A crewed US Air Force fighter and an uncrewed jet-powered aircraft flew together recently, communicating and showing how autonomous drones might fight in a future air war alongside human pilots.
US defense firm General Atomics, a competitor in the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Program aimed at developing and fielding loyal wingman-type drones, said on Monday that its MQ-20 Avenger, long a CCA stand-in, flew with an F-22 Raptor.
During the test at Edwards Air Force Base earlier this month, the stealth fighter’s pilot commanded the test drone to carry out tactical maneuvers, perform combat air patrols, and execute airborne threat engagement tasks.
The most recent demonstration is an advancement of a similar test in November 2025, when an F-22 pilot used a tablet to control an MQ-20, a test aircraft being used to demonstrate CCA-style teaming. The tablet allowed the pilot to communicate with the drone and send commands during flight.
The flight test earlier this month saw the Raptor pilot use government-provided autonomy software on the F-22 and a tactical data link to pass commands in real time to the drone.
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“This demo featured the integration of mission elements and the ability of autonomy to utilize onboard sensors to make independent decisions and execute commands from the F-22,” David Alexander, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., said in a statement.
The Air Force views CCAs as an attritable force multiplier that will be used with manned aircraft and autonomy.
US Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. John Macera
General Atomics said the latest demonstration showed how CCA-type platforms could increase the combat power available to human pilots in a future war.
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft program is a priority for the Air Force as a way to bolster American airpower. These drones are meant to fly alongside advanced fighters, including the coming sixth-generation F-47 being developed by Boeing.
Air Force officials say CCAs aren’t disposable, but they’re cheaper than fighters like the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. They are built to be attritable so they can be risked in combat instead of a human-piloted aircraft.
Testing with the MQ-20 is helping inform the Air Force’s CCA program, which is focused on General Atomics’ YFQ-42, Anduril’s YFQ-44, and Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A. The air service envisions these systems as easily upgradable platforms compatible with high-end crewed aircraft.
CCA-type drones, which include designs beyond those with dedicated Air Force program designations, are designed to carry out missions on their own, from air-to-air combat to strike and intelligence roles, while also boosting the power of a formation by adding more sensors and weapons without another pilot in the cockpit.
The Air Force says that CCAs are not intended as replacements for its crewed jets but are rather partners that will change how pilots work with artificial intelligence and drones — and expand US airpower in a fight, especially against a near-peer adversary.
Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s cofounder, said there’s a common misconception about his company’s signature software-powered drone: People say it needs to be armed.
The more experienced militaries who work with Shield AI, however, know they don’t need that capability in modern war, Tseng told Business Insider.
“Who doesn’t ask for that? The US military doesn’t ask for that because we understand joint fires. The Ukrainians don’t ask for it anymore, either,” said the former Navy SEAL, who is Shield AI’s president.
The V-BAT, a vertical takeoff and landing drone that uses artificial intelligence to fly in jammed environments, has primarily been used for intelligence and reconnaissance missions in high-profile conflict zones such as Ukraine. Shield AI said the V-BAT flew over 200 missions there in 2025.
The drone is still meant to be a multi-mission platform, Tseng said, and Shield AI has been exploring ways to mount weapons on it. The firm announced a partnership last month with South Korean arms manufacturer LIG Nex1 to equip the V-BAT with six-pound guided missiles.
“But at the end of the day, look: I describe V-BAT as a mini predator, reaper drone,” Tseng said. “That’s the mission it’s doing, which is: It’s finding targets. And it’s hard to find targets, you have to be out there for a long period of time.”
The V-Bat is being primarily used for ISR missions, but there are also options for the AI-powered drone to be equipped with weapons.
Kim Hong-Ji/REUTERS
To be fair, the MQ-9 Reaper is also commonly equipped with missiles.
However, Tseng said sophisticated militaries already have a vast array of other weapons that can turn the V-BAT’s intel into a precision strike.
“If you have been in these combat zones, the US allies who fought closely with us in Afghanistan, they do not ask for organic fires on board the V-Bat,” Tseng said. “Because everybody is so used to just saying: ‘Okay, I have a targeting package. What fires asset do I have lined up? Is it a one-way attack drone? Is it HIMARS? Is it artillery? Is it an SM-6? SM-3?”
“Doesn’t matter. You can find weapons,” he added. “The weapons are available. You need, actually, more intelligence.”
V-BAT’s early use in Ukraine
This was a framework that Ukraine still needed to improve when the V-BAT began spotting targets there in early 2024, Tseng said. The drone is meant to fly for over 13 hours and be easily deployable, requiring a two-person launch crew and no runway.
Tseng said that while Ukraine excelled in tactical drone warfare, its troops weren’t used to having a long-range asset that could spot targets for regular strategic attacks as the US military did.
“The strategic effects would happen, but they would be rare,” he said. “They’d be very, very deliberately planned operations, very expensive operations, things like what they did to the Russian runways with sending quadcopters deep into Russia via trucks.”
Ukrainian drone teams would use the V-BAT to find important targets, such as Russian S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, only to realize they hadn’t linked up with the right teams to strike them, Tseng said.
“We’d say: ‘Why didn’t you guys have these weapons lined up?’ They’d say: ‘Oh, well, we didn’t think to coordinate,'” Tseng said.
Since then, Kyiv’s forces have been using intelligence from V-BATs to carry out strikes with systems such as one-way attack drones or US-made HIMARS, Tseng said.
“There was a lot of learning over the past year for the Ukrainians,” he added.
The US Army used its first Best Drone Warfighter competition not just to test skills, officials say, but to identify what makes a top drone operator — and who in the force is best suited for the job.
Rather than training every soldier to fly drones, the Army is using competition to identify the skill sets of top drone operators and whether there are specific roles within units that would make the most sense for working with uncrewed aerial systems.
The effort reflects a broader shift from treating drone flying as something for all soldiers to approaching it as a specialized skill set that requires the right aptitude, training, and sustained practice.
The inaugural drone competition took place this week at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, gathering teams from across active, Reserve, and National Guard units. There were no requirements on what types of soldiers could participate or where they came from.
Rather, “it was just send your best UAS operators,” Col. Nicholas Ryan, director of Army UAS Transformation at the Aviation Center of Excellence, told reporters, prompting a mix of operators with different backgrounds and expertise.
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Over three days, soldiers competed in multiple events, testing their piloting skills. The first was an obstacle course that operators navigated using first-person-view drones.
Recent US Department of Defense directives have prioritized the development and integration of drones across the Army.
US Army photo by Spc. Michelle Lessard-Terry
The second was a hunter-killer scenario in which teams used a reconnaissance drone to survey an array of targets and decide which were highest priority for simulated strikes with one-way attack drones. The competition didn’t involve any kinetic strikes; instead, soldiers flew the drones into nets on the targets.
The third event was focused on innovation. Soldiers could build, modify, and test their own drones.
Ryan said that the Army was taking notes throughout the competition on who the top operators were, calling it talent management.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “it’s not about receiving trophies or awards,” it is about identifying what sets the top drone operators apart and figuring out how they developed those skills. The goal, he said, is to understand “what lessons can we take from this to find out who the best operator is and how they became the best operator. What skills and resources and training allowed them to become the best operator?”
Soldiers in the US and Ukraine have noticed that gamers make excellent drone pilots, as do soldiers who have experience piloting hobby drones.
“That’s something we’re absolutely looking at right now,” Ryan said.
Army leaders have previously noted a correlation between soldiers who grew up playing video games — or who are active gamers — and drone proficiency.
Troops who game have shown quick reflexes, precise hand-eye coordination, and strong spatial awareness that make them competent with drones.
At an exercise in Germany last fall, a US Army captain told Business Insider that the top pilots were soldiers who “when they got off on Fridays, then go and play video games.”
The Army has been restructuring its approach to drone warfare, rewriting its training and focusing on integrating soldiers with small drone training into front-line units. Lessons and approaches are being shared across the service, building a broader doctrine on how the Army is adopting drones.
The competition allowed Army leadership to learn more about the skillsets and backgrounds that make drone operators successful.
US Army photo by Sgt. Aaron Troutman
Ryan said that the service is realizing that flying drones needs to be a dedicated assignment. “You can’t be a squad rifleman and a drone operator,” he said, explaining that “it’s one or the other because you have to have the level of skill and expertise in operating and employing the drones. That’s what you have to be good at and train at and focus on for most of your time.”
Other Army officials said efforts like the competition were demonstrating where drones best fit in a formation and what aspects of training are most important to maintain these highly perishable skills.
For the most part, soldiers flew their drones successfully, but the Army did take note of communication breakdowns as soldiers went through the hunter-killer lane, specifically getting drones into position and identifying and simulating strikes on targets.
“That’s an example of something we didn’t anticipate, but it’s absolutely standing out as that is something we as an Army need to do better on,” Ryan said. “If we’re going to proliferate these drones and want them to be more effective and lethal, we just need to improve on how our soldiers talk to each other to communicate when they’re using them.”
In future iterations of the Best Drone Warfighter competition, the Army hopes to include kinetic elements as well as electronic warfare and jamming to better replicate real-world scenarios.
NATO is deploying a Turkish drone carrier to the Baltic Sea to boost its surveillance and defense in response to “repeated” Russian airspace violations, the alliance announced on Friday.
The TCG Anadolu will support Eastern Sentry, a defensive operation the alliance launched in September after Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace, forcing a military response.
The Turkish drone carrier is deploying toward the coast of Latvia, where it will contribute to air surveillance and defense along NATO’s eastern edge. Allies have been surging fighter jets and warships to the Baltic region in response to Russian drone incursions.
Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, one of three operational-level NATO headquarters, said in a statement on Friday that the deployment of the Anadolu follows “repeated airspace violations” that have been attributed to Russia.
JFC Brunssum called the deployment “a clear signal to the east” and said that it “sends an unmistakable message” that NATO is prepared to defend its territory.
A Bayraktar TB3 drone lands on the flight deck of the TCG Anadolu earlier this month.
Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images
It’s unclear when the carrier will arrive on station and how long it will remain there. The Turkish defense ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, and neither JFC Brunssum nor NATO’s Allied Air Command responded to a request for additional information.
The first-of-its-kind TCG Anadolu is the Turkish Navy’s only drone-carrying amphibious assault ship. It was commissioned in 2023 and is now Ankara’s most advanced vessel and flagship.
The 750-foot-long vessel was originally intended to carry helicopters and F-35B fighter jets, but after Turkey was kicked out of the F-35 program over its purchase of Russian surface-to-air missile systems, Ankara decided to repurpose the Anadolu for fixed-wing drones.
The Anadolu can carry Bayraktar TB-3 and Bayraktar Kızılelma combat drones, systems made by the Turkish company Baykar, as well as attack helicopters.
JFC Brunssum said the carrier is the largest ship in NATO’s Steadfast Dart fleet, which is comprised of 17 vessels, including amphibious landing ships, frigates, destroyers, and submarines.
Iran and China have also built their own drone carriers, and Portugal expects to receive one later this year.
Ukrainian soldiers are out cutting and snapping any fiber-optic drone cables they come across, regardless of which side they belong to. They use scissors, knives, even their bare hands.
Troops say it doesn’t matter if a drone is Ukrainian or Russian. If they’re not sure, they just assume it’s hostile.
These unjammable drones controlled by long, thin cables have flooded the battlefield as a countermeasure to the electronic warfare that often renders radio-frequency drones inoperable.
As these drones have become increasingly prolific, the result has been forests and trenches snarled with discarded and active cables.
Fiber-optic drones can leave webs of cables across Ukraine.
Francisco Richart/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
DimkoZhluktenko, an analyst with Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said that he always carries scissors so that he can “cut each and every optic fiber that we see.”
He said that his unit “actually stopped considering them friendly or foe. We think that all of them are kind of the enemy drones.”
In a YouTube video about the gear he carries, Zhluktenko said scissors became so essential that when his unit started operating in areas littered with fiber-optic cables, every team member was required to carry a pair. He said that he bought retractors for his team so no one would lose them.
An analyst with Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said he carries scissors to cut the cables of fiber-optic drones he comes across.
Dimko Zhluktenko
A Ukrainian soldier who spoke with Business Insider on the condition of anonymity said troops can often break the thin strands with their hands; that isn’t often necessary, though. Soldiers in his unit already carry scissors for medical purposes. Many also have knives.
He said that there can be so many cables about on the battlefield that “you don’t know if it’s a new thread or if it’s an old one that’s been lying around for a long time.” So his unit severs any they find as often as possible.
Not just fiber-optic cables
Other similar behaviors have been observed on the battlefield.
There are sometimes so many drones in the sky that soldiers looking up from the ground can’t even begin to tell which is friendly and which is hostile. In such cases, soldiers can be ordered to shoot down any drone they see.
Soldiers in charge of electronic warfare systems sometimes panic and jam everything in the air when they can’t tell drones apart, Zhluktenko previously told Business Insider.
Drones controlled by fiber-optic cables are popular as they can’t be jammed.
Viktor Fridshon/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Zhluktenko told Business Insider that cutting the fiber-optic cables is not something that he had to do often, as his unit was typically working in areas further from the front-line fighting that had fewer of the fiber-optic drones. He described it as something that they “sometimes” encountered.
Soldiers in Ukraine’s 15th Mobile Border Detachment “Steel Border” previously said in a video for Ukraine’s state border service that using scissors is a reliable way to disable the Russian drones. Russian soldiers have reportedly done the same.
If the cable is intact on an active and operational drone, the only other way to stop it is to physically shoot it (troops say a shotgun works best); that requires a mix of skill and luck, though.
Fiber-optic drones are a relatively new feature in this war that have not previously been fielded at this scale. That these drones can be disabled with simple tools — scissors, knives, bare hands — underscores a broader pattern in Ukraine: sophisticated systems are often countered with low-tech fixes.
In many cases, some of the most effective counters to advanced technology have been older or improvised combat tools — from shotguns used against small drones to nets draped over vehicles and positions to blunt aerial attacks. Even the drones themselves are cheap innovations designed to overcome more expensive equipment and wartime demands.
Ukraine’s large-scale drone war is pushing Western militaries to treat small drones less as high-end equipment and more as expendable ammunition that isn’t meant to come back.
US Army and British Army officials, as well as a NATO veteran who volunteered to fight in Ukraine, told Business Insider that effective drone warfare requires sending large numbers forward — and accepting many will be lost as a routine cost.
Maj. Rachel Martin, the director of the US Army’s new drone lethality course, told Business Insider that the conflict shows that “if you’re going to flood the zone with drones,” especially in a combat situation where electronic warfare is heavy, “you’re going to lose a lot of drones.”
She said it’s a “transition from the army of old,” where a lost drone was “a significant emotional event” that was reported to senior leadership. In Ukraine, it’s different. “Drones go down all the time.” There, losses are typically shrugged off, rather than investigated.
Drones are key to Ukraine’s fight, and the idea that many will be lost is understood across the military.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
That shifting mindset is shaping how Western militaries train.
Lt. Col. Ben Irwin-Clark, the commanding officer of the British Army’s 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, told Business Insider that his battalion has changed its training to allow drones to be damaged or even destroyed to reflect battlefield realities. “I absolutely think they need to be disposable because otherwise you’re not training realistically,” he said.
Not high-end equipment
Jakub Jajcay, a former special forces member from Slovakia who fought in Ukraine, told Business Insider that if NATO militaries want to start using drones for real missions, they “need to get used to the fact that they’re basically expendable material more akin to ammunition or fuel or gasoline, things like that, rather than specialized high-end pieces of equipment that need to be looked after.”
He said when he was serving in the military for his home country, “drones were very specialized pieces of equipment.”
The drones were fairly expensive, he shared, “and there was always a sort of bureaucratic process” in using them. Sometimes, only designated individuals were allowed to use the drones.
Ukraine uses small drones differently from the way that Western militaries did in previous conflicts.
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
If something happened to a drone, “that would’ve been a big problem in training. If we had lost a drone, somebody would’ve been in big trouble for that.” The war in Ukraine shows how poorly that peacetime mindset fits large-scale combat.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has featured drones on an unprecedented scale. Ukraine says roughly 80% of its strikes are carried out using drones rather than other weapons. Many never reach their targets and are lost along the way, though.
Cheap drones worth several hundred dollars have destroyed weaponry worth millions. But many of them don’t have any effect. A report last year from the UK’s Royal United Services Institute said that “between 60 and 80% of Ukrainian FPVs fail to reach their target, depending on the part of the front and the skill of the operators.”
Some drones are jammed or disrupted by electronic warfare, while others are shot down or get their cables cut. Sometimes they’re knocked out by soldiers on their own side.
Many of the drones on the battlefield are single-use, designed to explode when they hit their target, but many of them are destroyed, damaged, or disabled before they even reach that point.
Jajcay said that even drones designed to be used again and again “have a lifespan of maybe a few dozen missions at most.”
He also said that drones failed “all the time,” and those losses were expected.
Allies want to learn as much as possible from Ukraine’s drone warfare.
Paula Bronstein /Getty Images
The West is changing its view
The US Army is recognizing and learning from these dynamics in Ukraine, as are other Western militaries, as they incorporate the idea that drones cannot be treated as overly precious assets into their drone warfare training and doctrine.
Maj. Wolf Amacker, who leads the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Tactics Branch at the Aviation Center of Excellence, told Business Insider that out of the thousands of drones used daily, only around 30% of them hit their targets, while many others don’t have a significant impact on their targets.
The Army is learning that lots of drones need to be sent forward.
Irwin-Clark told Business Insider that the way the UK sees drones has also shifted. He said “every time there’s an iterative change in technology in the battlefield, everyone gets very excited about it and the ownership of that asset tends to be far too high.”
The US Army is training troops for drone warfare.
US Army/Leslie Herlick
He said that often when a new and powerful technology emerges, senior leaders will try to tightly control it, arguing that because there are only a handful available, only a select few should have the authority to decide when it’s used. The assets are carefully protected, at least initially. Later on, trust is imparted to soldiers to handle technology previously in the charge of higher-ups.
That pattern, Irwin-Clark said, is “exactly what’s happening with drones.”
His battalion wrapped the first drones it received years ago in bubble wrap, “and we didn’t fly them very often,” he said. “When we did,” he continued, “we made sure we flew in the middle of a field with nothing, no obstacles around.”
Now, his battalion is deliberately crashing its latest drone delivery into targets, while looking at how to make repairs. “It really doesn’t matter if we break them,” Irwin-Clark said.
The US is coming at it the same way. Martin, who previously commanded a Gray Eagle drone company, said her course takes into account that “drones crash. I’ll say that to the day I die having owned drones as a commander: drones crash.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said last year that the defense department needs to view small drones as consumables rather than “durable property” — more like ammunition than valuable equipment. It’s a change that Jajcay described as “a step in the right direction.”
Western armies were using various drones in warfare before Russia’s invasion, often using them as surveillance platforms or tools for launching missile strikes. Small drones weren’t used the way they’re being used in Ukraine, but the US, UK, and others are learning drone lessons from the war.
Martin said the ongoing conflict in Ukraine shows that even when you lose drones, it’s ultimately “still cheaper than employing missiles on specific targets.” That’s an equation the US Army can’t totally ignore.
“They’re cheaper, and you’re not putting human lives in danger” to carry out the mission, she shared. And the Army knows that “they’re going to crash. It’s going to happen.”
Cosmos floated his quadcopter over the ruined warehouse, guiding it through a corner of the roof where shattered metal sheets had collapsed to form a hole.
The drone pilot’s unit, the Wild Division, suspected that the building was a logistics hub for Russian soldiers, roughly 15 km, or about 9 miles, from the line of contact in southern Ukraine. These hidden locations often held ordnance or fuel stockpiles, and Cosmos’ fiber-optic drone was armed with explosives to destroy them.
Yet inside, the drone rotated its camera to reveal what looked more like a farmer’s garage: Four civilian cars, a pair of motorcycles, and two bridled horses.
“We had not expected to see this. It was unusual,” Cosmos told Business Insider, speaking on condition that he be identified only by his call sign.
“We were expecting to find some armored vehicles,” he added.
Video of the discovery went viral last week in Ukraine, as the war has increasingly seen Russian soldiers using unconventional transport tools, such as pack animals and bicycles, to conduct assaults or logistics missions. Cosmos said his drone mission was conducted in early February.
The smaller profile of a horse or civilian car might be harder for a drone to spot, though Russia’s repeated use of them has also raised questions about the viability of its tactics and whether it’s been producing enough military equipment to sustain its invasion.
Cosmos’ squad mates and officers at the Wild Division, a first-person-view drone company in the 82nd Air Assault Brigade, had seen clips of Russian soldiers riding on horses to attack Ukrainian positions before.
One famous example they remember was in Zaporizhzhia, when a Ukrainian drone crew attacked Russian infantry crossing the front lines on horseback last month.
Cosmos, who’s been piloting drones for a year, said it was the first time he’d personally seen the animals on the front lines.
He flew his explosive-laden drone straight into the back of one of the cars, and said his crew later struck several other vehicles inside. When Russian troops moved their transport assets, the Wild Division found the next warehouse and attacked that one, too, Cosmos said.
“The enemy usually lives in hiding close to these places,” Cosmos said of the warehouse. “It’s common for us to check all targets. Sometimes we can see the enemy infantry, or you can see their vehicles.”
Russia calculates war differently
The Wild Division declined to say where exactly the warehouse was located, but its brigade is generally deployed in the Donbas.
The commander of Cosmos’ battalion told Business Insider that the discovery of the horses surprised him, too.
“I thought it had been a location for transport vehicles, sort of a transfer hub,” said the major, whose call sign is Fizruk.
Fizruk said the appearance of horses and cars in his area of the front line could be a sign that Russian forces are running low on standard resources, but also reflects Moscow’s attritional nature of fighting.
The cars discovered by Cosmos appear to be Nivas, inexpensive civilian off-road vehicles from the Russian Lada car brand.
“They treat these like they will be losses anyway, that they will be destroyed anyway,” he said. “Look, a Niva costs, let’s say, $2,000. A Hummer, which the Armed Forces of Ukraine uses in many places, costs $20,000, maybe more.”
“Since they lose their equipment in assaults, from that point of view, why pay $20,000 for one vehicle if you can buy 10 Nivas for $20,000?” Fizruk added.
The Kremlin is known to pressure the front line with repeated ground assaults, sending small groups of infantry to approach Ukrainian positions on foot or in cheap vehicles. The strategy has been costly, with NATO now saying that up to 25,000 Russian troops are dying each month.
Sustaining that style of war has pushed Moscow to informal means of recruitment and weapons procurement, including hiring troops from overseas and receiving ammunition from North Korea.
Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency, GUR, has identified over a dozen American and Chinese electronics parts that it says were found in a new Russian jet-powered attack drone.
GUR published its new analysis of the drone, dubbed the Geran-5, on Monday, as part of its ongoing directory of key foreign components used in Russia’s weapons or defense industry.
The intelligence directorate published images of what it said was the drone’s wreckage last week, saying that the Geran-5 was newly discovered after being used in an attack in early January.
Shaped like a traditional fixed-wing aircraft, the Geran-5 differs from past Gerans, which are delta-wing aircraft modeled after the Iranian Shahed drone.
GUR said last week that the Geran-5 closely resembles Iran’s Karrar uncrewed aerial vehicle, which in turn is believed to be modeled after the much older American MQM-107 Streaker attack drone.
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At least nine of the Geran-5’s parts were produced by American companies, including digital signal processors, clock generators, and a transceiver, GUR said.
GUR said the drone also features a more powerful Chinese turbojet engine, allowing the Geran-5 to fly at up to 373 mph — much faster than the jet-powered Geran-3’s estimated 230 mph.
Three other parts, including a mesh network radio modem that retails for $8,100, were also sourced from China, GUR added.
One part on the list — the Geran-5’s transistor — is German.
GUR published an image of what appears to be gathered debris from a downed Geran-5.
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR)
Ukraine often warns that Russia’s military production base has been successfully evading international sanctions at a scale that allows it to manufacture a deep arsenal with foreign parts. Kyiv has long sought to compel international firms to introduce stringent due diligence programs to prevent their products from entering the black market.
GUR said in its initial report that the Geran-5 likely has a range of 600 miles and can carry a 200-pound warhead. The agency also said it had information indicating that Russia may seek to deploy the Geran-5 from Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jets, rather than from typical ground-based launchers, to extend its reach.
“Separately, the possibility of equipping the aircraft with R-73 air-to-air missiles to counter Ukrainian aviation is being considered,” the agency said.
The Geran drone family has come to describe loitering munitions that were based on Iranian designs but tweaked to be manufactured within Russia. Previous Gerans have taken inspiration from Tehran’s Shahed, and they’re so similar that they are often colloquially seen as synonymous.
The earlier Gerans are now one of Russia’s staple weapons against Ukraine, with the Kremlin manufacturing so many that it can afford to launch thousands of attack drones a month at Ukrainian cities.
Jet-powered versions of the Geran have been used more sparsely, though Ukrainian reports of the Geran-3’s use have grown increasingly common over the last year.
The leaders of several drone schools training Ukraine’s operators for the fight against Russia say they’re targets and they have to act accordingly — tightly protecting information and even moving around.
Throughout its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has launched huge drone and missile barrages at factories, training sites, and civilian infrastructure across the country, often far from the fighting in the east, straining Ukrainian defenses and serving as a constant reminder that nowhere in the country is completely safe.
Drones are prolific on the battlefield in Ukraine. Operators are priority targets. It stands to reason the schools training them for war would be too. Officials from three drone schools told Business Insider that they take steps to avoid getting hit.
Tetyana, a Ukrainian veteran who goes by the call sign “Ruda” and is now the head of R&D for Dronarium, a drone training school with sites in Kyiv and Lviv, said that it must follow strict safety rules because “the entirety of Ukraine is not safe, missile-wise, drone-wise.”
Dmytro Slediuk, head of the education department at Dronarium, told BI the safety measures, including not disclosing publicly exactly where its training centers are located and also changing their location “from time to time,” are necessary to prevent Russia from interfering with its training
To keep certain location data from getting out, the school doesn’t allow photos and videos that might reveal where its facilities are based.
The school has been mentioned by Russia’s military bloggers, influential pro-war accounts that often circulate operational details and commentary to large audiences. Though they are typically in favor of the war, they are also sometimes critical of Russia’s performance and dispute some of its defense ministry’s claims.
Drone schools say they’re targets for Russia.
Ivan Antypenko/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Rybar, a media outlet with 1.5 million Telegram subscribers, listed Dronarium as an example of Ukraine’s drone training efforts. The UK has sanctioned Rybar, initially presented as a milblogger but actually a partially Russian government-sponsored information warfare operation, and the US has offered up to $10 million for information.
Tetyana said Russian outlets have been writing about the school since 2022, the year Russia started its full-scale invasion. “As long as they write and talk about us, it means that they are afraid of us,” she said. But it also means that they’re on Russia’s radar.
She said the school and its attendees strictly adhere to a set of critical cybersecurity rules, and said there are also general safety rules in place. “When the air raid siren is on, all training activities, all the work, everything gets suspended, and we deconcentrate and get into safe shelters.” She said no one is complacent.
Vitalii Pervak, CEO of another training school, Karlsson, Karas & Associates, said that safety steps are crucial because “the Russians are constantly hunting for places where military personnel gather.”
Ukrainian officials have confirmed that Russia has hit some Ukrainian military training sites, killing personnel. It’s the kind of thing air defenses can try to prevent, but Ukraine has suffered shortages throughout the war. Ukraine has also successfully hit Russian bases and gatherings of Russian personnel.
The key is to prevent Russia from gaining sufficient knowledge of the school to target it. Its steps include “everyone who works at KK&A, including the cleaners,” having to do a polygraph security interview.
He said they don’t share any information about the location of the training center or about the appearance of the instructors or cadets.
“Some of our employees may have relatives or acquaintances in occupied territories who could be tortured by Russians for indirect contact with someone who opposes Russia,” Pervak said. “This secrecy also protects the instructors and cadets themselves, as well as their relatives, from attacks by Russian agents.”
He said that while the added security “hinders publicity to some extent — good things should be spoken about loudly — war dictates its own conditions. We are well aware that failing to observe the principles of secrecy may result in the death of staff or cadets.”
Viktor Taran, the CEO of the Kruk Drones UAV training center, said that “Russia is interested in destroying us.”
“Thanks to God and air defence, we’re still operating.”
