Ukraine last week announced the latest advance in the ongoing drone race with Russia, saying its new variant had the longest range of any in its arsenal and had successfully completed testing.
"Our drone with a 3,000-kilometer range has passed testing," President Volodymyr Zelensky said during his evening address on March 17.
"I am grateful to the developers and manufacturers. We are developing a line of long-range weapons that will help guarantee the security of our state," he added.
And that was it — there were no further details on the type of drone, its name, the size of its warhead, or when it would go into mass production.
The drone
Federico Borsari, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told the Kyiv Independent that it's likely the new drone has a fixed-wing structure and a turbojet engine.
"Similar to a very cheap cruise missile," he added.
If Borsari is correct, this would make it a longer-range version of Ukraine's Palianytsia missile drone, which was revealed last year and is thought to have a range of between 500 and 700 kilometers.
But a range of 3,000 kilometers opens up a vast expanse of Russia with multiple targets.
"That would create a lot of problems for Russia," Borsari said.
The possible targets
Fabian Hoffmann, a defense expert and doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, told the Kyiv Independent that the longer range will allow Ukraine to significantly expand its current drone campaign, and he expects the type of targets will remain the same.
"More critical infrastructure, oil refineries, oil processing facilities," he said, adding: "The other thing that immediately comes to mind is production facilities for various types of equipment on the Russian side that probably was outside of the target radius of previous drone systems."
To date, Olenya military air base in Russia's Murmansk Oblast was the farthest Russian facility hit by a drone. The air base is located some 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.
While it's not known what type of drone was used in the attack, the minimal damage caused and the fact it has not been repeated since suggest it was a drone armed only with a small warhead operating at the very limits of its capabilities.
But the airbase is well within the range of Ukraine's new drone, as is the Severomorsk-1 naval air base just to the north, home to Russia's 216 Independent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron and the 830th Independent Shipborne Anti-Submarine Helicopter Regiment.
Kyiv's ever-intensifying campaign against Russia's energy and military infrastructure to disrupt Moscow's war effort will likely be bolstered, with several oil facilities within the 3,000-kilometer range.
These include the Strezhevsk and Nizhnevartovsk oil refineries, both located some 2,600 kilometers inside Russia.
Ukraine may also choose to target Russian factories that contribute to Moscow's war effort.
Within range is the JSC Serov Mechanical Plant in Sverdlovsk Oblast, which produces casings for 152 mm caliber projectiles and oil drilling and production equipment for several major Russian oil companies.
The factory has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the EU.
Kateryna Hodunova
The damage
"The big question, of course, is how large is the warhead with all the drone systems? Because that will, in the end, really determine the damage that it can do," Hoffman said.
The larger the warhead, the heavier the drone, and the more limited its range, so Ukraine may have had to make trade-offs to enable the 3,000-kilometer range.
But Hoffman said that even with a small 20-kilogram warhead, the drone would still be effective against unprotected targets such as oil refineries where much of the vital machinery and flammable materials are stored out in the open rather than underground or protected by hardened shelters.
"Oil and gas infrastructure is very susceptible even to small warheads," he said.
"But if you want to have a bit more flexibility in terms of what you can target, I think we should at least hope for somewhere around 100 kilograms, but I wouldn't be too optimistic about that."
The defense
Ukraine does have one significant advantage in the ongoing drone war — Russia's inadequate air defenses.
"Russia has one of the most comprehensive air defense networks in the world, and yet even they face several challenges in countering Ukrainian drones," Mattias Eken, a defense and security expert at RAND Europe, told the Kyiv Independent.
"The vast expanse of Russian territory and the distributed nature of military and energy infrastructure make it difficult to provide comprehensive air defense coverage with existing Russian assets."
Ukraine already repeatedly strikes targets critical to Russia's oil industry and defense capabilities — military air bases like Engels and refineries such that in Tuapse have been hit multiple times, demonstrating Russian air defenses are already stretched thin.
"Russia will need to prioritize which areas and assets to defend, given the vast Russian geography, potentially leaving some vulnerabilities in its infrastructure," Eken said.
The Kyiv Independent
