The last time we checked in with frightening drone developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainians dropped melted thermiet along Russian trench lines and confirmed surface-air missiles to Marine drones.
Ukraine has a much smaller population than Russia and has its hope in a significant part on drone warfare, and hundreds of companies and organizations throughout the country are building everything from small air raid drones to massive land-crawling, machine-wing-wedding minelayers. (And this does not mean anything about all the innovation that takes place in Western defense companies such as Aerovironment.)
Here are only a few of the drone warfare -innovations that have appeared in public sources in recent months.
Mother's ships
Ukraine has introduced large “Mothership” drones for some time that can wear a set of smaller attack drones and ultimately use. This approach can, for example, get light and fast FPV attacks behind the front lines before they release them, extending the limited reach of the attack drones.
But it was only this week that I came across images of a mother ship -drone who launched an attack drone to bring down a much larger Russian surveillance drone. In the video, the mother ship comes into position above and behind the Russian drone and then launches a small quadcopter drone that runs and explodes to the Russian drone. Fragments of both drones float down while the mother ship films the action.
Drones launched drones to attack other drones – war at war in 2025.
A drone with two hunting gun barrels, looking for another drone.
Shotguns
Since the start of the war, the Ukrainians have tied everything to their drones, from grenades to mines to RPGs to Thermite. Given their return, weapons have been a bigger challenge, but this has not prevented drone makers to try it.
