The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine announced that new Bayraktar TB2 combat drones have arrived from Turkey and are being deployed in the field.
The delivery comes amidst the Russian invasion into Ukrainian borders. These new drones add onto the 12 Bayraktar TB2s in Ukraine’s inventory being used in the air and naval forces.
Ukraine shared grainy aerial images of Russian tanks and missile batteries destroyed by their Bayraktar drones. A black-and-white footage that went viral on Twitter Sunday showed a massive explosion ripping through what appears to be a Russian convoy.
“A footage released by the Ukraine military shows serious defects in Russian air defense cover, which is a surprise for many observers,” Arda Mevlütoğlu, a Turkish military and aerospace analyst told the TIME outlet. “The footage is also very useful for PR and psychological warfare.”
The video shared by the Ukrainian armed forces on Sunday reveals one of the drones’ key selling points: that they are capable of inflicting disproportionate damage on enemy hardware, far more cheaply than other drones, and at low risk. Tony Osborne, the London bureau chief of Aviation Week, a publication focused on the aerospace industry, estimates that the Bayraktar drones were sold to Ukraine at a cost in the single-digit millions of dollars each – but that the Russian surface-to-air missile system destroyed in the video on Sunday could be worth up to $50 million.
