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.

  • @someguy3English
    20•1 month ago

    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.

    • @CookieOfFortuneEnglish
      14•1 month ago

      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.

      • @pufferfisherpowderEnglish
        7•1 month ago

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

        • @CookieOfFortuneEnglish
          5•1 month ago

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

          • @AceticonEnglish
            4•1 month ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]English
              2•1 month ago

              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.

          • @Lost_My_MindEnglish
            1•1 month ago

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