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On February 19, the Armed Forces of Ukraine supported by the NATO military attempted an attack in the Russian rear areas using British kamikaze UAV.
Russian FSB, units of the military commandant’s office and the Russian Guard intercepted a British kamikaze drone Banshee Jet 80 in the Novoazovsky district of the DPR.
The Russian military managed to intercept control of the UAV and land it in the fields far from the residential areas. After the controlled landing, the specialists defused the warhead, which included seven kilograms of explosive and destroyed the charge on the spot.
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The decoding of the flight mission revealed that the target of the strike was an object of the civil infrastructure of Mariupol. The drone was supposed to approach the target from the Taganrog Bay and make a circle over the Novoazovsky district; but the attack failed.
Banshee Jet 80 is twin-jet engine powered drone, which entered service in 2010.
The current version is fitted with twin 40kg thrust gas turbine engines giving a total of 80kg of static thrust. This offers an increase in the maximum straight and level airspeed of up to 180 metres/second. The use of an auxiliary fuel tank ensures that endurance is similar to that of the single engine version with a typical mixed throttle mission time in excess of 45 minutes.
When fitted with the patented Hot Nose the target provides a forward and side-looking IR source with output in Bands I, II and III, whilst the jet engines provide a realistic rearward looking Infrared (IR) signature.
All other well proven augmentation devices traditionally available to Banshee can be fitted to this latest twin jet engine derivative.
The UK has repeatedly announced the supply of various drones to Ukraine, including promises to send “hundreds of kamikaze drones” with a range of up to 200 km.
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According to the reports from the Ukrainian frontlines, the Ukrainian military began using gifts from the UK in February 2024. On February 7, previously unknown Ukrainian kamikaze UAV shot down by Russian air defense. The warhead of the drone was equipped with shrapnel for a greater damaging effect on personnel, and the engine was a German P400-PRO jet, freely sold on the Internet. In two days, on February 19, another similar drone was intercepted by Russian air defense forces. The drones had common features with the British Banshee Jet 80+ jet target UAVs. Thus, it is possible that they were also assembled in the UK.
