What's also interesting is that he mentions a private firm working for border patrol, not the federal Border Patrol under Customs and Border Protection agency as being the interested party. I was unaware of CBP offloading some work to private firms to control the border.
Being stealth is not a video game cheat code. You still get detected if you get close. Also, information on enemy radar network is rarely available. Better to have the capability to yeet a missile 250km away than not having it.
Bro, make KE manned. c'mon, please bitte lütfen пожалуйста
Are you serious? Just because it is stealth, which just means it is harder to detect not invisible, it doesn't mean it is okay to risk it unnecessarily. Of course we are going to give it heaviest missile it can carry with the longest range, that would make the most sense out of anything. Say Anka-3 can carry Som-J (or a new some variant that both Anka-3 and KE use) that means it can release it from 250 kms away, with a relatively low risk because there are only a handful of air defence systems that can hit it from that far away.
I distinctly remember Kozan Selçuk Erkan stating that he asked Baykar people about it, and they flat out rejected the idea.
Winged kits like KGK can hit 100 km+
Yep, I am pretty serious. If you "give it heaviest missile it can carry with the longest range" you will run out of SOM missiles pretty fast. In war time stocks get depleted and you have to make heavier use of the cheaper and less smart munition. Sure, Anka-3 needs to be capable of using SOM as being capable is always preferable, but its main use case is to leverage the lower quality munition in closer range.
That still puts in Patriots range, along with other aa systems and for me what matters the most is to keep the drone intact. This isn't going to be a cheap TB-2, it is going to be a flying wing drone with ideally our own engine and RAM paint. Not only it would be expensive to lose it, it would give information away as well. Take care of air defence with expensive stuff, then we can roll them over with cheaper ones with shorter range.
S-400/500, David's Sling and one more, I think it was a new Chinese one. I'm pretty sure next upgrade of Patriot will push around that as well.
It's first and foremost importance is being able to destroy enemy air defence from a range, hopefully without being detected in a surprise attack. Afterwards we can rain as many cheap munitions as we want, but trying to get it to shorter range to cheap out on missile costs makes no sense because drone itself will be 30 or 40 times more expensive than SOM-J.
