British-made drones have been used by the Ukrainian armed forces for deep-strike missions against the Russian economy for the first time, a report states, prompting Moscow to make one of its periodic allusions to the threat of nuclear war.
Drones built by two British companies have been successfully used for long-range deep strikes into the Russian hinterland against military and economic targets in recent months, a report in The Sunday Times states, citing both Ukrainian and British government sources. The report states one of the weapons transferred from Britain to Ukraine is the Callen-Lenz / BAE Systems developed ‘Nyan’ drone, which has been used on strikes said to include targets such as “oil refineries in Volgograd, southwest Russia, and Yaroslavl, near Moscow”.
The Nyan cited in the Times report is a compound delta-winged, jet-powered, carbon-fibre drone — also known as a “One-Way Effector (OWE) Uncrewed Air System (UAS)” — designed to do the job of a cruise missile at a fraction of the cost. Crucially for the Ukraine conflict, the design has some ‘stealth’ properties, it has backup navigation systems to find its target in areas where heavy radio jamming means guidance systems like GPS can’t be guaranteed, and it can be mass produced quickly to a price.
Hellbound and Down 