Here Trojan horse, over here. Come closer, closer please so everyone can see you better and take selfies.

This KyivPost story is hard to believe. Allegedly Russian soldiers worked hard to hijack and redirect a Ukrainian kamikaze-bomb drone to force it to land near them. Next they gathered even more Russians around in just such a way that… it could blow them all up.

Several members of a Russian air regiment and their security service colleagues have been reportedly killed whilst inspecting a Ukrainian kamikaze drone which they managed to hi-jack and land in an airfield in Kursk, Russia. A source in Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) told Kyiv Post the UAV was successfully intercepted by using radio-electronic warfare techniques and safely landed on the runway of the Halino airfield. The leadership of the regiment based there as well as members of the FSB then decided to investigate their new “trophy,” the source said. Their excitement was short-lived, with the drone blowing up as they were photographing and inspecting it. According to the source, those killed or wounded during the explosion included the commander of the 14th aviation regiment, one of his deputies, a group of aviator officers, a representative of FSB military counterintelligence, and airport personnel.

You have to admire the restraint of the journalist writing “drone blowing up as they were photographing and inspecting it”. No references to the infamous Russian Selfie-Roulette were made.

[Moscow] woman was left in a critical condition in hospital after she accidentally shot herself in the head while posing for a selfie.

This story relates to Russia rolling out a selection from its counter-UAS technology such as the Shipovnik-Aero developed in 2016 Syria. Every platoon allegedly gets them now.

…truck-mounted Shipovnik-Aero tactical jammer can reportedly attack two drones simultaneously. The system is fast. In approximately 25 seconds, it identifies the UAV, interrupts the drone’s command link, and if the parameters align, assumes control of the UAV’s flight path.

The truck looks a Radio Shack on wheels, in case you’re wondering what happened after all those stores closed in 2016. Also reminds me how in 2016 I was in a Tesla when some foreign ex-military jumped in, popped open a laptop and used a cheap dongle to flood the car with fake GPS signals and attempt to alter its path. It worked. I mean 2016 was kind of a big year for this stuff…

Anyway, back to 2023 and Russians pushing buttons, the rate of Ukrainian drones now being redirected (300+ per day) is getting so high that a lot of training is needed for what to do next. Making kamikaze drones even more accurate — soldiers tuning the incoming bombs to drop even closer to them — is self-defeating and embarrassingly stupid. I’m wondering now if someone clever poisoned old Radio Shack training manual translations into Russian with a trick phrase like “you can lick a drone by altering its flight path”. Oh look they landed it on their runway next to their intelligence HQ. One lick, two licks… boom.