A video of the Spanish Army shows a disturbing end to a combat with drones

@DefAviation ES 12·30·2023 · 21:14 0

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also called drones, have revolutionized the work of the armed forces.

Spain will have its first unmanned aerial vehicles armed with Hellfire missiles
The surreal scene of a Russian soldier being chased by a Ukrainian drone

In Afghanistan and Iraq, drones were widely used for reconnaissance and intelligence missions, as well as attack missions, in the case of larger UAVs. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have introduced a novelty in the use of UAVs as attack tools: the use of small commercial drones to drop explosive devices.

Ukrainian forces have been pioneers in the use of this type of attack drones, wreaking havoc on armored vehicles and in Russian trenches, as we can see at this video we saw in July, which showed the "White Wolf" Special Unit of the Special Operations Center "A" (known as Alpha Group) of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) destroying a Russian T-80BV tank with a Mortar shell launched from a commercial drone:

This Thursday, the Spanish Army has published a video of the recent exercise Availability 23 of the VIII Bandera "Colón" of the "King Alfonso XIII" Brigade of the Legion, experimenting with drones within the framework of the program Army 2035. The video shows "an assault on defensive positions and attacks on vehicles with these means. The drones provided valuable intelligence information to the legionnaires, allowing them to carry out their missions with greater precision and effectiveness," said the Spanish Army:

In the video we see the Spanish legionaries using a small drone armed with an explosive in an attack on a trench. The recording begins with the launch of the explosive charge from the drone:

Below we see images of the legionnaires advancing through the network of trenches and also a video taken from a drone. The final part is somewhat disturbing. In it we see a BMR-600 armored vehicle, with Spanish soldiers on board. The marks in the image are those of the camera of the drone that is advancing towards that vehicle:

And the thing ends like this, with the screen that remains on the receiver of the drone controller when it hits its target and the signal is lost:

This curious end of the video should serve as a reflection: it is not enough to train in the use of attack drones like the ones we see in the video, drones that are being used by the defenders of Ukraine but that were also used by terrorists of Hamas in its attack on Israel Defense Forces border positions on October 7. Today, Spanish armored vehicles do not have any protection against this type of attacks, beyond what the best protected vehicles can resist, which are the Leopard 2E battle tanks. It is better not to wait to improvise solutions in a hurry when that need suddenly arises, as happened to the Russians.