"In an interview with Foreign Policy, a NATO official said that Ukrainian first-person-view drones, known commonly as FPV drones, were responsible for two-thirds of recent Russian tank losses."
The premise of the article is that Ukraine is not being able to disable tanks using conventional ways anymore because of lack of artillery shells. Also, "NATO official" tells nothing about quality of this report, it could be some clerks opinion.
I did read the article, yes, and I'm not sure what your point is. The existence of better weapons, which the Ukrainians cannot afford, changes nothing about the fact that cheap drones are effective anti-tank weapons, as ISIS first demonstrated ten years ago. Doubt the unnamed NATO official all you like, there are hundreds of videos on YouTube showing how the Ukrainian army uses drones against tanks; it is completely routine.
> the fact that cheap drones are effective anti-tank weapons, as ISIS first demonstrated ten years ago
its not a fact to me, I don't know who is that "NATO official" and how reliable his data. From another hand I rely on common sense that main battle tanks are hardened against direct middle caliber fire, and one need good amount of explosive to produce such impact. Javelin's warhead is 9kg, so your drone need to be able to carry it on solid distance, and this is not the level of "cheap racing drones".
If you are determined to remain skeptical of something which is being done every day, with a great deal of news coverage and abundant video documentation freely available to anyone who spends five minutes looking for it, there is nothing I can say that will help you. Have a nice day!
> Here's another video from googling "turret toss fpv"
there is one case of "disabled" tank there at the end, others cases got footage cut and its not clear what happened after explosion, but looks like drone hit into open hatch in that case as very visible on video. This is another weakness in this approach: RPG-7 may not cut it against modern tank, you need some more modern, powerful and probably heavy warhead to penetrate reactive armor + regular armor.
> They always look like something manufactured in a basement. Which they are.
They were building own large drones from scratch from the beginning of the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R18_(drone) so I think discussion should be if "A largish 7" drone"(from your other comment) is widely available on civil market, which can carry 1kg payload with solid range(5-10 miles?). If such drones are available (I am not expert in this), then I assume civilians can build weaponized platform base on them. But looks like Ukrainians were forced to build their own thing.
Like I said, do some googling for yourself if you're interested.
There are a LOT of videos I've seen on reddit of tanks getting hit in the space between the turret and the base which sets off the ammo in the autoloader, with the expected effects.
this is exactly case from previous video when drone hit open hatch.
I watch relevant videos, and I definitely don't see LOT of videos when drone destroys tank. This is actually first case I ever seen in my recollection.
It hit the turret, tank went kaboom. The Russian was standing in the hatch but the drone hit below that.
The tank would have went kaboom even if the hatch was closed.
I've see at least 50 videos like this, some being compilations with lots of tanks. Usually they target the rear of the tank at the bottom of the turret like in that video.
Comments on reddit say that is where the autoloader/ammo is inside.
Trust me, these videos are common. Here's another.
There's also many videos of the Ukrainian drone factories with 3D printers making parts for them.
I remember one video panning around in a basement with literally thousands of drone frames stacked up.
They look exactly like basic hobby drone frames and the videos even show the same Betaflight OSD as any FPV hobbyist would recognize.
I don't know why you are so reluctant to believe it despite the kazillion videos out there.
A PG-7VL Single-stage HEAT RPG warhead is 730g of explosive. So just the warhead end is prob 1kg. It's not going to maneuver well but a large 7" drone can carry that.
