A new generation of Lancet drones equipped with automatic guidance systems has further increased the weapons’ deadliness on the battlefield, Russian military observers believe.
The loitering munitions’ new capabilities, first discovered last week when drone cam footage of a Lancet targeting a Ukrainian Czech-made RM-70 Vampire rocket artillery system featured the never-before-spotted text ‘Цель захвачена’ (lit. ‘Target Acquired’), which appeared onscreen as the drone approached its target.
No further information about the upgraded Lancet has been provided by ZALA Aero Group or the Russian military. However, the company has repeatedly dropped hints about ongoing efforts to modernize its killer drones. Last month, an informed source told Sputnik that the company has created “a range of revolutionary upgrades for Lancet’s hardware and software systems” which promise to “enable the flexible deployment of kamikaze drones even in situations where targets are not directly visible.”
With the appearance of the footage with the ‘Target Acquired’ indicator last week, it appears at least one of the promised upgrades was related to the incorporation of an automatic guidance system.
Lancets come in several configurations, including Izdeliye-51 (lit. ‘Product-51’) – aka Lancet-3, a 12 kg drone with a 3 kg weapons payload, and Izdeliye-52 (‘Product-52’), aka Lancet-1, a miniaturized version of the former with a takeoff weight of 5 kg, smaller sets of x-shaped wings and a 1 kg weapons payload.
The latest version of the drone, known as Izdeliye-53, but also referred to as the Z-53, is a radical departure from its predecessors in terms of design – featuring just one set of x-wings (which are foldable), and launched from lightweight tubes, similar in configuration to mortars, instead of the specially-designed pneumatic rails used by its predecessors.
First presented by ZALA affiliate Aeroscan at the Army-2023 military expo outside Moscow this summer, the Z-53 was said to feature the capability to fly in groups and to be able to communicate and coordinate with other drones to seek out and assign ground-based targets for their up to 5 kg payloads.
The new automatic guidance system teased in the video, believed to have been shot from a Z-53, could shift the situation on the front in Russia’s favor at the tactical level, Russian military observers believe, pointing to the system’s “reduced” dependence on human operators to accurately target the enemy.
“Judging by the already published materials, the automatic targeting systems performs several functions at once: without operator intervention, it recognizes targets against the background of the ground (buildings or vegetation), automatically separates military/priority targets from civilian/secondary ones, and locks on for strikes,” one outlet suggested.
“In the future,” the outlet predicts, the massed use of automatic targeting system-equipped Lancets in swarms will “not only make it possible to create” mobile “anti-tank barriers across vast territories, but also make it possible to conduct coordinated attacks to disrupt enemy offensive operations or quickly destroy critical infrastructure.”
Effectively, given the systems’ mobility and light weight, it’s possible that the Russian military could deploy between 20-40 Izdeliye-53 Lancets onto jeeps, trucks and armored vehicles like the KamAZ-5350 Patrul, effectively turning them into highly deadly mobile precision multiple launch rocket systems.
Old Idea for a New Theater
Automatic guidance systems are already fairly widespread within Russian military equipment, with the Lancet design apparently taking a principle applied to other weapons and shrinking it down for use in a new domain, says retired Russian Army colonel and military analyst Viktor Litovkin.
“Such systems are found on many anti-aircraft missiles, and even the Iskander-M operational-tactical missile complex, etc.,” Litovkin recalled to Sputnik.
The observer emphasized that in a conflict of attrition like the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, the inclusion of advanced targeting systems in Lancet drones is significant. “It’s important to understand that these drones are quite expensive, costing, according to some sources, a couple of million rubles [about $21,200 US, ed.]. Therefore, the drone’s target must be more expensive than that – a tank, a self-propelled artillery unit, a HIMARS launcher, etc.”
Lancets’ firepower is also quite serious, Litovkin added, meaning that they shouldn’t be expended chasing after individual troops, but rather spent attacking larger moving targets, as well as stationary ones like control rooms and radar stations.
The military analyst believes the improved Lancets’ performance will depend on their ability to operate effectively as a swarm, and on the size of these swarms. “Swarms don’t just fly as if one throws a handful of sand and it falls just anywhere. They are directed to certain territories, to certain targets. Some have one mission, others - another,” he stressed.
In this arena, Litovkin pointed out, Russia already has decades of experience with swarm algorithm-based weapons, including with the targeting acquisition capabilities of the Granit and Onyx-series anti-ship cruise missiles, whose simple algorithms used to make complex mathematical calculations on targeting and flight go back all the way to the 1980s. The principle involved in automatic targeting in Lancet drones appears similar, but shrunken in size and adapted for new environments, the expert summarized.