Oy
https://news.yahoo.com/military-expert-iranian-shahed-136-135000436.html
What are your thoughts about this article made by a "Military Expert"? He is claiming that the Shahed-136 is fully made of components bought on "AliExpress", that the GPS is bought from freely available civilian stuff, that it got no other way of guidance than it
He also says that each Shahed-136 costs 1000$
I've only saw the motor on Aliexpress, but i didn't found anything about other components, which he say himself that he is relying on Iran specs, he is saying the drone is small and no way it can reach 1500 or 2000km
He is saying that Israeli and Turkish "laser beam" systems will counter them easily and directly, and that Ukraine can counter it "by using jammers bought on Aliexpress", easily and that western systems are going to counter it easily.
He seems trying to demonize Shahed136 and Iran as much as he can, is it just an attempt to demonize Iran and reassure himself and people or is he right on the whole thing made out of AliExpress components, is he just speculating the specs with his hatred also? Because he doesn't know the specs himself but manages to claim that it uses a freely available civilian GPS for guidance
Not sure who the author is, and obviously it is hurried "research" if one can call it that. With a little bit of time, and prior knowledge one can find alot of verifiable details. It's hard to even start with this one, but its definitely either is just rushed and poorly "researched" or deliberate dis-information. I guess I should try to clear some things up.
I am curious as to where you found the engine on Aliexpress if you can show me the link, unless you just meant component level. As far as our research goes, the engine is a German Limbach L550E engine. It is a patented design, so I would be surprised to see Aliexpress would have it. Either way, this engine is reverse engineered by Iranian MADO company made under the designation of M550 and used in many. different UAVs. Quick search on google will show.
This engine in the market costs around $23,000 so his cost estimation is already wrong. Actually production cost would be cheaper though
On to the body, alot of "analyists" believe the body is the same as a Harpy or some Harpy-copy. Once again, with very minimal research, one can see the honeycomb RAS design, layered with carbonfiber interior, and fiberglass exterior. This is part of the reason why radars have such trouble catching them from long ranges.
A combination of INS and GPS/GNSS course correction is a very high of being inside the UAV. I'll give the clown that one. As for guidance, this is where things can be interesting. GPS can only get you so far if you are not using NATO military grade GPS.
Terminal Guidance:
1. Via IR sensor in the nose cap (Also seen in other UAS models)
2. Guided via another Recon UAV (Per Russian telegram sources). Apparently Recon UAVs can act as commanders and flying relays to guide suicide drones to their targets that are loitering around.
Example:
The drone is actually large for a suicide UAV, much larger than a IAI Harop which is purported to have 1000km ferry range. On can see the human in relation to size. Arms length of a person only reaches 25% of the wingspan (if you can see the man), while an Arms length of the man with the Harop could go atleast 50% of the wingspan. It is also thicker from a side view.
Laser system would be good if it had a clear LOS and within short ranges. This is a large front , and the long endurance of the UAS allows it to plan a flight path that avoids centers of high AD saturation. It's strange that he mentions lasers systems of Turkish or Israeli origin which are not even operational and are still in development/testing stages or not in production in high numbers. Meanwhile their are plenty of other systems from other NATO nations that can be used, but are not economical at all. GPS jammer won't be effective once it reaches near it's target or mission, if relay drones are involved and the UAS is under communication range.
Best case for GPS Jammer would be to use in the event Russia would use these for some deep strike missions. But due to its low RCS profile, it may not even be detected on time to use such systems nor can it be deployed in scale across the country. We've seen this play out already and if it's already near it's target by then, it's IR sensor complete a lock once its pre-deterimed target is within visual range.
You simply cannot use commercial level GPS to target something slightly thicker than a telephone poll perfectly. Or can you use it to target refinery towers in Abqaiq. It is simply not possible without accurate terminal guidance.
If such assertion by these Russian telegram accounts about other drones providing guidance for these UAS's, once Russian get higher operational skills, they can use them in larger loitering swams, and instead of a single operator, commanding a single suicide drone, you'd have a 2 operators guiding 1 recon drone, and commanding suicide drones to attack designated targets. Which would make for interesting testing ground for how to operate a network of UAVs rather than single units individually.
In my opinion the cost of each drone would probably be around 20k-40k per unit, so something akin to a American JDAM which should be affordable for a country like Russia to have thousands of units if they can use these effectively, it would be worth it. Alas, most of this information is open source, as far as we are concerned this drone didn't even exist prior to it's usage in Abqaiq in 2019 and it's information is classified.
Their is one little possibility I have considered, which would be their are different variants of the Shahed-136, but none that we have heard of.
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