Ukraine plinking a Russian GPS-jammer with a GPS-guided bomb. Ukrainian drones blowing up Russian drone-jammers. Ukraine’s cruise missiles striking Russian air-defense sites whose missions include, you guessed it, shooting down cruise missiles.
Russia’s 23-month wider war on Ukraine has seen a lot of ironic, darkly-hilarious clashes. The latest was also one of the quickest between setup and punchline.
On Tuesday morning, Russian media announced the deployment, to Ukraine, of Russian forces’ latest high-tech counterbattery radar. A few hours later in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainians blew it up … with artillery rockets.
The irony deepens. In theory, a Russian Yastreb-AV radar would help to protect Russian troops from Ukraine’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems launchers—its HIMARS. Now guess what the Ukrainians used to destroy that first Yastreb-AV.
That’s right: HIMARS.
This. I have a DJI mini 2, and while that isn’t a combat drone used by anyone’s military, it’s pretty much impossible for me to see it at it’s “maximum” altitude of 122 meters and at that height I can get pretty good real-time video. I’m pretty sure it will exceed that altitude limit if I wanted it to, and there’s no way I could see it or hear it at 200 meters. And it would still get me useful video.
I have to assume that the drones being used by the UA are better than my silly little camera drone.