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by anovikov 3 hours ago
It's not about "can reach", it's fairly easy to get them to fly even higher. It's about danger of interceptors vs danger of detection. Today's Ukrainian detection network (based on radars) is so dense there is no way to hide from it anywhere, anyway, so high altitude wins.
1 comments
Hackbraten 2 hours ago
> It's about danger of interceptors vs danger of detection.

What's with that "vs" trade-off?

You're saying avoiding detection requires high altitudes.

What do interceptors have to do with that?

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anovikov 1 hour ago
Interceptors are battery powered and their energy budget and thus range suffers if they have to climb high.

Detection is facilitated by radar, low altitude means flying under the radar (due to curvature of the Earth) - except radar network is now so dense, it in practice can't work anymore. So they can fly low or high they will be detected anyway - but flying high reduces interceptor's reach and makes intercept geometry harder, giving them better chances to slip through.

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zer00eyz 1 hour ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(drone)

The distance to the horizon at sea level, is 5km, a high flying drone only increases that.

With a 25k range and a 10k ceiling, and a stupid low unit cost it is dead easy to deploy this en mass to protect vital infrastructure and deny lower visibility routes (valleys, places where detection range is short).

They (Ukraine) are heavy users of YOLO (image model) that runs on some very low end hardware (sub .35 watt for the most efficient models) - and have shown it to be effective for terminal guidance.

The US has a budget item for 2027, DAWG (defense autonomous war group) - that requested 54 billion dollars. This is larger than the USMC's entire budget. This is a quite admission (another one) that the US is far behind, and the things that are going on in the Ukraine are, terrifying.

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