It may be the first time a drone has destroyed a helicopter in mid-air.

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.

  • ashok36@lemmy.worldEnglish
    42·
    3 months ago

    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.

      • ashok36@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        3 months ago

        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@lemm.eeEnglish
          171·
          3 months ago

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

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

          • JuiceEnglish
            16·
            3 months ago

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

        • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          3 months ago

          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.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            3 months ago

            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.

          • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            61·
            3 months ago

            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.

            • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              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@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              3 months ago

              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.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      63·
      3 months ago

      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.

      • BruceTwarzen@lemm.eeEnglish
        18·
        3 months ago

        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.

          • thebestaquaman@lemmy.worldEnglish
            13·
            3 months ago

            “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.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            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.