That’s pretty clever. It’ll be low enough that most radar will have trouble picking it up, but it can hit planes at altitude.
Plus, some of the counters to groups of these USVs in videos I’ve seen in the past have been helicopters, and I bet that throwing one of these air-defense USVs in a group of USVs will put a damper on that pretty quickly.
The R-73 is pretty comparable to the AIM-9X in capabilities as it has some flare resistance, is short range, and can do off-bore shots. Though, the off bore shots require a targeting head on the boat itself, which it probably doesn’t have, they almost certainly are using the missile seeker itself as the targeting system as it is MUCH easier to implement. Meaning they likely need to point the missile roughly at the target.
This system would be most useful for taking out the choppers attacking the other suicide boats as well as sniping planes taking off/landing on coastal airstrips.
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