Russia's New V2U A.I. Drone Hunts Ukraine's Best Weapons—So Far, It's Unjammable
With redundant navigation and A.I. targeting, Russia's 1.2-m V2U attack drone can fly and attack without human help
Russia’s new AI kamikaze drone can navigate and attack without any connection to a human operator. The V2U may be one of the most sophisticated small attack UAVs on either side of Russia’s 40-month wider war on Ukraine—and it risks tilting the life-or-death drone race in the Kremlin’s favor.
The electrically-powered, propeller-driven, explosives-laden V2U, roughly 1.2 meters from wingtip to wingtip, first appeared along the 1,100-km front line this spring.
Recovering crashed examples, Ukrainian and allied analysts have been able to identify the components—many of them Chinese, Japanese or American in origin—that help the V2U fly for up to an hour at 60 km/hr and strike with a vehicle-wrecking 2.9-kg shaped-charge warhead, all without human intervention.
That autonomy makes the V2U essentially impossible to jam. Like smaller fiber-optic first-person-view attack drones, the V2U is impervious to electromagnetic attacks on its control link. The only way to defeat it is to shoot it down—or hide from it.