Russia Loses in Dogfight to a Homemade Drone
A Ukrainian soldier holds a drone during training on October 26, 2023 in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine. A Kyiv drone commander posted recent footage of a homemade Ukrainian drone destroying a more advanced Russian drone.
A video posted online Monday shows a Ukrainian military unit winning a drone dogfight against Russia with a homemade unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s “Magyar’s Birds” drone unit in the southern Dnieper region, shared the footage on his Telegram and YouTube accounts.
The aerial showdown reportedly took place in the skies near Krynky, a village on the Moscow-occupied side of the Dnieper River that has been the site of intense combat ever since Ukrainian Marines secured a bridgehead there last fall. Most recently, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday that Russian forces had retaken control of Krynky, but his claims have not been independently verified.
The Kyiv Post described the Ukrainian drone depicted in Brovdi’s video as “a cheap home-made remote-controlled copter with an explosive zip-tied to its belly,” whereas the Russian aircraft was identified as a substantially more-advanced Raptor-R propeller plane drone.
Brovdi reported that the Ajax drone unit, an air support element of Ukraine’s 126th Territorial Defense Brigade, was behind the successful operation.
In the video, the Ukrainian drone can be seen making two passes before it rams into the Russian propeller UAV, destroying both aircraft. Cheers can be heard from the Ukrainian flight crew as they celebrate taking out the enemy weapon.
Newsweek reached out to the Ukrainian and Russian ministries of defense via email on Tuesday for comment.
Brovdi noted that Russia only recently began receiving Raptor-R drones, which can carry a warhead that weighs up to 11 pounds. He also claimed that in the course of two days, Ukrainian forces had destroyed 57 out of 83 detected Russian drones.
The website for the Armed Forces of Ukraine also reported on the dogfight video, writing that the incident is the “first known case of interception of an enemy fixed-wing type UAV using a front-person view (FPV) drone.”
Drones have become a valuable weapon for both sides during the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022. Military analysts have credited Ukrainian drone strikes for putting Russia on the defensive in the Crimea region, and drones from Kyiv have made it all the way to Moscow.
Kyiv’s military also reportedly recorded a significant victory during the early hours of Tuesday when a Ukrainian drone strike targeting a Russian military warehouse in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region destroyed a significant amount of equipment.
According to military bloggers on Telegram, the strike destroyed two Russian T-72 tanks, S-60 anti-aircraft guns, a BMP-3 Russian infantry fighting vehicle, Ural-4320 off-road vehicles and a BMPT “Terminator” armored vehicle.
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