The combat part was reduced: Svitan tells how Russia could increase drone speed to 800 km/h
Recently, Russian media reported that Russia has allegedly managed to modernize Shahed attack drones, and now they can accelerate from 450 to 800 km per hour. However, these figures may be significantly overstated.
Roman Svitan, a reserve colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a military expert, told ICTV in an exclusive interview.
– “If a drone is built for a speed of 150/200 km per hour, it cannot be accelerated to 800 km per hour. It will simply break down and fly away. It would have to be another drone, like an airplane or a missile. A rocket goes at 800 km per hour, even for a rocket it is a problem. The same design can be accelerated up to a maximum of one and a half times more without changing the design,” he said.
Increasing speed by reducing the warhead
The expert noted that it would be possible to increase the speed of a UAV so much only by reducing the warhead of the aircraft.
– Most likely, due to the lack of ICEs (internal combustion engines), and they are not produced in Russia, they tried to put a turbine instead of an ICE. But any turbine engine consumes a lot of fuel. Therefore, they could increase the fuel tank by reducing the explosives compartment, there was no other way. And as a result of the reduction of the warhead, the drones lost their strike capability, and the range decreased by 100%,” he said.
Earlier, we told you that the Russian Federation began equipping Shahed-136 kamikaze drones with a thermobaric warhead weighing almost 40 kg, which creates a completely new level of threat. Read the Fakty ICTV article to find out how dangerous it is.
