David Hambling reports via Forbes that a missile could not erase Russian drone’s embarrassing stealth secret. Hambling writes:

Shooting down their own brand new drone on video when it went out of control over Ukraine may be one of the biggest embarrassments ever suffered by the Russian Air Force. But there may be worse to come.

The Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik-B (“Hunter-B”) was a prototype stealth combat drone, a ‘loyal wingman’ designed to operate alongside with the new Sukhoi Su-57 “Felon” fighter. After it was shot down by its accompanying Su-57, the Russians fired an Iskander missile at the crash suite to destroy the S-70 wreckage. Pictures show that well before the missile strike took place, the Ukrainians had already taken away key components for analysis.

That analysis is likely to be very embarrassing for the Russians – but maybe not for the reasons you might expect. […]

After the S-70 was shot down, the Russians hit the crash site with an Iskander ballistic missile. These missiles are scarce and expensive, and diverting one from the campaign against Ukraine’s cities suggests this was a high priority target. There are several reasons why the Russians would want to stop the West from recovering the drone wreckage. […]

Even more serious is that the S-70 was designed alongside the Su-57, Russia’s showpiece next-generation combat aircraft, and likely uses the same stealth materials and techniques. If the West can see how S-70 stealth works, they could get a pretty good insight in to how to defeat the Su-57 too.

But there is a more likely explanation of what the Russians are really trying to hide. And that is that the Emperor has no clothes, that their stealth technology is non-existent. […]

Given Russia’s culture, it is quite possible that even senior commanders are not aware of these shortcomings in their stealth technology. Nobody ever wants to report bad news, and Russian defense contractors know how to pay off procurement officials all the way to the top.

The Russian leadership may be about to find out that their expensive, much-hyped invisible drone is not in fact stealthy at all. And they will find out by reading it in the public media.

Read more here.