[Combat] Ukrainian FPV drone equipped with shotguns shoots down Russian drones.

While back I was listening to some folks from Boston dynamics talk about a project in broad terms… basically a “platform for repetitive concessionary force”… aka treads for an auto shotgun or belt fed machine gun. This was 2018?

We way past knife on roomba tech.

just wait till the flying cats learn how to hop on for a ride

It could possibly be using some kind of recoil less/low recoil firing mechanism. All you need to fire a buckshot is a tube and a firing pin of some sort, the amount of recoil essentially just depends on how tightly you close the back end of the tube. A shoulder fired rifle obviously needs to close off the back completely, but this kind of drone could in principle have an open-ended firing tube.

The tradeoff for low/no recoil is of course less energy being imparted into the buckshot. However, I can't imagine that you need a very high-energy projectile to take down these drones, so it may well be worth the tradeoff to improve the accuracy, not to mention the increased stability allowing you to manoeuvre immediately after firing.

It was a mistranslation from Telegram's built-in translator. Here is the correct translation:

For the first time on video – drone "Winchesters" shooting down other drones with buckshot

a semi-automatic shotgun has a lot less recoil than a single shot gun because it uses the recoil energy to cycle in the next round.

Not sure what type of action they have on these guns

There appears to be very little recoil.

They don't say what gauge they're firing, which would be a factor. Might be less than 12-gauge.

If you figure that weight of the gun is going to cut into flight time, you might want a light gun if possible.

EDIT: The video here shows Ukrainian soldiers testing shotguns against drones. The guy says that #3 buckshot is inadequate to break the blades:

https://www.twz.com/land/anti-drone-weapon-with-24-barrels-firing-buckshot-like-rounds-emerges-on-russian-buggies

So there may be some lower bounds on what they can effectively use. It looks like there are double-aught .410 shells, but I'd guess that you wouldn't be sending many balls downrange.

EDIT2: I was wondering about using a 40mm underbarrel grenade launcher firing flechette rounds earlier, as that'd let everyone in a squad carry something that'd have at least one round that'd put a lot of projectiles downrange quickly; one has to assume that a squad patrolling isn't going to give up their assault rifles for shotguns or similar. NATO does have a 40mm canister round.

Since they're all plastic, it may not be a regular level of shotgun force.

Mutually Assured Drone Destruction?

id prefer drones fighting drones over humans fighting humans tbh