It may be the first time a drone has destroyed a helicopter in mid-air.
Ukrainian forces deploy more than 100,000 explosive first-person-view drones a month all along the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 28-month wider war on Ukraine. The drones smash into armored vehicles, chase down exposed infantry and follow artillery fire back to its origin in order to target Russian howitzers.
And today one of the small quadcopter drones—remotely steered by an operator wearing a virtual-reality headset—shot down a Russian helicopter, apparently for the first time.
Photos and videos that circulated on social media depict the Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter burning near Donetsk in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. “A speedy recovery to the survivors,” one Russian blogger wrote.
This new use of explosive drones has been a long time coming. As long ago as September, Ukrainian operators first tried ramming their flying robots into Russian helicopters mid-flight. The drone threat got so serious that the Russian air force began assigning some helicopters to escort other helicopters.
Slava Ukraini.
Haven’t gotten to do one of these for a while…
If you post that every time Russia loses an aircraft to Ukraine, Riker is going to be out of breath.
Only when they lose a manned aircraft because of a two-pound drone.
Virtual Riker never gets tired. Sour notes for days!
I’m just waiting for someone to use one of these for an assassination attempt in a western country. I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t happened yet considering Ukraine has shown how effective they are.
Be careful what you “wish” for.
Not wishing at all. As soon as it happens, they’ll outlaw all drones. They won’t be covered under the 2nd amendment of course.
They won’t be covered under the 2nd amendment of COurse.
What if I strap a gun? Then it’s patriotic and family friendly!
I would be absolutely astonished if as part of the no-fly zone established at these rallies that they don’t have frequency jammers at the very minimum.
I feel it’s only a matter of time before they put a plexiglass bunker surrounding the president at the very least.
For that rally they didn’t have it. It’s in the report. And yes the entire security world spit their coffee out when we found that out.
Imagine if that guy who tried to shoot trump, actually used a drone. I don’t know how these things work, but I assume they have more than 1 missile per drone. So then imagine he just opened fire on a large scale crowd.
And because it’s a drone, he could be like 2 miles away. With the right escape plan, he could have been in Mexico long before anyone ever traced it back to him.
From Mexico, he could move pretty much anywhere with an alias.
He could have committed a large scale terrorist attack, AND gotten away with it. At least for a while. I mean, even Bin Laden EVENTUALLY was found.
That’s not really how they use these drones, or how you would use a drone to assassinate someone. For the case of Trump you’d use a FPV drone that weights maybe 750 grams and can lift an extra 400gramms of whatever payload. And then you just kamikaze it into the target. It’s pretty easy and cheap. A drone like that if you build it yourself is maybe 250 bucks on the low end and maybe 400 for a long range drone. These things are fast as fuck and you can be a good km away from the target. If you are even a mediocre pilot it’s pretty hard to miss. I don’t know shit about explosives, and how you would make it go boom, but just flying a 500g drone into someone’s face at 100kmh surely sends a message.
If you are even a mediocre pilot it’s pretty hard to miss.
Ever fly fpv?
“Mediocre” can be a relative term. I would call myself a “mediocre” runner, because I run a handful of times a week and can beat most people on a 3000m, but am eons away from the pros. A “mediocre” fpv pilot can be someone who flies regularly and who most people would look at and consider “really good”, but who is still far from being a pro.
Fair point.
He did use a drone a few hours before the attempt but only to get an overview
100k drones a month?!
This is a surprisingly hight number :o. Then again saying this already feels stupid since the answer is probaby just industrial warfare or smth.
Wasn’t the last US aid package some 60 Billion dollars or so? Assuming thats for a year, that would make it about 5 Billion a month. So even if every drone would cost 5.000 Dollars, it would add up to about 10% of that budget.
And from what things in Ukraine look like, we hit a new era of warfare, with a change similiar in scope to the invention of the machinegun.
Commercial quads are 200-500 bucks. Ukraine has been making their own which significantly reduces cost. A somewhat comparable piece of equipment, the switchblade, is between 60-80k per drone and is only effective against infantry and light vehicles. The US MIC must be frothing mad right now.
The US MIC doesn’t give a fuck because the DOD will never pay a reasonable price for anything, ever.
That’s not really true. All that stuff about “$50K toilets! $5K screwdrivers!” includes shipping and installation in a warzone. Try asking for that on Task Rabbit and see what price you get.
Considering they’re basically guided munitions at this point, it makes sense.
Exploding drones. They’re basically ordinance.
It reminds me of the eternal war in Civ 2 where whenever there is a build up of an army they just get targeted and nuked. Eternal War
The Russian military has hundreds of helicopters and, so far, has lost just a hundred or so to Ukrainian action.
Odd use of “only”. Based on that sentence alone, they’ve lost between 10% and 90%, which sounds like a lot…
Not to mention, if they’re anything like their fighters or their tanks, only a small fraction was really in operational condition, the rest stored for parts.
An apt analogy for the war as a whole.
Anti-air-drones. Fuck yeah.
A helicopter can fly faster than 150 miles per hour at altitudes exceeding thousands of feet—too fast and too high for a two-pound drone to get a clean shot without an enormous degree of skill or luck on the part of the operator.
They spotted the 12-ton, three-crew Russian helicopter—which performs attack, transport and medical-evacuation missions—while it was still close to the ground. “Caught at the moment of takeoff,” a Russian blogger reported.
There are quads that can do 200+mph these days, only a matter of time before they’re cheap enough to be used to hunt down the helis.
Doubtful they can do that at the same altitudes as a helicopter though
while carrying a payload
Yeah but they’re much more vulnerable to SAMs at altitude.
The only winners in this war have been the Chinese drone part makers on Alibaba and the intermediaries in the Middle East/Central Asia buying those parts and reselling them to Ukraine/Russia.
Weight is just a number, guys. Even the skinniest of us can score!
Not that I’m skinny, but… Nevermind.
I’d be interested in the cost difference as well.
Mi8 has a pricetag of 15 million, excluding crew and whatever it was carrying. If that drone was on the expensive side it was 15K. So a factor >1000
Uh, that was a good purchase then.
I am the skinniest of us. Can confirm.
Fuck the smelly orcs and vatniks as always.
John Barnes got a whole lot right in Kaleidoscope Century more than 25 years ago.
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