Given the historical obsession of Russians to make the most giant everything even to the point that it will bankrupt themselves, I fear if Ukraine did this, Russia would just build the world’s biggest trebuchet and become the supreme world leading nation.
I think the odds are higher that their trebuchet backfires and demolishes the Kremlin instead.
If you scale up the trebuchet enough it gets large enough to throw things on a suborbital trajectory and you can use it to throw nukes at other continents!
Because that would of course be a war crime. Too powerful.
Can’t wait until some Ukrainian telegram feed announces that they have working prototypes of this, maybe in 2 weeks?
I would guess that a ballista would provide more launching capacity per unit of weight of the launcher than a trebuchet and would be shorter, easier to hide.
Launch frequency may also be a factor – like, you might want to launch multiple UAVs off one launcher quickly for a massed strike.
I remember being a little surprised that the Switchblades used a compressed air launcher instead of those elastic band launcher things, but it might make sense if the goal is to be able to keep quickly lobbing them into the air quickly or if having a compact launcher with rapid teardown/setup is critical.
Geneva Conventions be damned.
Why use trebuchets when they can use a Catapult. A far superior seige weapon.
Clearly a Russian disinformation agent.
