Ice - and that includes “just frost” - build up on the wings of a flying machine can screw up the performance/aerodynamics. There are, no doubt, ways to minimize or eliminate these issues but they would have to be built into the machine.
Iran is warmer than Ukraine, it’s possible the designers/builders didn’t built in systems to deal with frost/ice build up.
Or it could be something else.
It’s possible that they were designed with a closer neighbor (Israel, for example) in mind as a potential target and not with the notion Russians would be buying them to use against someone else in an Eastern European winter.
You and yours might well do that. That doesn’t mean everyone does that.
Frankly, I don’t know what sort of testing the Iranians did or didn’t do. I’m not even convinced the reasons we’re given for a drone’s failure is true, either.
And those are exactly the conditions where icing up is problematic.
You don’t have to worry about icing up in arctic temperatures because the moisture in the air is already frozen out. “Hovering around freezing” is where you get the most ice.
No. That’s how it’s done. Of course fuck ups happen all the time but there is no way there wouldn’t have been basic environmental testing and they wouldn’t design something so complicated for just one climate. You’re out of your depth here.
Say they do testing outside expected climate parameters and find a problem. Say they do an analysis and find that fixing the problem would reduce efficiency by 10%, increase per-unit costs by 20% and delay the project by six months. Would the people paying for the project accept this, or think, “There’s only a 1% chance of this ever being relevant, so let’s just ignore it”? I think that more times than not, they’d do the latter. Remember, the actual decisions in your business or any other business aren’t made by engineers - they’re made by accountants, businessmen and politicians.
There is a big difference between a bean counter forcing a bad engineering decision and the testing not being done at all, which was the claim. I could believe a bureaucratic cluster fuck.
I’m not sure it’s necessarily a bad decision. Almost every project involves compromise, and overdesigning something can be as bad as under-designing it.
Fair point. I loved telling the young engineers the common saying that perfect is the enemy of good enough but I always worked on cutting edge consumer tech, not defense. There wouldn’t be a catastrophe if one of my products failed.
The testing would only be done if the requirement specifications called for it.
Before the first CAD drawing is done or the first line of code written, management (speaking for the “customer”, whomever that is) specifies the characteristics of the device being manufactured, including operating conditions – things like climate conditions and expected ambient temperature.
If the drones were never specified to operate in European winter conditions, perhaps because they were never intended to be operated there, not one second of development or testing effort would be spent accomplishing these non-requirements.
I remember reading about the New York black out. The biggest challenge was restarting the grid and stabilizing it.
It must be a nightmare in Ukraine’s energy control rooms. The surges and spikes on the lines have to be blowing up the consoles. Also consumer electronics are probably getting fried
As others have already pointed out, the coldest temperatures in Iran aren’t much different than the current temperatures in Ukraine. It’s not the Arctic.
Aviation and rocket science are littered with the wrecks resulting from failure to do something we consider basic. As I said, I don’t know exactly was or wasn’t done in this case, but lack of considering northern winter conditions is a possible cause, even if not a proven one.
If you fell better calling that a “fuck up” so be it. Accidents and disasters occur for three reasons:
Machines break
People make mistakes
No one controls the weather
It’s always down to one or more of the above. If you want to include “bean counters get cheap” under #2 I’m OK with that, too.
Coldest temperature ever in my area was -33 C, that doesn’t mean we plan for that temperature. Even stupid little things like windshield washer fluid - many of the versions sold around here are only good down to around -29 C, maybe -32. I can speak from experience that the fluid WILL freeze below the specified temperature. Our vehicle batteries often won’t start at those temperatures, and unlike some places that routinely see -30 C and lower we don’t all have engine block heaters. Why? Because they’d only be needed once a century.
Granted, that’s all above civilian infrastructure and doesn’t translate exactly to the military. I’ll just throw in that things like oil and lubricating fluid has to be formulated for anticipated conditions and what works at 30 C likely won’t at -30 C.
So… would Iranians design for what they believe they’ll most likely encounter, or once-in-a-lifetime conditions?
Yes, things like jet airliners routinely go through temperature extremes, but they also have various heating elements designed in, and their fluids are formulated for their conditions.
While I agree it would be a screw-up for a military not to consider these factors when deploying weapon systems it’s far from impossible for exactly that to happen.
Or maybe the Russians are just chronically incompetent these days.
I definitely don’t even have 1% of your knowledge when it comes to aircraft design. My only claim was about the testing which is always done at extremes well beyond expected normal conditions. I can believe a flawed test or a management call to say things are good enough currently and move ahead.
More drone attacks on Russian airfields. Ukraine is certainly going after military targets that are being used to kill Ukrainian civilians. Good for them.
Back on topic: if the airbase attacks were conducted by Ukrainian drones, they do look pretty far into Russia, and not a significantly different distance than to Moscow. I know it’s more practical to spend the drones to attack military sites but I wonder how Muscovites would like to spend the winter with their power grid crippled…
I suspect the Russian power grid may be much more vulnerable. Their inefficiency and corruption has probably depleted parts inventory. Has their power plants even been updated since Soviet Union?
I saw news that reported the Russian engineers didn’t know how to operate the modern Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station. That’s why they are using Ukrainian staff.
I’m not sure striking Russian power stations would be wise. The response after hitting the Crimea bridge was pretty frightening.