Drones are now launching drones to attack other drones in Ukraine

Last time we checked in on terrifying drone developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainians were dropping molten thermite along Russian trench lines and attaching surface-to-air missiles to naval drones.

Possessing a far smaller population than Russia, Ukraine has pinned its hopes in significant part on drone warfare, and hundreds of companies and organizations across the country are building everything from tiny aerial attack drones to massive ground-crawling, machine gun-toting minelayers. (And this is to say nothing of all the innovation happening in Western defense companies like AeroVironment.)

Here are just a few of the drone warfare innovations that have appeared in public sources over the last few months.

Motherships

[Update: The mothership example below is disputed. Though the video was presented on numerous social media channels as showing a drone launched from a mothership, other commenters claim that the full video actually shows one quadcopter drone watching as another quadcopter drone attacks a Russian surveillance drone—no mothership required. What has been clear for some time, however, is that drones are being used to hunt larger and slower drones.]

Ukraine has, for some time, fielded large "mothership" drones that can carry and eventually deploy a set of smaller attack drones. This approach can, for example, get light and fast FPV attack drones behind the front lines before releasing them, thereby extending the attack drones' limited range.

But it was only this week that I came across footage of a mothership drone launching an attack drone to take down a much larger Russian surveillance drone. In the video, the mothership gets in position above and behind the Russian drone, then launches a small quadcopter drone that races toward the Russian drone and explodes. Fragments of both drones float down as the mothership films the action.

Drones launching drones to attack other drones—welcome to war in 2025.

Shotguns

Since the start of the war, the Ukrainians have been strapping everything imaginable to their drones, from grenades to mines to RPGs to thermite. Given their recoil, guns have been a bigger challenge, but this hasn't stopped drone makers from trying.

Recent footage suggests that real advances have been made in stabilizing the drone platform while firing; one viral video shows not one but two shotguns mounted to a drone, which zips around blasting three Russian drones before targeting an infantry member on the ground. Given the presence of two shotguns going off simultaneously, the drone's stability is impressive.

This does not appear to be in mass production, though the Kyiv Post talked to an aerial scout about the weapon's utility.

Grenade launchers

Grenade launchers have been tested on aerial drones, but they seem more suited to a ground platform. Enter the Burya, a small tracked drone with a grenade-launching turret on top. The Burya can carry up to 64 grenades and use fire-control software and gyro stabilization to aim and fire a grenade up to 100 meters. According to Ukraine's military, the system has already entered mass production and is being delivered to front-line units.

What's next for the system? According to the developer, a Ukrainian company called Frontline, "We are planning to combine the turret’s targeting system with data from reconnaissance UAVs [that is, drones] to transmit coordinates to the target in live mode."

Assault rifles

They may be harder to aim accurately and may go through ammunition more quickly, but assault rifle drones are still being worked on. In September, the Kyiv Post reported on the most recent efforts to strap an AK-74 rifle to a drone and then go attack Russian trenches.