While first-hand accounts of the air war over Ukraine have been previously provided by some of its fast-jet aviators, we now have new insight from the pilot and gunner of a Ukrainian Army Aviation Yak-52 prop trainer. The Soviet-era aircraft has been used to hunt Russian drones for some time now, with signs of success, but few details of its missions have been published.
In a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal, a Yak-52 pilot, a 56-year-old with the callsign “Maestro,” and his 38-year-old gunner, “Ninja,” describe their mission. Of the two, Maestro learned to fly before Russia’s full-scale invasion, as a hobby, while Ninja first went aloft in a plane after the current conflict began.
We now also know that the Yak-52s are assigned to the 11th Army Aviation Brigade, a unit within Ukrainian Army Aviation, rather than the Ukrainian Air Force. The Army Aviation branch is otherwise responsible for rotorcraft. Previously, the Yaks were understood to be operated by a Tactical Aviation Group from Ukraine’s Civil Air Patrol, a civilian organization that consists mainly of amateur aviators and private aircraft owners.
An earlier video of a Yak-52 apparently operated by the Tactical Aviation Group of Ukraine’s Civil Air Patrol:
Regardless, the drone-killing Yaks and their crews are being kept busy by relentless Russian attacks. According to the brigade’s deputy commander, Col. Mykola Lykhatskiy, Maestro and Ninja have flown around 300 combat missions in the last year, downing “almost half” the unit’s total claimed tally of 120 drones.
On a daily basis, various Army Aviation light aircraft and helicopters are responsible for downing between 10-12 percent of all drones claimed by Ukrainian air defenses of all kinds, Lykhatskiy said. Interestingly, the deputy commander also claims that the agile Yak-52 is considered more survivable than helicopters, allowing it to roam closer to the front lines.
According to the Center for Information Resilience, a U.K.-based open-source organization, around 11 percent of all Russian long-range one-way attack drones made it to their targets last month, highlighting the broad success of Ukraine’s different counter-drone efforts.
According to the WSJ article, as well as Shahed/Geran-type long-range one-way attack drones, the Yak-52 is mainly used to tackle Russian Orlan and ZALA surveillance drones. These propeller-driven types fly at around 115 miles an hour, well within the performance envelope of the Yak, which tops out at more than 180 miles an hour.
The ZALA 421-16E is a flying-wing type, weighing around 20 pounds and used primarily for surveillance near the front line of the battlefield. The Orlan-10/30 series is among the most widely used Russian drones in Ukraine, the smaller Orlan-10 weighing around 35 pounds, while the larger Orlan-30 tips the scales at around 90 pounds. It’s also primarily used for surveillance and targeting, equipped with an electro-optical sensor and laser designator.
The interception process involves the crew waiting close to their Yak-52 while awaiting the order to scramble. Once a Russian drone is spotted on air defense sensors, the Yak is normally airborne within 15 minutes.
With no radar and apparently no other onboard sensors, the Yak-52 crew relies on radio commands from the ground to get close to the drone. From the open rear cockpit, the gunner then gets the drone in their sights, wielding a handheld gun. Typically, engagements are made from a distance of 200 to 300 feet.
Both rifles and shotguns have been tested, with Ninja currently preferring a German-made “MK55 automatic rifle,” apparently a reference to the Haenel MK556 that was selected as the German military’s new assault rifle, before later being rejected.
Ninja likened the process of aiming against a drone from the Yak-52 to “shooting a gun while riding a horse.”
Other tactics include using the wingtip of the Yak-52 to tip over the drone, sending it out of control. This mirrors a maneuver that the U.K. Royal Air Force employed in World War II to defeat Nazi Germany’s V-1 flying bombs.
On one occasion last year, it took Maestro and Ninja 40 minutes to destroy an Orlan drone that began maneuvering in tight circles once they arrived. Eventually, it was brought down by a shot from directly below. Increasingly, Russian drones are fitted with rear-facing cameras to help evade interception by aircraft.
Videos show a Ukrainian Yak-52 attacking a Russian Orlan-10 drone, reportedly in the Odesa region of southwest Ukraine, in April 2024:
Russia is also apparently making direct efforts to counter the Yak-52s.
At least once, Maestro and Ninja have been forced to evade a Russian air defense missile that was targeting them. A high-speed descent saw them shake off the missile, they say.
Their base has also been attacked. One Yak-52 was destroyed on the ground in a raid last month that also claimed the life of the brigade commander, Kostyantyn Oborin. Reportedly, the hangar was struck by a Russian ballistic missile.
The latest details of the Ukrainian Army Aviation’s exploits with its drone-hunting Yak-52 indicate that the prop trainer is now a more formalized part of the country’s air defenses.
With Russian drones being very much a priority target, Ukraine has assembled a multi-layered air defense network that includes advanced Western-supplied Patriot surface-to-air missiles and F-16 fighters at one end, via Soviet-era systems and hastily developed “FrankenSAMs,” all the way down to light aircraft and mobile fire teams equipped with machine guns and searchlights. In addition, there are a growing number of non-kinetic options, such as electronic warfare, too. A network of acoustic sensors all over the country and an app that ties this information with spotter reports are also key elements of Ukraine’s unique air defense network.
On the other side, as we have previously noted, Russia now produces Shahed/Geran drones at the rate of 2,000 per month with plans to nearly triple that in the not-too-distant future. It is by far the primary method by which Russia launches long-range strikes into Ukraine.
It is worth noting that Russia, too, has attempted to develop a counter-drone solution, also based on the Yak-52, to help thwart Ukrainian long-range drone attacks. You can read more about that in our past story on the matter linked here.
Meanwhile, the continued scale of Russian drone activity over Ukraine means that the Yak-52 fleet and the crews that operate them will only become busier.
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