According to Russian authorities, eight drones were shot down in Moscow, and there are reports that as many as 30 drones may have attacked the city.
The attack has led to widespread speculation on social media about the origin of the drones. One drone in particular that was captured on video is puzzling the experts.
“The drone in the videos is unlike any I have seen before, which indicates that it may be a new system developed by Ukraine as part of their expanding arsenal of long-range military drones,” writes James Patton Rogers, a drone expert at SDU and Cornell University, to SVT .
However, there are similarities with a newly developed Ukrainian type of drone, which has not been seen in use so far. That’s what David Hambling, journalist and author who has been monitoring drones for many years, says.
“The problem is that anyone can make drones”
However, it is not possible to fully establish which drones have been used just by analyzing the video clips that have been circulated.
-If you don’t get access to the wreckage and can examine it, it is not easy to determine what type of drone it is, who made it or where it comes from, he says and continues:
– The problem is that anyone can make drones these days. Parts are available online and for a few thousand dollars you can get them and build a drone that is actually capable of this type of mission.
Even if the drones were Ukrainian, it does not necessarily mean that the Ukrainian government is behind the attack. An independent pro-Ukrainian group may have carried out the attack.
According to Hambling, it is also possible, perhaps even more likely, that the drones took off from within Russia.
– That explains how they got past hundreds of kilometers of air defense and why they weren’t shot down by Russian warplanes on the way there.