The slow speed of Yak-52 in this situation is an advantage. There are no limits for Ukrainian ingenuity.

'Too close for missiles, switching to guns'

"Yakety Yak don't talk back" 😊

Full circle back to 1914 tactics. Didn't see that coming!

The Ukrainians continue to impress me with their ingenuity and creativity. Stay strong Ukraine!

The Red Baron would be proud

Ukraine is currently the world's sole producer of folk heros.

back in the mid 90s i used to fly yak 52 from Ukraine to the uk and other countries in europe for resale, they are great aircraft and can pull 6 g in a super tight turn.

The Japanese Zero fighter, with its high maneuverability, low wing loading, and a stall speed below 69 mph would make an ideal drone interceptor!

They need to add a ww1 Scarff ring with something like an MG3 with the rate of fire turned up and thermal optics.

I wonder if the US still has any of the OV-10 Bronco's laying around. Maybe the Marine Corps still has a few. They were used in Vietnam and were a worthy airframe suited for lingering, reconisance, close air support and came armed with 7.62 mm machine guns with 2,000 rounds, and external weapons including a gun pod with 20 mm (0.79 in) M197 electric cannon, and AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Some quick research reveals there are still quite a few of them around in the US and other countries. The OV-10 can land and take off on roads and is considered a STOL aircraft...short take off and landing. There are a lot of Vietnam era propeller driven planes that could be considered good candidates. One version of te OV-10 had night vision gear as well.

Nice to see a light aircraft pilot who knows what the rudder is for👍 This interception looks like an early (first) test with highly improvised armament. I'm sure they are already working on an improvement. The Yak-52 is an ideal design for a drone hunter. It can be operated from short grass strips or ordinary streets with little to no infrastructure (a workshop truck and a fuel truck), is easy to fly and highly maneuverable, has a very strong airframe, is easily fast enough and can also fly slow enough to follow every fixed wing, piston engine or electric drone. The very traditional, all metal design is easy to maintain and easy to repair and it is the key to a very wide variety of possible modifications. There is a huge, world wide used market and they are still in serial production in Lithuania and Romania (and Russia). The aircraft has been highly popular in the western world since the 90s and there are thousands of experienced pilots and aircraft maintainers and serveral sources for all kinds of replacement parts including at least some engine parts. The only downside is that the engine (Russian modification of an older Ukrainian design!) currently is only in production in Russia, but if the concept gets deployed on a larger scale, that should be solvable within a few months. 👍

where there's a will there's a way.

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'riding shotgun.'

Cope cage on drones next?

Yak-52 are a very good airframe. Their top speed is just under 300kph, so probably good to keep up with most drones it's sent up against. They were being made in Romania up until 1998 by Aerostar, who sold about 3,000 of them. They cost about $100,000USD. Bloody good plane.

Reminiscent of the old Douglas A-1 Skyraider the US used in the Vietnam War. Seems an anachronism (even if the Yak-52 was first built after the Skyraider was retired), but propeller craft have a huge advantage for low speed applications like this and loiter time. Really smart use of resources.

Specialized shotguns and rounds? At this point I’m beginning to think the Ukrainians are part Wizard. They’ll figure it out.

Great shades of Biggles! Victory to Uiraine.

Shades of WWI! Before fighters evolved, WWI pilots used the same tactic to shoot at the enemy!

Ukraine might make good use of our L3Harris OA-1K Sky Warden for combating drones over Ukrainian airspace.

Another example of Ukrainian improvisation. 👌💪🇺🇦💪🇺🇦

Now this is weird as some time ago I was discussing whether at some point a drone company would develop a fighter drone - thinking along the lines of a scaled down un-manned remote Spitfire! Specifically armed with small calibre MGs.

No school like the Old School 👍

The Yak-52s are pretty popular as trainers, aerobatic aircraft & Air Race aircraft. It's also very fast & agile.

biggest problem with using light aircraft for drone interception is deconflicting air space, which is quite a difficult problem even for modern air defence. Ukraine mostly has old soviet systems that, to put it lightly, weren't designed with heavy emphasis on safety

A trainer isn't made to be cutting edge. Just train the basics. I was thinking how unlikely it is to hit a drone like this, until I realized you just pull up into formation with the drone & it should be easy to hit in fact.

Difficult to mount a machine gun. Should probably consider shot guns using skeet trained gunners.

Very good idea indeed. I was surprised an intercepted drone deployed a parachute. Is the idea that the drone could be recalled and then salvaged if, for some reason, the orcs decide it’s better to do so? I see no other reason. Thank you!

EXACTLY!... these drones are just like WW2 planes... [or WW1] and should be dealt likewise...

Every owner of a WWII era warbird is probably on their way to Ukraine.

First Ukraine develops mini WWII bomber drones, now on to WWI style shoot downs. They on that retro vibe.

They musy have been listening to my pub conversation! A few days ago, we were discussing how several WWII aircraft could be useful in this war, like Hurricanes to tackle drones and Mosquitos, with their low radar profile, to raid Russian oil installations. Those 4x 20mm cannon would make short wotk of a row of oil tanks while the SAM's would hardly get a fix on them. Come to think of it, a Sopwith Camel might be even better for drones, slow and agile

The use of low speed trainers to take out drones is sensible, any country with this kind of aircraft spare. Should donate them to Ukraine. If they have machine guns or auto cannons even better. Argentina had some. But they might have all been blown up by the SAS.

Ооо, знакомый самолет! Вижу его в небе довольно часто ♥️

Damn I love this channel

Hmmm. Yak tail gunner anyone?

At the beginning of ww1 they used to shoot at each other with handguns. By all accounts it was very ineffective, however the drone can't take evasive action.

Thank you! 💪💪🇺🇦💪💪💛💙

I'm actually surprised that it took Ukraine this long. Brazil has been promoting the Super Tucano as a helicopter killer for years, and more recently as a drone-hunting aircraft. A modified trainer with a fire-control radar pod under one wing connected to a gun pod under the other could be a pretty good platform for this kind of job. One of the European ships in Operation Aspides (French, maybe?) also found a helicopted door gun to be a very effective weapon against slower types of kamikaze drones.

the Argentinian picara aircraft would be ideal for this situation

Thank you for the update

Ukraine has proven to be quite adaptive to the Russian threats

when i read about this i figured they had armed them but someone 'riding shotgun' might be a easier way to do it with these recon drones flying around maybe others types.. always seemed like small planes and small helis could be used to drone hunt away from the front would like to see a drone kitted up to hunt other drones...the U.S. should send them some of the gun pod armed variants of the t6 trainers we have a bunch just lying around but still think something like a little bird with door gunners on either side would make a great drone hunter their are a great many of those or something similar available

Piston powered, prop-driven, air to air combat with small arms. Fighting 21st century robots, sent by a nuclear power, with WW1 tactics. You must admit, this war has variety.

Ya know what flies even slower and is even more nimble in the air? “WW1 biplanes” have just been added to the BINGO card.

Como hacian los ingleses para perseguir a las V-1 durante la WW2, por lo visto los Ucranianos son muy astutos ..!!

the Texan A would be a good drone hunter

Snoopy air wing

This is brilliant. The old Yak-52 has a top speed in level flight of 177mph. The Shahed 136 drone reportedly flies at 115mph. Time will tell as to handgun(?) vs drone but the Yak is clearly a good choice as performance goes. Perhaps night lighting would need consideration too.

Given the location, it begs the question where the Orlan-10 originated from.

A modern day take on Stalin's Night Witches.

Gee I thought getting seasick was rough..... Imagine being in the back of the yak trying to focus on a drone

In WWII the uk pilots flew up to the doodle bug drone Germany sent and used their wing and flip them. Maybe this will work on the Russian drones. Saving all the bullets from flying around

That Yak has a very nice sound

The Yak 52 is basically a modern BB-1 as far as i can tell. Thats amazing

Tks. Cda.

Pull!

Snoopy vs. the Red Baron style.

Actually a good question: Why not build a couple of cheap (WWII level) fighters, or rather interceptors, that require less training to be flown, and equipped with a cannon? This could help with the price and training gap. They dont have to even get anywhere close to the frontlines.

Pretty sure I read a similar story in an old Issue of Commando when I was a kid 😆

Reminds me a bit of how some German V1s (the first terror drones) were intercepted by inventive Spitfire pilots in WWII: instead of shooting them down, they simply hit them with a wingtip, whereupon the 'doodlebug's' gyrocompass system failed and the whole thing crashed.

.....and it doesn't take long to train a pilot but night time drones will be a problem.

What's the deal with the parachute? I must be missing something.

Need 100% communication so ground AA doesn’t hit it, it would seem.

A similar job could be done with a Fieseler Storch, also incredibly manoeuvrable and able to land almost anywhere; problem is that there are not many of them. Antonov's first real plane was a copy of that, there could be a few of them lying about somewhere.

Thank you, Suchomimus, for bringing the videos together! 🇺🇦 Перемоги і миру всім українцям! 🇺🇦

As these are military training aircraft, you may find that some are equipped with wing hard points to carry practice bombs etc. If this is the case the hard points could be modified to mount a gun or guns.

Fantastic! And even New Zealand has a dozen or so Yak 52 aircraft!

Yak 52 is a versatile relatively inexpensive aerobatic trainer; upgraded variants are in service with numerous European airforces (Wikipedia); they are often seen performing in airshows. Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦 from 🇦🇺

Once popular as an aerobatic aircraft.

Something interesting mentioned on press conference about Norwegian military build up. It was passed with 100% agreement in our parliament. That's an enormous build up for a little country like Norway. But what might be of interest to you guys is that NASAM have the capability that's not been mentioned to fire long medium AND long range munition and not just short range as Ukraine has gotten. Norway is developing 100% norwegian produced long range version of the munition now. I suspect Ukraine will want these ASAP and I'm sure Ukraine will get them as what better way to test them than to take out attacks incoming from Orks! It will be great to see these come into use. Im not sure that our military wanted this to be known, but one of the members of the defence comittee on our parliament splurged it at the press conferense, and you could see that some reacted to the revelation. But cat out of bag now! And that's good. :)

I’ve been wondering for a while now if planes like crop dusters could be useful with some modifications. They were used extensively and very successfully in the past.

These aircraft also serve as trainers to build up flight hours among their many other uses.

LOL, the *gunner in the back* is shooting down drones? This war really IS so 1916! 😅

Jolly good show Biggles!!

Thank you good sir

Propellar Aircraft have been making a comeback in the last 1-2 decades. Especially in the ground attack role. But I guess drone defense is another option. See "Why Propeller Aircraft Are Making a Military Comeback" by "Military Aviation History". The idea is that in a area where you hold air superiority to air supremacy and in a low intensity combat (insurgency, apparently drones), they work perfectly fine. They are cheaper to build, maintain, operate and don't need military airfields.

I have thought a year ago that 1930s or early WW2 fighters would be an economical, effective anti drone fIghter

-Putin says he wants Alaska back. You can't even take Ukraine dude . . .😂 #Putin Fail Army!

Very reminiscent of the Second World War V-1 intercepts over Britain. And when the Yak's gunner runs out of ammo, the pilot could then resort to affempts at wing tipping. However, this approach only works when there aren't any Su-35's equipped with R-37s lurking at high altitude, few hundred kms away.

Great idea!

Yakolev made some interesting aircraft over the years.

You had fighters shooting down V-2 rockets in ww2 , 80 years later we are still doing it 💀

Several of these aircraft here in NZ. Sort of 'entry-level' Warbird cost-wise. Someone please get onto writing a Flight Simulator bolt-on for this 😃

Yak - also in Command and Conquer: Red Alert as soviet anti-infantry unit.

Very interesting!

"air superiority" has become wierd

I get 2nd ww vibes here, prop fighters going at it. Old-school style.

An ace in the making

It's like we're going back in time. Trenches, propeller planes, artillery warfare. What's next?

They could drop tangling lines in front of the drones.

0:54 Are they using pistols like in WW1 👀

Proof that anyone who claims Ukraine does not want to use older airframes is a traitor and a liar.

Hardly a novel tactic. The British used fighters to down V1 rockets in WWII. The V1s were the original armed drone.

well I had no doubt some1 else had the same question I had for such a long time. Finally they got it into action. Thing is whats the risk of the plane getting into air without getting shot down (air countermeasures and so on)

Why don't they use electronic anti-drone weapons from the airplane?

Maybe combo of sports pilot and sports shooter ,smaller drone they can throw a fishing net like in gladiators

Ukraine should have had several dozen turboprops already fully armed in support rolls. The modern turboprops with missiles and guns along with modern avionics and radar could be supporting front line troops vs helicopters. They can fly fast and turn on a dime compared to a jet. Get more of them headed to Ukraine asap as the flight cost is cheaper than jets as well.

Just brilliant, great ingenuity. I suppose flying a trainer plane does not require ja jet pilot training. And using a gun that isn't mounted on the airframe itself gives flexibilty. IIRC there is a US or was it Brazilian made crop duster plane with a turboprop engine--I saw a video about it a while ago--that could be something useful for Ukraine to use. Thumbs up!