JET “SHAHEDS” IN THE SKY OVER ODESA: How Ukrainian drone operators hunt enemy targets

Speaker 1

To understand how it happens, we fly toward the enemy, we spot him, our main task is to establish visual contact. – And then, accordingly, the navigator's work ends here, and this is where the direct pilot's work begins.

Speaker 2

– I didn't have time at that moment because he was already coming in to attack in this zone, and every second counts there.

Speaker 3

– And what about the claims, Mr. Oleh, that you aren't a legend of this unit at all, the first one to shoot down an aerial target?

Speaker 2

– Yes, I got the first one. Shahed. –

Speaker 3

Shahed?

Speaker 2

– Yes.

Speaker 3

Ordinary or reactive?

Speaker 2

– No, ordinary.

Speaker 3

– Now we are hunting Shaheds that are trying to break through to Odesa, together with the crew of the 447th separate unmanned systems battalion of the Naval Forces of Ukraine, next to me Mr. Ayakskyi and Mr. Elvin. You are the pilots today, as I understand it, right? –

Speaker 1

Yes, I want to remember the past. –

Speaker 3

Understood. And Mr. Elvin – assault. – Yes, sir.

Speaker 1

– When the target approaches, and you detected it not deep in the sea, but already near land, it is important not to miss the moment when it begins its attack run. – There were cases when we were no longer tracking the target, and it was a matter of three or four seconds. And you see how it suddenly begins to dive and closes in on the target, and strikes the target it was aiming for, and you didn't make it in time.

Speaker 4

– Today I was in the role of the loader, where my task is to equip the craft as quickly as possible and prepare it for combat. In approximately one minute to one minute twenty, I fully equipped the craft and brought it out for combat. This is our Sting, this is a daytime Sting, but generally, we work with Stings and FPVs. – The hardest part of this work is the wind gusts, because these means are less sufficient. If we can fly for approximately fifteen minutes, seventeen minutes, then with gusty wind, this reduces our efficiency. –

Speaker 1

The sea is a completely different matter; it has its own nuances, fundamental nuances. And even if you take very effective crews now who have been working on land for a year, and they are used to their landmarks and all that, if these crews were brought to this position now, I would be interested to see what results they would show. – Quite a challenge.

Speaker 3

so professional, somewhere, for other crews to intercept?

Speaker 1

– Yes, it is a professional challenge. Why? Because working deep into the open water, seeing no landmarks at all, working exclusively by radar data, it is difficult for you to orient yourself at all as to where you are in space. – On

Speaker 3

second

Speaker 1

m'yans, the thing is that the enemy constantly employs different tactics, and here no two days are the same. For example, today there were launches there; other crews, who are stationed further in the area of responsibility, responded. In our sector it is quiet. For now. And maybe it won't be quiet, I don't know. Nobody knows. We'll see.

Speaker 3

– And what is behind the wall now? Tell in listeria.

Speaker 6

– This is a gift from the commander for the fact that I trained. Very well. I dreamed of joining the army, but my husband forbade me. Unfortunately, my husband was killed in '23. I was with him in the Prynsivskyi direction. There. After my husband, my brother forbade me from serving. My brother also died. I went to serve after all. And I actually became very happy when I joined the service. The depression vanished immediately. Completely.

Speaker 1

My practice and that of my comrades. We trained as crews. We took our shoot-downs. We simply gave a person these videos on a flash drive and said, "here are 20 shoot-downs." And tell me at what timestamp you saw the target. And they would come with a piece of paper, a slip, and they would note it down. File such-and-such, saw it here. And then, sitting side by side, we watched this video. And I say, "look, you saw it at the 25th second, hypothetically, of the video, or at the second minute of flight." But it was much earlier. Meaning it was already in the frame. And in this way, the person gets involved, they train their brain. To see the target. That is the most important thing.

Speaker 5

Ready?

Speaker 3

And this music, when turned on, do you always air out to the music? Yes.

Speaker 6

What was that? Just a barrel.

Speaker 3

Is it hard to do? How much training is needed for something like this?

Speaker 6

No, they'll just return that much, and that's it, and there'll be a barrel.

Speaker 4

We try to train, approaching the target from different angles, so that they do not have the opportunity to see our interceptors behind them.

Speaker 1

Now everything is right in front of us. And, in principle, we can make decisions. If it's a jet-powered one, we will fly against it too, because there is an option. We are talking about a jet-powered Shahed, right? About a jet-powered Shahed. We can take it out, yes? There are options for striking jet-powered Shaheds. I'm not saying it's one hundred percent, so that colleagues don't misunderstand. They also occur. There are plenty of facts of shooting down jet-powered Shaheds with the means currently available to us. For example, if this isn't recorded, but we have a tool from one of the manufacturers, Pyonsan, which has a terminal guidance system.

Speaker 5

From time to time, you know, remarks are made. Usually, this happens after something still makes it through, flies through the line of defense, and some Shahed or whatever hits. Unfortunately, it still happens. About, like, "well, where is our air defense?" Or where are our interceptors? There are already many of them, so why does it get through? What would be said in response to such remarks?

Speaker 1

This is always, again, let me remind you, a game of cat and mouse. Tactics, changing tactics. The target can come in too high or too low. The thing that constantly gnaws at you afterwards is this feeling that you missed it, and it hit somewhere, and someone suffered because of it. Well, I think that's a feeling any person who knows what empathy is has. I am a fairly empathetic person, and I work specifically so that it doesn't hit.