Quote from: TwitchySeal on Today at 08:56:49 AM

Quote from: Branko on Today at 07:56:09 AM

Quote from: suchmoon on November 06, 2022, 09:40:13 PM

Quote from: be.open on November 06, 2022, 06:04:11 PM

Ill say that this is definitely not an original Russian development - military acceptance in Russia would never have accepted such a miserable product as Geranium-2. I think this is a slightly modified and improved copy of the Iranian Shaheed-136, are you happy now?

Please enlighten us why the glorious Russian military has resorted to using such an inferior Iranian product, instead of their own vastly superior drones or missiles.

Because its cheaper, and still get a job done?

It's because they aren't able to manufacture the drones themselves.

So, Russia can put objects into space at will, have hyper-sonic weapons, optionally nuclear tipped, which cannot be stopped by anyone, can dump as many artillery shells in a few weeks than all those used in WW-II or some such and seem to have not run out yet, etc...but they cannot manufacture a 50hp chainsaw engined flying corn-chip?

That you could actually believe such a thing explains a lot about why you are wrong about pretty much everything else on this earth.

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WRT the 'Iranian' drones, I've heard one story/idea that they started out as a soon abandoned Russian project under the general umbrella of the groups who 'owns' Kalashnikov. They handed the project off to the Iranians a while ago, and they did significantly more R&D and got them pretty flyable. Russia then bought them back and did some updates to the navigation systems. They are reported (by Ukraine who got a few in tact) to be of a 'hand made' nature. If this is the case, I would expect that yes, at least the early crop had at least air-frames and powerplants fabricated in Iran. But, so what?

If it's the case that anyone who has the ability to build a car for weekend races can hammer one of these things together, and if the prints and 'open sourced', it could open up some world-wide possibilities.

That said, I suspect that the reason these things seem so effective is that they are so 'bad'. The anti-aircraft systems designers didn't even think of a slow flying and 'thermally quiet' targets...because they were more focused on how many millions of $$$ they could bilk out of the American taxpayers instead. But, with another few billion $$$ for R&D and a few years, Lockheed and friends probably could 'de-tune' some of their existing overpriced junk to be effective against flying lawn mowers as well.

Of course we are right back to spending $1,000,000 to get a shot at a $20,000 target. In other words, right where the military/industrial complex wishes to be.