A Ukrainian unit is hunting down dozens of Russian drones with a flying double-barrel shotgun

• A Ukrainian battalion has published a video of a shotgun-mounted drone destroying dozens of targets.

• It's 1 of the biggest footage collections of drones shooting down different drones.

• The tech is apt based connected a World War I recoilless gun, which fires from some ends of a barrel.

Propellers whirring implicit the frost-laden landscape, the Ukrainian drone approaches, duplicate barrels creeping toward the force bomber.

A flash erupts connected its attached first-person presumption camera, and the people — a DJI Mavic drone — falls lifelessly to the ground.

Dozens of different attacks play successful accelerated succession, each showing the ends of 2 barrels blasting Mavics retired of the sky.

The video was posted connected Sunday by the 2nd Motorized Battalion of Ukraine's 30th Mechanized Brigade, which is warring adjacent Bakhmut. Its accompanying caption was simple. "Shooting down force drones is 1 of the priorities of the 2nd Battalion of the 30th Mechanized Brigade," the battalion wrote connected its Telegram channel.

These clips signifier portion of 1 of the largest recorded collections made nationalist of a comparatively caller conception successful enactment — drones shooting down different drones.

The signifier besides carries implications for however battlefield exertion is evolving much broadly successful the war, arsenic Ukrainian and Russian units person experimented with attaching firearms and adjacent molten thermite to drones, fundamentally creating flying guns and flame-spewers.

In Sunday's post, the double-barreled shotgun drone chiefly targeted what look to beryllium Mavics. These lightweight, commercialized Chinese-made drones are costly and, therefore, typically reserved for scouting oregon bombing missions by some sides.

Inspiration from World War I

Ukraine's Presidential Brigade, which has units warring successful Luhansk, publicized an identical instauration to the shotgun drone successful aboriginal March.

Footage showed a recoilless weapon concept, wherever a quadcopter is fitted with agelong barrels designed to occurrence from some ends. One broadside aims astatine the target, portion the other extremity fires to supply counter-recoil and support the drone stable.

"The interaction origin is strong. You don't request precision; the dispersed effect is what matters," a brigade subordinate told the camera.

The brigade published a clip of the drone firing astatine a people board, its duplicate barrels roaring. Since the drone was not seen with a reload mechanism, the shotgun volition apt person to instrumentality for manual reloading.

The aforesaid thought was seen successful Ukraine arsenic aboriginal arsenic precocious December, erstwhile a Ukrainian charity, LesiaUA, posted clips of what it said were shotgun-mounted drones it had helped to fund. Visually, the drone appears to beryllium the aforesaid benignant arsenic the 30th Mechanized Brigade's.

Russian drone manufacturers had already been investigating the conception arsenic aboriginal arsenic September. State media outlet RIA Novosti published an nonfiction that period covering the plan of a azygous tube mounted connected a drone that could occurrence successful some directions simultaneously.

"It operates connected the rule of the Davis craft cannon from World War I," the outlet wrote.

Designed from experiments by US Navy Commander Cleland Davis successful 1910, the weapon provided militaries with a mode to trim recoil but was cumbersome to reload. It saw constricted usage successful World War I.

Drone improvement moves rapidly successful Ukraine mostly owed to the industry's decentralized nature. Volunteers, units, and manufacturers typically enactment connected idiosyncratic projects and beforehand them to each other.

Many creations, specified arsenic fibre optic drones, person progressively featured bequest exertion utilized to bushed much modern equipment. In the West, it's prompted concerns among immoderate defence analysts that the NATO military-industrial analyzable has placed excessively overmuch accent connected processing precocious weaponry, without considering the request for quantity oregon the anticipation of lower-tech solutions.

Read the archetypal nonfiction connected Business Insider