Double blow: Ukrainian drone of new type attacks oil pipelines along Russian-Belarusian border

Ukraine may have used its new kind of UAV in attacks on the Russian oil industry. On 29 January, in the evening or early morning the next day, drones from Ukraine's 14th Independent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Regiment struck a pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline along the Russian-Belarusian border in Bryansk region. Forbes writes about it.
The Druzhba pipeline is one of the world's largest pipelines and is critical to the infrastructure of Russia's most profit-making industry.
The resulting fire was large enough to be registered even by NASA's fire detection satellites.
‘Judging by the fire, the strike was precise’, noted Estonian analyst WarTranslated.
The Ukrainians have been attacking Russian oil for two years. But almost all of the strikes have been carried out by drones packed with explosives, which simply fly to their targets by themselves. However, recent UAVs have been bombing the republic of Bryansk with bombs, according to the popular Mykolaiv Vaniok publick.
Ukraine has already been using civilian sport planes modified for remote control, under which large bombs can be attached. So far, however, it appears that the drones were simply crashing into their targets rather than dropping bombs.
An Aeropract A-22 sport plane loaded with explosives can barely fly more than 600 kilometres round trip. Yet Ukraine has been striking Russian oil infrastructure 1,200 kilometres or further from the front line.
‘Using A-22s in one direction means they can fly missions 1,200 kilometres away instead of just 650. There is no need to drop a bomb when there is no expectation that the attacking drone will return to base,’ the publication said.
The recent attack against Druzhba targeted a pumping station just 40 kilometres from Ukraine, meaning that the endurance of the drone bombers was not a major factor in planning the attack. They may or may not have dropped their bombs and returned to base. Operators could also have dropped their bombs and then directed the drones along a second run to crash into the same target they had just bombed. Double strike.
If large Ukrainian drones are capable of dropping bombs underneath, they can also come back up. These could be reusable weapons: each would hit more than one oil refinery or pumping station during its lifetime.