Russia's Starlink Killer & New Drone Tech Revealed

This is quite an interesting one today because Russia has struck a Ukrainian airbase with advanced drone for drones while building what is thought to be its own alternative to Starlink, the satellite constellation from Elon Musk. So this is actually quite bloody interesting. The successful strike on the Bosnian airfield, I butcher that but like that's the best I can do. On or around 27 June, 2026 Russian, Russia, Russia, Russia, they conducted a deep strike on this airfield using Ukraine's Mikhailai region using two advanced drone for jet-powered kamikaze-lautering munitions. Jet-powered drones basically so you can fly this thing over for hundreds of miles and then it'll just cruise around in a little pattern until it gets an instruction and then goes and gets the thing, goes and shoots the thing so it'll go and crash into whatever it is and blow up. The Durant 4 is a significant upgrade over the slower propeller driven Durant 2 which is the Russian version of the Shahad Shahed 136 which is like this giant wing that I think it's made of fiberglass or is it stamped aluminum now I don't know what but basically it's a very very cheap to make large delta type drone and inside this drone at the back of it there's a large plate machine plate and then bolted to that plate there's a cheap I think it's a two-stroke or is it a four-stroke engine of Ali Baba so if you go to Ali Baba you can order one of these engines like 1200 bucks and get the engine delivered on a crate and you bolt that to the back of the thing, boom, where you go so cheap as chips to make these munitions, the ducks like it, I love it so but that was the old version the Durant 2, the Shahad 136 now things have moved along you know since then I mean this war has been going on since February 2022 so yeah this has gone on for more than four years now so the Russians they don't stand still, the Ukrainians don't stand still, the West and I'm specifically talking about the UK and Germany they don't stand still they've been moving their solutions along but so have the Ruskies those pesky Russians so now what they've replaced the big noisy bloody petrol engine that they bolted to the back they ripped that thing off because too bloody heavy doesn't have enough range, too noisy enough and it can't fly high enough and they've strapped on a turbojet engine this is also really cheap and guess where it comes from China bloody China yeah China and they just sell them right they just go into the market place and they somebody places in order for 200,000 of these turbojet engines and the factory basically fulfills the order they'll just send it to the factory floor and say oh there's big order coming through we go ship them to this address in Moscow they basically do so for China it's like yeah just just this is just everyday business people are ordering stuff from us they do it all the time now we call it dual purpose you know dual use sails basically so you can you can buy these things and you can also put them to military uses very very bad now and we can just say that and it doesn't really mean anything we can accuse the Russians of doing this but that I'm really keen to be fair so and the Chinese don't care either they're like yeah whatever so far anyway so yeah the Chinese turbojet engine giving it a much higher speed making it much harder for so they just go fast for Ukraine you need a fences which there aren't any now there's bloody bug all left you know there's a few oh somebody's having a bad day over there oh dear oh oh dear mum is every around down fixer the up I think that we fell as drop something in the drink and so I'm not gonna video it but mum has had to go now I've fetched out there's not much I could do to help oh dear it's a nice little interlude right so where was I yeah the Chinese turbojet engine giving it a much higher speed making it harder for Ukrainian air defense of which there's bug all left there's really no air defense left there's another story here about the A50s which are back hunting again the A50s are the AWACS platform from from Russia and they are hunting again team so that's interesting that is really interesting but that's for another day yeah so basically Russian Ministry of Defense footage they've actually published the footage and statements claim the strike destroyed one MiG-29 on the open apron while it was armed and preparing for takeoff bloody hell so to be able to pull that off and then let me just explain how difficult that is because when when you're on a flight line if you're on a strike strike flight line you've got things that happened all the time and you're pushing and pulling aircraft in an hour hanger you don't leave out a whole bunch of aircraft sitting on the apron and then waiting for munitions and you got to load them up and you don't leave them out for days you know you'll roll them back into a protected hanger so in order for you to hit something which has basically been prepared it's been staged and it's our jet is ready for munitions that's that is really I mean that is this has been armed this has been armed so it's already got munitions the armors have come out you know when you go and arm a jet like a fighter jet you don't just turn up and just switch it on no it's like a three hour three or four hour operation for the armors to turn up and they bring out all the specialist trolleys and then they've got a system to elevate the munition up onto the pilot and then they've got to attach it and test and do all this other stuff you don't just turn up five seconds later done it no it's not like that it's actually a fairly complicated process to I think they were the we felt I dropped this shoe I think that's why it's working now along with the shoes now and I think one of them is quite wet so yeah I think he's dropped his shoe off the bridge through the bars into the drink mum had to go down and fetch it oh mum will be wild anyway yeah back to the story so look you know having worked on a strike force squadron before and done a lot of this stuff you know prep aircraft now I'm not an armourer I was an avionic engineer so the armors would come along they would do all that stuff but look it's not a trivial thing and to have an aircraft in that location in that position ready to go you know you're normally like everybody's like wow we are we're on our A game because we've got to get this thing in the air we don't have much time so yeah you don't have a big window where you've got aircraft just sitting around the apron wanting to get struck that doesn't happen that way so what I'm saying is I think there's something very different happening here I think that aircraft the drone was loitering for quite a long time and I think they had intelligence I don't know where that came from maybe from the drone itself if it had an array center array like a camera or something on the front and it can basically look down and it can see the it can see the bloody thing on the on the runway and then the operator can say to his team well chip give me the give me the coordinates for that or just let I'll just guide this thing straight in because I've got I've got a vision I can actually see the camera feed from the drone because I'm connected to the drone and that's what I think what I think is what basically happens so yeah so the drone the drone for represents Russia's ongoing adaptation and unmanned systems now after SpaceX that Elon Musk restricted unauthorized styling terminals in Ukraine earlier in 2026 as they the Russian sexy tried this they went and got a couple of SpaceX terminals and they've bolted them to the top of the of their drones and they had a few successful runs I think they were just test runs basically and they managed to make them work apparently because you kind of doing this on the daily they are sending they go in 2000 kilometers or miles they go deep into Russia with their cheap drones and they go in strike targets and they basically use our styling our dishes bolted to the roof of the drone that's how they're doing it and it's bloody ingenious so hats off to the engineers in in Ukraine because they are pulling off an absolute coup now there's another story in here around the jamming technology here because apparently Russia are actively jamming styling now inside Russia and those a lot of those drones are actually crashing they're not making their target so I'm watching carefully I suggest you do the same go and have a look at their claims from Ukraine about the number of the drones they launch that are actually hitting targets because I think the number is going down quickly I've noticed that and I'm thinking hang on what's going on maybe Russia have figured this out and they figured out a way to jam the styling consolation as it flies over Russia so basically these Ukrainian drones are losing their vision coverage and therefore they're not as effective now imagine the same thing will happen on the Ukraine side of the border if it's true what I'm saying is I think these Shahar, these Jeraan drones they are being because this new satellite angle I think basically Russia have got their own version of styling now they call it the Volna coupole garant yeah that's the on that's the system they use to jam styling can localize areas with mixed success and higher attrition rates so they've had this system and they've been using that to jam jam styling now the Jeraan 4 strike on this base may have benefited from early integration or testing of this Leo network for better resistance to jamming and improved guidance so I think I think they've definitely figured that out they've figured out how to to jam Ukraine and I think Ukraine have got to be able to reciprocate and figure out how to jam Russia yeah because I think their Russians have got their own version of styling team I think that's what they've done they've basically built their own version of styling I think they've only got like six or eight satellites in their consolation these are Leo so they're not they don't stay in the same place they actually just they cruise around the earth so they've got to get their timing right so when one of these is passing over before that it's passing over they've actually flown Jeraan into the theatre and it's basically loitering and it's waiting for this Leo to come across the top and as it comes across the top it picks up comms the comms go down to the drone and the drone can oh hey all of a sudden the operator can the camera comes on you can see I've got it sweet so for the next like 30 minutes I can control this drone and I can give it instructions so I can use it in a loitering pattern to do surveillance and I can figure out what I'm looking at and what the take wardens are so it could see that that mech 29 on the apron being prepared and actually having its its munitions loaded up onto the pylons under the wings that's crazy so that the operator will be like hang on I can see it mech 29 there it is I'll zoom in and let's have a look there it is right yep they've rolled out into the onto the apron and I can so I can see the armourers they're starting to load it up this is an active operation right here so why don't I just go fly into it and I blow it up and that's what they did so I think it's bloody interesting that they've got this new capability and I think it's really important for Ukraine to figure this out and to block it just like from what I understand I think Russia has blocked Starlink now so I don't know the Ukrainians can use those long-range drones anymore the only things they can use are things like storm shadows from the UK all their analogues from France or from Germany so the tourists and the I don't know what the French called some other version basically the same thing yeah they used terrain mapping to to find the targets but yeah bloody interesting really interesting mainly due to the fact that if we think that we in the west are isolated from all this I don't think that's the case I think right above me now there's probably a dozen Starlink satellites maybe more and they're just zipping past they just zipping around the world all the time that constellation's getting bigger and bigger so that means that if you if you're if you're a country let's say Yemen or Iran and those things are flying over you then the US and its partners they can fly drones cheap drones and have them loiter over a target and then when they track that and they decide okay we're going to strike that they can strike it it just changes everything all of the old systems that were used to like ballistic missiles are probably still usable but you know they don't have the same currency because you don't have that immediacy of information like this thing to look down and see a target and go right I'm going to qualify the target this is a new target and I'm going to approve that target package in a way I go now we we just you know we're not used to that we're not we normally we have these you know there's standoff munitions either you know air drop you know glide self-repelled glide jasms or tomahorks that are fired from a submarine or a destroyer now in the ocean they fly a long way and they can loiter not long but they can loiter without bloody expensive we don't have think this is really interesting it really changes the nature of warfare globally in the years to come yeah because of in theory team if you can if you can launch these these vehicles you know from a container ship in the South Pacific or in the Indian Ocean or in the the English Channel or in the Baltics or in the the Arctic or wherever you like it could be in the Gulf of America Gulf of Mexico could be in the Gulf of Mexico could be in the Atlantic you know just off the coast of New York you know you can fly one of these scenes going loiter and they're all of a sudden you can give an instruction so do you think can you understand what I'm saying I'm not I mean I'm interested in what's happening in Russia Ukraine I'm actually more interested in what this means for us all because yeah it's a bit chilling really really is quite you know you think on the face of it you think wow there the Elon Musk Starlink network is incredible because it means with everybody in the middle of nowhere they've got access to the internet and they can read books and they can talk to family and it's a motive and lovely and great you know the internet's empowering and blah blah blah but it's also quite bloody dangerous so you know that's what I think I think it's got pros and I think we're starting to see some of the cons of at least satellite based anywhere on the planet including on the back of a drone antenna I think that's yeah that is uh that is something else that really is something else so but that's all from me today I hope you've enjoyed this little gas bag than use overnight I really enjoyed uh learning about how these things work and uh I'm looking for some eels in the river but I don't see any eels in the river not yet yeah very very nice little spot down by the river yeah well that's all from me today so look I hope you've enjoyed this week's show little walk around talk about shahad uh drones and the drone drones and the starlink constellation and it's equivalent from Russia I don't know the name of it but I've got one up there it's a it's a first attempt we've got a few six or eight uh satellites going around the planet and they've got the same sort of system up and running so uh super interesting I thought super interesting we'll have to watch and see how this one evolves uh where it goes but I do think there are some pretty profound implications for us all going forward I hope wherever you are team you have an absolutely epic day cheers bye