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A Two-Pound Ukrainian Drone Just Shot Down A 12-Ton Russian Helicopter

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.

nkat2112 ,
@nkat2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

Slava Ukraini.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Haven’t gotten to do one of these for a while…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3240eb04-e89a-4692-88ce-32aa8e005b92.png

aeronmelon ,

If you post that every time Russia loses an aircraft to Ukraine, Riker is going to be out of breath.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Only when they lose a manned aircraft because of a two-pound drone.

Chee_Koala ,

Virtual Riker never gets tired. Sour notes for days!

ashok36 ,

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.

Weirdmusic ,
@Weirdmusic@lemmy.world avatar

Be careful what you “wish” for.

ashok36 ,

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.

Railcar8095 ,

They won’t be covered under the 2nd amendment of COurse.

What if I strap a gun? Then it’s patriotic and family friendly!

Juice ,

I have a constitutional right to glue an Uzi to a quadcopter to protect my GMC Sierra

lennybird ,
@lennybird@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Bob_Robertson_IX ,

We’re getting to the point where even a frequency jammer might not stop an AI piloted drone. Just teach the drone what a ‘rally’ looks like and where the target typically stands, and then launch it. No radio or GPS signals required.

monomon ,
@monomon@programming.dev avatar

Consumer drones already exist, that can recognize you by face and follow you.

AnUnusualRelic ,
@AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

All of the public events now have some heavy anti drone measures set up. Like the Olympics currently.

I’m not sure how this works as they often rely on drones for filming though. So it’s not jamming.

lennybird ,
@lennybird@lemmy.world avatar

Possibly whitelisted frequencies that must hop in a certain pattern to avoid jamming?

lennybird ,
@lennybird@lemmy.world avatar

I was reading a company in Ukraine has completed a functioning drone that does just this. Basically permits it to fire-and-forget as it has basic optimal image recognition built into a chip. Crazy.

Alternatively if you knew the target’s static location, you could bypass GPS and controller jamming by utilizing good 'ol fashioned orienteering principles with an accelerometer, compass, and provided coordinates.

Maggoty ,

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.

Lost_My_Mind ,

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.

cosmicrookie ,
@cosmicrookie@lemmy.world avatar

He did use a drone a few hours before the attempt but only to get an overview

BruceTwarzen ,

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.

SkyezOpen ,

If you are even a mediocre pilot it’s pretty hard to miss.

Ever fly fpv?

echodot ,

It was a fairly wide bore target though. The only reason he missed was because of the range. With a Drone it would be point blank.

thebestaquaman ,

“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.

SkyezOpen ,

Fair point.

Rhaedas ,

Bringing down a helicopter is just a matter of removing the miracle that keeps it up there. I've always been wary of them, but after seeing that one tragic Ring video of the small helicopter that just came apart in midair and a straight plummet down. Never. I mean they are great strategically, but when they fail...it's pretty complete.

Shadow ,
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

FYI it’s not a miracle keeping it up there, it’s science.

And no, any failure is not “pretty complete”. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation

The most common use of autorotation in helicopters is to safely land the aircraft in the event of an engine failure or tail-rotor failure. It is a common emergency procedure taught to helicopter pilots as part of their training.

Valmond ,

Have you heard of the jesus nut?

Shadow ,
@Shadow@lemmy.ca avatar

Yep, but a single mission critical part and everything else being survivable is a far cry from “any failure is pretty complete”.

Valmond ,

True.

Still scary af though :-)

nulluser ,

They don’t actually fly. They’re just so ugly that the Earth repels them.

foofiepie ,

You almost made me snort peas.

theluckyone ,

I used to be scared to fly in a helicopter. Then I learned how they fly. Now I’m scared when they fly overhead.

MeThisGuy ,

It’s just lift vs drag and rotation!

Vandals_handle ,
@Vandals_handle@lemmy.world avatar

Knew a carrier based Navy search and rescue swimmer, he always said “Helicopters don’t fly, they beat gravity into submission.”

GBU_28 ,

So you haven’t seen the video?

Autorotation was…not an option.

Nurgus ,

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…

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Aurenkin ,

An apt analogy for the war as a whole.

someguy3 ,

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.

CookieOfFortune ,

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.

pufferfisherpowder ,

Doubtful they can do that at the same altitudes as a helicopter though

CookieOfFortune ,

Yeah but they’re much more vulnerable to SAMs at altitude.

CanadaPlus ,

Doesn’t it get easier to fly fast high up? It does for planes.

Lost_My_Mind ,

It does for space craft too. At least thats what No Mans Sky has taught me! Gotta turn on the thrusters!!!

Aceticon ,

It does, but it gets progressivelly harder as it goes up to maintain enough vertical airflow for a rotary-wing craft to stay up because the air becomes thinner.

The going faster for fixed wing craft compensates for the air being thinner because the Bernouli Effect (the sustentation effect from the wings) gets stronger the faster the airflow over the wings is, but the equivalent of that for a rotary wing craft is for the paddles themselves to rotate faster and the craft itself going faster doesn’t help (it makes air over some paddles go faster but also makes the air over the paddles going in the opposite direction go slower).

Quadcopters are rotary-wing craft, so can’t really improve the altitude they can reach by going faster.

CanadaPlus ,

Ah. So it’s less that they’re slow at altitude, and more that they may not be able to reach it in the first place.

nonfuinoncuro ,

while carrying a payload

kwomp2 ,

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.

Aqarius ,

Considering they’re basically guided munitions at this point, it makes sense.

JWBananas ,
@JWBananas@lemmy.world avatar

Exploding drones. They’re basically ordinance.

Jackinopolis ,

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

Tryptaminev ,

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.

SkyezOpen ,

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.

oyo ,

The US MIC doesn’t give a fuck because the DOD will never pay a reasonable price for anything, ever.

KevonLooney ,

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.

peopleproblems ,

Anti-air-drones. Fuck yeah.

zephyreks ,

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.

Junkhead ,

i cant wait until actual war machine countries start producing the drone swarm en masse. (this is sarcasm)

Maggoty ,

Well congratulations you already waited long enough. The US is producing them.

Junkhead ,

yayyy cant wait til im swarmed after an AI thinks im gonna commit a crime

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JWBananas ,
@JWBananas@lemmy.world avatar

Beep tha boop outta here

RamblingPanda ,

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.

Badeendje ,
@Badeendje@lemmy.world avatar

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

RamblingPanda ,

Uh, that was a good purchase then.

Mango ,

I am the skinniest of us. Can confirm.

fne8w2ah ,

Fuck the smelly orcs and vatniks as always.

corsicanguppy ,

It’s be great if we cooled it with the chasing of infantry. If you’re chasing, then they’re running, and if they’re running away from ya it’s a war crime.

I know, I know: Russia has been the poster-child for war crimes, with Israel. But we need to be people still at the end of this. So just maybe we don’t say “chasing”.

sandbox ,

That’s not true, it’s a war crime to shoot at enemies who have surrendered. Running away isn’t surrendering. There’s no way to tell if an enemy is running away to withdraw to better cover or because they intend to cease being a combatant all together. That’s why we have the requirement of surrender. If they were waving a white flag and got bombed, you’d have a point, but that’s clearly not what was described.

Maggoty ,

It’s even more brutal than that. There’s no requirement for air forces to take surrender into account because they cannot reasonably or effectively accept a surrender.

The Ukrainian drones that have led surrendering Russians back to where they can be taken into custody is way above and beyond what’s required.

rasmus ,

But its better for Ukraina if the Russian soldier can trust that they can surrender safely so that they, hopefully more people do it.

Maggoty ,

Absolutely.

corsicanguppy ,

no requirement for air forces

To also identify and separate combatants and non-combatants before carpet-bombing? If you can’t spot one, you can’t spot the other.

Maggoty ,

That’s in regards to proportional force, not the rules around surrendering forces. They absolutely have to restrict themselves to proportional force.

corsicanguppy ,

MFW the Geneva conventions are optional.

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