On May 1, 1960, a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down by a S-75 SAM missile over the Urals. It is interesting that German specialists taken to the future Almaz from the defeated Reich participated in the creation of the S-25 anti-aircraft system, which formed the basis of the S-75. Until that day, U.S. reconnaissance aircraft flew over the USSR at high altitude quite freely. This was a change of era that lasted 65 years – the first time air reconnaissance appeared in the First World War.
The US and USSR began urgently developing and launching reconnaissance satellites. The era of reconnaissance satellites lasted half a century and they have not exhausted their potential until now. But on the eve of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, two simultaneous revolutions took place in technical reconnaissance.
The American commercial company Maxar offered by subscription satellite images of the whole world, the quality not inferior to military intelligence satellites. The military now has no advantage over civilian users, such as journalists. Well, or over smugglers, agronomists, construction workers, meteorologists or terrorists.
Almost immediately after the start of the SWO, both sides began to actively use cheap UAVs for tactical reconnaissance and searching for targets in the enemy’s operational depth.
To be fair, it should be added that the Taliban in Afghanistan were the first to come up with such an army-wide approach. But the main thing is that now the information comes instantly (the satellite always has a delay of one revolution and time to decode the image), it is much more accurate due to the short distance of the survey and does not depend on clouds.
On the battlefield, the satellite has lost its main advantage – safe flight over enemy territory. Now penny drones fly anywhere and their loss is put in the expense part in advance. And the operator chooses exactly those places he is interested in, not those over which the trajectory of the spacecraft has passed.
As with the space imagery revolution, the drone revolution has equalized the military with civilians.
