How $500 Drones Obliterated $50 million Russian Strategic Bombers

The FPV drones that attacked Russian airfields yesterday are the OSA model from the Ukrainian company "First Contact."

These drones, believed to be costing around $500 apiece, obliterated 7-13 Russian strategic bombers including the Tu-22 and Tu-160 which cost upwards of $50 million each to make.

The quadcopter drone has a  sealed frame that houses all the electronics, which allowed the drones to "survive" a trip in trucks on rough roads, unconfirmed reports said.

According “First Contact,” the "Osa" UAV system is designed for searching, detecting, identifying targets, and delivering weapons payload to destroy them.

 "Osa" can lift up to 3.3 kg of payload and stay in the air for up to 15 minutes. The drone also has the ability to accelerate to 42 m / s (up to 150 km / h), which allows them to strike despite strong wind, which also speaks to the reasons for choosing this particular drone.

The technical characteristics of the Osa UAV allow for the use of various types of target payloads, including:

Cumulative charge (kamikaze, drop).

High-explosive charge, fragmentation-high-explosive charge (kamikaze, drop).

Thermobaric charge (kamikaze, drop).

VOG (an abbreviation for “Вогнегасний осколковий гранат,” which translates to Incendiary

Fragmentation Grenade) – up to 12 units dropped in successive salvos.

In one of the images on website of “First Contact,” a high-explosive weapons is shown strapped to the bottom of the OSA drone.

Success of Intelligence

While the "Operation Spider Web" (Name given by Ukraine to this operation) could go down as one of the most successful covert operations ever, similar to the use of Pagers to immobilize Hezbollah operatives by Israel in the run-up to the Lebanon offensive, it could not have been  a success without precise intelligence as to the location of the aircraft, down to a meter in terms of accuracy.

"We prepared the operation for more than a year and a half. The planning, organization, all the details were perfectly prepared. We can say with confidence that this is a completely unique operation," Ukrainian President Zelenskyy 

Here, the combined intelligence strength of NATO may have been on the side of Ukraine providing precise data as to the arrival and departure of aircraft and to strike simultaneously at the airfields when the aircraft were parked there.