- The Russian FSB says it has been able to hack a British Banshee drone
- The drone can fly at a speed of 600 kilometers per hour with a range of 60 kilometers
- The FSB said it was overruling the Banshee’s escape plan
Russia claims to have successfully ‘intercepted’ a British Banshee Jet-80 kamikaze drone and obtained its secrets.
The FSB security service claims to have overruled the flight plan because it was on a mission and landed the UAV.
“After a controlled landing of the drone, explosives experts neutralized the seven-kilogram warhead,” the Kremlin’s official newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta said.
“Experts reviewed the electronic contents of the UAV and determined that it was targeted at a major civilian infrastructure facility in Mariupol.”
No specific details were given about the ‘decryption’ and its possible precise target, nor how it was intercepted.
The FSB security service claims to have ignored the Banshee drone’s flight plan while it was on a mission and landed the UAV
No specific details were given about the ‘decryption’ and its possible precise target, nor how it was intercepted.
The Banshee drones can fly at a speed of 640 kilometers per hour and a range of 100 kilometers
Denis Pushilin, appointed by Putin to head Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region, said: “The Russian FSB Directorate for the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic), with units of the Military Commander’s Office and the National Guard, at the Novoazovsky district intercepted a British Banshee Jet-80 kamikaze jet drone.’
He accused “Western terrorists, together with their Ukrainian accomplices” of trying to “organize a monstrous terrorist attack and blame Russia for everything.”
Pushilin said: ‘Against the background of a major defeat of the Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka, the regime in Kiev is making every attempt to destabilize the situation in the republic (occupied region).
“Thanks to the coordinated work of our special services, we were able to prevent a large-scale terrorist attack with human casualties.”
The Banshee drones can fly at a speed of 640 kilometers per hour and a range of 100 kilometers.
They can fly up to 30,000 feet.
Normally they are intended as anti-aircraft drones that simulate threats during military exercises.
It is unclear whether Ukraine has converted the Banshee Jet-80 into kamikaze drones, as Russian claims suggest.
Another theory is that they were used to track Russian air defenses and that the plane crashed close to the front line and that is how Putin’s forces got their hands on it.
There are no signs of damage from Russian air defenses.