Adviser to the Minister of Strategic Industries of Ukraine Yaroslav Oliinyk has shared a notable video showing the synergy of a Shark unmanned reconnaissance aerial vehicle from Ukrainian Ukrspecsystems and a Switchblade 600 attack drone from U.S.-based Aerovironment.
In the video, the pair of drones launch a coordinated attack at a russian Tor mobile anti-aircraft missile system. The attack rendered the Tor, praised in russia as particularly effective against small unmanned targets, eliminated. The events took place a few months ago.
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Frontline life in Tokmak direction. A few months back, I was a recon UAV pilot. Here's a special video — our first TOR-2M Russian anti-aircraft system takedown. A Switchblade 600 hit it, and I was adjusting fire with a Shark drone from Ukrspecsystems. This footage captures the… pic.twitter.com/ybiPcY3Wv7— Локі (@yaroslav_loki) November 18, 2023
OSINT analysts have already geolocated the place: it happened near Kharkove village in southern Ukraine, close to the second line of russian defense.
Besides the fact that quite a valuable target was destroyed with a rare weapon, the most important here are the circumstances. To begin with, this region must be densely covered by air defense systems of all calibers and electronic warfare equipment. However, as we learned previously, Shark was specifically designed to be EW-resistant, so it shouldn't be a problem for providing target data on russian Tor.
As we can see from the footage, the Tor also was active and surveilled the surrounding airspace, yet for some reason wasn't aware of the Ukrainian drone watching over it. Having changed position, Tor's crew is trying to aim at the Shark UAV by pointing the radar toward it. Still, no missile launch happens, at least there isn't one in the video, or the Tor system failed.
Either way, the russian air defense system was destroyed, as specified, by a Switchblade 600. There is no moment of the hit but the recorded results indicate the Tor was immobilized and out of order, the crew had left the vehicle. Afterward, the target was finished off with other weapons.
The bottom line is that Tor wasn't able to neutralize Switchblade, and EW systems couldn't suppress it either.
We should also point out how the russian vehicle was freely moving near an anti-tank ditch, apparently, there were no such dense minefields deployed near that line of defense at that moment.
This video is a good illustration of the real capabilities of weapons Ukrainians acquired throughout the war, particularly of the Shark UAV and Switchblade 600. For a reminder, the former was developed from scratch to mass production all during wartime. Tor could see it but not destroy it, for one reason or another, and its effectiveness in the conditions of intense electronic warfare is evident. The same goes for the Switchblade 600 that managed to strike the target hard enough with its anti-tank warhead to render it immobile and ultimately taken down.
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