Drone Warfare Comes to Tennessee

Fact is catching up to fiction in Ukraine, with a related excerpt from my 2009 novel Foreign Enemies and Traitors.

First the 2025 fact, and then the 2009 fiction.

Ukraine’s Fixed Wing Gun Drone

from The Armourer’s Bench

“The first imagery of the ‘ZigZag’ UAV developed by Ukrainian drone manufacturer Sky Defenders was shared on social media 15 March. Shared on Sky Defenders’ official social media channels the minute long video shows a fixed wing UAV being launched, once in the sky the video cuts to an onboard camera view which features a crude but unmistakable sighting ring. In the nose of the UAV we can see a pair of tubes set side by side. The video shows a test flight of the twin prop UAV.

“This appears to be the second fixed-wing drone developed by Sky Defenders. the first is the Vyryi M7 which is now said to be being delivered to Ukrainian units. The M7 is a loitering, or one-way, munition, powered by a single rear prop it has a 33km range and a warhead in its nose.

“In an earlier video shared by a Misha a member of the Sky Defender’s team, posted on 5 March, we get a closer look at the ZigZag gun-armed drone. The video’s caption reads: ‘Please support the combat tests of the Zigzag interceptor aircraft. This UAV is quite an achievement for my small but really awesome team. We put all our resources into this project.’

“It appears that the drone actually has four rather than two gun barrels. There is only a short clip of the drone’s guns being tested and it doesn’t appear that the drone’s flight is impacted by the recoil of the gun. From the fuselage design it appears that the drone will not be using the counterweight recoilless gun designs used by the quadcopter gun-armed drones. It’s likely the the ZigZag is powerful enough to fire conventional-type ‘shotgun’ and withstand the recoil.”

“In the video we can see the aiming post and ring and behind it a camera on a 360-degree gimbal mount which enables aiming. While the M7 drone is a one-way-munition and not designed to return the ZigZag appears to be more robust and intended for repeated sorties. The range, weight and loitering time of the UAV is currently unknown. The role of the ZigZag appears to be as a dedicated drone hunter able to rapidly intercept opposing drones and engage them with its guns. It will be interesting to see how the ZigZag is employed.

“The Sky Defenders ZigZag represents another interesting step in the rapidly evolving gun-armed drone space in Ukraine.”

[My note: the ZigZag drone shown above is currently being equipped with shotgun barrels for drone-versus-drone aerial combat, but rifle-caliber sniper UAVs will not be far behind.]

Now the closely related excerpt from Foreign Enemies and Traitors, published in 2009. The story takes place a year after two massive New Madrid Fault earthquakes have devastated the Mississippi Valley. Battalions of foreign “peacekeepers” are occupying Tennessee at the invitation of the president.

Drone Warfare Comes to Tennessee

Inside this smaller room within the gym (formerly a coaching office) were four senior UAV crew sitting at flight monitors and two managers at desks, behind their own computers. These six men, as well as those on the other shifts, had all been picked by Bob Bullard, chosen because of their personal loyalty and their understanding of the difficult but crucial nature of their mission.

“Good morning, Director Bullard,” the bearded senior technician greeted him. He was wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt and jeans. The men in this room were all dressed casually, in slacks or jeans and long-sleeve shirts, without ties or jackets. Each wore a laminated security badge pinned to his shirt.

“Good morning, Harry. Anything interesting since yesterday?”

“Oh, we had a few good shoots. Popped an A.I. and nailed a few curfew violators.”

A.I.s were armed insurgents, curfew violators and boundary jumpers observed carrying weapons. “Let’s see the video,” said Bullard as he was handed a cup of coffee by one of his entourage, whose duty it was to fetch a cup immediately upon entering any office with a coffee maker. Offices with genuine coffee were rare, but the inner sanctum of UAV flight operations was one such place.

Bullard sat in the senior technician’s padded swivel seat as the video was cued up on the monitor. He sipped his coffee and watched. In the first video clip, the infrared image of a man was clearly seen flitting in and out of the brush along a tree line. The man, hotter than his surroundings, was seen as a white figure walking against a dark background of trees and bushes. The scene appeared to have been filmed from only a hundred yards away, even though the slant range from the UAV was several miles.

This night creeper was clearly a curfew violator, with no legitimate reason to be out after midnight. The image of a crosshair appeared on him, and a few moments later the crosshair was surrounded by a flashing box. The flashing box meant that the target was being painted by coded pulses of invisible laser energy. Within a few seconds there was a silent explosion of white light. When the picture was reacquired, the man was gone, replaced by scattered white hotspots on the ground.

The senior tech said, “Night shift dropped one of the new thirty millimeters on him.”

He had seen the prototype 30mm rockets. They were not much thicker than a rake handle, and only a yard long. Smaller even than the baseball-bat–sized Viper missiles, with their four-pound charges. Being dropped from altitude, they didn’t need much propellant. Once a target was designated, GPS guidance would send the missiles into the correct area, usually to within twenty meters. The UAV operator kept the crosshair on the target, painting it with the laser target designator. When a missile was coming down its seeker head locked on that reflected laser energy, and its fins steered it to the exact impact point. Now the 30mm rockets were entering active service, saving the government money by conserving the larger and much more expensive missiles. “They follow the laser just like the old model Hellfires, right?” asked Bullard.

“Every damn time. Only a pound of explosive. Cuts ’em in half. Much better than the Hellfires or Vipers on exposed insurgents. We can use the thirties a lot closer to structures and friendlies. We used a thirty millimeter on this guy because he was over the line.”

“Over which line?”

“Northern Mississippi, but inside the buffer zone. Practically on the state line, actually.”

“Aren’t you supposed to run that by my office? We don’t want to get General Mirabeau in an uproar. We need his cooperation down there.”

“There wasn’t time. It was take the shot or let him go. The UAV was almost out of fuel, and nothing else was close enough to pick up the coverage. He was in the buffer zone anyway.”

“Fine, just use your discretion. Look, let’s skip the rest of the review. Everybody else, why don’t you go out for a break? Smokes, whatever. Take ten, okay?” When the room was clear except for Bullard and the senior UAV tech, he said, “Harry, I’ve got a special mission for you today. Here are the coordinates.” Bullard handed him a scrap of paper with the GPS numbers recorded on his visit to Colonel Jibek’s estate a day earlier.

Harry sat at an adjoining monitor and entered the digits on his keyboard. “Clark County. Let’s see what we’ve got up that’s nearby. Okay, we’ve got an armed Predator. The easiest way would be to just drop a thirty on him.”

“Listen, I don’t want to drop a missile on this target, not even a thirty millimeter. Do you have a SniperHawk available?” Bullard already knew that one was available. He’d personally been down to the “bird farm” a mile away, where the UAVs were launched and recovered, and had ordered one sent up. The small and stealthy SniperHawk had to be used together with a Predator, using the bigger drone as its data link and main visual reference provider.

“Oh, going for plausible deniability, are we?” Harry raised a conspiratorial eyebrow and winked. Harry had worked with Bullard on special projects in the past.

“Something like that.” If the Kazaks blamed an insurgent firing a long-range sniper rifle for the death of their commander, their hatred for the locals would intensify, which was a good thing. On the other hand, a missile dropping down from the sky and taking out Colonel Jibek would lead their suspicions elsewhere.

“You’re in luck—we’ve got a SniperHawk just a few minutes away. Sounds like you’ve already got a target in mind, am I right?”

Bullard handed him a photograph of Colonel Yerzhan Jibek, a portrait from the chest up, wearing a Russian-style uniform tunic with medals. “This guy. He’s not working out quite as well as we’d like.”

“Oh, I see—we’re going to have a kinetic change-of-command ceremony. Got it. Any idea where we’re going to find him?” Jibek’s confiscated equestrian estate came into view on the flat-screen video monitor, in full color and rich detail, as the Predator UAV steered itself over to Bullard’s coordinates.

“He’s usually riding a horse this time of morning,” offered Bullard. “A white stallion.”

“Well then, let’s start over at the stables.” Harry steered the camera, and in a few minutes of searching he found a mounted party. He zoomed in the camera until the men were vaguely recognizable.

“That’s him, in the middle. With the mustache and the brown beret.”

“How do you want to do this?”

“Well, you can just shoot him, can’t you?”

“Right now?” asked the senior UAV tech.

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Kind of unusual, taking out one of our loyal allies from the People’s Republic of Kazakhstan.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say he was so loyal,” replied Bullard.

“Hey, it’s your call, chief. Okay, here’s how we’ll do it. I’ll line the SniperHawk up for a straight glide-in, right at his back. As long as he doesn’t turn too much, this should work just fine.”

“They won’t hear the drone?”

“A SniperHawk? Hell no. No way. Silent but deadly—that’s our motto. I’ll bring her in low and just pop her up for the shot. They’ll never see it or hear it.” Harry cracked his knuckles and went back to his keyboard while staring at the screen. “Okay, watch a pro at work, see how it’s done. We’ll use both screens: this one is the Predator, this one is the SniperHawk. This’ll take a minute to sync up. Okay, I’m cutting the Hawk’s engine now, and arming the rifle.”

“What’s that thing shoot?” Bullard already knew; he was just testing Harry’s level of knowledge.

“What caliber? It’s a special round, very fast. A 6.5 millimeter. Fully suppressed, so there’s nothing but sonic crack, and that doesn’t give a directional reference. Okay, here we go, just watch your man on the horse.” Harry used his track ball to put a white crosshair on Colonel Jibek’s back. “Fully stabilized. Once I designate the aim point, it’ll lock on and fly the bird. There, it’s done. You want the honors? Just push this button here when the crosshair is where you want it.”

“Sure thing. This is great.” Bullard leaned across and pushed a red button on its own small keyboard. A second later he was rewarded with the image of Jibek slumping forward and sliding from his horse to the ground. Around him, the other horsemen wheeled and reared their mounts.

“Okay, I’ll take her back around now. Nice shot, chief.”

The director of rural pacification chuckled. “Yeah, I’m a natural.”

[A much longer excerpt from Foreign Enemies and Traitors can be found on my website here.]

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