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Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

Ukraine uses (among other things) fixed-wing drones with similar characteristics to civilian aircraft. Some of them are *actual* civilian aircraft, retrofitted into unmanned suicide drones,

https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/ukraine-appears-t... ("Ukraine appears to deploy modified A-22 ultralights as suicide UAVs")

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None of them remotely resemble an E190 though, which is about 50x the size of a cruise missile, communicates effectively with air traffic control and broadcasts ADS-B signals telling you what it is (at least when you're not jamming it...)

Radar doesn't exactly tell you the size of of a contact. Sure, you can measure the power of the return signal, correct for distance and get something that loosely correlates with size. But it correlates much more strongly with other things.

You're also making the assumption here that it was a modern Russian system. This wasn't exactly close to the current fighting, its entirely possible this radar was manufactured in the Soviet Union. I don't think those receive a lot (or any) civilian broadcasts.

> You're also making the assumption here that it was a modern Russian system

People do like to provide their very important opinion completely oblivious what Grozny is farther away from eg Crimea than Kiev.

Since Russia reduced Grozny to rubble relatively recently, it's probably not that old.

Most A2A systems has wheels (or floats) and can thus easily be relocated. While it probably had good stuff once, I think all the high end equipment once located here has moved closer to Ukraine by now. What's left is probably the worst (human or technological) that's left.

> Some of them are actual civilian aircraft, retrofitted into unmanned suicide drones

literally small prop planes with guidance systems and instead of ~4 passengers it's lots of explosives. commonly used against Russian oil depots, etc.

small radar signature, and a lot of ambiguity with civilian aircraft.

Confusion with civilian prop aircraft, not commercial jet airliners flying at vastly higher altitude and speeds.

An E190 on approach (remember, this airplane was trying to land at Grozny) has an approach speed between 125-145 knots (depending on load). A Cessna 172 for example has a cruise speed of ~120 knots and can cruise up to 10k feet. A typical instrument landing glide path is 3 degrees - that intercepts 10k feet at ~60km out.

The likelihood of confusing a regional jet with a small prop plane (purely based on speed/heading/altitude) is way higher during landing.

While it crashed near an airport it doesn’t seem like the aircraft was targeted at low altitude and low speeds.

This aircraft was trying to land so it likely had much lower altitude and speed than usual.

It doesn’t appear that the aircraft was attacked on final approach. Instead flying much higher and faster than prop drones.

> Ukraine uses (among other things) fixed-wing drones with similar characteristics to civilian aircraft.

Including taking off from commercial airports on publicly available schedules, on predetermined airways/corridors, and broadcasting 1080 MHZ ADS-B data?

Unmanned kamikazes?

They are just DIY cruise missiles really.

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