Are FPV (first-person viewer) suicide drones literally flown into targets the Sagger wire-guided ATGM of our era?
Ukraine claims it will produce a million FPV drones next year.
The Sagger was a Soviet anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) flown to the target using a joystick, with the operator keeping the target and missile in sight to steer the missile. It required lots of training.
Its effectiveness shocked the Israelis in the 1973 war. Counter-measures were
developed. Last-minute swerving, artillery fire, obscuring the view of the
operator, and firing "beehive" rounds at the general launching area. One old description of the contest noted one Israeli tank with numerous wires (from the passing missiles) draped over it in a testament to the ability to avoid destruction.
Eventually, missiles like TOW that only required the operator to track
the target were developed. Then there were fire-and-forget missiles that allowed an operator to fire and then move to avoid counter-measures.
It
seems like we are in the Sagger stage of FPVs. And there is a lot of premature FPV worship going on before counter-measures are deployed. Seemingly justified by results:
This massive use of FPV-armed UAVs has revolutionized warfare in Ukraine and both sides are producing as many as they can. Not having enough of these to match the number the enemy has in a portion of the front means you are at a serious disadvantage in that area. These UAVs are still evolving in terms of design and use and becoming more effective and essential.
But I can't tell if this reporting--complete with videos of hits--is propaganda (which is hardly irrelevant) or a fair evaluation of their relative value compared to other weapons. This seems to support the hype theory:
On YouTube, viewers see the drone missions that succeed, not those that fail. But studies show that the latter now far outnumber the former. The Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, has estimated that only one mission in three succeeds; other sources put the figure at one in every seven to ten. These results do not mean that drones are useless, but they do not reflect transformational impact on warfare, which would explain the merely incremental changes in observed battlefield outcomes.
It seems like there is a race between drones and counter-measures, just as ATGMs face. I ran across this information about a weakness that wire-guided missiles did not face:
With a range of six miles, [the Russian Shipovnik-Aero electronic warfare system] can block drones and also acquire the coordinates of the pilot’s location, within one metre, in order to direct retaliatory artillery fire.
Cheap drones are numerous but obviously limited in what they can carry to counter the interference.
Further, and this parallels the Sagger training issue:
A major limitation is the need for trained UAV operators. These troops need over a hundred hours of training before they are able to start operating these UAVs, and another hundred hours of actual use before they are able to make the most out of the system.
I also wonder if the success of drones is amplified by the war being stuck in a static front right now. This Strategy Page post argues that FPV drones are revolutionizing warfare. But:
You can consider a loitering munition overhead as a form of suppressive fire on the troops below. In this respect loitering munitions do what snipers have been doing for over a century, forcing troops to stay out of sight or the enemy sniper will get you. This was common during World War I, when trench warfare made snipers useful for keeping enemy troops from observing the terrain between the trenches of opposing forces.
Just as snipers had an outsized role in the World War I trenches, surely it is easier to use the cheap drones when the operators have a secure area and operate over familiar territory--because the front isn't moving much--with those short-range suicide drones.
Have no doubt that counter-measures will be developed with tactics and equipment.
Then we'll get "TOW" FPVs and then those that are "target and forget" after the operator decides what should be attacked.
And more counter-measures will reach the battlefield.
The "silver bullet" will become one more useful weapon in arsenals.
UPDATE: I bet the much-maligned but very effective cluster warhead could really ruin the day of a FPV drone operator who isn't in a covered bunker. Pinpointing the source of the controller combined with rapid counter-fire with mixed HE and cluster rounds could break that threat up in a classic example of combined arms operations.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
