A new generation Russian drone was shot down by a Russian fighter jet over Ukrainian lines. Moscow would have decided to destroy this ultra-secret device so that its technologies do not fall into Western hands.
Rather destroy it than let the enemy get their hands on it to discover its innovations and the origin of the components. This is undoubtedly the reason which pushed Russia to shoot down an S-70 Okhotnik-B (hunter in Russian, hence its nickname Hunter), the most advanced drone in the Russian air force. And to make clear the technological advance in this area, Moscow participated in the broadcast of images showing the air attack.
In the video released by the Ukrainian army, we can see a Russian fighter jet, most likely an SU-57, firing a guided missile at the drone which crashed with a loud explosion. According to local media, the two planes were flying at an altitude of more than 7,000 meters above the town of Konstantinovka, in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine.
Like the American X-47B or the European nEURon, the S-70 Okhotnik-B is a stealth fighter designed to fly in pairs with fifth-generation combat aircraft. Supersonic and stealthy, this unmanned combat aircraft (Ucav) was designed by aircraft manufacturers Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG and Sukhoi.
This drone is a concentrate of technology. It is supercharged with artificial intelligence to detect land targets and transmit precise information from the territories it flies over. Designed to carry out air-to-ground attacks, it has impressive dimensions: 19 meters in wingspan and 14 meters in length. At takeoff, with its armaments, its weight can reach 25 tons, including nearly 3 tons of ammunition.
A $170 million program
Before this event, it had not been officially presented. Some images showed a futuristic device adorned with a red star on each of its wings.
Most military analysts agree that the SU-57 pilot appears to have lost control of the drone. If it crashed in Ukraine in an area controlled by Ukrainian troops, Moscow would have feared that Western countries would recover information on its design in order to hack other copies of this drone. Russia reportedly has only three units and is preparing three more.
To develop it, Moscow would have invested nearly 170 million dollars. Each copy would cost between $15 and $18 million. According to an Osint Defender post published a year ago, the S-70 would have made its first test flight in 2019 to be operational in 2024. Apparently, things did not go as planned.
Given these characteristics and the amounts involved, there was no question of letting a Western country study the technologies it contains in order to copy them or manage to hack the communication system which connects it to the Su-57 pilot.
Moscow would also fear that NATO would discover the flaws in these stealth cells. According to an article published in 2019 by the specialized site rusi.org, the Russian drone is technologically behind Western or Chinese demonstrators. For other experts, the Russian drone would be a low-cost imitation of the American X-47B.
By shooting him down in a place particularly monitored by the Ukrainians, did Russia want to make people believe that its program was successful? In this information war, all questions are open and all answers are allowed.
