Sadly, Russian ‘SuperCum’ Aircraft Are Just a Typo

In the early hours of March 16, the official Twitter, Facebook, and Telegram accounts for the Ukrainian Air Force claimed to have shot down three Russian “SuperCum” drones. It was a typo: The text was meant to read “SuperCam,” and the accounts quickly corrected the mistake. But the damage was done. SuperCum entered the public consciousness.

The Ukrainian Air Force says Russia launched 6 Kinzhal missiles from 6 MiG-31K aircraft, 9 Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea, 3 S-400 or Iskander-M missiles, and 6 Shahed / Geran-2 drones over night, all of which were successfully intercepted.https://t.co/Cu9pZqA2MM pic.twitter.com/k58PEKr9bt

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) May 16, 2023

Along with information about Russian losses, Ukraine’s Air Force posted an image that detailed what it had destroyed. Both the text and the image contained the typo “SuperCum.” What Ukraine actually destroyed was three Orlan-10 “SuperCams.” The Orlan-10 is a reconnaissance drone that’s curved like a batarang. It’s meant to be stealthy, take pictures, and come home. According to Ukraine, three of them didn’t.

SuperCum was the one English word in the sea of Cyrllic text, which made it impossible to ignore. News of the SuperCum’s destruction spread fast on the internet, with many people uncritically repeating the typo. It ended up on some pro-Russian Telegram channels and some war-watchers assumed the typo was propaganda designed to make Kyiv look foolish. It wasn’t. SuperCum is merely an innocent typo, the kind of thing you do when you’re excited your military just downed a bunch of enemy ordinance and you want to get the news out as quickly as possible.

⚡️Rumor has it that US Army (NATO) Major Johnny Sins was killed in a #SuperCum drone strike on an underground base in Dnipro today. The bunker was located 1,100m below the surface of the earth. RIP Hero. 🇺🇸💦 pic.twitter.com/v0h8H6akHZ

— ✙ Fella Brigade ✙ (@FellaBrigade) May 16, 2023

Facebook allows users to edit their posts, but it also allows the public to view edit histories.s. The SuperCum typo lasted a respectable 15 minutes on the Ukrainian Air Force’s Facebook before an administrator for the pagefound it, removed the picture, and edited “SuperCum” to say “SuperCam.” In those 15 minutes, however, SuperCum had spread far and wide, and became a trending topic on Twitter on Tuesday.

News of the slippery typo overshadowed the biggest news in the damage report. Kyiv claimed it had shot down six more of Russia’s “unstoppable” hypersonic missiles. Moscow, it seemed, has been lying about its performance.