Ukraine’s weirdest drone killers are back in action in their 50-year-old propeller-driven training plane, adding two aerial kills to their already impressive tally in the span of just a few days.
A capture from the video feed of a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle, circulated online on Saturday, seems to depict two Ukrainian aviators staring down their latest target—the drone itself—from the open cockpit of their 1970s-vintage Yakovlev Yak-52 trainer. The Yak-52 and the Russian drone are only a few yards apart.
It appears the Yakovlev’s back-seat passenger—who has reportedly wielded a drone-destroying shotgun—is aiming something at the drone. Possibly the shotgun that has made him famous.
Earlier this month, one Russian blogger complained about the Yak-52 crew “firing at our UAVs like it’s a shooting gallery.” Others have likened the shoot-downs to a World War I dogfight.
In mid-April, videos circulated online depicting the 120-mile-per-hour Yak-52, apparently belonging to a Ukrainian volunteer flying club but clearly fighting on behalf of the Ukrainian air force, engaging a Russian Orlan surveillance drone over Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine—and reportedly shooting it down.
Six weeks later in early June, a similar video—this one captured by the Russians—appeared online. It depicts the Yak-52 engaging a Russian ZALA surveillance drone. In that video, the back-seat gunner can be seen reaching for something, possibly his weapon.
Photos that briefly appeared on social media on Tuesday reveal the kill markings on the side of the propeller-driven Yakovlev: at least six Orlan and two ZALA unmanned aerial vehicles. Additional markings are ambiguous.
The video capture from Saturday seems to depict an additional pair of kill markings, meaning the Ukrainian drone hunters have had a busy week.
When the first videos of the Yak-52-versus-drone dogfights appeared on social media, some observers speculated that the crew of the one-ton training plane was firing at the drones with underwing guns or rocket pods.
But as Italian aviation expert David Cenciotti noted, very few Yak-52s were ever modified to carry underwing weapons. So it should have come as no surprise when it came to light that the Ukrainians were firing a shotgun from the plane’s back seat.
At a time when the Ukrainian air force is trying to save its most expensive surface-to-air missiles for the most dangerous Russian targets—ballistic and cruise missiles as well as manned fighter-bombers lobbing powerful glide bombs—a guy with a shotgun riding in a slow propeller plane is an inexpensive way to shoot down intruding Russian drones far from the front line.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for the Ukrainians. Both the Yak-52’s pilot and the back-seat gunner must be skilled and patient to get a clean shot at a small drone.
Again, this isn’t dissimilar from a World War I dogfight. After one of the very first plane-on-plane skirmishes, Royal Flying Corps observer Archibald James admitted to opening fire on a German pilot from too far away. “I put up my sights on the service rifle to 600 yards and fired six deliberate shots, and was miserable that I didn’t apparently hit him at all,” he wrote.
“I’ve no doubt I was miles away,” James added. “We had no conception then at what close ranges it was necessary to shoot to have any effect at all.”
If the Ukrainian crew of that Yak-52 suffered through a similar learning process, it happened months ago. In all the recent aerial skirmishes, the Yakovlev pilot apparently maneuvered to within tens of feet of his target before the back-seater opened fire.
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