The Ukrainian military uses special sights to shoot down Shaheds

2 January, 2024 The mobile fire team fires at aerial targets. Photo credits: Air Command "South" Ukrainian mobile air defense fire teams are using digital sights for targeting.

The Air Command "South" published a video capturing the use of new equipment. To strengthen air defense and reduce the pressure on missile units, the Ukrainian military has long used mobile SUV firing teams to shoot down low-speed strike drones such as Shahed. The main weapon in these teams is heavy machine guns, which are guided by thermal imaging sights and powerful searchlights that illuminate targets in the night sky.

The effectiveness of such units is not fully disclosed due to manual targeting by the gunner, which could lead to frequent errors and misses. However, it seems that this problem is already being tackled by the introduction of special digital sights.

Automatic target lock-on by the thermal imaging sight of a machine gunner as part of a mobile anti-aircraft fire team.

Photo credits: Air Command "South"

The footage published by the Air Command "South" captures the process of automatic target acquisition in the thermal imaging camera sight. Such an application should aid the shooter in quickly detecting a stealthy flying object and aiming at it, which is extremely important, as the target could be in the striking range for a few seconds. It is not announced whether this sighting system is capable of making adjustments for firing at moving targets.

The M2HB Browning machine gun is equipped with a sight as part of a mobile fire team.

Photo credits: Air Command "South"

In addition to machine guns as part of mobile fire teams, portable anti-aircraft missile systems of the Soviet and Western models are often deployed. Ukrainian volunteers equip MANPADS launchers with thermal imaging sights to use against air targets in the dark.

Ukrainian military and Strela-2 MANPADS equipped with a thermal imaging sight. Photo credits: Air Command "South"

Thus, the Prytula Foundation acquired 100 Guide tk 431 thermal imagers, which will be equipped with 100 Igla MANPADS.

Sights and mounts for them were transferred to military units of the Ukrainian Navy and air defense units of Air Command "South."