Mysterious Surveyor Drones Have Shot Down More Than 1,000 Shaheds In Ukraine

NATO troops want to bet on them.

The Merops system has destroyed more than 1,000 Russian Shahed drones in Ukraine using Surveyor interceptors. It is now being deployed in NATO countries.

Western governments have praised the success of Merops and hope it will protect Eastern Europe from attacks by the Russian Armed Forces in the future. This is according to Business Insider, whose journalists learned the details during military exercises in Poland this week. U.S., Polish and Romanian servicemen took part.

U.S. Army Brigadier General Certis King, commander of the 10th Air and Missile Defense Command, told the media that the Merops system has been very effective in combating kamikaze drones in Ukraine. He estimates that it has neutralized up to 40 percent of the downed Shaheds.

It was developed as part of the U.S. Project Eagle initiative. The complex consists of a small ground control system, launch platforms and a Surveyor interceptor drone. The cost of one such drone is about $15,000.

Surveyor is either manually controlled by an operator or autonomously targeted using thermal, RF or radar sensors. The interceptor accelerates to about 280 km/h and carries a small warhead that explodes when rammed by an enemy drone or remotely detonated.

Western militaries assure that the Surveyor flies fast enough to catch up with Shahed jets, although it itself uses propellers. The drone is allegedly resistant to electronic warfare, which has become a big problem for UAVs in Ukraine.

Surveyor has already intercepted more than 1,900 drones in combat conditions, including reconnaissance and strike models. A flight usually takes only a few minutes. During an exercise in Poland, drones were launched from pickup trucks.

The entire system is operated by a crew of four: a commander, a pilot and two technicians. Training takes two weeks, which is much less than for many other modern weapons.

Ukraine earlier used a new interceptor drone. The 5th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade showed how it found and shot down an enemy UAV in the sky.

The Ukrainian STING drones are very effective at shooting down Shaheds. As the Wild Hornets team stated, they can destroy about a hundred targets in one night.

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