Active Conflicts & News Megathread August 22, 2025

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[u/Well-Sourced]

There have been a few examples of drones taking down helicopters in the Russia-Ukraine War and now have one in Colombia. As troop transports they have always been vulnerable when loading/unloading and with the introduction of drones to non-nation state actors all over the globe they are even more so.

🪖MilitaryNewsUA🇺🇦 | BlueSky

In the department of Antioquia, 🇨🇴Colombia, local militants used an FPV drone to shoot down a police helicopter carrying government personnel in an anti-drug operation. 12 police officers were killed.

[u/Electrical-Lab-9593 → u/Well-Sourced]

the heavy lift drones carrying things like stinger / marlets and ATGM seem interesting to me, UK has one testing, making a small cheap automated attack helicopter seems like something good for a drone role, if you can get around the electronic warfare hurdles

helicopters need to have jamming helicopters with them, the turbines can power the radios, I think russia has one that does this.

[u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho → u/Electrical-Lab-9593]

I suspect the range with payload on these is poor. The best way to deal with EW might be to have these work on a fiber optic connection, like newer FPVs. You would need to check if the back blast of the missile launch yanked out the fiber.

[u/Electrical-Lab-9593 → u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho]

hydra 400 fully loaded carrying 400kg is 25km, it has NATO 14" rail can carry the brimstone which is about 50KG i think, so will go way further than 25km with just missiles on it, and shoulder launch style missile would be lighter even than that, but i don't know how hardened it is vs EW/Jamming, or it is even in production, but that was the concept.

here is a picture of it

https://www.mbda-systems.com/mbda-invests-uk-sme-maker-innovative-hydra-drone