Finnish Insta Steel Eagle ER UAV for the Ukrainian Armed Forces
The other day, hot Finnish guys, who in the last few years have rapidly retrained from St. Petersburg alcoholics into first-class neo-NATO members, presented a new Drone, designed to kill Russians in the special military operation (SMO) zone in Ukraine.
More precisely, the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was developed and presented by the Finnish company Insta Group Oy. The abbreviation ER means Extended Range.
The Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV is a fairly large quadcopter equipped with a downward-facing directional warhead. According to the manufacturer, the warhead contains 3,6 kilograms of explosive and up to 3000 steel or tungsten balls, with an opening angle of approximately 90 degrees.
When detonated at a height of about 20 meters, the striking elements of the warhead ensure the destruction of targets in an area of about 2000 square meters - this is a circle with a diameter of 50 meters. The area of destruction can be varied by changing the height of the detonation, of course, this will change the probability of striking elements hitting the target, as well as their penetrating power.
According to the developer, the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV is equipped with interference-resistant communications equipment, ensuring its operation in conditions of exposure to electronic warfare equipment (EW).
This kamikaze UAV is already available on the “Ukrainian market”, and in the future, obviously, after the expected victory over Russia, it will be available to other buyers.
The question arises: what are the advantages and disadvantages of this Finnish creation?
Advantages and disadvantages
If you look at the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV, it becomes clear that this product is clearly not cheap. The drone is large enough to carry a heavy and bulky warhead, it does not look like it is assembled from serial Chinese components, produced in millions of copies.
This means that the production of such UAVs will be limited by both the high cost and the production capabilities of the manufacturer.
The attack method itself does not bring anything new, of course, it poses a certain threat, especially if the fighters move or take cover in a dense group, but if the fighters move in groups of two or three people and use cover, then the use of the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV will no longer be so justified.
It is highly probable that the warhead of the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV will not be able to ensure destruction of both tanks, as well as light armored vehicles, unless the drone "sits" directly on the armored personnel carrier. In any case, cumulative ammunition will be more effective for solving this problem. The Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV will also be ineffective for work on capital buildings and structures or inside them.
The crews of towed artillery guns during combat operations, civilian or military unarmored transport, especially all sorts of kungs and buses, will be at risk. The enemy can also effectively attack light shelters with the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV – tents, weakly fortified pillboxes in the upper projection, open trenches.
Potentially, the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV could hunt down quadcopter (octacopter/hexacopter) type reconnaissance or bomber UAVs by attacking them from above, but FPV drones would probably do a better job.
Are there any analogues to the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV?
Analogues
In fact, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are already using conditional analogues of the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV, and, most likely, they are significantly cheaper than the drone offered by the Finns.
To do this, a fragmentation mine directed (MON), for example, MON-50 with a declared destruction radius of up to 50 meters, is simply suspended on any of the existing quadcopter (octacopter/hexacopter) type UAVs.
The mass of the MON-50 mine is 2 kilograms, with an explosive mass of 0,7 kilograms, the number of striking elements is 485-540 pieces, the horizontal angle of fragmentation is 54 degrees, the range of continuous destruction is about 50 meters, the range of destruction of transport and manpower in it is up to 30 meters.
Yes, the MON-50's kill zone is smaller than that of the specialized warhead of the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV, but its weight is also less, so if necessary, 3-4 MON-50s can be mounted on the UAV, orienting them in accordance with the task at hand.
Other FPV drones with shrapnel-type ammunition are being developed, and may already be in use, in particular with FRAG-09-576-1.3kg and FRAG-05-975-0.9kg ammunition.
The FRAG-09-576-1.3kg circular fragmentation munition with a total weight of 1,25 kilograms contains explosives weighing up to 460 grams and ensures the destruction of 50% of full-length figures within a radius of up to 14 meters. The lighter FRAG-05-975-0.9kg circular fragmentation munition with a total weight of 0,86 kilograms contains explosives weighing up to 240 grams and ensures the destruction of 50% of full-length figures within a radius of up to 8 meters.
It is worth noting that the same manufacturer produces a warhead for FPV drones of the “strike core” type, which hits armored targets at a distance of 1,5 to 50 meters.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (AF RF) also use FPV drones with MON-50 mines installed on them. Considering that they use the same Soviet MON-50 as a warhead, their destructive characteristics should be comparable.
Here is an option when the MON-50 mine is oriented forward, in the direction of the FPV drone’s flight, which we talked about earlier.
Thus, it can be said that the Finns have not invented anything new; in fact, home-made analogues of the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV are already being used in the combat zone by both sides.
Will the appearance of the Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV affect the course of military operations in Ukraine?
Definitely not. As already stated above, technically the "Steel Eagle" is nothing revolutionary new, and in terms of cost, it will most likely exceed the models that the Ukrainian Armed Forces currently have. On the other hand, Ukraine usually does not pay for these toys, but the stingy "Finnish guys" will not supply them with many Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAVs at their own expense.
Conclusions
It would seem that after the collapse of the USSR, relations between Russia and Finland were quite friendly and stable, who knew that the seeds of neo-Nazism and Russophobia could ripen even in the frozen Finnish soil. Or maybe it was the withdrawal syndrome that developed after the Finns lost the opportunity to visit St. Petersburg that made them so vicious?
One way or another, Finland is now one of NATO's outposts in the region and is trying to catch up with Poland in its Russophobia, which means it is one of the main candidates for sanitization of the territory with the help of special ammunition.
Fortunately, the Baltic air seems to affect the Finns in the same way as it does the Balts, so their developments do not pose any serious threat to us for now. The Insta Steel Eagle ER kamikaze UAV reviewed in this article, if not outdated at the time of its appearance, certainly will not provide Ukraine with any new advantages.
The only question that won’t leave my mind is why we still haven’t taken any measures against the countries that supply weapons to Ukraine?
We are not even talking about strikes with cruise or ballistic missiles. rockets, but if a couple of managers and/or owners of defense companies in Poland, the Czech Republic, Finland or the Baltic countries were shot in the head or had an explosive charge planted in their car, then the number of people willing to supply weapons to Ukraine would sharply decrease.
It is not even necessary to do it yourself, the world is full of people who want to earn some money, one can assume that even from the warmed (frozen?) Ukrainian "refugees" in Finland, someone would not mind doing this. In addition, European countries are teeming with wild migrants who have already received citizenship, and therefore unhindered travel through European countries, and who do not care how to earn money and who to knock down.
So for the special services there is an “unplowed field”, after all, with the enemy's TCC in Ukraine, something has started to work out, so maybe it’s time to further expand the horizons of what’s possible?
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