A Russian motorist near Ryazan (southeast of Moscow) recorded a video earlier this 12 months of an unusually large, low-flying drone with a V-shaped tail and wings spanning a whopping 23 meters from tip to tip.
This was a rare sighting of a “heavy attack” drone that was developed by Russian drone-maker Kronshtadt prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s called the Sirius, named after the brightest start within the sky. Sirius was intended as a higher-performance, twin-engine successor to the single-engine the Orion UCAV, which saw combat use earlier through the invasion.
Samuel Bendett, an authority on Russian uncrewed systems and AI on the Center for Naval Analyses and the CNAS think tank, wrote to Pop Mech:
“Sirius is a pre-war legacy system, together with Helios long-range ISR drone and other Kronstadt projects. That is alleged to be considered one of the flagship projects to propel Russia into the rank of drone superpowers on the air with the US, Israel and China. Sirius is alleged to be a big upgrade of Orion in practically all capabilities.”
Russia’s first missile-armed combat drone to enter service, the Inkhodets (“Orion”) medium-altitude long endurance (MALE) drone began production in 2021, only a 12 months before Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. That’s somewhat shocking, on condition that the U.S. began using large combat drones (or UCAVs) twenty years earlier in Afghanistan. Russia’s long lack of comparable capability allowed China, Israel, Turkey, and even Iran to capture a lot of the killer drone marketplace for years, at the least almost about countries without access to U.S. exports.
Nevertheless, following embarrassing military setbacks during Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, Moscow purchased drone technology from Israel, giving domestic firms the tech injection needed to develop and eventually combat test Orion UCAV and KYB kamikaze drone prototypes over Syria in 2018. Those trials, in turn, allowed Russia the operational drone capabilities with which it began the war in Ukraine.
But waiting within the wings (and with larger wings) were many recent UCAV designs at various stages of development. Certainly one of them, Helios (or Orion-2) was for a better altitude (HALE) drone. Meanwhile, Kronshtadt’s Sirius—also sometimes dubbed the Inkhodets-RU—was principally a twin-engine variant of the Orion: still a MALE drone, but with greatly improved performance.
A mockup of Sirius was displayed on the 2019 MAKS airshow, while construction of a flying prototype began November of 2021. While originally planned to enter service in 2023, it as a substitute made its first flight on February 27, in response to a leaked Pentagon report.
Key changes include much greater range, and support for a satellite communications (SATCOM) antenna that may allow for handheld remote control over huge distances.
It can also carry heavier, harder-hitting bombs and missiles ordinarily reserved for manned warplanes. That supposedly includes 1,100-pound class RBK-500U cluster bomblet dispensers and destructive ODAB-500PMV fuel air explosives. The drone also advantages from a ground-mapping Synthetic Aperture Radar that will help generate terrain maps, as well locate ground-vehicle and artillery targets.
Sirius will supposedly are available three variants—one for attack, one for reconnaissance only, and one for maritime patrol. The last submodel, operated by Russia’s navy, is meant to have payloads for anti-submarine ops, search-and-rescue, maritime reconnaissance, and signal-repeater duties. Production will begin at a facility in Dubna (55 miles north of Moscow).
Russia’s war has drained away much R&D funding, but in response to Bendett, service entry will not be that distant now. “In the mean time,” he said, “work is ongoing given all of the resources invested on this project which can also be alleged to be mostly domestically sourced. So far as public resources go, Russia is heading in the right direction to begin mass production sometime this 12 months.”
Asked if Sirius was more likely to come standard with satellite communication antennas, Bendett said that he believed it was “likely, but unclear to what extent.”
Nevertheless, others are skeptical that Russia’s GLONASS navigational satellites are in sufficiently good state for Russia to depend upon them for long-range drone flights. Though, it’s value taking into consideration that the drone should still access GPS or other satellite-navigation systems as a substitute.
Useful Over Ukraine?
Early within the war, a spate of videos showed missile strikes by Orion UCAVs, which will be used to verify the destruction of 5 trucks, a pair towed howitzers, and three tanks. Forepost-R drones—a modification of a reverse-engineered Israeli reconnaissance drone—claimed six more vehicles.
Clearly, then, Russia’s UCAVs achieved some results, but on a vastly more limited scale than the killing sprees of Bayraktars drones over Libya, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh. In contrast, there are a lot of more successful attacks recorded on video of Russia’s Lancet kamikaze drones.
Moreover, footage of Orion strikes petered out almost entirely after the Fall of 2022.
Experts are pretty sure they know why. Within the war’s first weeks, each side’ ground-based air defense coverage was spotty, giving UCAV drones a window of viability. But once ground-based air defense coverage was fully energetic, neither side’s UCAVs had acceptable survivable odds.
A May report penned by Bendett on Russian uncrewed systems by the Center of Naval Evaluation concluded:
“…although [Orion] worked well for the Russian military against antigovernment forces in Syria, they will not be equipped with robust defenses, making them vulnerable to Ukraine’s counter-drone and air defense systems. After some initial combat sorties, the Forpost-R and Orion drones now seem confined to ISR missions due to their initial low numbers and concerns over further UAV losses if used on attack missions, in response to a Russian MOD broadcast.”
Essentially, while medium-altitude combat drones can safely attack insurgents or poorer armies from outside the range of their flak guns and portable anti-air missiles, a wealthier, state-level opponent fielding many medium- and high-altitude air defense systems—akin to the Buk, the S-300, and even fighter planes or shorter-range defenses just like the 9K33 Osa—can still easily engage slow-moving, high-flying MALE drones.
And costing multiple thousands and thousands of dollars each, UCAVs are too precious at to treat as being entirely expendable. By June 2, 2023 photos have confirmed that Ukraine has lost at the least 19 Bayraktars, while Russia has lost 4 Orions and a number of other additional UCAV types.
While Sirius improves on the Orion with greater range and payload capability, it seems more likely to run into the identical survivability problems limiting use of other UCAVs over Ukraine.
Still, Sirius may provide Russia some additional capabilities at a standoff distance, whether for reconnaissance/surveillance or for serving as a launch platform for heavier, longer-range weapons. It is also used for rear-area security in areas faraway from Ukrainian air defense coverage, or provide ISR capabilities together with strikes by Russian fighters.
“Other functions may indeed be considered like maritime capability or a drone carrier platform, but its real usefulness can only be confirmed once it’s operational,” Bendett wrote.
Scourge Over the Black Sea?
One arena where Sirius’s expanded range and weapon’s payload capability seem most applicable is over the Black Sea, where ground-based air defenses shall be a smaller factor—especially as Ukraine’s Navy lacks warships with high-altitude air defenses.
The viability of UCAVs on this environment was demonstrated last Spring, when Ukraine’s Bayraktar drones managed to devastate Russia’s Snake Island garrison (and the boats dispatched to alleviate it) until the survivors were forced to evacuate.
Russia might, subsequently, try and use Sirius for maritime domain awareness over the Black Sea—perhaps most significantly attempting to detect and potentially destroy Ukraine’s uncrewed kamikaze boats harrying Crimea, in addition to hunting its manned patrol boats. Further afield, it could monitor Ukrainian industrial shipping activities, or shadow NATO ships within the Baltic or Sea of Japan.
Such maritime ops, though potentially useful, would remain a sideshow to Russia’s larger military challenges in Ukraine, which the Sirius probably can do little to alter.