The crew of a Mi-8 helicopter from the Ukrainian Navy’s Naval Aviation destroyed 12 Russian Shahed kamikaze drones in just three hours.

A mi-8 helicopter designed in 1968 eating $50k*12 shaheds = $600k of cutting edge military equipment destroyed in three hours for the price of fuel and bullets.

A mil mi-8 costs somewhere around $10 million dollars and can be used for an absolutely mind boggling amount of uses other than war. This is even more true for the advanced flying expertise pilots gain in shooting down the shaheds. Shaheds after all began as a derivative of a target drone design...

The math doesn't work out for shaheds here like people assume it does especially because a platform like an mi-8 can easily carry more high powered sensors than a shahed can and thus detect shaheds at a much greater range than the shahed can in return detect the larger sensor platform.

This isn't a new concept, it is just the idea that bigger things do things more efficiently and powerfully than a bunch of smaller disconnected things, but drones have made people selectively forget this.

https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/shahed_136_really_cost_20_50k_iran_sold_them_to_russia_for_200_300k_in_2022_actual_price_far_higher-17764.html