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After months of speculation, the German government has confirmed that Berlin has supplied or will supply Kiev with a weapon that is very useful for the Ukrainian armed forces (and also for the Russians): an anti-aircraft system called Skynex.
The system, which cost an astronomical 90 million euros each and was paid for entirely by Germany, is actually simple at first glance: it is an anti-aircraft cannon. In principle, other weapons can also be attached to it, such as guided missiles or lasers, but in the basic version one or more (up to four) rapid-fire cannons with a caliber (i.e. barrel diameter) of 35 millimeters are connected to a control system. Center” with radar and other sensors.
Then, at a distance of a few kilometers, it can engage various targets, from airplanes, helicopters, flat-trajectory guided missiles and drones to incoming shells from mortars.
Among other things, the Skynex fires “shotgun” projectiles, each containing 152 small tungsten balls. He can program the fired projectiles to explode in the air after a certain amount of time, showering the target with a shower of these small fragments. This is an extremely effective – and also quite cheap – weapon against flying targets, which are usually not very resistant due to their low weight. And it can also reliably hit small targets such as drones or even entire groups of drones.
You can see how such a weapon works in practice in the next picture. The footage appears to be from August 2023, which could indicate that the system has been in Ukraine for some time. If it is not the damage caused by Skynex, their nature is very similar and therefore gives a good idea of the effect of their ammunition.
Photo: Telegram
A Russian drone was destroyed by ammunition that may have been fired from the Skynex system
A similar anti-aircraft device is conceptually nothing new. The Bundeswehr used a very similar Mantis system in Mali in 2018 to protect its base. He later gave them to Slovakia as compensation for the equipment Bratislava had sent to Ukraine. The Gepard systems, which are essentially a vehicle on a tank chassis equipped with a radar and an anti-aircraft gun, are also successfully used in Ukraine.
Skynex can be static or placed on some kind of chassis. Above all, it is understandably more modern and more accurate. However, it is important for Ukraine that small drones should also be combated on a much larger scale. This is a weapon that not long ago modern armies did not consider to be a major threat, but is now one of the dominant forces in the Ukraine war.
Price problem
The fight against drones is an extremely burning and unresolved issue for both armies on the Ukrainian battlefield. There are many different unmanned systems used in combat, but the general trend is that small systems are more effective.
This is due to the general situation on the battlefield, where effective air defense on both sides significantly restricts the movement of large – and expensive – machines. Planes or drones worth firing a large anti-aircraft missile at cannot stay within their range for long.
Although there are drones the size of smaller aircraft on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides, significantly smaller machines in the order of tens of centimeters or low meter units play the key role. A large portion of these are commercially available drones, mostly from Chinese companies, deploying units at all sorts of levels of individual cooperatives.
For example, the use of these drones for reconnaissance and warfare is widespread. Ukrainian soldiers have repeatedly complained and complained that training in NATO countries emphasizes that commanders should be close to the front lines. In their opinion, drones, with which Western militaries do not have much experience, allow commanders to stay behind and still keep an overview of what is happening and to be able to direct their troops well.
Skynex drone defense system in use. Video: Rheinmetall, Youtube.com
An ever-increasing proportion of small machines are kamikaze FPV drones (FPV is the English abbreviation for “first-person view”). Both sides already produce and deploy tens of thousands of these weapons per month – and both Kiev and Moscow reportedly want to significantly increase production.
These are typically custom-made machines, largely derived from racing drones, which the pilot controls via goggles into which the image from the camera on top of the machine is projected. They offer similar capabilities to small cruise missiles at a very low cost. FPV drones are used to attack tanks, cannons, command posts, groups of soldiers (and sometimes individuals), but also bunkers and other fortified points. They carry a small load that won’t break through a concrete wall, but the pilots can control them with a precision few can match.
In practice, they function like expensive guided missiles and ammunition of all kinds. Although they are not so destructive, they can be stopped by a network or mesh, their control signal can be interrupted, but the price and availability are unmatched.
For example, the Ukrainian Stugna-P anti-tank missile costs $20,000 each, while American Javelins are about twice as expensive. An Excalibur GPS-guided artillery shell costs about $100,000. FPV drones cost around $400 to $1,200 depending on features, size, range and other parameters.
No wonder both sides are using them more and more often. In the recent attacks on the village of Marinka in the Donetsk region, Russian forces used FPV drones to systematically destroy one prepared Ukrainian defensive position after another: They flew into the windows of the houses where the Ukrainians had positions, but also into the basements or bunkers underneath. Within a few weeks, the drone campaign, combined with bombing, artillery fire and Russian infantry attacks, managed to destroy the positions so badly that Marinka fell at the end of 2023 after almost two years of fighting (with the ground effectively leveled).
At the same time, there is virtually no reliable defense against FPV drones. Electronic warfare means have certain results, that is, a de facto signal jamming to control drones. But its effectiveness is uncertain as both sides constantly look for ways to circumvent their opponents’ measures.
Larger relatives
However, small drones are not the only problem. Particularly on the Russian side, larger machines in the order of meters, which are used for surveying over longer distances, have proven to be particularly effective. The most common example of this category is Orlan aircraft.
These are targets that can be hit relatively easily by anti-aircraft missiles, but at the same time are so cheap that the price of a missile fired almost always significantly exceeds the value of the target destroyed. In this regard, economics is paradoxically on the side of the one who lost the machine: Orlans are cheaper and easier to manufacture than the missiles they destroy.
The situation is very similar with remote-controlled drones. On the Russian side there are Shahid drones licensed or manufactured directly in Iran, and on the Ukrainian side there are several types built directly in Ukraine. Their price is lower than practically all anti-aircraft missiles, but at the same time the defense can hardly ignore them.
Ukraine therefore uses all possible means against Russian drone attacks, including older anti-aircraft guns or machine guns mounted on the bodies of off-road vehicles. However, they try not to “waste” expensive cruise missiles on them.
4×4 kilometers
From this point of view, ammunition for rapid-fire cannons is a much more economical solution. The major disadvantage of the Skynex is that it is common to many modern European weapon systems: it is inherently expensive and also unavailable.
Although the price per cartridge fired may be low, the entire system will cost around 90 million euros each, according to available data. To be more precise: We know that Germany paid 182 million euros for Ukraine for two pieces, i.e. over four billion crowns. Even if we don’t know exactly what is included in the price (equipment level, service, support, ammunition, etc.) – and this is very important for similar contracts – it is certainly not little. Especially when you consider that a Skynex can only protect a relatively small area from the enemy. The most commonly referred to is a square of 4×4 kilometers.
How many such devices would be needed to cover the front or back of Ukraine? Ideally hundreds. And this means that one can also rely on the fact that similar systems would certainly suffer losses when deployed at the front. Finally, its range means it has to be within range of a whole range of enemy weapons.
The price could undoubtedly fall if a similar system were produced in larger quantities, ideally in series. But this also applies to a whole range of Western and especially European weapons: their high price is primarily due to the fact that they are only produced in limited quantities. Without the promise of large orders and investment in mass production, the price is unlikely to fall.
This is evidenced by the prices of artillery ammunition from (at least some) European companies, which are an order of magnitude more expensive than production in other parts of the world (up to 100,000 crowns per piece of 155mm ammunition, as announced in December). Treaty between French gunsmiths and the German state). However, the situation is similar for more complex systems such as Skynex.
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