On March 16, the United States urgently approved a new round of military assistance to Ukraine, similar to the previous assistance provided, the bulk of this batch of military assistance is still a variety of anti-tank weapons, such as two thousand "Javelin" anti-tank missiles, thousands of AT-4 and M141 rocket launchers, as well as portable anti-aircraft missiles, mainly "Stinger" missiles, in addition to a number of small arms, there are thousands of guns, tens of millions of bullets, hundreds of grenade launchers, etc., in general, there is no heavy equipment, But how much light equipment to give, take these things, you Ukrainians with the Russian tanks to go to you.
However, in addition to these bargains, this time the Americans did give some novelties, for example, in the aid to Ukraine, the Americans specially gave 100 "spring knife" type cruise missiles, many people legend ah: this "spring knife" cruise missile is small in size, light in weight, A patrol missile weighs only 2.5 kilograms, with a launch device, the estimated weight does not exceed 5 kilograms, a soldier can lift up and go; it is very convenient to use, there is a piece of open space to fight, after playing with a mobile phone operation, like playing a drone, let it fly over to find the target, it is said to be able to fly 2 to 5 minutes, fly 10 to 20 kilometers to find the target; the attack can be attacked autonomously, can also be operated by people to attack, find the target directly on the line, it is said that it has a small warhead, can hit the target such as light armored vehicles, and even on the front line "Operation Decapitation", specifically used to deal with important figures such as enemy officers.
I heard that the United States gave Ukraine such an advanced thing, I don't know how many people "rejoiced", thinking that the heavenly soldiers really arrived, after Ukraine got the advanced patrol missiles, it took the first rank of the Russian tank in minutes to thousands of miles, ah no, twenty miles away, not to mention five Russian major generals, and then fifty Russian major generals, will also be killed by the United States to give the patrol missiles one by one in minutes.
So, is this "spring knife" patrol missile obtained by Ukraine really so useful? Well, let's take a look at the color of this "cruise missile". We all know that the lethality of any kind of weaponry and equipment must be constrained by its weight, such as missiles, missiles must have shells, control equipment, engines, fuel tanks, remove so many messy things, and the end is the real lethal weight of the warhead.
Judging from the weight of the missile warhead, such as the "Harpoon" of the United States and the "Flying Fish" anti-ship missile of France, the weight of these missiles is about 700 kg, but the weight of the warhead is generally 200 kg, which means that most of the weight is occupied by the missile shell, engine and so on. This patrol missile is certainly no exception. Its total weight is actually only 2.5 kg, you first have to remove the weight of its shell, after all, the shell of the missile can not be paper paste; then remove its engine, after all, the engine of the cruise missile plus the battery, should be the large head of the weight; and then there is its search system, the head of the cruise missile should have a small infrared camera, there should also be a wireless transmission device, so that the transmission signal to the controller to carry out remote control; as for the cruise missile wing, the control motor that controls the wing, and the core components that control its flight, it is not to mention, this must be counted in the mass of the whole bomb.
After such a large number of things are removed, it is estimated that the weight of the warhead of the "spring knife" patrol missile, we are full of calculations, that is, about 600 grams, to make a comparison, the Soviet Union in the 60s of the last century general equipment, a few days ago was also captured by the Russian army in Kherson more than ten thousand boxes of F1 grenades, its full weight is also 600 grams, containing about 100 grams of TNT explosives - in the end, the "switchblad" UAV blows badly, in fact, the lethality is similar to a grenade, this lethality, Hitting tanks is definitely no play, hitting armored vehicles must be worse, maybe it can pose a threat, either soldiers who stay outside and don't wear body armor, or trucks that have no protection and transport supplies, of course, how much lethality can a grenade cause to trucks, which also needs to be a question mark.
This is not to mention, the "spring knife" UAV control mode, although it is said that the mode of autonomous attack can be adopted, but everyone knows that the mode of autonomous attack is unreliable, after all, in this chaotic battlefield, the enemy and I wear similar clothes, take the gun almost the same, and even the tanks that are opened are similar models. Therefore, after the "spring knife" is released, it must take the way of manual manipulation, we use the term that people are in the loop, that is, the "spring knife" is flying in front, while flying while using its own camera to shoot at the bottom, shooting things through the antenna to the back. There was a soldier in the back holding a tablet with a large screen to watch, monitoring where the "switchblade" flew, and if he found the target, he manipulated the patrol missile to fly over and plunged down to complete the entire attack process.
It seems that this attack method is foolproof, but if you have the experience of playing drones, especially shuttles, you know that the "spring knife" thing is similar to the faster shuttle drone, which can fly 180 kilometers per hour, such a high speed, such a low height, what things are dangling shadows on the screen, and it is simply difficult to find the target. At the same time, the endurance of the "spring knife" is not too strong, it is said that when flying at a speed of 180 kilometers per hour, it can only fly for 3 minutes without electricity, even if it flies at a speed of 90 kilometers per hour, it can only fly for less than 10 minutes, which means that its radius of activity is also 10 to 15 kilometers. Such a small radius of activity, such a short time to stay, the flight speed is still quite fast, even if you are looking for a master of the shuttle to fly over, you want to complete the entire procedure of taking off, flying, finding the target, judging the nature of the target, and finally attacking the target in the chaotic battlefield, especially in the woods and swamps of Ukraine.
As for relying on the "spring knife" drone to "behead" the senior officers of the other side, it is even more unreliable, although the Ukrainian side always publishes reports of great victories and says that it has killed more or less major generals of the Russian army, but from the Ukrainian base camp war report that the Russian warship was sunk, and as a result, the Sunken Russian warship returned to the port unscathed, it can be seen that the Ukrainian army's base camp war report is indeed enough. After all, from the perspective of normal combat command, it has long passed the era when the generals personally came to the front line to direct the battle, and everyone stayed in the rear command post in peace and stability, even if they came to the front, they were sitting in the command car transformed from armored vehicles to avoid losing command and control over the troops, so this returned to the original question, whether the "spring knife" patrol missile could hit tanks and armored vehicles in the end, and the conclusion was that it could not be fought, so what confidence did the Ukrainian army have? Can you rely on such a thing that is not much better than DJI drones to "decapitate"?
Therefore, if we want to summarize the 100 "spring knives" obtained by the Ukrainian army this time, we can only say this: we got 100 grenades that can fly 10 kilometers, to put it bluntly, this thing is really strange and clever, it looks really good, maybe it can blow up a few more Russian transport vehicles, but you want to say that relying on 100 flying grenades can turn the tide of the war, this... Probably the mystery of military blindness.