According to a report by the U.S. Defense Blog on October 23, Ukrainian electronic warfare experts confirmed that the Russian army has deployed a new type of drone on the front line that has never been seen before, using an extremely rare annular closed wing structure.
Such drones are suspected to be from a Russian company called “Step Forward,” whose main uses include air intercepting enemy drones and carrying out ground strikes.
The drone is small in size, closed in structure, can carry warheads, and has the ability to carry out high-precision suicide attacks and anti-drone missions.
The most eye-catching thing is that its annular aerodynamic layout breaks the traditional design and compresses the length of the wing while increasing lift, making the drone more portable overall and staying in the air for a longer time. It looks like alien technology, as if manipulating a flying saucer into the battlefield.
This indicates that the Russian military-industrial system still has the capacity to strike under heavy pressure.
After the United States and Europe imposed all-round technical sanctions, Russia was cut off from key import sources such as high-performance chips, avionics, and precision processing equipment. The West originally expected that this would lead to the stagnation or even collapse of Russian military research and development.
But the emergence of this drone breaks this judgment, and represents an ultra-realistic technological path: no longer pursuing large and comprehensive systems, but a shift towards plug-and-play tactical innovative products.
As long as it can be quickly put into the battlefield and play a role, no matter whether the design is perfect or elegant, it can be put into trial production and then sent to the battlefield for verification.
This is a kind of thinking that judges combat effectiveness, which allows Russian military enterprises to get rid of traditional cycle constraints.
More importantly, the deployment of ring-wing drones shows that Russia has built a technological strategy that is completely different from the traditional West and even Russia's own weapons system.
Western countries are accustomed to building efficient battlefield perception strike chains through system connectivity, while Russia has moved towards small-scale innovative ideas.
The drone does not rely on the satellite navigation system, nor relies on the remote communication network, in strong electromagnetic interference, complex terrain can still rely on pre-set routes or independent visual navigation to complete tasks.
This non-networked combat capability is a pragmatic countermeasure to deal with the Ukrainian army's electronic warfare and GPS jamming.
Its dual-purpose capability of intercepting and striking also reflects the Russian army's increasingly fierce offensive and defensive cycle in the field of drone confrontation, trying to use extremely low-cost solutions to counter the large number of cruise missiles and FPVs provided by Ukraine and NATO. fleet.
This reflects the latest characteristics of the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield. When traditional equipment systems are difficult to support long-term high-intensity wars, only low-cost, highly adaptable, and quick-deployment tactical systems can survive and iterate repeatedly.
From a more macro perspective, the emergence of Russian ring-wing drones shows that the Western technology blockade policy has not achieved the expected results.
Over the past three years, when the West has made high-profile propaganda about decoupling precise sanctions from technology, it has often emphasized its fatal blow to Russia's high-end military industry.
However, the reality is that Russia is rebuilding the entire chain of tactical-grade unmanned systems through various alternatives and domestic technology redundancy, even if the cost is slightly higher and the accuracy is slightly more than enough to meet basic operational needs.
It can be said that Western sanctions finally forced Russia to jump out of the technological path set by the West and independently open up new tactical platforms. Instead, it gained a certain lead in the direction of unmanned and miniaturization.
The West once wanted to rely on technological blockade to crush Russia, but now it can only watch the Russian army counterattack with drones that it has never seen before on the Ukrainian battlefield.
And the ring wing drone is probably just the beginning, and what it represents is a tactically unmanned way of industrial mobilization, a logic of technological survival adapted to the pressure of a comprehensive war – even when the chain is disconnected, it can quickly build a system of destruction with pragmatism and the ability to test and mistake the battlefield.
The West naively believes that technological suppression can bring strategic victory, but ignores the cruelest aspect of war: the rules of the battlefield are written by those who appear on the battlefield.