SiverSurfeR said:

Neither the fact that MAT 120 were exported to Libya in 2007

Ah, thats awkward.

Such a shame as it sounds like a great system. 

Heres an interesting one.

Russian 'Spider' personal Laser Warning Receiver for helmet mounting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/106e3qw/ukraine_captured_this_strange_helmetmounted/

Now with video of their impact; pretty good bang.

Also a testament to the flexibility of the RPG7 system that such a round is even possible. 

YouTube

Makeshift Fire Extinguisher RPG Warheads In Ukraine

In December 2022, images of an interesting new craft-made munition began to surface in Ukraine. Chechen troops in Bakhmut have improvised an RPG-7 warhead ma...

Funny enough i have been trying to purchase spider IR warning reciever months before the war , didn't know back then that it was Russian product , but the Po Box 'ratailer' out of Finland was very unresponsive .

We meant to sell these to our SF snipers are its a valuable tool to warn the team if they are being lased, basicaly it  the classes the lasers to rangefinders and target designators and enabled vibratory ,visual and or Voice warning.

Simple design using only two sensors means it only points the direction to left right or head on depending on which sensor is irradiated.

Extreme prevalence of drones on the front lines means new methods and gear to fight them is being cooked up every day in garages of Ukraine and Russia , interesting are new hand-held drone approach warning receivers that pick up radio emissions from drone transmitting video  feed.

It's quite interesting to read the detailed analysis of the recovered Switchblade 300 , it seems like a really high end product with no expense spared .Interestingly enough it seems it was developed for use in ME has some vulnerabilities related to datalink and the targeting sequence , also interesting i that it uses a lidar for fusing (airburst) not an impact sensor.

https://t.me/UAVDEV/

There's a recent telegram video of an FPV drone just like this with an rpg7 warhead straight into the side of a bmp3.

You probably can't do this with an amazon.com $500 FPV drone rig, but if you build from parts this is not just possible but can be done pretty cheap.. (especially if you're buying parts in bulk so you can reuse transmitters etc)

So what I'm seeing in multiple sets of footage is you have one or more recon drones running spotter and pilot guidance duty for the fpv suicide drone operators.

It's not a matter of one or the other, you use both and this gets you the combined synergistic effects of much more expensive and low production weapons systems that you can now use In quantities we never really imagined having to deal with.

Even more than that though, you can afford to lose a metric shit ton of them because you can literally build 6 recon drones and 12 FPV suicide drones for the cost of a single javelin reload.

I don't want to sound bloodthirsty here because I definitely don't like how much loss of life and destruction we're witnessing...

BUT 

People like me are feeling extremely vindicated right now since we're seeing both sides in this conflict very heavily and successfully using precisely the things we tried to warn people were coming. Things that we were told anyone with western backing could "easily jam entirely out of the sky" etc and would never be the threat we said they'd be. I remember being called hysterical for saying this stuff, and even the hilariously quick improvement cycles we've seen in the year this war has went on we tried to warn people would happen.

The interesting and scary thing about these suicide fpv's is that it's positively easy to get the power to weight ratios you need to lift tandem warhead rpg7's attached to one and even get 10 to 15 minute run time with outright cheap and massively plentiful components while still being able to zip around at >100 mph.

The secret sauce here compared to doing precision drops from octo copters etc is that your rpg7 is very securely attached to the drone body versus hanging and swinging under an octa as well as sacrificing total flight time etc by moving a bunch of the stuff like a gimbaled pan tilt and zoom cam you have on a precision drop octa to an offboard secondary platform.

On a suicide fpv you have essentially a fixed forward camera motors battery receiver equipment your payload and the most minimal airframe components capable of supporting the weight of everything and the payload.

As a have dabbled in drones a bit , there is a method to madness .

Two drone ship is practically necessary for most DIY drones as soon as you need to deal with either a built-up or forested area or you are a past line of sight( that happens fast if the drone is flying low) as one drone needs to play both as a repeater and spotter for it . Diy quadcopters you see carrying RPG warheads have endurance in sub 5 minute range and pure line of sight functionality those are not flying miles but hundreds of meters

Interestingly from what i can read in the analysis of the recovered Switchblade (possibly a Phoenix Ghost variant that have a side camera ,longer time on station and smaller warhead),drone bypasses the need for two ship formation by first scouting for the area with a side looking camera and once the operator designates the target, the attack profile is automated to the end and loss of signal that happens on the attack run due to geography, vegetation or buildings blocking the signal is irrelevant. also noteworthy it that system is designed to a straight line into the ground in event of malfunction preventing any errant maneuvers or it straying somewhere .

While DIY drones we see now are effective to a degree, it seems most of them are relatively easy to jam if the tools for it are at hand. The true threat will come in form of AI power that enables drones to operate with minimal human input out of LOS  and through loss of signal. those will be harder to detect, harder to discover their command post and much harder to stop without shooting them down.  And as AI is just software upgrade away this capabilty could very soon become available to anyone.

Diy drones also have DIY countermeasures, we are now reading of Russians making and shipping shitload them jammer guns , the goal being to have one practically on the squad level.

Confirmed losses of Ukrainian AF , it seems more than a third of all losses are to own air defenses which makes sense as most anti air systems ukraine uses and MANPADS dont have a usable iff and if it its flying is most likely Russian

It also confirms a bunch Air to air action and losses around Snake island that were denied at the time 

https://kv-bear.livejournal.com/499192.html

Yes, the multiship formations are not only necessary to the diy drone solution sets, but in many cases it's very likely desirable. Using your second battle damage assessment and recon ship as a repeater etc also can make dealing with these attacks much more difficult in the very near future.

As an example the Chicoms have a 1 pound aesa module they've developed specifically for drone use which could allow your "repeaters" to be much more resilient, difficult to jam, and otherwise just a massive pain in the ass.

It's gonna be interesting seeing over the next decade how this arms race plays out.