Anti-aircraft drone shoots down experimental Russian Merlin-VR UAV. VIDEO
Soldiers of the 1129th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment shot down an enemy reconnaissance UAV Merlin-BP.
According to Censor.NET, he was hit by an anti-aircraft drone, after which he opened his parachute and fell.
Merlin-VR is a Russian experimental unmanned aerial vehicle. It is designed to conduct terrain reconnaissance in automatic and semi-automatic modes. It was developed by the Research Institute of Modern Telecommunication Technologies (RIMTT, JSC) in Smolensk. On 28 September 2021, the Merlin-BP prototype was presented. There is no information on testing, let alone mass production. The developer claims that the device has a hybrid engine, which gives "little acoustic signature". However, the drone shot down by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in early June 2022 during the Russian aggression against Ukraine did not have any hybrid technology in it, only a conventional engine. The drone was also equipped with French-made thermal imaging optics Lynred (Ulis) PICO1024 with a resolution of 1024*768, and a regular plastic canister with a handle was used as a fuel tank.
