상호 발전해가는 우크라이나와 러시아의 무인기 운용전술

[위종민]

우-러 전쟁에서 우크라이나에서만 매월 5~10만 대의 드론이 손실될 정도로 격렬한 드론전쟁이 벌어지고 있고, 특히 전자전 분야에서 격렬한 경쟁이 벌어지고 있는데 전술변경이 너무 빨라서 8주마다 기술을 업그레이드해야 한다고 합니다. 

개전 초에 쓰였던 TB-2같은 군용 대형드론은 취미용 미니드론에, 미니드론은 1인칭 FPV 레이싱 드론에 자리를 내줬다고 하네요. 양측 모두 FPV 드론을 간이 스마트폭탄으로 운용중이고, 우크라이나는 FPV 드론을 더 큰 드론을 격추하기 위한 요격기 용도로도 사용중이라고 합니다. 

또한 전파방해 우회를 위해 지속적으로 제어 주파수를 변경하고, 드론운영팀의 은엄폐 방법을 바꾸고, 운용 거리를 늘리기 위해 제어신호 중계용 보조드론을 운용하는 등의 전술이 계속 개발되고 있다고 하네요. 

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/12/theyre-also-learning-russia-ukraine-race-to-out-innovate-each-other/

‘They’re also learning’: Russia, Ukraine race to out-innovate each other - Breaking Defense

‘They’re also learning’: Russia, Ukraine race to out-innovate each other

Tactics and technology advance so fast that a drone that’s cutting-edge today will be obsolescent in two months, Ukrainian and NATO officers say.

By   SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on December 14, 2023 at 3:50 PM

After that date, image will need to be licensed from the website.) Ukrainian military operate a Punisher drone, a small fixed-wing reusable aircraft used by frontline infantry to strike military targets, on November 7, 2023 near Vuhledar, Ukraine. (Photo by Kostya Liberov/ Libkos via Getty Images)

AOC 2023 — The visible front line has hardly moved in months, but above the trenches and minefields dividing Ukraine, an invisible battle rages back and forth in the airwaves.

Both sides are constantly updating their drones and their anti-drone tactics, which depend above all else on the radio connections used to control the unmanned aircraft and to relay the vital intelligence they collect to commanders, artillery batteries and missile launchers. Both sides have invested heavily in radio-frequency jamming and deception — electronic warfare — to misdirect missiles and bring down drones, with Ukraine alone losing an estimated five to ten thousand every month. And this cat-and-mouse game moves so rapidly, Ukrainian and NATO experts said at the Association of Old Crows’ annual electronic warfare conference, that tech needs to be upgraded about every eight weeks.

RELATED: Amid Ukraine and Israel conflicts, Pentagon acquisition chief sees counter-drone ‘crisis’

“The electromagnetic environment in the eastern Donbas is the most complex in the world,” said Air Commodore Blythe Crawford, commandant of the Royal Air Force’s Air & Space Warfare Centre (ASWC). “If you’re turning out version 1.1, you’ve got eight weeks before you churn out version 1.2.”

A Ukrainian reserve officer and tech entrepreneur, Capt. Iaroslav Kalinin, made the same point more bluntly as he whipped through a presentation of different drone types the two sides had fielded one after another. “Whatever I show you becomes obsolete in the next two months,” Kalinin told the AOC conference.

Big, purpose-built military drones like the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 that were stars at the start of the war have given way to hobbyist mini-drones and, increasingly, racing drones controlled by operators using VR goggles to get a drone’s-eye-view — what’s called “First Person View” (FPV) control.

Both sides have turned the agile, speedy FPV drones into ad hoc smart bombs and, Kalinin said, the Ukrainians are now even using them as interceptors to bring down larger Russian drones. Meanwhile, operators are constantly adjusting control frequencies to bypass jamming, changing how they hide from retaliatory strikes — which prioritize drone operators — and extending range by such tricks as relaying the control signal through a secondary drone.

“The side that prevails will be the side that innovates the quickest,” said Crawford.

But which side is that? While the Russians have a well-earned reputation for rigidity, “they’re also learning,” said Maj. Gen. Borys Kremenetskyi, a Ukrainian air force officer currently serving as defense attaché to the US. “They’re adapting [their] tactics.”

When the war began, Kremenetskyi said, Ukraine was fighting “the big Soviet Army”: long columns of tanks, troop carriers and trucks surged into Ukrainian territory — and often got stuck when resistance proved greater than planned, like the infamous 40-mile “traffic jam” north of Kyiv. As the war ground on, Cold War-era mechanized echelons increasingly gave way to human wave attacks of poorly supported foot troops, straight out of the darkest days of the “Great Patriotic War” against the Nazis. But the Russians also launched relentless missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian cities, and, Kremenetskyi said, there they were careful to vary their flight paths from strike to strike and use recon drones to scout for weak points in Ukraine’s hard-pressed air defenses.

In the cyber/electronic warfare domain, the Russians began the war with a knockout blow against the ViaSat communications network on which Ukrainian troops depended, only for Elon Musk’s Starlink to save the day. Starlink has proved remarkably resilient against hacking and jamming. But, Kremenetskyi warned, the Russians learned to look for areas of “mass internet access” and other signs that Starlink terminals were online, then target them.

Nevertheless, Kremenetskyi expressed confidence that Ukraine’s more Westernized society and military could adapt faster than the authoritarian Russians. “Innovation is one of our advantages,” he said. In particular, since the devastating losses in Crimea and eastern Donbass during the Russian invasion of 2014, Ukraine has reformed its armed forces to allow more initiative among junior frontline troops — the soldiers are actually storming trenches and reconfiguring drones.

“We transferred a lot of authorities to junior officers,” the general said. “We created a very powerful non-commissioned officers corps, which allows us to make decisions in trenches. Our soldiers do not wait for a general somewhere in headquarters. …They can use their own initiative on the battlefield. That is one of our advantages.”

Those tactical and technical reforms made a particular difference in electronic warfare: Russian jamming paralyzed Ukrainian command systems in 2014, but failed to bring them down in 2022.

“The biggest boogeyman in the world was Russian EW,” said Jeff Fischer, a former US Air Force electronic warfare officer. “[People said] ‘they’re light years ahead of us.’ No, they’re not.”

Sure, he told the AOC conference, the technical specifications of Russian systems were impressive, and specimens acquired by intelligence agencies performed magnificently in field tests on US ranges — where they were operated by US-trained crews with top-notch technical support. In the mud and chaos of actual conflict, however, with patchy maintenance and tired, under-trained crews, their combat performance was much worse.

That said, Fischer warned, the brutal natural selection of ongoing combat is forcing even the Russians to get better. “I will say, even though Russia wasn’t great at the beginning, fighting is training, so they might be losing guys but they’re learning,” he said. “Russia’s getting actually relatively good, only because they’re being forced to do so.”

What Russia lacks in bottom-up initiative, it might be able to make up its ability to ruthlessly mobilize all available resources to serve the autocrat’s objectives, argued Crawford.

“Rather than being a question of, ‘are we ahead or are we behind’ … it is a battle of innovation models,” he said. “You have Ukraine, which is slightly more Western in its approach, a bottom-up innovation model … versus a top-down autocratic model … where they have mobilized the nation’s industrial base to support that top-down innovation.”

As the war grinds on and Western resolve wavers, it’s hard to say whether the free world or the autocrats will prevail in the end.

[ssn688]

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/12/loitering-munitions-use-rises-across-ukraine-pilot-training-becomes-new-key-task/392433/?oref=d1-homepage-top-story
FPV 드론은 쿼드콥터보다 조종이 어려운 만큼 조종사 부족이 크다고 하네요. (먼 산)
>Highly motivated students can become good FPV pilots in around 30 days
>Training at Kruk runs slightly shorter, clocking in at two weeks. Frolov said the training has been compressed to accommodate the needs of the war.
>Berlinska estimates the country needs 10,000 FPV pilots in its one million-strong military.
> “Ideally, every soldier could use a drone like they could a rifle.”

[위종민]

양성에 한 달이나 걸린다니.. ㄷㄷㄷ

향후 지상군 단위제대별로 드론을 어떻게 운용해야 할 지, 카운터 드론 장비들은 어떻게 운용해야 할 지.. 관계자들은 머리가 참 복잡하겠습니다.

[엽군]

그래도 기술이 좋아져서 한달이지, FPV는 어느 정도 감도 타고 나야죠. : ) 당장은 카운터 드론도 쉬운 일인데... 앞으로 10년 쯤 지나면 정말 골머리 아파질 상황 올 것이라 봅니다.

[ssn688]

https://youtu.be/ZQUjKKvvAIQ?si=6h6-tr9vlVvPU7ql
"요즘 세상에도" 전차간 교전(우크라이나 T-64 vs 러시아 T-72)이 벌어졌는데, 선빵을 맞은 T-72가 연막 뿌리고 퇴각했지만 FPV에 맞아 차량을 버리게 되었다는 게 개그입니다. -_-

[Minowski(김유철)]

우크라이나의 작년의 방어전과 반격의 성과와 올해의 성과가 갈리는 가장 결정적인 원인은 아무래도 러시아의 무인기 운용능력의 향상이라고 봐야할 것 같습니다.
인력을 갈아넣는다고 비아냥의 대상이 되긴하지만, 러시아의 방어전에서 무인기 활용사례는 사실 전쟁초반에 우크라의 전매특허였고...
결국 전쟁을 너무 오래 끌었다는 생각이 드네요.

[위종민]

결국은 전선 상공의 제공권을 확보하고 SEAD/DEAD 시행해서 방공망이나 지상용 전자전 장비들을 때려부숴서 우리만 드론을 쓸 수 있게 만드는 게 공세 성공의 필수조건이 아니었나 싶네요. 근데 이건 미국만 가능한 게 아닐지..

그렇다고 우크라이나가 내년 초반에나 들어올 F-16을 기다릴 수도 없었으니.. 여러 모로 추계공세 돈좌가 참 아쉽습니다. 추계공세가 실패로 돌아가니 바로 서방에서 우크라이나 지원 움직임에 균열이 가네요.

[백선호]

항공전을 10톤 넘고 빠르게 나는 100대 이하의 유인기로 하는 것이 아니라 수십~수백 kg에 지면 가까이 느리게 나는 수만대의 무인기로 하는 셈이네요.