Last time, when we checked in on the horrific drone developments in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainians had dropped melted thermite along Russian trench lines and attached ground missiles to naval drones.
Ukraine owns a much smaller population than Russia, and has fixed its hopes on a critical part of drone warfare, with hundreds of businesses and organizations across the country engaging in large-scale ground guns from small air attack drones They build everything from miners carrying guns around. (And this goes without saying that all the innovations happening in Western defense companies like Aerobilon.)
Here are just a few of the innovations of the drone war that have appeared in public sources over the past few months.
Mothership
Ukraine will be able to carry large “mothership” drones for a while, and ultimately deploy a set of small attack drones. For example, this approach can extend the limited scope of the attack drone before it releases the FPV attack drone behind the frontline.
However, this week alone, I came across footage of a mothership drone, launching an attack drone, defeating a much larger Russian surveillance drone. In the video, the mothership lies above and below the Russian drone, launching a small quadcopter drone that runs towards the Russian drone and explodes. As Mothership shoots the action, fragments of both drones float.
Drones launch drones to attack other drones – welcome to war in 2025.
Hunt another drone with two shotgun barrels.
Shotgun
Since the start of the war, Ukrainians have tied everything they can imagine into a drone, from hand-rena bullets to mines and RPGs. Given the recoil, guns were a bigger challenge, but this has not stopped drone makers from trying.
