It is unclear exactly what payloads and launchers Ukraine will receive along with the drones.Īn Area-I Air-Launched, Tube-Integrated, Unmanned System, or ALTIUS, sails through the skies at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. Anduril says the company has recently added a loitering munitions capability to the platform. ALTIUS has also been tested as an electronic warfare platform. Army has tested the system in multiple forms, including launching them from the ground, from helicopters as air-launched effects (ALE), and even operating together in swarms. The drone is tube-launched and recoverable.
Its manufacturer Area-I, a subsidiary of defense startup Anduril, promotes the craft as a modular system with a nose cone that can be fitted with an array of sensors or payloads. He declined to specify either precise numbers or timing of deliveries.ĪLTIUS-600 is a small drone that can fly over 270 miles. Ryder cautioned, however, that the drones would likely not arrive until late spring or later, well after the fighting is expected to pick up. “I think it’s become apparent to everyone in the last five to seven years, you know, especially as we saw groups like ISIS starting to use drones and now especially in this conflict, the significant impact that drones have.” 24 that unmanned systems are now “part of the modern way of warfare.” Only the Switchblade has been promised in past aid packages. These include Switchblade 600s, Jump 20s, ALTIUS-600s, and CyberLux K8s. will provide include systems either still in testing or that have only been used sparingly to date by U.S. Ukraine has also used off-the-shelf drones to drop explosives, a tactic ISIS has used against U.S.-backed forces in Iraq and Syria. Ukraine has also employed drones, including Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2s, and quadcopters for artillery spotting in the slugfest now taking place in the eastern part of the country. Russia has made extensive use of Iranian-made kamikaze drones to attack Ukrainian infrastructure, providing a novel and cost-effective solution to countering Ukrainian air defenses while still achieving air-to-ground hits. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have been able to achieve air superiority in the conflict, leading both sides to turn to drones to as a lower-risk means to attack ground targets from above. building on the success of smaller drones in Ukraine and leveraging that as much as possible in the absence of the ability to send a larger aircraft, manned or unmanned, into the battle,” Lee said. Caitlin Lee, senior fellow for UAV and autonomy studies at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the UASs represent a natural evolution of new equipment for Ukraine.
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