YA-9 had the same issues the SU-25 still does. One hit to the body is liable to knock out both engines, as opposed to the A-10 having the engines spaced apart, so no one AA or manpad hit can't knock both out. Afaik, the two YA-9 prototypes never got armored firewalls that were placed between the engines like the production SU-25s had received.
There's also TV guidance. Don't know if it's in shells, but in bombs at least it's pretty jam proof. The Maverick missile has that along with laser guided and infared variants.
There aren't a lot of drones that are strictly mechanical INS. I flew the T2 as a SEREGRAD to teach F14 RIOs in the pipeline how to handle crew coordination and how to use a map before they got to their first RAG to actually learn the jet.
You can jam tv optical the same way you jam radio, blanket signal with close band irregular intervals. That TV image still has to be transmitted and guided by the pilot.
That is fair since it's wireless. Still I'd see it as more resistant than GPS jamming, since the aircraft shooting it is right there vs a satellite tens of thousands of feet in the sky. In any case I guess that's why they have laser guided variants too. Got to kill the aircraft or pop a fuck ton of smoke to jam that.
You also have to remember that a lot of targets that need lasering have their own laser warning systems that infrom the crew that your ass is being lit and it's time to do drastic action. I also know at least that some also tie automatic smoke launchers to that as well.
Mechanical INS systems are basically non-existent on small UAVs and UCAVs and I'm not even sure something like a TB-2 has one although I thas some sort of autonomous guidance
Note that "TV guidance" on a Maverick can also refer to a fire and forget contrast based guidance system aka contrast guidance as it uses a TV camera
Laser can be beat and spoofed as well, but it requires knowing when, where and at what the strike is aimed at, and it's one that I can't go in to any detail on without getting my door knocked on. But there's been a few cases on specific areas where SOFLAMs and other designators have had bombs put on to them instead of the target
I could see in my head how a laser designator could bounce back and target you, just through the properties of light itself. But I see. Thanks for saying what you can man. In any case seekers are cool no matter the type and at the same time none is perfect. It's why fighters still carry IR missiles like Sidewinder even when they got 100km+ radar guided missiles. Maverick is similar. You need the right tool for the job.
You dont need INS when you have a drone that is being directed by onboard AI targeting anything that moves in its view. You also dont need INS when your drone is command guided by wire as were seeing now in Ukraine, or with Hezbollah with their Spike ATGM knock offs.
On board AI.
Wtf are you talking about connecting to a cloud? You think you need a server farm or Nvidia's latest Blackwell for basic image recognition and guidance? I dont think you understand how compact, cheap and powerful modern processors are.
Those require a specialized skillset to make and fully mechanical has more or less fallen out of use. Usually for these smaller drones they just slap on a quartz-rate sensor to a rate gyro system for minimal parts.
Better yet, solvent to lube the thing was slightly out of spec or applied unevenly. Have fun rebuilding the entire fucking device to prevent gimbal lock.
I suddenly now have the idea to build a IRST-like thermal device which detects lasers and optics glass and sends out a anti-laser/anti-thermal camera suicide drone and call it at SNEED duty (Suppression of Night/Eletro-optical Enemy Devices). 21st century version of "shoot the fucking Malyutka operator" and warthunder optics sniping in real time for shits and giggles.
I think they have this on display in a museum somewhere in Russia.
AI can't run on a pi. You certainly can't power it with a low cost battery, and if you tried the kinetic and range would be about as fast and far as the operator can throw it
It's as close as anyone has gotten to replicating the F-5E in the 21st century.... On the West. See the JF-17 for the Chinese version.
Yep. People VASTLY underestimate the processing needs for reliable image recognition and image processing compute power. There's a reason your smartphone offloads a lot of that to a data center elsewhere
that is exactly what happens, electronic warfare units detect and invetigate the sources of electronic control, report it up, and ether artillery gets requested to fire at the detected location which is frequently how FPV operators get killed or injured, or a drone unit sends a drone to investigate visualy, if confirmed it will get the appropriate ordenance delivery..