DanielR

Great that you found this thread useful. 🙂

Your first sentence isn't quite right. It is the United States that has lost this trade war. Even once Trump is gone, trading partners and allies can never again trust the US. The US seems to be in the midst of mental health crisis, lashing out at friends while inflicting a great deal of self-harm.

Glad you liked it.

3. Here is the video showing the very nice launches.

2. Here is a longer thread showing more detail about this missile.
bsky.app/profile/dani...

1. Four Ukrainian Bars cruise missiles were launched at night. The shape is hard to make out but the fuselage is consistent with the unusual shape of Bars.

Looking towards the eastern sky.

What a photo does not show is how fast the auroa can change. At times, brief (fraction of a second) pulses spanned a large part of the sky. Overall, it was a great show.

I managed to snap a couple of photos of the aurora last night (November 12). Brightness on the bottom right of this photo is, unfortunately, from the city lights. Camera was a Canon T6i with an EF-S 24 mm lens. Not too fancy but works well enough. Other folks there had much fancier kit.

Yup. 🙂

Designed to be made in large quantities in a hurry. When used in combination with larger missiles, it is a decoy with its own punch. It needs better electronics though but there is lots of room inside for fancier guidance kit.

Glad you liked it. 🙂

*last post

By the way, this thread is 24 posts long. You may need time to click on the lost post to see the following ones.

24. Overall, the simple design & construction of Bars is really interesting. If you found this thread useful, please repost as a quote. Respectful comments are always welcome. Also consider reading my previous threads.

23. Its speed will make it a challenging target for russian air defence. It also means that we should not expect many good quality photos or videos of it flying. It will be tough to know how many of these are being used.

22. Although similar in size to Peklo, this is a much simpler design so production should only be limited by the availability of engines. The "Army of Drones" logo tells us where the funding came from.

21. The warhead is about 40 kg and is the same as used in large Ukrainian drones. Big enough for soft targets including fuel storage tanks. If produced in large numbers, Bars will be trouble for the russians.

20. Bars was obviously designed for mass production with a low number of parts and simple assembly mostly using adhesives. It probably has a top speed near 700 km/h. When one hits the ground there is not much left to examine.

19. When one of these burns, there is not much left. The russians misidentified this one as a Bober but it is clearly a Bars. This also shows, very likely, a fuel filter.

18. A curious detail is a component that may be a tray (perhaps to hold electronics) or part of the fuel system. There is a handwritten "OK", likely for quality control. Odd is the label with "FX" but the writing on the side is a backwards "XF".

17. There a consumer-grade GPS antenna but more interesting is a Globalstar satellite modem with an Orange Pi Zero controller. This most likely returns telemetry data including location so Ukraine will know if it made it to the target or, if lost, the location of air defenses.

16. The flight controller (likely not mounted here) is a commercial grade Orange Cube+. The patch of adhesive tape may have secured the antennas. It is not clear what the channel in the fuselage is for. It appears that hatch covers are mostly secured with duct tape.

15. The panel shows a separate switch for each fuel pump. Switch numbers likely follow the startup sequence. Note the white adhesive used to bond the fuselage pieces together.

14. Fuel consumption is about 1 kg per minute so a large fuel tank is expected. This photo shows something that looks like a fuel tank but it seems too small. Since there are two fuel pumps, there may be two fuel tanks.

13. This example shows the Swiwin ECU and wiring harness. The fuel system is a bit complex and uses two fuel pumps and three types of tubing. Unfortunately, none of the photos show an intact fuel system so it is difficult to sort this out.

12. Two types of jet engine have been observed: a K450 by the Taiwanese company King Tech or a SW400 by the Chinese company Swiwin. The engine is simply clamped to the top of the pylon. Internal wiring depends on which engine is used.

11. This reported to be the remains of a Bars' wing, and it is about the right size. The root rib is similar to the rib shown in #4. The large tubular spar is consistent with a fairly simple design but there is little indication of how the wing & fuselage join.

10. Each vertical stabiliser might be either attached directly to the core of the horizontal stabiliser or be a single piece. The wing root appears to be moulded directly into the fuselage but there is not a good view of this detail.

9. The elevator use a simple tape hinge. Also shown here are two bulkheads that appear to bonded to the fuselage with double-sided tape. It is not clear what the white area in the fuselage bottom is for.