Your linked weapon has a range of 40km and a payload of 5kg. Meanwhile the US has repurposed their SDB1 program with an M26 motor and now uses it for artillery purposes with 150km range and a warhead weighing 93kg but since it is a bomb from 2006 it is not a threat, right?
Turns out a plastic airframe with a chainsaw motor, RPG warhead and some mostly COTS electronics can inflict similar damage for a small fraction of that.
These are more directly comparable to Israel's Harpy/Harop, still costing fortunes are they com from the 80s and carry all of proper military development the red tape.
>Turns out a plastic airframe with a chainsaw motor, RPG warhead and some mostly COTS electronics can inflict similar damage for a small fraction of that.
Specifically in a battlefield that is extremely Anti-Air starved, and with minimal (but growing) EW ability, and in the places they can deploy that EW have done much better against loitering and cheap guided munitions.
The Lancet requires active guidance from a drone over the target. With a busy RF spectrum it can't really do that. The Shahed is inertial guided I believe, which means it won't hit what you aim it at, and flies so slowly that it can only work in a situation where Ukraine cannot afford to intercept it, because we still refuse to give them enough tools to protect their airspace.
A SDB has a 93kg warhead. An RPG-7 warhead is 4kg. You're not going to get similar damage out of them. A SDB also has jamming resistant GPS receiver, which you're not going to get on COTS electronics.
Sure, and it makes a difference for many targets, but a tank or a field ammo dump is fried from either equally well-done, and GPS jamming doesn't seem to matter.
More importantly than the price, Ukraine just can't manufacture the GLSDB (arguably Vilkha are in a similar league, still production is very slow), while you can put together these kamikaze drones in a garage.
