The record What this system is, where it comes from, who operates it and which of Vigil’s modules it is relevant to — with the evidence each of those rests on.
Record
Conflict relevance
This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.
Operators
Ukraine: Ukraine's principal reported long-range strike drone. Reporting attributes its employment to Defence Intelligence and the Security Service, with the Unmanned Systems Forces named as the institutional home of the long-range drone effort; Ukraine rarely confirms which structure flew a given strike, so each formation edge is graded reported.
Battlefield role
Deep strike against fixed economic and military infrastructure inside Russia — refinery process units, fuel storage, airfields and ammunition depots — at ranges beyond any supplied missile Ukraine holds, launched in numbers that accept attrition to air defence on the way in.
Typical employment
Salvos against a single plant's process units, often repeated at the same plant across weeks, as the refinery series in this module records; flown with decoys and alongside other long-range types so that air-defence effort is divided. Nothing about routes, launch areas or timing is authored.
How the system is commonly used, at the level of published analysis — never a procedure, a loadout or an engagement envelope.
Strengths
Range, cost and domestic supply. Announced for a 75 kg warhead at more than 1,000 km, with 2025–26 reporting of strikes at 1,300 km (Orsk, October 2025) and roughly 1,300 km (Ufa, June 2026); cheap enough to be used in salvos; and produced in Ukraine, so neither stocks nor targets depend on a partner government's decision.
Limitations
A small warhead — reporting gives 50 to 75 kg, with range traded for payload — that damages a process unit rather than destroying a plant; a propeller airframe vulnerable to point defence and electronic warfare on a long transit; and an effect that is cumulative and reparable rather than decisive. Production and loss rates are not published and are not stated here.
Typically used alongside
- Storm Shadow / SCALP-EGConfidence: Moderate
The supplied missile lane the drone programme was built to be independent of; used against hardened targets the drone's warhead cannot address.
- R-360 NeptuneConfidence: Low
Ukraine's other domestic long-range option, used against coastal and naval targets where the drone's payload is insufficient.
Observed adaptations
Reach extended from the first refinery strikes within some 800 km of the border in 2024 to reported strikes at 1,300 km and beyond in 2025–26, with range growth rather than warhead growth the campaign's clearest trend.
Campaign relevance
Derived: a participant organisation in these campaigns carries a typed equipment association with this system. That is not the same as documented use of the system in the campaign itself.
- The Black Sea campaign and the export corridor Since February 2022
via Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR/GUR) (Reported, moderate confidence)
- The Ukrainian deep-strike campaign Since 2022
via Unmanned Systems Forces (Reported, moderate confidence); Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR/GUR) (Reported, moderate confidence)
- The eastern attritional campaign Since April 2022
via Unmanned Systems Forces (Reported, moderate confidence)
Visual identification
A conventional light-aircraft layout rather than a delta: straight wing, twin-boom tail and a nose-mounted propeller, with a slender fuselage — closer in silhouette to a small sport aircraft than to the Shahed family. Seen chiefly in Ukrainian government presentations and in debris.
Documented conflict use
Reported as the drone behind Ukraine's refinery strikes from early 2024, when the Ministry of Digital Transformation and defence-industry officials presented it publicly; thereafter the named type in reporting of strikes on refineries, fuel depots and airfields across European Russia, including the Orsk refinery in October 2025 and the Ufa refineries in June 2026. Ukraine's General Staff confirms strikes on named plants without naming the airframe, so type attribution per strike is reporting rather than official statement.
Branch & service operators
Dated changes
2025-10-03 Employment Reported strike on the Orsk refinery in Orenburg region, about 1,300 km from the border — the deepest reported employment of the type to that date. Type attribution is reporting, not a General Staff statement.
2024-03 Employment Publicly presented by Ukrainian officials as the drone behind the early 2024 wave of refinery strikes; the first documented employment of a domestic long-range one-way attack drone against Russian refining.
Assessed as of — 2026-06 Last reviewed — 2026-10-29