The apparently-staged TB-2 crash from late April 2022.
As Russia’s wider war in Ukraine enters its third month, Ukraine’s small force of Turkish-made TB-2 armed drones continues to pick off Russian forces in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The 1,400-pound, propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicles, armed with 14-pound laser-guided missiles, have targeted air-defenses, artillery batteries, supply convoys and command posts.
There’s even some evidence the drones, operated via satellite by controllers on the ground, have slipped across the Russia-Ukraine border to strike logistical infrastructure inside Russia.
It makes sense that the multi-million TB-2 has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance. By the same token, it makes sense that the drone also has become a target of Russian propaganda.
Most recently, Russian forces apparently tried to create the impression they’ve shot down more of Ukraine’s TB-2s than they actually have, by staging old drone wreckage in a very sloppy mimicry of a recent crash.
The Russians have downed at least six of the slow-flying TB-2s that independent analysts can confirm. On Thursday they tried to assert an additional shoot-down—one that never actually happened. Purveyors of so-called “open-source intelligence” quickly revealed the fraud.
It started with a post on social media depicting a shattered Ukrainian navy TB-2, with the tail number T187, lying in the mud in a hamlet purportedly in Kherson Oblast, the main battleground in southern Ukraine.
The photo might have appeared legitimate to a casual observer. But OSINT experts noticed key details that matched an older photo of a TB-2 the Russians brought down reportedly in late March around Kherson. That photo appeared online on April 2.
The legitimate photo of the wreckage of TB-2 number 187.
In both photos, the same damage is obvious. A shattered port wing root. A severed port tail stabilizer. A starboard tail boom, broken at its root. The same cowling, pried loose from the fuselage.
Even an intact MAM missile, photographed separately in late March and late April, bears the same scratches and dents.
Equally tellingly, whoever staged the April shoot-down—apparently by hauling wreckage a short distance across the Kherson area—used bricks to prop up the UAV’s broken tail.
Within hours after circulating online, the Thursday photo had been thoroughly debunked as proof of a genuine shoot-down. That doesn’t mean the Russians haven’t shot down more than six TB-2s. It does mean they haven’t proved they’ve shot down more than six TB-2s.
Ukraine’s drone force if anything is growing stronger in the ninth week of the wider war. The Ukrainian air force and navy still have most of the three dozen or so TB-2s they’ve acquired in multiple batches since the summer of 2021. A fresh shipment of the Turkish drones that took place in March, after Russia attacked, underscores Kyiv’s ability to sustain if not expand its TB-2 force.
And then there are the octocopters. Aerorozvidka, a volunteer drone squad that supports the Ukrainian army, has developed a custom, eight-rotor helicopter drone that’s similar to models anyone can buy online for $10,000. And Aerorozvidka has modified these R18s to drop tiny bombs that are just powerful enough to knock out an armored vehicle.
Russia undoubtedly has shot down dozens of Ukrainian drones in addition to the six TB-2s analysts agree Kyiv has lost. A clumsy effort to inflate the tally of UAV-kills does nothing to alter the reality—that the Ukrainian armed forces have lots of drones, and are using them to devastating effect against their Russian foes.
