A drone of the «Nebesna Mara» unit (43rd Mechanized Brigade) ALMOST got a Russian attack helicopter



by MatchingTurret

15 comments

  1. Wow, that was very close indeed.

    The day that a Ukrainian drone neutralizes a Russian chopper will truly be a sight for sore eyes!

  2. Almost. A bit of a late turn to the right. Choppers are indeed much faster than land vehicles so operator probably didn’t adjust.
    Hope to see it happening, it would be spectacular. Imagine countermeasures; barn on helicopters? Or maybe huge wire wrapping?

  4. This would’ve been the shot of the year, but even the first second it might’ve even looked like a ground vehicle, by the time it’s obvious that it’s a heli, there’s no way to catch up

  5. It’s going to happen eventually. I just hope there is a spotter drone to catch it.

  6. These drone operators are next level. They are running their rigs analog with no tracking, just flying by sight trying to find an intercept path to another flying object. Imagine if they had even better tech.

  7. If you were to design a drone to keep up and attack a helicopter, it could be done in theory. Even electric drones can get as fast as a helicopter. The really fast electric drones thus far tend to use four propellers on a streamlined body, such as the tiny drone flown by Red Bull.

    If you can develop one with the ability to carry a decent grenade or shaped charge its a potentially dangerous weapon against helicopters (and glide bombs), but because it doesn’t alert the way SAM’s do, it could probably strike cleanly without being confused by countermeasures.

    Short range and high speed would require a high power density battery. Lithium silicon nanowire batteries are coming available with higher energy density and higher power density. [https://und.edu/research/soars/past-conferences/2024-presentations/ionelstefan.pdf](https://und.edu/research/soars/past-conferences/2024-presentations/ionelstefan.pdf)

    So perhaps an electric drone version of a SAM able to fly 5-10km is reasonable, at 300-350kmph peak. (The Russian Ka-50 is 270kmph). Red Bull’s racing drone does 355kmph, supposedly for 5km with a lot of hard turns which would sap energy fast. So, you’d need to add some wings, reduce disc loading (increase propeller diameter) to increase efficiency, fly up at a steady rate and then coast down to pick up some speed minimising turns, and this should extend range and give the option to add some payload.

    Short ducted fans might offer some advantage in that they can eliminate tip vortices and with a shaped outer shroud they can achieve thrust augmentation, that can increase thrust per kW.

    You can object designate through a viewer, connected to the drones video, point it, then allow it to object track.

    Launch would rely on some sort of man portable catapult.

    It would need folding wings. Two additional pusher propellers / ducted fans on the wing tips provide good flight control and yaw control, eliminating the draggy vertical stabiliser. It would probably use either canards as control surfaces, or use of differential thrust or vectoring. Short vertical fins could be used to extend a propeller above the rear tail section and below it, similar to the Red Bull racing drone, to provide pitch control, with wing tip propellers for yaw. The tail section could be shaped to smooth air flow to these. Alternatively (or as well) it would use one main pusher propeller with vectoring, and wing tip propellers for drag reduction and yaw control. If unducted, unloaded tip propellers are promising and can give higher efficiency, see Prandtl propeller.

  10. Helicopters are fast and delicate. Focus on speed and less on the warhead. Helicopters have so many vulnerable points that a frag grenade of almost any flavor would hit something fatal. Especially if you focus on the rotors. But even getting close with a fragmentation warhead might close that speed gap like a shotgun.

  12. Do those drones have to STRIKE something to explode, or does the operator have an override?

  13. It would have to probably be head on since the downward force of the propellers would throw off the trajectory, but still good try!

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