Ukrainian forces down mysterious experimental Russian jet drone
Portal Defence Blog reports the Ukrainians have shot down a mysterious Russian drone powered by a jet engine. This is the first time this model has appeared on the front line. While inspecting the drone's interior, the defending army was unprepared for what they found.
The Ukrainians had not encountered such a drone before. In one of the latest attacks, the Russians used a previously unknown design to the public and military analysts, Defence Blog reports.
They hit the Russian drone and checked what was inside
After shooting down the drone, the defending army decided to examine its mysterious construction. Two details are noteworthy. Firstly, the drone is equipped with a jet engine, suggesting it is likely a newly designed model. Older drones typically use different engines; for example, the popular Shahed-136 uses a piston engine.
Additionally, the jet engine indicates that the designer prioritized maximum speed for the device. The Ukrainians also noted the aerodynamic silhouette in a flying wing layout, which suggests the drone was intended to have stealth characteristics, i.e., reduced detectability.
It is also significant that the drone, shot down by the Ukrainians, was moving without any additional equipment. It lacked reconnaissance equipment (such as a camera to observe from the air) and did not carry any weapons. In theory, this made the Russian drone useless – it could neither conduct reconnaissance nor attack any Ukrainian positions with onboard weapons.
"Experimental model"
Portal Defence Blog explains that these deficiencies may indicate that the Russian Federation used the equipment as bait to test Ukrainian air defences. The Russians may have been verifying whether their new design is easy to detect and, if so, whether it can be shot down using specific air defence measures.
A detailed analysis of the downed weapon also showed that "the drone was not a high-quality factory product, but rather a more primitive, experimental model". This seems to confirm that the Russian Federation is developing new types of drones and using their prototypes (without additional armament and equipment) as decoys to test the usefulness and durability of the weapon on the front line under combat conditions. The exact specifications of the recently downed mysterious Russian model remain unknown.
