Russia has fielded a new version of the Shahed-136 kamikaze drone armed with a single R-60 air-to-air missile. In principle, the heat-seeking R-60 would give the one-way attacker a way to engage Ukrainian fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and creates a deterrent threat, but the effectiveness of this combination is unclear.
The Sternenko Community Foundation, a Ukrainian non-governmental organization with a stated mission to help supply the country’s armed forces with uncrewed aerial systems, shared a video online today showing an air-to-air intercept of an R-60-armed Shahed-136. The Russian one-way attack drone is said to have been taken down by a Sting anti-drone interceptor, which was developed in Ukraine by the Wild Hornets Charitable Fund, partly with funding from the Sternenko Community Foundation. The footage shows the R-60 loaded on a launch rail installed right on top of the drone’s nose.
Also known in the West as the AA-8 Aphid, the R-60 is a Soviet-era heat-seeking design, the baseline version of which began to enter operational service in the early 1970s. Variants remain in use in many countries globally, including both Russia and Ukraine. At nearly seven feet long and just under 100 pounds in weight, the R-60 is a notably compact missile for its type. It is shorter and lighter than the R-73 that followed it in the Soviet Union, and also remains in widespread service around the world, and Western analogs like the AIM-9 Sidewinder family. As another point of comparison, the Shahed-136 is around 11 feet long.
It’s also worth noting here that there have been several instances of R-60s being employed as surface-to-air weapons, including reportedly on Ukrainian uncrewed surface vessels (USV), as well as by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. Ukraine has also integrated R-73s and AIM-9s onto its USVs, all to similarly pose a threat to Russian fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters sent to intercept them. In addition, Ukrainian forces make significant use of short-range air-to-air missiles adapted for use in the surface-to-air role on land.
The appearance of the video online came after Ukrainian electronic warfare expert Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov shared pictures showing what he said was the wreckage of a Shahed-136 that had been carrying an R-60 on his channel on the Telegram social media network. The images show the missile still attached to its launch rail, which looks to be of a standard design intended for use on fixed-wing tactical jets.
“Today, for the first time, an R-60 air-to-air missile was detected on Shahed,” Beskrestnov wrote in a brief post accompanying the images, per a machine translation. “This combination is designed to destroy helicopters and tactical aircraft that hunt Shahed.”