In a sharp escalation of its drone campaign targeting strategic industries deep inside Russia, Ukraine seems to have fitted Cessna-style light planes with remote controls, packed them with explosives and flown at least one of them more than 600 miles to strike a Russian factory in Yelabuga, 550 miles east of Moscow.
Ironically, the Russian factory produces—you guessed it—drones.
Russians on the ground recorded the shocking scene as the light plane dove onto the sprawling Alabuga Special Economic Zone industrial campus, where workers assemble Iranian-designed Shahed drones that, just like Ukraine’s DIY Cessna-style drone, can range as far 600 miles with an explosive payload.
Superior Ukrainian gen 5 stealth technology: The Cessna 206.
Let’s be honest…. Probably less expensive and just as effective as a tomohawk.
It shouldn’t be, though. The Russian military should have shot it down long before it got to the target.
What a wild and spotted life that guy lives
I knew about him landing the plane. Didn’t know that he stabbed a girl almost to death because she wasn’t interested in him.
Perhaps? I worry about this tactic being used in the US against targets. For all anyone knows, they’re a plane that just lost communication.
I mean, that kinda already happened
Yes, but not using much smaller, easily rented or more accessibly purchased planes.
The world isn’t very safe when you start getting creative.
The world isn’t very safe when you start getting creative.
Inspirational af.
Get this printed as a motivational poster and sell it.
But in that case fighter jets here are usually scrambled and if they don’t see anyone in the cockpit, they shoot the damn thing down
Bad time for the pilot to be in the bathroom.
I don’t think most Cessnas have bathrooms.
They have windows…
If you’re peeing out the window, you’re still in plain view of the intercept fighters.
The openable part of the window on a Cessna is tiny and high up. There’s no way anyone could contort like that plus it’s likely to come back at you.
I can see opening the door, but you’d likely need a copilot: I don’t know if a simple autopilot could handle that configuration
And thats when you put down your mask, give hand signals saying radios out, and then veer the plane into the fighter jet and shoot it up with the machine gun!
This concept was in season 2 of Slow Horses.
I’ve never heard of this show. I might have to check it out!
It’s fantastic and so is Gary Oldman.
Used by whom? An actual military will need more than a handful of light aircraft to topple the USA and domestic terrorists just use semi-automatic firearms because they’re quicker, cheaper, easier and lower risk.
Rigging up a plane to be flown remotely is a non-trivial amount of specialised work and you still need to know how to fly a plane when you’re done.
Crashing it into something without an explosive payload has been done and it killed 2 people, one of whom was the guy in the plane. They’ll never win the approval of their far-right Discord buddies with numbers like that.
Filling it with explosives isn’t easy either since they don’t have a death cult that insists anyone should be able to buy them for any reason. Start buying up enough to take down a building and you’ll have feds knocking on your door in days (if you don’t accidentally blow yourself up first).
There are far more dangerous things to worry about than an imaginary plane.
Crashing planes into things has killed way more than 2 people.
9/11 comes to mind.
Do you really want me to publicly explain to you the difference between a small Cessna and a Boeing 737?
Do you really want to publicly ignore 9/11 as an incident in which “an airplane was flown into things”?
Considering that most small Cessna’s have between 3-500 pounds of full fuel load, and more if you strip out all the stuff for pilots and passengers, and provided military grade high explosives, you’ve got enough to do the same kind of damage as the Oklahoma City bombing (which was a 5000 pound anfo bomb in the back of a rider truck.)
Do you really want to publicly ignore 9/11 as an incident in which “an airplane was flown into things”?
Sure, let’s do it since I’m now genuinely curious what’s going on inside your head. Is your reading comprehension that dogshit or did you ignore all that context because you genuinely thought “airplane did 9/11” was going to get you crowned “smartest person in the room”? Maybe you’re lashing out because I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of domestic terrorists just carry out attacks with their legal firearms? Let’s find out together.
The headline and article specifically mention that a light aircraft was used. Everybody in every comment until you arrived is talking about Cessna style aircrafts with a maximum takeoff weight around 7,700kg, not a passenger jet with a takeoff weight around 200,000kg.
The person I replied to said they were “worried about this tactic being used in the US against targets”. It doesn’t look like you felt the urge you frothily exclaim “WHAT ABOUT 9/11???” at him, so I guess at that point you hadn’t yet decided we were talking about massive passenger jets.
In my comment, I specifically mentioned that filling a Cessna with remote control gear and high explosives is a non-trivial task, making it an extremely unlikely plan for a terrorist and without those things, the damage may not be fatal to anyone but the pilot.
Then you burst in with your pants already pissed. “What if they just casually load it up with 500 pounds of military explosives they ordered off Amazon? It could do as much damage as a bomb that was 10 times larger and used materials that are closely monitored!”
But fuck, if we’re going for baseless hypotheticals that ignore both the “size of plane” and “no explosives” caveats, why stop there? What if a racist teenager fills an A380 with nuclear warheads and crashes it into New York? Think about how wrong I’d be then – since for some reason, that’s important to you.
As another commenter said
A Tomahawk goes about 4 times faster, but it seems it doesn’t matter if your enemy is incompetent.
This is the equivalent of wrapping ping pong balls in tin foil, putting a lighter underneath for a few seconds, and suddenly effective smoke bombs.
Edit: Yes, you can try this at home. But outside and obviously don’t rip the fumes like a bong.
You forgot the part where the smoke bombs were able to travel a vast distance undetected after you threw them at a low speed.
I feel like that’s easy enough to fix with flint and some kindling/match heads.
This is pretty embarrassing for Russian air defense. Though, I also wonder if they were hesitant to shoot down an unidentified aircraft after multiple cases of friendly fire bringing down VKS aircraft. I’m also amazed that there was seemingly no Electronic Warfare (EW) systems in the area to prevent remote control of drones. Sure, there are EW countermeasures, but this seems like a pretty significant failure that this drone could be flown in from that far away.
Having a massive landmass has been a huge boon to Russia historically, but we’re seeing the inverse now with all these long range precision guided munitions. They have too much land to cover with adequate air defense, it seems
maybe it wasn’t remote controlled as much as pre-programmed?
I heard they can stop nukes. I don’t believe it.
While embarrassing, the environment in which that happened was entirely different. You had Regan and Gorbachev actively working to improve relations. And no one was actively trying to blow up Soviet infrastructure. You’d think the Russian air defenses would be a bit more sensitive to small aircraft coming from Ukraine in this environment.
There were so many moments like that in this war. The grandma giving Russian soldiers sunflower seeds to put in their pockets so they grow when they die. The guy berating Russian soldiers saying “Every other woman here is a witch! All your dicks are going to fall off!” Zelensky saying “I don’t need a ride I need ammunition.”
Though I don’t know what else I’d expect from people who told the Ottoman Empire to go fuck itself.
Absolutely badass. Slava Ukraini!
please go meet bandera
In Soviet Russia plane is guided munition.
Hmmm… SU-27 replica on top of some “cheap” jet… Smoke from second engine… Control it like it was a damaged SU-27 returned home…
Land it wherever Russia has their temporary airfields… Boom.
After a while we’re going to see Russia shooting down their own jets 😁
Yeah pretty sure that’s a war crime under the Rome Statute. Emphasis mine.
The law applicable in international armed conflict forbids “mak[ing] improper use of … the military insignia and uniform of the enemy …” (Art. 23(f) of the Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907; Art. 39 of Additional Protocol I; Art. 8(2)(b)(vii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court). Not all uses of enemy uniforms are prohibited therefore; only “improper” uses. For example, wearing enemy uniforms in order to flee the fighting or escape capture does not run afoul of the law (U.S. Department of Defense Law of War Manual § 5.23.1.4). On the other side of the spectrum, engaging in attacks while wearing the uniform of the enemy is flatly prohibited, as affirmed in the treaty law and numerous military manuals (see here, here and here, for example), and is a war crime under the Rome Statute.
It’s funny that there is an entire branch of law describing what is acceptable and what is unacceptable while mass murdering people.
New Geneva conventions list of war crimes:
- Wars
I like this direct, in-your-face style they have going. Very refreshing and potentially fatal.
