- Russia’s FSB says it was able to hack British-made Banshee drone
- The drone can fly up to 400 mph with a range of 60 miles
- The FSB said it canceled the Banshee’s flight 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 canceled its flight plan because it was on a mission and to have landed the UAV.
“After a controlled landing of the drone, explosives experts neutralized the warhead weighing 7 kilograms,” the Kremlin’s official newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, reported.
“Experts studied the electronic contents of the UAV and determined that it was aimed at a large civil infrastructure facility in Mariupol.”
No specific details were given about the “decoding” and the precise target, if any, or how it was intercepted.
The FSB security service claims to have canceled the flight plan of the Banshee drone because it was on a mission and to have landed the UAV.
No specific details were given about the “decoding” and the precise target, if any, or how it was intercepted.
Banshee drones are capable of flying at 400 mph with a range of 60 miles
Denis Pushilin, Putin-appointed head of the occupied Donetsk region in Ukraine, said: “The Russian FSB Directorate for the DPR [Donetsk People’s republic]”Together with units of the military command and the National Guard, in the Novoazovsky district they intercepted a British Banshee Jet-80 kamikaze drone.’
He accused “Western terrorists, together with their Ukrainian accomplices” of trying to “organize a monstrous terrorist attack and blame everything on Russia.”
Pushilin said: “Against the background of a major defeat of the Ukrainian armed forces in Avdiivka, the Kiev regime is making any 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 victims.”
Banshee drones are capable of flying at 400 mph with a range of 60 miles.
They can fly up to 30,000 feet.
They are typically intended as aerial drones that simulate threats during military exercises.
It is unclear whether Ukraine has repurposed the Banshee Jet-80 into kamikaze attack drones, as Russian claims suggest.
Another theory is that they were used to detect Russian air defenses and that the plane had gone down near the front line and that is how Putin’s forces obtained it.
There are no signs of damage from Russian air defenses.