Ukraine using gunners in prop planes to down drones from Russia

Yakkety-yak! It’s a counter-drone attack! Right now, in the skies above Ukraine, a 50-year-old propeller-driven airplane is racking up kills against 21st century unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

An unknown number of the Soviet-era Yak-52 training aircraft —crewed by Ukrainians from a local civil air patrol chapter — appear to be flying free-hunt missions in southern Ukraine, taking down Russian surveillance drones .

The area where this is happening is a pretty good distance from the frontlines, where Russian air defense systems would down these planes almost as fast as a Patriot missile could down a Su-34 — which is pretty fast.

Be that as it may, downing the drones in a World War I style air battle isn’t easy either.

For starters, the types of drones the Yaks are hunting are small, and the pilot has to find the things in the sky without modern sensors or equipment. Once a target is located, and the pilot manages to put the plane in a suitable firing position, the gunner still has to shoot the thing down — by hand, likely with a basic infantry weapon — in the open cockpit of a moving plane.

Obviously not an ideal or effective tactic for every situation, but it’s not entirely ineffective either.

Images of kill marks on the side of one Yak-52 showed up online recently, and if true, the plane is responsible for downing at least eight Russian drones. Two other drones are seen marked out above pictures of a pelican and a storm cloud, leading some military analysts to postulate the Yak crew witnessed two Russian drones get taken down by a bird and a storm, according to reporting from The War Zone .

Of course, the best time to take down unmanned aerial vehicles –whether they’re just surveillance systems or one-way attack drones –is to blow them up before they launch. In late June, that’s just what Ukraine's navy did.

Using domestically produced Neptune missiles or similar weapons, Ukrainian forces launched a night attack on a base in Russia's Krasnodar region. The base is home to the 726th Air Defense Training Center where Russian pilots are taught how to fly all sorts of drones, like the Geran-2 , Moscow's version of the Iranian-made Shahed-136 .

Satellite imagery revealed the level of destruction. Ukraine said it blew up 20 Gerans, 50 Lancets, 40 Zala reconnaissance drones, 10 Supercam recon drones and an unspecified number of smaller attack drones.

Some barracks on the base and administrative buildings were also hit, causing an unknown number of casualties. In fact, the surnames of three Iranian men — believed to be flight instructors — were listed among the dead.

The Kyiv Post called the strike the most effective Ukrainian counterattack against Russia's long-range strike capabilities since the war started.

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