Russia Arms Shaheds With Air-To-Air Missiles To Shoot Down Helicopters

Russia continues its relentless drone bombardment of Ukraine, launching over 5,400 Shahed-type attack drones last month. The vast majority, around 84% , were shot down, many by Ukrainian helicopters. But Russia has just raised the ante, by arming some Shaheds with R-60 air-to-air missiles in an attempt to turn the tables and shoot down those helicopters.

Blasting Drones From Choppers

Shaheds typically cruise at about 120 mph, following a preprogrammed course. Generally there is no operator control: the drone has no situational awareness, and will do nothing to avoid either ground fire or aerial threats. So it is relatively easy for a helicopter to fly up alongside one and blast it with machine gun fire until it goes down.

There are many videos of Ukrainian helicopters downing drones with turret-mounted machine guns or cannon , or door gunners unleashing M-134 minigun fire at close range.

Ukraine has an elaborate layered air defence including electronic warfare, aircraft, missiles, interceptor drones and mobile ground units. While we know the total number of drones downed, we do not know the distribution of kills. What we do know is that some helicopter crews have been extremely successful. One video shows an Mi-24 attack helicopter with at least 50 kill markings. Others are anecdotally credited with hundreds of kills each.

The Russians have taken various measures to make Shaheds less vulnerable, including fitting them with cameras and modems so operators can take evasive action when the drones are targeted. Now they have taken things a step further by arming their drones.

Enter The Aphid

On December 1^st, influential Ukrainian electronic warfare expert Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov shared images of a downed Shahed with an R-60 missile and launch rail with the comment “This combination is designed to destroy helicopters and tactical aircraft hunting for Shaheds.”

Further imagery released later showed when the Shahed was shot down.

The R-60, otherwise known by its NATO reporting name of AA-8 Aphid, or Vympel, is a short-range air-to-air missile originally carried by jet fighters in the 1970s. It is an infrared missile which homes in on the engine heat of the target, and has a range of about five miles. A proximity fuse detonates close to the target, and the seven-pound warhead is a ‘continuous rod’ type, a set of hinged steel rods which unfold to into a giant ring moving fast enough to cut through an aircraft.

While the R-60 is one of the lightest air-to-air missiles, along with its launch rail it still weighs over a hundred pounds. That is a lot of extra weight and the missile-armed Shahed likely does not have a warhead. The missile armed drone is an escort fighter to counter aircraft, with no ability to hit ground targets.

Aiming the missile must be fairly challenging for the drone operator even if the communications are working well. The Shahed is no dogfighter and has limited maneuverability, being designed for long-endurance flight. Once alerted that there is an enemy aircraft in the area, the drone operator must swing the drone around and capture the target in the missiles’ narrow field of view, then hold it there long enough for the missile to achieve lock on before launching. This might be possible with a slow-moving target like a helicopter.

Short-range heat-seeking missiles can be highly effective, with the US equivalent to the R-60, the Sidewinder, scoring up to 80% kills. But some earlier model Sidewinders had a success rate at low as 10%, and the Russian missiles may fall in the lower end of the range. Also some heat-seeking missiles can be easily decoyed by infra-red flares carried by helicopters and other aircraft.

Aerial Drones, Sea Drones, And The Numbers Game

This is not the first time drones have been armed for air-to-air combat. The US tried putting Stinger missiles on its Predator reconnaissance drones, but in the only known encounter an Iraqi Mig-25 easily shot down a Stinger-armed Predator in 2002. In 2021, Iran displayed a drone with an Azarakhsh (“Thunderbolt”) air-to-air missile and test-fired it.

The concept with all of these is the same. While armed Shaheds may not individually present a major threat to helicopters, they change the calculus. When you intercept enough Shaheds, one of them will be carrying a missile, and every time that happens there is a risk of losing a valuable helicopter.

This is exactly the same approach as Ukraine has taken with its drone boats. The uncrewed speedboats were vulnerable to Russian helicopters machine-gunning them, so the Ukrainians responded by arming a few of their boats with surface-to-air missiles. In at least one case these have shot down Russian helicopters. It would be a brave or foolish helicopter pilot who risked getting within firing range of a drone boat.

The point of drones like the Shahed and drone boats is that they can be made cheaply in large numbers and overwhelm or wear down defenses. Using expensive platforms like helicopters or jets to down them may not be a workable strategy, and pilots will need to be wary of this new threat, especially when a Shahed swings around to face them.

Fortunately Ukraine is rapidly scaling up an alternative. Interceptor drones, which cost much less than Shaheds, are now appearing at scale (one brought down the missile-armed Shahed). Maybe Shaheds will get miniature gun turrets or other means to counter the interceptors. One thing is fcertain: drone warfare is evolving fast, and the war of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures will continue.