A Ukrainian Yak-52 Training Plane With a Shotgun-Wielding Backseater Has Shot Down At Least Eight Russian Drones
If it works, it works
In mid-April, videos circulated online depicting a gunner in the back seat of a 1970s-vintage Yakovlev Yak-52 training plane, apparently belonging to a Ukrainian volunteer flying club, engaging a Russian Orlan surveillance drone over Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine—and reportedly shooting it down.
Six weeks later in early June, a similar video—this one captured by the Russians—appeared online. It depicted a Yak-52, seemingly the same one, engaging a Russian ZALA surveillance drone. In that video, the backseat gunner could be seen reaching for something, potentially his weapon.
Now we have a sense of how busy that drone-killing Yak-52 has been—and what weapon the gunner has been using. Photos that briefly appeared on social media revealed the kill markings on the side of the propeller-driven Yakovlev: at least six Orlan and two ZALA unmanned aerial vehicles.
A drone a week, at a minimum. Additional markings are ambiguous.
Earlier this month, one Russian blogger claimed to have knowledge of the Yak-52 crew’s armament. “The second person in the plane is a Ukrainian with a double-barreled shotgun, firing at our UAV like it’s a shooting gallery,” they wrote.
“As ridiculous as it sounds, in the Kherson direction, the enemy has already shot down two UAVs.” If the blogger is right, the Yakovlev crew scored six more kills in just two weeks.
If indeed all the videos feature the same 120-mile-per-hour Yak-52, and that one plane is shooting down several drones a month, there’s an argument to be made that Ukrainian flying clubs should assign additional planes to the counter-drone mission. There should be additional Yak-52s in their inventories. And shotguns are plentiful.
“The longer this goes on, the more it seems like both sides are descending into a bizarre World War III,” the blogger moaned. Some battles are fought with the most advanced weaponry on the planet. Others are fought with a Yak-52, a double-barreled shotgun and “a pilot with goggles and a scarf fluttering in the wind.”
“Unbelievable.”
But if it works, it works.
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