Ukraine Using Machine Guns To Knock Out Russian Shahed Drones
Ukraine is hunting the Iranian-made drones with Mi-8 attack helicopters to save valuable anti-aircraft missiles.
In scenes that look more like they're from World War II than modern warfare, Ukraine is now hunting Russian drones from helicopters and downing them with machine gun fire. The Iranian or Russian-made drones fly at low altitudes, at relatively slow speeds (185 km/h max), and are made with composite materials that make them hard to detect for anti-aircraft radar. And Russia has hundreds and hundreds of these things, either bought from Iran at around $200,000 each, or made domestically in Russia. Downing them with surface-to-air missiles is effective but also expensive, as Ukraine always has limited supplies. So they've come up with a novel approach to the problem: hunting them from attack helicopters.
The video above is from a side-mounted machine gun, while the text below refers to the machine gun mounted in the front window of another helicopter. As always, the Ukrainians add some music, in this case Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally."
Source: Euromaidenpress
A Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter shot down a Russian Shahed combat drone with a forward-mounted machine gun located in the nose of the aircraft, says Militarnyi.
The Russian Shahed-type attack UAV was detected at a low altitude over water. A Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopter was deployed to intercept it. A crew member of the aircraft used a 7.62mm machine gun mounted in the nose turret to hit the drone, as per the KARYMAT Telegram channel.
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Using helicopters to intercept Russian attack drones can be effective, but successful interception depends on several factors, including crew training and the timely detection of enemy aerial targets.This approach can save anti-aircraft missiles. However, helicopter use is limited as they must operate over uninhabited areas, particularly rivers, reservoirs, or the sea, to avoid endangering civilian objects and populations.
And another one this morning during the Russian terrorist attack on Kyiv.