Russia’s drone revolution heaps pressure on Ukrainian defenses

A top-secret Russian unit based in Moscow has changed the landscape of drone warfare, turning what was an advantage for the Ukrainians into a vulnerability.

The unit is known as Rubicon and has expanded rapidly under Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov since his appointment in June last year. Belousov visited its headquarters in October 2024 and was shown a range of drones being developed, according to video published by official Russian media.

The advent of Rubicon – full name the Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies – is a prime example of how the Russian military has learnt to shrug off its rigid way of warfare during the Ukraine conflict and adapt to a rapidly evolving battlefield.

Ukraine had already established a separate branch within its military – the Unmanned Systems Forces – in mid-2024.

As Rubicon proved its worth, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in June that Russia would establish a military command dedicated to “unmanned aerial systems.”

That unit came into being last week.

“The head of unmanned systems has been appointed, and military command and control bodies have been created at all levels,” said its deputy commander, Col. Sergei Ishtuganov.

“Just a year ago, our troops weren’t so saturated with drones of all types. But gradually, Russian units managed to turn the tide in the skies,” he told Russian daily kp.ru.

“We are assigning operators, engineers, technicians and other support specialists to these units,” Ishtuganov added, a clear sign of the resources being dedicated to the command.

It even has its own emblem – featuring a crossed arrow and sword, with a microchip bearing a star and wings in the center.

Rubicon is not just about designing and deploying drones. It develops and tests advanced robotic systems and AI.

It pioneered the use of fiber-optic drones, which have had a significant impact on the battlefield. These are controlled via a fiber-optic cable, providing a secure video feed in real time and cannot be jammed.

It also improves the performance of other units.

“Rubicon formations remain a leading problem for [(Ukrainian)] drone operators, not only the drone companies themselves, but because they train other Russian drone units,” notes Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

Within months of Rubicon’s establishment, its units were fanning out across the front lines with a new generation of drones, turning the tables on Ukrainian forces.

Their first known involvement was inside Russia, after Ukrainian forces entered and took a part of the Kursk region last summer. Shortly after Rubicon’s appearance in the area, the Ukrainian military reported that their supply lines had been almost completely cut off by drone attacks.

Ukrainian forces withdrew from the area early this year. Later, two commanders told CNN that a well-trained Russian unit had suddenly changed the battle, hunting Ukrainian logistics and drone operators. At the time, they had no idea Rubicon had been deployed.

Since then, Rubicon units have been reported in many parts of the battlefield, often giving Russian troops an advantage by attacking Ukrainian supply routes well behind the front lines – as well as enemy drone operators.

In August, the commander of Ukraine’s 93rd Brigade battalion told CNN that Rubicon units had been integrated with Russian brigades in the Kostiantynivka area of Donetsk.

Within a week, he said, his unit had lost most of its vehicles, drone launch sites, antennas, and communications equipment. From the beginning of the war, the Russians have tried to target Ukrainian drone operators. Rubicon units have taken that to a new level.

The conflict is now “a saturated drone operating environment,” according to military analyst Mick Ryan, who was recently in Ukraine.

Ryan said frontline officers had told him that Russian innovation in drones probably now just outstrips that of Ukraine.

“Within 15 kilometers (9 miles) of the front line, vehicle movement is difficult to impossible. Infantry soldiers must march to their positions for 10-15 kilometers (6-9 miles),” Ryan said.

“Where armoured vehicles and artillery are deployed, these can be subject to dozens of attacks per platform per day. Every HQ is now buried deep underground to avoid detection and destruction by Russian drones,” according to Ryan, author of the blog Futura Doctrina.

“Today it is drone pilots who are the architects of victory, shaping the modern battlefield. They are the ones who, to a large extent, ensure the advance of… infantry,” wrote the Russian Telegram channel Lost Armor, posting a nearly five-minute video of Ukrainian armor that had been destroyed in the Pokrovsk area.

Ukrainian forces have erected nets on roads and tracks behind the front lines to ensnare Rubicon’s drones, but they are of limited help given the sprawling combat zone.

Rubicon has also been innovative in developing radar networks to bring down Ukrainian drones.

“They captured ALL TYPES of our main UAVs as trophies,” says Ukrainian electronic warfare specialist Serhiy Beskrestnov. “Of course, they studied all the electronics, communication systems inside our UAVs, and navigation systems.”

Rubicon also appears to have been involved in the first successful use of a Russian naval drone, which struck a Ukrainian vessel in the Danube estuary in August.

Two weeks ago, Rubicon claimed to have taken out a Ukrainian naval vessel mooring at a gas production facility in the Black Sea.

So important are Rubicon units that the Ukrainian security services are now intensively searching out their forward bases. A drone strike on a Russian base in occupied Avdiivka destroyed a Rubicon headquarters earlier this month, according to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.

One Ukrainian drone unit attached to the 71st Jaeger brigade recently posted video showing strikes on antennas and hide-outs in Sumy that it said belonged to “the elite Russian Rubicon unit.”

“We detect, search for antennas, satellite communication terminals, dugouts, and strike them,” said Vyacheslav, the unit’s commander. They had detected take-off points and intercepted radio communications to establish the presence of a Rubicon unit, he said.

While the two sides have similar capabilities, the Russians had an advantage in the number of fiber-optic drones they were producing, Vyacheslav told CNN.

“The availability of these drones, how many they can launch, how many we can launch. That’s the key difference.” And there were more Rubicon operators now, he said.

The conflict in Ukraine has increasingly become one of counter-measures, designed to leap-frog or neutralize an innovation by the enemy. It’s a constant battle between drones and electronic warfare that can detect, jam or spoof enemy drones.

“The enemy plays with frequencies; we reconfigure our electronic warfare systems. The enemy begins to suppress us with electronic warfare; we switch to other frequencies,” according to the Russian commander, Ishtuganov.

Adaptation is never-ending.

In Rubicon’s arsenal is the Molniya drone, a relatively simple UAV largely made of plywood. The second generation of the Molniya (lightning in Russian) carries a payload of up to 7 kilograms (15 pounds) and can fly more than 30 kilometers (19 miles) deep behind the front lines. It can also act as a “mothership” that launches two first-person view (FPV) munitions – and, as CNN discovered in August, has made travel along critical routes much harder.

As soon as the Ukrainians captured a Molniya, they began copying – and improving – the design. They have also developed a new drone – the FP-2 – that can strike Rubicon command centers at least 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the front line.

In the early days of the war, Russian forces were frequently derided in the West for their rigid tactics, poor equipment and mediocre leadership. That has changed.

In a major departure, the Russian military has begun embracing start-up manufacturers such as the Oko Design Bureau in St. Petersburg, which makes two types of drones now widely used in combat. Oko has been sanctioned by the United States.

The Russian military’s embrace of innovation makes Russia “a more dangerous adversary for Ukraine, as well as a much more capable and dangerous military to threaten Europe,” according to a new analysis by the Special Competitive Studies Project, a US think-tank.

The world envisioned by Rubicon and its backers “will soon have swarms of autonomous drones that can overwhelm adversaries’ defenses, microdrones that are difficult to identify or stop, and drones that mimic birds, bugs, or other wildlife,” said military analyst Dara Massicot.

Drone warfare – and anti-drone electronic warfare – is evolving at an almost weekly pace as the price of survival.

“Experts are fond of saying that armies shape war. But war shapes armies, as well,” Massicot said.

In the forests of Sumy in northern Ukraine, that translates to what Vyacheslav, the commander of the drone unit, as an endless routine.

“It’s systematic work: detection, destruction, detection, destruction.”