How Hard Is It to Shoot Down a Drone? Even a World Champion Struggles

A Challenge Even for a World Champion

If you follow the war in Ukraine, you’ve seen the videos: FPV drones diving at tanks, chasing cars, and hunting soldiers across open fields. They’re fast, unpredictable, and deadly. And even the best shooters in the world can barely hit them.

A Finnish shotgun world champion, Kim Leppänen, recently demonstrated just how difficult it truly is. On a training range, he set up a simple test: shoot down incoming FPV drones. The result was eye-opening.

You get one second. Maybe two. And that’s it.

Three Scenarios

Kim tested three situations:

• a drone flying straight at him,
• a drone zig-zagging aggressively,
• two drones attacking back-to-back.

He had equipment most soldiers never see: a specialized shotgun, custom ammunition, thermal optics. Even with all of that, the first round went to the drones.

The difficulty is easy to underestimate. Small and agile FPV drones move with a speed and unpredictability that leaves almost no room to react. For anyone on the ground to notice the threat, assess it and respond in time is incredibly hard. One brief moment decides everything — lose focus for a second, and the drone is already too close.

Even When You Hit It, It’s Chaos

In the second scenario, when the sun wasn’t blinding him, Kim managed to hit a zig-zagging drone. But it wasn’t a controlled shot. It came down to timing, experience and some luck.

Most Soldiers Have Far Less

The contrast with real frontline conditions is stark. Many Ukrainian soldiers:

• have never handled a firearm before the war,
• use cheap, low-quality shotguns,
• do not receive special ammunition,
• and often get only a few hours of training — or none at all.

Meanwhile, the drone is piloted by an operator wearing FPV goggles, fully focused and controlling it with precision similar to a video game.

What the Video Makes Clear

Several points become obvious immediately:

• the drone closes distance almost instantly,
• any change of direction cuts the chance of hitting it dramatically,
• even a world champion struggles to keep up.

If this is what it looks like on a clean Finnish range, imagine mud, smoke, noise, stress and battlefield chaos.

Why This Matters

Frontline soldiers often rely on shotguns because many FPV drones no longer react to electronic jamming. Fiber-optic-guided models ignore it entirely. The last line of defense becomes a weapon many troops barely know how to use.

This test highlights a clear conclusion: counting on humans to reliably shoot down FPV drones is unrealistic. Modern warfare now operates in reaction windows measured in fractions of a second. A guided machine approaching at 150 km/h simply exceeds human reflex capabilities.

Sources

🔗 Original article:
https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/zahranici/mate-zlomek-sekundy-mistr-sveta-ve-strelbe-brokovnici-prozra/r~3d3d145cc09911f09af20cc47ab5f122/

🎥 Video:
https://youtu.be/mORdXxZ2uKU?si=uO34F0vavdLCHewd