https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d6CJtoibnWc

Also see above video.

Amazing to see, although Super Tucanos would have obviously worked, this ultralight turboprop civilian is perfect as an ultra-lightweight electronics warfare platform designed to effectively and cost efficiently disrupt large Russian shahed style flying bomb attacks.

This is the kind of practical, non-flashy weapons development that wins wars.

Go along for a ride in the shark (I like the account name :P).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Angsf1SWecI&pp=ygUgc2hhcmsgYWlycGxhbmUgdW5leHBlY3RlZCBmbGlnaHQ%3D

Rundown of this unexpected warhorse from a civilian buyer informational video.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JObUKp4R64Q

“This is the most efficient platform you can buy with the 912 [aircraft] engine in it.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotax_912

[the civilian version of the aircraft weighs without fuel ~325 kg]

“I will get to ~8000 feet in about 10 minutes” pilot on the high power to weight ratio of the plane.

This is not a “frontline” aircraft at least in the traditional sense of the word, and it is hilarious to see people bashing this thing like it is going to lose air to air missile duels or be dodging SAMs. A single surface to air missile designed to shoot down fast jets can easily cost a multiple of what this aircraft sells for on the civilian market bought in single units. This is designed as a backline workhouse designed to be cheap and scalable enough to protect cities from mass cheap shahed attacks.

The cherry on top is being able to train Ukraine’s next generation of pilots at the same time. Honestly flying in one of these has to be a really special experience, they are custom designed to inject a joy of flying into the pilot and passenger, not a joy derived from the drug of war and violence but of flight and the freedom inherent to it. Fear and respect a nation of people who understand flight or make a similar mistake nations did during the age of sail that dismissed smaller nations of mariners as pushovers that could be overwhelmed by sheer force and number, sailing expertise be damned. No, the pilots will always win, kings just sometimes forget it and think they must be the more powerful of the two because their throne is chained to the ground.

A king desperately pretending he is a pilot to project the illusion of having the individual power to change the world with his own two hands. Keep lying to yourself, fool.

I would not be so confident as Russia is throwing away the lives of their precious pilots while they set a clarion call over Ukraine to learn to fly and then provide basically infinite trainer drones to practice interdicting/ shooting down all day as much as they have the human capacity to train. It will inveitably produce a generation of pilots that can steamroll Russia with whatever airframe they have access to, military or not.

This is a target practice drone masquerading as a weapon. Fear those who cut their teeth downing waves of these, for they will be formidable, relentless and highly experienced.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nT9cH3jR5Y0

It is called a shark after all!

The Wind Rises

Imagine if you were a frontline UAV pilot in Ukraine and had turned your love of FPV racing and the adrenaline inducing high speed action of flying drones into an ability to kill… that leaving a mark on you however I can’t imagine it does… and yet had never had the time or money to actually learn to fly in an airplane and one day somebody approached you with the opportunity to rotate into the backline and learn to fly real airplanes while still keeping your country safe?

Imagine for a minute how you might feel the first time you were able to use your honed killing skills to do something even more basic and powerful, lift your body with an involuntary cry of joy into the air… now experiencing the true raw potential of flight as a full body experience.

I can see the potential in this “weapon system” to do the most important thing necessary to decisively winning a war, which is create a potential so much more powerful than violence that it washes it away like rain. To say “fine, optimize your factories to train my next generation of pilots” is the kind of response that dismantles empires…