That Russian Stealth Drone Was On A Bombing Run When It Got Shot Down Over Ukraine

That Russian Stealth Drone Was On A Bombing Run When It Got Shot Down Over Ukraine

I'm surprised that this wasn't posted here before. But let's get into it. There were reports before that Ukraine shot down the S-70. However come to find out that the Russians themselves shot down this S-70 drone because of a malfunction by a Russian fighter. More then likely they lost communication with the drone and blew it up to keep tech out of Ukraines hands.

A rare Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik—the Russian air force’s first stealthy armed drone—got shot down apparently by an accompanying Russian fighter after the drone seemingly malfunctioned near the Ukrainian-held fortress town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine on Saturday.

Here are a couple of different view of the shoot down.

a reply to: grey580

Looks to me like it was shot down from behind at close range with a heat-seeking missile (whatever the Russian version of a Sidewinder is). That kind of shot usually results in the missile flying up the tailpipe (the hottest part of the aircraft) and blowing the engine apart. That will terminate the flight, but often doesn't result in the destruction of the aircraft mid-air. The video shows a brief explosion with no big fireball--indicating that the fuel tanks on the drone didn't seem to be ruptured by the explosion. In fact, the drone kept on flying after the hit--indicating that the airframe was basically intact. Other photos from this last weekend showed that it seemed to enter a flat spin after it lost power and it was nearly intact after it pancaked into the ground.

A radar-guided intercept missile would have been a much better choice in this case; they have bigger warheads and they go for a center-of-mass hit. What I'm getting at is that a shoot-down with this missile isn't a good choice if you want to keep the drone technology from falling into enemy hands.

a reply to: Boomer1947

With Russian technology who knows. Maybe the pilot tried another missile and it didn't fire? Who knows.

a reply to: grey580
Youtuber "combat veteran reacts" was talking about this-he said the drone is supposed to have "sophisticated" A.I. but the fact it just flew off in a straight line when it lost control suggested it didn't even have a working RTB(return to base) system which even cheapo consumer drones have if they lose signal/gps .

Sems like they franticly tried to shoot it down before it got into Uke territory-but the Ukes got hold of the wreak anyway.

Cool, what will they do with a defective drone? Was it sent over and shot down on purpose to give a misleading red herring for the Uke’s to waste time reverse engineering?

a reply to: onestonemonkey

a reply to: onestonemonkey

If you asked Russia they would of said it had a quantum ai that could evade any weapon that targeted it. So take anything Russia says with a grain of salt.

a reply to: grey580
That was certainly a knuckleheaded move and an embarrassment. Not quite as embarrassing as shooting down ones own F-16 and killing its pilot, but close enough. Thankfully it was just a drone and no pilots were harmed in the making of this film.

a reply to: grey580

I posted about it in the Russia/Ukraine update thread a few days ago.
I think it's a great embarrassment for Putin and his Airforce, lots of Russian tech seems to not live upto the hype they enjoy pushing.
This is meant to be the epitome of Russia tech' and it gets shot down by one of it's own because of malfunctions....

a reply to: Kurokage

Yeah. A lot of propaganda. Just take anything they say with grain of salt.

I’m not buying it. $50 days that “malfunction” was the S-70 being spoofed and guided in to friendly hands for an intelligence windfall that would have likely just confirmed what had already been suspected; that the S-70 is as much a “5th Gen” platform as the SU-57 (it ain’t).

Either way, even the wreckage will provide quite a lot of useful information.

a reply to: FloridaManMatty

Last thing I heard was that they lost communication with the drone. Who knows the reason. But they lost control so decided to shoot it down. Much good that did them.