you could imagine building a drone which is just large enough to carry one which could knock out an MBT.

      Something like a B-52 could carry hundreds of them. A dedicated launch platform could carry thousands. And each one could be told which GPS coordinates to head to and use image recognition like the sensor fuzed weapon to find military targets - tanks, anti aircraft systems, APCs etc.

      And they could fly low enough to hard to track with radar. And fast and erratic enough that they'd be hard to knock out with ZSU type guns.

      So you'd unload them outside the country's airspace and they'd fly to their targets and nail anything which was on the target list.

      Some would get shot down of course but if you kept unloading B-52 loads of them programmed to destroy anti aircraft systems they'd eventually destroy the air defence systems of a country. And a lot of other stuff too - all the tanks and fuel dumps for example.

      And then of course more valuable aircraft could be sent in to destroy everything else.

      If an air defence system is an immune system, these things would be like HIV viruses. You could probably make them really cheap too - somewhere between the price of a civilian drones and a JDAM.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    4. Re:4 meter wing spans? by ScentCone · · Score: 2

      stop being a faggot

      Well, it is hard to argue with someone who relies on reason and solid information to make their point, that's for sure.

      you've never had to shoot down one incoming anything

      Interestingly, you don't know anything at all about what I've shot at what, nor how many times. Regardless, a Phalanx or the like could possibly be a less appropriate defense in a place near civilian housing and the like. And we're not talking about taking out incoming ship-killer missiles, we're talking about overgrown, lumbering model airplanes at prop speeds. More importantly, we're talking about a relatively new threat, and that new ways to detect and act are required. Do you really think they've been testing upgrades to TARS just to improve traffic monitoring on the roads? Rigs like that are designed to spot such stuff from miles out while it totters in on small props. Counter measures are a lot different when a slow-moving fixed-wing thing more or less like an ultra-light is wandering in. Even mentioning something like CIWS in that context shows you're not actually thinking about this, and just looking to use the word 'faggot' because it's exciting to you to type it.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    5. Re: 4 meter wing spans? by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Indeed, an ammo dump at Slinfah was hit by one of them as well - it was first assumed to be an Israeli airstrike, and only later determined to be a drone attack. The drones are perfectly designed for hitting soft targets - rather than single powerful charges, they use 8-20 PETN bomblets, packed full of ball bearings.

      Concerning tracking them... these are not that large, and made of wood. I imagine they're pretty hard to track and home in on. Plus, having to waste an antiaircraft missile on someone people glued together with bargain basement parts is asymmetric to the benefit of the rebels. Russia's Hmeimim base is packed full of their most advanced antiaircraft systems, yet they still lost planes (ironically, as usual, they spent the next several days both simultaneously confirming and denying that they got hit ;) ). Locals described the sky as lit up by antiaircraft fire.

      The US should take a lesson from this and seriously up their efforts toward anti-drone defenses. For now, I expect Russian/Iranian/Assad/Hezbollah/etc forces to put more effort toward hardening depots, airfields, etc against attacks from the air. The drones have a 100km range, which lets them reach from well behind the frontlines.

      I would expect GPS to have been jammed at Hmeimim. If not, Russia is incompetent. If so, the drones would appear to be prepared to deal with the loss of GPS signal. Russia was apparently caught off guard with the sophistication of the drones and is now trying to claim that they couldn't have figured out how to make them on their own. I don't buy this at all; both anti-ISIS rebels and ISIS have long been working on drone technology, as well as other "advanced" technology (such as remote-controlled robotic guns).

      --
      Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
    6. Re: 4 meter wing spans? by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

      Oh, and another thing: this article says that there was no claim of responsibility. Nonsense. FSA Free Alawite Movement claimed responsibility for it, and promised more attacks.

      --
      Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
    7. Re:4 meter wing spans? by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      The Western thinking is Russian electronics cant keep its systems locked on and tracking so many drones at the same time.
      That defensive weapons systems would need a reload time and so the nations backing the terrorists would get to see what the timing and what defensive systems could do.
      Russia would be looking for any other nations electronic intelligence collection in the area at that time.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    8. Re: 4 meter wing spans? by SlovakWakko · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Russia's Hmeimim base is packed full of their most advanced antiaircraft systems, yet they still lost planes (ironically, as usual, they spent the next several days both simultaneously confirming and denying that they got hit ;) ). Locals described the sky as lit up by antiaircraft fire."
      It's pretty comical that despite all the facts already being shared by RuMoD like 5 days ago, many people still don't know them. There was a mortar attack on December 31, when several planes were *damaged* by shrapnel and 2 servicemen were killed. In the recent drone attack nothing was damaged and nobody got hurt, as all 13 of them were intercepted before getting to the bases (3 went for Tartus, 10 for Khmeimim). Of these 7 were shot down by Pantsirs and 6 were intercepted by EW hardware, most likely directed microwave emitters which fried their electronics. They fell down, 3 were destroyed by explosions of their bomblets, 3 remained largely intact. There's ton of material about it out there already...

      "Plus, having to waste an antiaircraft missile on someone people glued together with bargain basement parts is asymmetric to the benefit of the rebels."
      Nobody knows whether any missiles were fired, it's only that some western reports added the missiles to the original Russian report, which does not mention them. From other signs it's more likely that the Pantsirs' IR tracking and 30mm cannons were used to destroy the drones.

    9. Re: 4 meter wing spans? by mjwx · · Score: 2

      I've always wondered what would happen if you dropped a bunch of tank seeking drones with a shaped charge warhead.

      Likely the GPS and comms would immediately be jammed and they'd be entirely dependent on local processing which is not a good thing. First off, this kind of image recognition is very processor intensive, the hardware alone needed to run this would be 4-5 KG on its own... possibly not even including sensors. Also tanks are real easy to make them look like they're not tanks. Both the allies and the Germans did a lot of this during the war you know. False positives are going to be a huge nightmare, a drone mistakenly blowing up a truck of food is going to be handing victory to the enemy on a platter (because that truck of food was bound for starving orphans... wars are not won by martial might these days).

      Shaped charge warheads are small and light and you could imagine building a drone which is just large enough to carry one which could knock out an MBT.

      That's a 450 KG bomb. The drones in the article would likely have a carrying capacity measured in single digits (less than 10 KG). An MQ-9 Reaper has a carrying capacity of 1,400 KG and a wingspan of 26m for comparison.

      Something like a B-52 could carry hundreds of them.

      Solution looking for a problem. The B-52 needs to be retired as the heavy bomber has had it's day (70 years ago). A C17 could do the same job if you're looking for a deployment platform but we'd be better off using either a land base or naval launch systems (re purposing nuclear submarines, destroyers and helicopter landing ships).

      A dedicated launch platform could carry thousands. And each one could be told which GPS coordinates to head to and use image recognition like the sensor fuzed weapon to find military targets - tanks, anti aircraft systems, APCs etc.

      The big problem you'll have here is that weapon needs to be directed, it can hit the target once it's been identified and aimed, but cannot select it's own target. Again, going back to my first point, processing sensor information for something specific is very processor intensive, more so if you want results in anything resembling real time so if communications are jammed or unreliable, you're going to need a lot of processing power on board.

      And they could fly low enough to hard to track with radar. And fast and erratic enough that they'd be hard to knock out with ZSU type guns.

      For large drones, a ZSU (23 mm) is fine. Especially if it's mounted on an auto-tracking turret.

      For the kind of drones mentioned in the article, a turret mounted 7.62 machine gun will be sufficient. You don't actually have to destroy an aircraft to knock it out, you just have to do enough damage to make it lose control and let it crash on its own. Most anti-fighter missiles are designed to destroy control surfaces making the aircraft un-flyable. Back in the war, British Meteor jet fighters found it more effective to use the wings of the Meteor to flip German V1 flying bombs than to use the machine guns to shoot it down (using the wingtip vortex so no actual contact was made). Once in a spin, the V1's couldn't recover and it was faster than trying to hit one with the guns.

      So you'd unload them outside the country's airspace and they'd fly to their targets and nail anything which was on the target list.

      Some would get shot down of course but if you kept unloading B-52 loads of them programmed to destroy anti aircraft systems they'd eventually destroy the air defence systems of a country. And a lot of other stuff too - all the tanks and fuel dumps for example.

      And then of course more valuable aircraft could be sent in to destroy everything e

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    10. Re: 4 meter wing spans? by Rei · · Score: 2

      Mortar attack on December 31 - oh really?

      Russian officials have suggested the U.S. or its allies may have had a role in the drone attacks on the bases. Mr. Putin said drones captured in the course of the attacks revealed highly sophisticated technological elements that were acquired and passed to the rebels from abroad.

      The Pentagon has said it played no role in the drone attacks.

      A person close to Russia’s Defense Ministry said the accusations have largely served to deflect attention away from Russia’s own failure to protect its main Syrian base at Hmeimim.

      The base was hit by a number of drones on New Year’s Eve, killing two service people, injuring 10 and damaging at least six planes, the person said. The attack was allegedly the first to penetrate the base’s formidable defenses including Pantsir and S-400 surface-to-air missiles.

      --
      Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
  2. Payload around 6kg (13 pounds) by raymorris · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just designed and built a similar, though smaller plane from scratch. Based on the reported wingspan of three to four meters, we estimate the payload capacity at around 6kg.

    Based on my experience with people professional pyro, I'd say that a 6kg weapon using a simple explosive like black powder would be a dangerous item to have laying around the house, but not particularly effective as a military weapon. (Remember most of the weight is the casing, it would be less than a kg of explosive composition.). Modern military explosives are significantly more powerful, and much harder to make, if the people launching these have access to a good supply of military explosives.

    1. Re:Payload around 6kg (13 pounds) by arth1 · · Score: 2

      Based on my experience with people professional pyro, I'd say that a 6kg weapon using a simple explosive like black powder would be a dangerous item to have laying around the house, but not particularly effective as a military weapon.

      2 kg of C4 and 1 kg of non-explosives like radioactive materials, mercury or anthrax could be very effective, depending on what the target and strategic goals were.
      And remember the V bombs used against Britain. The major object was to instil fear; if they blew up something of strategic value, that was just a bonus.

      It seems like better defences against drones might be prudent.

    2. Re:Payload around 6kg (13 pounds) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd say that a 6kg weapon using a simple explosive like black powder would be a dangerous item to have laying around the house, but not particularly effective as a military weapon. (Remember most of the weight is the casing, it would be less than a kg of explosive composition.).

      From my reading, professionally made HE munitions of all sizes from grenades to 1000kg bombs all seem to have around 45% explosive content by weight, with the rest being casing.

      godel_56 with mod points

    3. Re:Payload around 6kg (13 pounds) by sysrammer · · Score: 2

      Or are they freedom fighters? So hard to tell sometimes.

      Their guys cut off people's heads for fun and prophet.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  3. Drone review is already on Yelp by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Build quality terrible! Would not bomb again!" ;)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  4. Wave of the future by burtosis · · Score: 2

    You can't put technology "back in the box" and drones are here to stay. This type of weaponry has been in a popular viral video. Swarms of small drones can be quite dangerous, though we are maybe 20ish years behind on the on board processing shown in the linked video and it's uncertain how you would design a power source light yet powerful yet stores tons of power to give them enough run time. Unfortunately, drone weapons like these don't suffer from needing overly complex processing nor mission run time and can tide us all over 'till true Armageddon arrives.

    1. Re:Wave of the future by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      What do you think they can ban? GPS receivers? Small computers? Model airplane engines? Programming?

      These weren't off the shelf drones to begin with, it's hopeless.

      They will end up with parameter defensive drone swarms, perhaps seaking on non-linear junctions or electronic noise, like a bug detector. Will have limited effectiveness.

      I expect there will come a time where anytime winds are under 10mph, bases goes on 'slow fly' drone alert. All aircraft parked in small bomb resistant hangers.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  5. Followed a mortar attack by quonset · · Score: 5, Informative

    These drone attacks came not long after a mortar barrage at the same base in Hmeimim, Syria. In that attack, two Russian soldiers were killed and seven Russian jets were either damaged or destroyed, with another report saying up to ten planes were hit. Of those confirmed damaged, only two returned to operational service.

    Whoever is behind these attacks has a high level of sophistication and operational awareness. With the ease of making and using drones, expect to see more such attacks and in even greater numbers.

    1. Re:Followed a mortar attack by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      Re "Whoever is behind these attacks has a high level of sophistication and operational awareness"
      The range is the tell that another nations security services helped the terrorists plan their actions.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  6. Re:We should just make them illegal. by BlueStrat · · Score: 2

    You can have my drone when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

    [MiB 'Bug' or US Gov]

    "Your proposal is acceptable."

    [/MiB 'Bug' or US Gov]

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  7. Re:Beware, anyone can make those drones, anywhere by Bert64 · · Score: 2

    A lot of people are criticising how cheaply made these drones were, but simplicity is genius...
    The amount spent by the Russians to shoot these drones down must have vastly exceeded the cost to build and launch the drones, not to mention the cost of repairing/replacing anything that the drones managed to hit. If you can spend $50 and cause your enemy to waste $500 repelling your attack then you've achieved a successful result.

    The drones didn't have cameras, but assuming they did - how would the footage have got back to the drone operators? Chances are the Russians would be jamming any transmissions, and if the drone was programmed to fly back with recorded footage the Russians could follow it and attack whoever came to collect the footage.

    As for a lack of GPS, there are plenty of other ways to navigate especially if you know where the target is, the nazis had flying bombs which were built to just run out of fuel and crash onto london.

    These drones look like they were built to be cheap, easily/quickly manufactured and disposable. Modern militaries are typically set up to fight similar forces, they will need to adjust their strategy to deal with this kind of threat.

    --
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  8. Re:Beware, anyone can make those drones, anywhere by Henning+Rogge · · Score: 2

    A lot of people are criticising how cheaply made these drones were, but simplicity is genius...
    The amount spent by the Russians to shoot these drones down must have vastly exceeded the cost to build and launch the drones, not to mention the cost of repairing/replacing anything that the drones managed to hit. If you can spend $50 and cause your enemy to waste $500 repelling your attack then you've achieved a successful result.

    Only if you have at least 10% of the resources of your enemy available... otherwise you will run out of steam before the enemy, which is not a successful result.

  9. Re:Beware, anyone can make those drones, anywhere by Rei · · Score: 2

    In the real world, antiaircraft missiles are a couple million dollars each.

    I seriously doubt it costs a tenth as much to build these. More like 1/100th, if that much. Possibly as little as 1/1000th.

    --
    Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.