Recently, UNITED24 published a video showing SSU drone operators from Special Group Alpha in action on the front line. The footage offers intriguing details about how and with what they managed to strike two russian helicopters in flight last year.
On August 7, 2024, an unidentified drone hit a russian Mi-28 attack helicopter. Just a few days later, a similar incident occurred, this time involving a Mi-8 transport helicopter. These became the first known cases in history of a drone striking a helicopter in mid-air.
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It turned out that both helicopters were hit not by an air-defense system or a standard FPV quadcopter, as initially assumed, but by a Ukrainian-made UAV called Darts.
Darts is an FPV wing drone, meaning it is operated like a conventional FPV drone but features a fixed-wing design. This allows it to carry a larger warhead, fly farther, and reach higher speeds than typical FPV drones — all at a relatively modest cost of around $1,000.
The drone can carry a 4–5 kg warhead over a range of 40–50 km and reach speeds of about 160 km/h. By comparison, the russian Molniya kamikaze drone can carry a heavier payload of up to 10 kg but has a shorter range of around 30 km.
In the video, the operators claimed the helicopters were "shot down" rather than merely "damaged." However, no visual confirmation has been released, so for now it can only be confirmed that the helicopters were hit or damaged.
ПЕРШЕ У ІСТОРІЇ УРАЖЕННЯ ГЕЛІКОПТЕРА ДРОНОМ У ПОВІТРІ!Воїни підрозділу М2 Центру спецоперацій СБУ змогли вчора завдати удару по російському Мі-28 довгим FPV, на який ви раніше донатили.На жаль, інформації про подальшу долю гвинтокрила немає.Також на відео ще 2 спроби заходу… pic.twitter.com/bsqVAHs6Ja— Serhii Sternenko ✙ (@sternenko) August 7, 2024
Whether the drones were able to strike critical components of the helicopters at such an angle remains an open question.
For the record, Myanmar’s resistance forces actually beat Ukraine to this historic milestone — in May this year, they became the first to down a helicopter using an FPV quadcopter drone.
Read more: russian Molniya-2 Kamikaze Drones Now Equipped With Thermobaric Warheads
