Political impacts of Ukraine war

[HavokFour]

An unidentified drone has reportedly evaded detection in Romania and made it all the way into Bulgaria before exploding 1km away from a compressor station of the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline.

Unidentified drone explodes in Bulgaria, close to major gas pipeline

Bulgaria's prime minister said both Bulgarian and Romanian authorities had failed to pick up the drone as it made its way through their respective airspace. #EuropeNews

www.euronews.com

 

[YZT580]

An unidentified drone has reportedly evaded detection in Romania and made it all the way into Bulgaria before exploding 1km away from a compressor station of the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline.

Unidentified drone explodes in Bulgaria, close to major gas pipeline

Bulgaria's prime minister said both Bulgarian and Romanian authorities had failed to pick up the drone as it made its way through their respective airspace. #EuropeNews

www.euronews.com

First Germany, now Bulgaria. This is getting too close for comfort to an Article 5. Russia will deny it though so they have an out.

 

[GR66]

So, it appears that Russia's Arena APS system actually works...but there's simply too many drones out there for it to make a difference...

Expert: Russia’s Arena tank defense wasn’t the failure it seemed

A Russian tank that Ukrainian and Western observers had already written off as another failed experiment in anti-drone armor may actually have done exactly what it was built to do, just not enough of it. New battlefield testimony from a

defence-blog.com

A Russian tank that Ukrainian and Western observers had already written off as another failed experiment in anti-drone armor may actually have done exactly what it was built to do, just not enough of it.

New battlefield testimony from a combat drone specialist who spoke directly with the Ukrainian unit involved in the fight suggests Russia’s upgraded Arena active protection system, a hard-kill defense mechanism that automatically detects and shoots down incoming threats before they hit a tank, worked as designed against a wave of Ukrainian first-person-view drones, destroying seven of them before the vehicle was finally knocked out.

The tank’s active protection system appears to have functioned exactly as engineered, intercepting drone after drone in real combat conditions, but Ukrainian forces adapted by simply sending more drones than the system could physically stop, a tactic that has defined much of the drone war on both sides since 2023. Seven intercepted threats out of what analysts estimate is typically fifteen to twenty drones needed to kill a modern tank is a real technical achievement for Russian engineers, yet it changes nothing about the tank crew’s fate once the ammunition ran out.

The problem is scale. As long as there are more attack munitions than there are interceptors then the math is simply against the defender. That doesn't only go for APS systems...it's the same calculus for the Navy or for AD systems in general.