Ukraine carried out an attack on Russia using a civilian plane transformed into a suicide drone this Tuesday (2).
The aircraft in question was an A-22LS Foxbat, manufactured by Ukrainian Aeroprakt. It is a light sport aircraft (ultralight) with capacity for two passengers and equipped with a Rotax 912 engine with one hundred horsepower.
The vehicle is equipped with floats for landing on the water and a hook for towing gliders and has a capacity for up to 310 kg of cargo.
The plane was adapted by Ukrainian forces to fly autonomously, carrying explosives for 1,130 km — a distance from the Ukrainian border with Russia to Alabuga, a city in the republic of Tatarstan. It is in this Russian federative unit in the central region of the territory that the Shahed-136 drone factory is located.
The Shahed-136 are Iranian, but in recent months they have been produced in Russia. The country led by Vladimir Putin has been betting on smaller unmanned aircraft to carry out attacks against Ukrainian troops and on reducing the cost of using larger planes, manned or not.
The attack destroyed part of an employee dormitory at the drone factory and injured at least 12 people. A refinery in the same city was also hit on that date, but it was not possible to confirm whether by another A-22 or by a different aircraft or missile.
The fact that the aircraft flew more than 1,000 km inside Russia without being detected or intercepted is worrying for Russian air defenses.
Out there
Receive in your email a weekly selection of the most important things happening in the world
A similar incident occurred during the Cold War, when Russia was still part of the Soviet Union.
Then, a German pilot flew a Cessna 172 Skyhawk —an aircraft similar in size to the Aeroprakt A-22— from Finland to Moscow and landed in Red Square, the regime’s seat of power. He was only approached two hours after landing.
