Commentary-themed posts tend to deal with recent developments. These will typically be much shorter and less detailed than my analysis-themed posts for which commentary-themed posts may serve as “building blocks.”
A new undated video shows an armoured Ukrainian train locomotive. Armour of this type is optimized against armed “first-person video” (“FPV”) multirotor drones, which are typically equipped with a modest shaped charge warhead that is initiated by an impact/contact fuse.
Russia and Ukraine have been regularly targeting one another’s trains. The advent of armed “FPV) multirotor drones has greatly reduced the barriers of entry to undertaking such attacks and, more importantly, allows for the targeting of specific cars/wagons/cargoes as well as train locomotives. I covered a Ukrainian attack involving the use of multiple armed “FPV” multirotor drones against a Russian train in a recent post:
Armed “FPV” multirotors drones are fairly small and light uncrewed aircraft turned munitions that are restricted to a small and light explosive payload. The resulting destructive effects and destructive radius are, as such, quite limited. Given this, armed “FPV” multirotor drones are best used to attack targets for which the secondary destructive effects are far consequential than the primary destructive effects brought about by the detonation of the warhead. That is, armed “FPV” multirotor drones are best used to attack the operator’s cab in a train locomotive, propulsion machinery in a locomotive, and specific types of cars/wagons/cargoes, such as those used to transport fuel or chemicals. An adeptly undertaken attack involving multiple armed “FPV” multirotor drones can bring a train to a halt and possibly result in its derailing. Subsequent attacks using armed “FPV” multirotor drones can later be used to target specific cars/wagons/cargoes so as to prevent recovery and, more importantly, permanently take a given car/wagon, and perhaps a stretch of track, offline. Beyond that, larger and heavier munitions are required to destroy a train locomotive in the manner seen in the following video.
As with so many other areas of military technology, developments in the Russia-Ukraine War are likely to spread far and wide, not least when it comes to uncrewed aircraft-turned-munitions that are built from readily accessible commercial-off-the-shelf components. Armoured train locomotives and the use of other countermeasures, more generally, may become an unremarkable practice worldwide going forward.