Civilian volunteers on either side of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have furiously worked to adapt lots of of 1000’s of commercially available drones for combat use by soldiers on the frontline. And along the best way, they’ve innovated to deliver more practical weapons—Ukrainians have taken the lead in each fielding drone boats and mass-producing low-cost, first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones.
Russian volunteers, nonetheless, are attempting to one-up their rivals by fielding a big anti-tank guided missile—a weapon that many drones would struggle to even lift, and which generates considerable recoil.
The weapon in query is an old 9M111 Fagot (“Bassoon”) wire-guided anti-tank guided missile—also codenamed AT-4 Spigot by NATO—which weighs 28-pounds, including its launch cannister and gas booster.
While the ordinarily 50-pound 9K111 launcher is missing its 9P135 tripod launch post, the 9S451 guidance box is visibly still attached, as is its 10x magnification 9Sh119 sight (which adds substantially more weight). It is a heavier payload than a lot of the civilian drones utilized in the war can accommodate.
The volunteers slung the launcher on top of a heavy-duty Perun-F quadcopter drone (to not be confused with a Ukrainian drone of the identical name), described as a “heavy assault quadcopter.” According to a Greek drone analyst, it appears to be based on the Chinese EFT Z50 agricultural spraying drone, which may carry as much as a 110-pound payload and is currently being sold for prices starting from $7,000 to $10,000 USD.
The Z50 weighs 100 kilos (including batteries), has the endurance to hover for 7 minutes while carrying a maximum payload and 20 minutes unloaded, and is controlled via a handheld remote control device with a 5.5” screen and range of 1.86 miles.
The video shows the Perun-F lifting off, achieving a semi-stable hovering state, and firing the powerful 120-millimeter diameter missile—despite the powerful kickback from the gas-generator, which propels the missile from the tube at 180 miles per hour.
The drone can also be shown to be able to firing while landed, which could possibly be useful for organising an ambush from an unexpected position. This capability likely explains why the missile is mounted atop, not under, the drone.
After launch, the missile’s solid-fuel rocket motor ignites, accelerating the missile to 420 miles per hour—roughly the utmost speed of many a late World War II fighter plane.
There’s an issue, though. The Basoon’s missile is ordinarily semi-automatically guided by a human operator to its goal via a spool-out wire that stays connected to the missile throughout its flight. But there’s no person “on” the drone peering through its sight and physically manipulating its controls. Without such direction, it’s principally just an unguided rocket that’s only prone to hit a really close goal.
Drones and anti-tank guided missiles: feasible?
Business drones have played a very important role in anti-tank warfare in Ukraine. Initially, they were used to gravity-bomb armored vehicles from above with anti-tank grenades, and boasted surprisingly lethal accuracy. While this method continues to be used on immobilized or abandoned vehicles, by the winter of 2022/2023, it was surpassed by faster, remotely piloted first-person view drones used to ram enemy vehicles while carrying a contact-fused rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) warhead. These could higher engage moving targets, and tens of 1000’s per thirty days could possibly be produced cheaply and quickly.
Anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), nonetheless, are a unique beast than rocket-propelled grenades. RPGs are low-cost, highly portable, and have an efficient range rarely exceeding a number of hundred meters. ATGM systems, however, weigh dozens of kilos, typically have ranges of 1-4 miles, are more costly, and are guided all of the approach to goal (which can take greater than 30 seconds, depending on the weapon and distance.)
So while RPGs are close defense and ambush weapons, ATGMs are rarer, heavy weapons—they’re akin to long-distance snipers that may kill tanks. Moreover, ATGM-launching helicopters have proven effective. They’ve superior mobility and vantage to locate and pick off enemy tanks, all while remaining outside the range of many short-range air defenses. So, the Russian ATGM-on-drone project could hypothetically lead to a type of poor man’s anti-tank helicopter.
But without guidance to hit targets at range, ATGMs lose most of their utility in comparison with RPGs. Moreover, the 9K111 has a minimum range of 70-75 meters.
The design challenge is to ensure that the drone’s operators have a approach to each spot the goal (preferably from a sight on the drone, parallel to the launcher), and to send guidance commands to the missile midflight so as to keep it on the right track. Stabilization of the sight used to guide the missile also appears mandatory, given the observable wobbliness.
These are solvable problems—though, they’re solvable in ways which will cut against either the DIY nature of the project or the drone’s maneuverability. For instance, the operators might tether the drone to the missile’s original analog guidance system on the bottom (while retaining a videofeed on the drone as a sight). Ukraine’s Stugna-P system, for instance, already has a 50-meter cable tether, and such a tether has been improvised for Russian Kornet and 9K111 systems. In fact, that solution would largely remove the system’s mobility.
Or they may expensively devise a remote-control command link for the Nineteen Seventies-vintage missile, but such bespoke innovations risk exceeding what DIY volunteers can reasonably achieve.
Russia’s newer ATGMs—notably, the larger 9M133 Kornet and lighter 9M131 Metis-M—are laser-beam riding weapons, wherein a laser on the launch platform transmits guidance instructions to the missile by reflecting a laser into receivers on the missile’s tail. Those guidance systems is perhaps easier to adapt for handheld remote control, and people weapons also penetrate two or 3 times the equivalent armor of the unique 9M111 model.
It’s noteworthy, though, that the testers used the Bassoon—an over 50-year old weapon—which lacks the penetrating power to reliably defeat the bricks of explosive reactive frontal armor on most Ukrainian tanks. Given the demand for ATGMs on the frontline, perhaps the testers reason that a volunteer-built anti-tank drone will only have the ability to make use of older munitions.
A Western-style fire-and-forget missile like Javelin, or one with in-built radio data-link like Spike, would simplify the issue—nevertheless it isn’t an option for the Russian volunteers.
How anti-tank missile-armed drones could work
A conservative operational concept for drone-launched ATGMs could see these used as stand-ins for the standard ground-based ATGM teams being priority targeted by artillery and armored vehicle cannons. While remaining near friendly positions, ATGM drones would offer higher spotting angles, firing angles, and a level of mobility—all while sparing human operators from enemy counter-fire (and thus reducing hesitancy to open fire in any respect).
A more radical concept—reliant on higher command-links and jamming resistance, and maybe AI-assisted goal ID and guidance algorithms—might seek to make use of these drones to infiltrate past the frontline, allowing them to take shots at a tank’s much weaker side and rear armor (which also may make it more prone to achieve surprise). The power to land these drones and have them lay in wait to spring an ambush from the bottom also has interesting tactical potential.
The inherent standoff reach of ATGMs would allow them to each safely strike more distant targets and interact tanks protected by self-defense jammers (that are increasingly common, resulting from the specter of kamikaze drones). Moreover, many non-tank assets behind the frontline could possibly be attractive targets, reminiscent of command posts, radar systems, supply trucks, communication systems, ammunition depots, and jamming systems.
But before either concept could be implemented, the issue of guidance have to be solved.
Samuel Bendett, an authority on Russian unmanned systems and AI on the technology, told Popular Mechanics that he sees the promise of such systems. “That recoil goes to be very powerful, stabilizing this sort of drone could be difficult and and getting an accurate strike could be problematic,” he said. “But for those who are on the lookout for a less accurate airborne hit, then this could potentially be appealing.”
He recalls having observed several previous attempts to mount ATGMs on consumer drones, including from Russia-allied Belarus. Innovators in Ukraine, meanwhile, are known to have test-mounted an anti-tank weapon on a Chinese DJI Agras T-30 hexacopter agricultural spraying drone. Time will tell if such prototypes are iterated into operationally effective platforms.