In a sharp escalation of its drone campaign targeting strategic industries deep inside Russia, Ukraine seems to have fitted Cessna-style light planes with remote controls, packed them with explosives and flown at least one of them more than 600 miles to strike a Russian factory in Yelabuga, 550 miles east of Moscow.
Ironically, the Russian factory produces—you guessed it—drones.
Russians on the ground recorded the shocking scene as the light plane dove onto the sprawling Alabuga Special Economic Zone industrial campus, where workers assemble Iranian-designed Shahed drones that, just like Ukraine’s DIY Cessna-style drone, can range as far 600 miles with an explosive payload.
Superior Ukrainian gen 5 stealth technology: The Cessna 206.
I’m just imagining a Cessna wearing a giant pair of Groucho Marx glasses.
You’re amazing and I love you.
Thats a decent ass edit
It’s a nose, actually. And eyebrows.
Now this is Marxism I can get behind.
:: wiggles cigar ::
Whether or not he’d let me stand back there is another story.
Next generation stealth plane: going back to basics.
They’re putting sails back on boats, why not?
Damn, thought this was Non Credible Defense.
Ukraine is basically the embodiment of NCD. I saw a guy carrying a traditionally vehicle mounted AA gun with a buttstock welded onto it.
Solid move. After you dislocate your shoulder a few times, you get used to it.
Evidently it was just a vehicle mounted machine gun, so no dislocation, but still noncredible as fuck.
I understand that the situation is not great and the stakes are very, very real.
At the same time it’s kind of amazing how this whole affair has this “improvised tube-sock & axle-grease sticky bomb” perseverance to it.
And that’s how it’s done, people!
This is great. Thank you for making my night
Let’s be honest…. Probably less expensive and just as effective as a tomohawk.
A Tomahawk goes about 4 times faster, but it seems it doesn’t matter if your enemy is incompetent.
Your comment made me go do the math and a TCM is, in fact, between 3.5 and 4 times faster than the fuel efficiency speed of a Cessna 206.
Kudos to you good Person.
And kudos to you for reporting that, so we all learn something new.
No, a Tomahawk is really only a little faster than a Cessna
/s
Surely the speed of the tomahawk depends on how hard you throw it?
African or European Cessna?
How many coconuts did it carry?
You mean an Indigenous Peoples Hatchet Missle?
Yes, although I believe they are incompatible with the First Nations Attack Helicopter.
It shouldn’t be, though. The Russian military should have shot it down long before it got to the target.
What a wild and spotted life that guy lives
I knew about him landing the plane. Didn’t know that he stabbed a girl almost to death because she wasn’t interested in him.
Just one of those things you do growing up
Anywhere can be a bathroom if you’re brave enough
Perhaps? I worry about this tactic being used in the US against targets. For all anyone knows, they’re a plane that just lost communication.
I mean, that kinda already happened
Yes, but not using much smaller, easily rented or more accessibly purchased planes.
The world isn’t very safe when you start getting creative.
The world isn’t very safe when you start getting creative.
Inspirational af.
Get this printed as a motivational poster and sell it.
But in that case fighter jets here are usually scrambled and if they don’t see anyone in the cockpit, they shoot the damn thing down
They had this eventuality covered !
Bad time for the pilot to be in the bathroom.
I don’t think most Cessnas have bathrooms.
They have windows…
If you’re peeing out the window, you’re still in plain view of the intercept fighters.
The openable part of the window on a Cessna is tiny and high up. There’s no way anyone could contort like that plus it’s likely to come back at you.
I can see opening the door, but you’d likely need a copilot: I don’t know if a simple autopilot could handle that configuration
And thats when you put down your mask, give hand signals saying radios out, and then veer the plane into the fighter jet and shoot it up with the machine gun!
This concept was in season 2 of Slow Horses.
I’ve never heard of this show. I might have to check it out!
It’s fantastic and so is Gary Oldman.
Used by whom? An actual military will need more than a handful of light aircraft to topple the USA and domestic terrorists just use semi-automatic firearms because they’re quicker, cheaper, easier and lower risk.
Rigging up a plane to be flown remotely is a non-trivial amount of specialised work and you still need to know how to fly a plane when you’re done.
Crashing it into something without an explosive payload has been done and it killed 2 people, one of whom was the guy in the plane. They’ll never win the approval of their far-right Discord buddies with numbers like that.
Filling it with explosives isn’t easy either since they don’t have a death cult that insists anyone should be able to buy them for any reason. Start buying up enough to take down a building and you’ll have feds knocking on your door in days (if you don’t accidentally blow yourself up first).
There are far more dangerous things to worry about than an imaginary plane.
Crashing planes into things has killed way more than 2 people.
9/11 comes to mind.
Do you really want me to publicly explain to you the difference between a small Cessna and a Boeing 737?
Do you really want to publicly ignore 9/11 as an incident in which “an airplane was flown into things”?
Considering that most small Cessna’s have between 3-500 pounds of full fuel load, and more if you strip out all the stuff for pilots and passengers, and provided military grade high explosives, you’ve got enough to do the same kind of damage as the Oklahoma City bombing (which was a 5000 pound anfo bomb in the back of a rider truck.)
Do you really want to publicly ignore 9/11 as an incident in which “an airplane was flown into things”?
Sure, let’s do it since I’m now genuinely curious what’s going on inside your head. Is your reading comprehension that dogshit or did you ignore all that context because you genuinely thought “airplane did 9/11” was going to get you crowned “smartest person in the room”? Maybe you’re lashing out because I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of domestic terrorists just carry out attacks with their legal firearms? Let’s find out together.
The headline and article specifically mention that a light aircraft was used. Everybody in every comment until you arrived is talking about Cessna style aircrafts with a maximum takeoff weight around 7,700kg, not a passenger jet with a takeoff weight around 200,000kg.
The person I replied to said they were “worried about this tactic being used in the US against targets”. It doesn’t look like you felt the urge you frothily exclaim “WHAT ABOUT