Ukraine using WW2 Spitfire-style planes to shoot down Russian drones in humiliating blow to Putin

Ukraine using WW2 Spitfire-style planes to shoot down Russian drones in humiliating blow to Putin

the ACT 52 is a is a an old Soviet actually but Russian uh training aircraft um standard prop engine just just designed to uh for for people coming into flying to to learn how to fly from the basic level so a very rudimentary very not designed for military operations it was never armed per se I’m I’m sure some have been but yeah it was never designed for this type of thing yes so we actually go back in in history this is actually more like World War I than World War II so when the airplane was first invented they they used to be used for reconnaissance not dissimilar to those drones um but over time people started getting fed up with people looking at them from airplanes so they started to attack them and it was literally using hand weapons so we are seeing literally a sort of Rebirth of air power back from 1914 um the the reason it’s happening is these drones are are quite nuisance there there’s plenty of them they’re cheap but they’re actually quite quite dumb they they fly in relatively predictable profiles they don’t really have any self- protection measures They Don’t Really they can’t even see behind themselves so so they’re quite vulnerable and and they’re quite fragile so it’s actually relatively easy to go and knock them out the sky with some pretty basic things which is a lot better than using rather expensive you know 21st century missiles that that cost a lot more than a drone um so this is really just a way of of finding another way of of of taking out a system but in a really cost- effective way there’s basically two types of drwing there’s a lot more than that but but basically two types one one is the type that’s literally just taking pictures taking video it’s just there for reconnaissance um and the airplane or the Drone itself has got a small engine in a little bit of fuel in so it’s it’s relatively benign the other type of course is the is the long range oneway drone that’s packed with explosives in the front of it so if you shoot one of those down then likely to explode so so you do need to be quite wary of of what might happen and if you go back to the second world war so your analogy with spit fars it was the V1 doodle buug um and there are there’s quite a lot of footage of splitfire and hurricanes shooting those down with them exploding in front of them because they contain explosives so another trick they used to use was to literally fly alongside and flip them to sort of put them off their course because they they weren’t designed to to maneuver they just flew in a straight line so if you could move them off the straight line they would then hopefully go somewhere um harmless um we actually did this in 2012 so it wasn’t that well publicized but during the Olympics um we did have a concern that we might see a rogue aircraft come into within the Olympic Zone and we were concerned about how we might deal with that one one way would be to uh to to shoot it down using a fighter jet but again that that that’s quite dramatic and and obviously the debris is going to fall somewhere so you have to be really quite careful so we came up with the concept of putting snipers into helicopters military helicopters um and they could either threaten because they literally had uh LED signs that they could show the pilot of this so-called aircraft um to to come and land and and get out the way because it might have been an innocent incursion but they were also there effectively to shoot out the engine block so they could disable the aircraft so the aircraft would then have to land somewhere else so so we we’ve done this over many many years this is just an evolution I mean now and we haven’t seen a lot of it so the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to spot the Drone you’ve then got to get your aircraft out near the Drone to then do whatever you’re going to do to it and and so it it’s actually it’s quite complicated it’s and and look at the size of your crane I think people forget how large Ukraine is to be able to cover the entire country and detect every drone you tend to shoot them down as they get closer to the Target because if you know what the targets are you know where they’re going to come to so patching up with them on their way is is a lot harder and a yak 52 doesn’t fly very fast so it’s it’s not going to catch up very quickly World War I was literally the very first the the sock widths of this world that the the you know the the even more basic than a yak 52 so we’re talking an airplane that could probably fly maybe 100 miles an hour you know you’re literally in an open cockpit um and and the first ever aerial combat I think was 1914 but I’d have to go back and check my check my notes um and it was literally airplanes carry caring rifles by shooting at each other um now if anybody’s tried to shoot at something moving you clay pigeon shooting it’s hard enough standing still imagine now trying to do that with both of you flying at 100 miles an hour with both of you moving um it’s it’s not a simple Endeavor you have to get quite close you have to uh you have to be quite accurate you have to know how far ahead you have to shoot etc etc so so this is quite quite difficult to do um we shouldn’t underestimate the complexity of what uh what people are trying to achieve here I mean I I don’t know how much training they’ve done I I can tell you the training that we did for the 2012 Olympics with the snipers in the back of pummer helicopters um those were trained snipers who took weeks and weeks of training to get used to all the challenges of the vibration um you know moving with two Dynamic targets so you’re moving the target’s moving um and it’s not something you can just do by just going up and having a go um you really would have to get quite practiced at it now you can get lucky and and and these drones I mean they are really dumb so that that particular type of drone is just going to keep flying in a straight line unless it knows you’re there but even then it’s probably not going to be able to do very much so you could literally fly alongside it and and and and literally tap it on the shoulder and and and and and blow it up there and then so so you can get extremely close to these things and and therefore it is a little bit easier but the whole the whole debate actually is about the cost Effectiveness how if a drone is going to cost you those aren’t that cheap let’s say they’re going to cost you $10,000 um you know using a million dollar missile is clearly not not a very economic way of dealing with them so finding a way that makes the Drone cost greater than the cost of intercepting it is is what what’s going on here I mean the fact that we’ve only seen one or two videos it tells you that a this is quite difficult um and and it and it isn’t the answer we we not heralding here a whole new way of fighting I mean this is a really Innovative way of dealing with a particular problem in a particular area where they happen to have some some capability um because if that was happening let’s say a little bit closer to the front line the poor old Yak 52 would be the target not the Drone um so this is only something you can really do in a very safe space where you’ve kind of predicted things are going to come through and actually if you look at the roots of these drones they are relatively predictable everyone’s worked out we’re all defensive systems are and the Russians are starting to root their cruise missiles and their drones through particular areas so it does tend to get funneled in to to a vulnerable area so if you can start putting layered defenses in there which could include these Yak 52s then then it’s just another tool in the Box the problem you’ve got of course is if you’re also shooting the drones of missiles the ACT 52 does not want to be there when that’s happening so it it’s quite a complex piece of of planning to ensure that you you you stay out of each other’s way but you all sort of take it in turns as you begin to take these systems out as they come down and it’s not dissimilar if you if you look at London during the Blitz and the second world war you know you had airlanes that would try and take them out over Kent and then as they got closer to London then you’d have artillery firing and balloons and and and so so it’s it’s all part of a very layer defense so the yak 52 has has got a role to play I think the fact we’ve only seen a couple of videos probably tells you a lot um and so I it’s it’s not it’s not a new new way of fighting it’s actually a very old way of fighting but but it’s it’s it’s symptomatic of of how do you solve the problem of a relatively cheap threat without having to spend an inordinate amount of money in defeating it and and the yak 52 if you like has brought that into St relief so so it’s not necessarily the ACT 52 that’s the answer but it does highlight the challenge I think that we all face and they they’ve been incredible and whether it’s adopting other Western Equipment learning how to use it very very quickly I mean incredibly quickly and and lots of different systems building them into a layer defense and and then and then never stop thinking NE never stop thinking of another way of doing it so yeah I I I think it is very symptomatic of how good Ukraine have been in being Innovative no doubt about it if you look at the statistics I mean I follow it quite closely so you look at the statistics every day you see almost every single weapon fired at K as an example as being shot out of the sky you know we’re talking 9095 5% success rates the of of shooting down anything coming towards population centers um and and Russia knows that’s going to happen it sees it happening day in day out so it kind of sends another 50 or another 100 knowing what the outcome’s going to be but of course their game is a different game what they hope to do is wear out Ukraine stocks wear out Western appetite to continue to send those stocks so for for Russia this is a war of a if they if they can basically tire out Ukraine and tire out the west from resupplying them um that is what the aim is here now does it also reflect badly on Russia that their so-called incredible equipment their wonderful drones Hypersonic missiles Etc keeps getting shot out of the sky um that should start to send some ripples of concern back into Russia now Russia’s a regime that that will suppress that type of thought but there will be plenty of people in Russia looking at the statistics going hang on a minute these aren’t working you know the Patriot system that we thought wasn’t very good or we thought we’d invented a system that could take it out or or that could go round it it’s not so uh there should be some serious questions here for Russia because what this is doing and the yak 52 is another example you know to be shot to have your highly sophisticated 21st century drone shot down by by a 1930s you know prop airplane designed for training by somebody with a machine gun out the back is embarrassing you know um and so yeah I think it does send some messages that that are perhaps Beyond just the military effect I think there is some some messaging here that’s uh that that’s not yet being fully understood by everybody but for those of us that are saw in the know we’re watching this with great interest seeing things about how Russia fights and what it fights with that is not um what they probably hoped it would be

UKRAINE are using WW2-style planes to hunt down Russian drones on the battlefield in a blow to Vladimir Putin’s increasingly desperate war effort.

Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, a retired RAF commander, told The Sun Ukraine has taken inspiration from Britain’s famous Spitfires and are making headway in the skies against Vlad’s meatgrinder troops.

Read more: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/28563321/ukrainian-pilots-hunt-russian-drones-spitfire-style-planes/#:~:text=UKRAINE%20are%20using%20WW2%2Dstyle,Putin’s%20increasingly%20desperate%20war%20effort.

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