Adapt, Improvise, Overcome: Ukrainians Shoot Down Russian Drones With Shotguns

A major development in the Great War was the advent of aircraft. Originally used for reconnaissance, including aerial photography, pilots and observers soon started carrying along sidearms, rifles, and shotguns with which to take potshots at their opponents. That later led to machine guns mounted on a pivot at the observer's rear cockpit, or on the upper wing, where they fired outside the propeller arc. Then, a Dutch aircraft manufacturer, Anthony Fokker, who was supplying Germany with pursuit (fighter) aircraft, invented an interrupter gear to allow a machine gun or two to safely fire through the propeller arc - and thus was born the modern air-to-air fighter planes.

Now, I told you that so I could tell you this. In Ukraine, some pilots are returning to a version of those early Great War tactics, and carrying along a rifle or shotgun that a gunner can use to engage Russian drones. What's more, they are having some success.

Ukrainians are hunting down Russian drones armed with nothing more than shotguns and rifles while dangling out of prop lanes as part of a low-tech solution to Moscow’s high-tech aerial assassins.
Although Kyiv has some of the West’s most advanced air-defense systems, including US-made Patriot missiles and F-16 jets, the nation has been forced to deploy such unconventional tactics to counter Russia’s ever-escalating drone bombardments because of the sheer number of devices being deployed.
Pilots and gunners in Ukraine’s 11th Army Aviation Brigade have been tapped to take the Soviet-era Yak-52 prop planes to the skies, with the two-person aircraft shooting down 120 drones this past year with only shotguns and rifles, the Wall Street Journal reported.

That's nothing short of remarkable.

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These magnificent men in their flying machines are, low-tech or not, accounting for a significant number of Russian drone interceptions.

Despite the seemingly low-tech solution, these tactics account for about 10% to 12% of all drones intercepted by Ukraine on a typical day, according to the 11th’s deputy commander, Col. Mykola Lykhatskiy.

This may well be an indicator that Ukraine's air-defense forces are stretched thin, which should come as a surprise to no one. And, of course, they won't be able to do this forever. It seems likely, indeed a near-certainty, now that this Ukrainian tactic is common knowledge, that the Russians could easily retrofit some drones to engage these old Cold War-era prop planes; a remote-controlled drone packed with cameras and high explosives may be able to get close enough to one of these Yak-52s to knock one down before the gunner can hit it. It's unclear if the Ukrainian pilots would be able to outrun a big, mil-spec Russian drone; the Yak-52 has a rather unimpressive top speed of 177 miles per hour. The common four-rotor or "quadcopter" drones aren't that fast, but some single-wing drones are faster.

This is how warfare works. One side innovates, the other side adapts, improvises, finds out what works, and then employs new equipment or tactics; that forces the other side to innovate again. That's why wars are frequently a speed boost for technological developments.

In this case, though, the Ukrainians are looking back for ideas - over a century, in fact. But it's working, for now, and sometimes "for now" is good enough. And the Ukrainians are once more proving true a famous old military aphorism: "If it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid."

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

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