What happens when your enemy copies your best weapon? Russia’s latest drone innovation mirrors Ukraine’s own breakthrough—and the implications stretch far beyond the battlefield.
Russia’s Molniya drone mothership carries FPV attack drones tens of kilometers behind Ukrainian lines, marking the first confirmed use of this Ukrainian-pioneered technology by Russian forces.
The innovation, which Ukrainian forces developed and Russia has now embraced, extends the range of smaller explosives-laden drones from mere miles to dozens of kilometers. It’s essentially a smaller-scale, aerial version of the drone deployment method the Ukrainian state security agency, or SBU, used to devastate five Russian air bases on Sunday.
The SBU operation, involving more than 100 small quadcopter drones smuggled across Russia in specially modified truck trailers, ended with the destruction of more than a dozen Russian warplanes including irreplaceable Tupolev Tu-22M and Tu-95 bombers and Beriev A-50 radar planes.
Russia copies Ukrainian drone tactics
The Russian drone-carrying drone was caught on camera for the first time on or just before Wednesday. Rob Lee, an analyst with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, identified the carrier as a Molniya, an inexpensive one-way attack drone with a battery-powered propeller engine and a payload of up to five kg. The Molniya’s payload was a standard first-person-view quadcopter.
“These could be a serious problem,” Lee warned.
The rationale behind the drone-piggybacking-on-a-drone innovation is obvious. On its own, an FPV drone ranges just a few miles. It’s constrained by its battery life and the reach of its radio transmitter. By contrast, a Molniya ranges as far as 40 km. It could launch its FPV at the end of its sortie, and even relay the FPV’s radio signal back to the drones’ operators—effectively adding tens of kilometers to the FPV’s range.
Once the FPV has struck its target, the Molniya no longer needs to act as a carrier and relay—and can strike a target, too.
Ukraine pioneered drone motherships in 2023
Drone-carrying “mothership” drones are proliferating on both sides of Russia’s 39-month war on Ukraine. Russian troops first encountered Ukrainian motherships in November 2023. Today, when Ukrainian FPVs strike as far as 40 km behind the line of contact, it’s often because they were carried into the Russian rear area by motherships.
From sea to sky: Ukraine’s expanding drone fleet
The Ukrainians even launch FPVs from their satellite-controlled unmanned surface vehicles. In other words, drone-carrying drone boats. The first strike by a USV drone-carrier, in December, targeted a Russian-occupied oil platform in the Black Sea. Four months later, the robotic aircraft carriers motored along the coast of occupied Crimea, launching FPVs that blew up a pair of Russian air-defense vehicles: an Osa and a Strela.
The newest Ukrainian aerial mothership, the StratForce Gogol-M, deployed last month. The propeller-driven, catapult-launched Gogol-M can carry two FPVs as far as 300 km. “A $10,000 mission replaces what previously required $3 to $5 million missile systems,” a StratForce official told Forbes.
The communication challenge driving AI adoption
The main problem for all operators of mothership drones is communication. Line-of-sight radio struggles to reach over the horizon, potentially just a few miles away. Satellite radio signals can be jammed. Ranging hundreds of kilometers from their operators, a mothership and its smaller drones risk getting cut off.
Autonomy is one answer. It’s not for no reason that StratForce has equipped the Gogol-M with A.I. that can steer the drones toward recognizable targets. “It’s like a self-driving car,” the company official told Forbes.
It’s unclear whether the Russians have installed A.I. in the Molniya or other mothership drones.
Reusable vs. expendable: the next evolution
It’s also unclear whether the Russians expect any of the drone-carrying Molniyas to return to base after launching their FPVs. The Gogol-M is designed to launch its FPVs and then return to base, effectively making it the small, robotic analogue of a manned bomber armed with even smaller cruise missiles.
Reusable motherships are even more dangerous than single-use motherships. If their FPVs miss you the first time, they might just return to base, load up more FPVs—and come after you again.