Feb. 5, 2026

A TV crew from French outlet TF1 boarded a Soviet-era cargo plane and witnessed civilian team members visually identifying drones and firing a hundred 7.62mm bullets per second to score Shahed kills.

A French TV crew accompanied a Ukrainian team hunting Russian drones aboard a Soviet-era, propeller-driven An-28 cargo plane armed with M134 miniguns.

The TF1 crew, which accompanied a four-person team on a night sortie on an unspecified date, reported that the men had volunteered their service to the military as civilians and were called in to help intercept drones after they were spotted in the skies.

“It’s 2 a.m. There are targets in the air to the southeast. We, as pilots, are trying to fight these drones with our planes, shooting them down with a machine gun,” one pilot told the outlet.

At -20°C (-5°F), the team prepared the plane for takeoff within 10 minutes, TF1 said, with no lights on the runway other than the torches carried by the team as seen in the video. Then, the air-defense controller directed the plane to an area with active drones, where the team was tasked with visually identifying them using night vision goggles (NVGs) and thermal imaging cameras.

Russian Shahed drone as seen by the specially equipped An-28’s thermal imaging camera. (Screenshot from video)

A drone was spotted beneath the wing, the outlet said, and moments later the machine gunner was seen raining down bullets, with audible shots and visible tracer rounds, before an explosion followed.

The M134 Gatling minigun employs the 7.62x51mm NATO rifle cartridge with a rate of fire of 6,000 rounds per minute. While equipping it on a Soviet An-28 plane is considered novel, similar setups operated by door gunners are frequently used by US military helicopters.

A Russian Shahed drone explodes after being hit by several dozen rounds of 7.62 NATO. (Screenshot from video)

TF1 then said the plane pulled away from the explosion to avoid shrapnel fragments and engaged another target.

After the plane spotted another drone, the outlet noted that the pilots and gunners did not engage it immediately but instead escorted it away from the villages below.

“We try to catch as many as possible and shoot them down in a safe place – fields, forests – but never over houses,” the pilot told the outlet. The plane shot down the drone, but not before receiving minor damage from the shrapnel.

As dawn broke, the team received an order to land, TF1 said – not because the mission was over, but because Russian cruise missiles were detected in the air.

A debriefing soon ensued, but TF1 said the plane was ordered to make an emergency takeoff again as the airfield was targeted.

One unnamed pilot told the outlet the stakes are getting higher as Russia improves its drones.

“We’re going from hunting drones to real air combat with these drones because they’re evolving so fast. They’re putting anti-aircraft missiles, air-to-air missiles, and so many other things on these Shahed drones that they’re currently testing,” the person said.

Equipping Shahed drones with anti-air missiles does not appear to be part of serial production, but isolated, officially confirmed reports have documented improvised solutions, including Soviet R60 air-to-air missiles found on downed drones and sightings of shoulder-fired air-defense launchers incorporated onto the drones.

TF1 said the plane they flew in was also marked with kill counts on its side, with five new ones added to nearly 150 already there.

The An-28, reported by TF1, is part of Ukraine’s broader effort to find cost-effective ways to counter threats from low-cost kamikaze drones.

Pre-dawn photo of the M134 Gatling minigun and team member operator with NVGs. (Screenshot from video)

Given the cost disparity between $20,000 Shahed-style drones and US Patriot missiles costing up to $7 million, Ukraine has pledged to scale up low-cost interceptor drones to counter the threat, such as the OCTOPUS drones developed and produced jointly with the UK.

Equipping An-28 with miniguns would be another approach being pursued, but the overall cost against major Russian attacks remains high – on Jan. 20, President Volodymyr Zelensky said it cost Kyiv nearly $100 million to fend off an overnight attack the same day.

“In my opinion, it’s not that we have fewer air defense missiles – it’s that the Russians now have more missiles,” he said.

“They receive components from, unfortunately, partner countries and from the private sector. Nevertheless, their ability to produce these missiles must be reduced – and that is not happening yet.”

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/69519