How are Ukraine’s drones disrupting Russian supply lines — and can Ukraine hold on to its advantage? Flying far behind enemy lines, “middle-strike” drones hunt the fuel, ammunition, and reinforcements Russia needs to sustain its assaults. Starlink has helped make this campaign possible, but dependence on
The US has resumed sharing intelligence on Russian ballistic missile launches with Ukraine after a pause of several days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News on 18 October. The blackout fell on days when Russia was firing ballistic missiles at Ukraine. Limits on the Starlink satellite service that Ukraine’s forces rely on remain in place, he said.
Russia has leaned on ballistic missiles in this month’s strikes on Ukraine’s grid, firing 39 in a single attack, and Ukraine is short of interceptors to stop them. Washington has used its support as leverage, reportedly telling Kyiv to spare Russian refineries or lose US intelligence and arms.
The sharing had been blocked for some period of time before it was restored, Zelenskyy said on Meet the Press.
“We are very thankful for this. Now it works,” he said.
Ukraine gets other intelligence from Europeans and dozens of other partners, he explained. But only the United States has the data that tells Kyiv when Russia launches ballistic missiles.
“We didn’t get it during ballistic attacks during three days,” Zelenskyy said.
A timely warning gives Ukraine’s air defenses extra minutes to prepare and lets authorities alert civilians, Liga noted. Late on 12 October, Russian ballistic missiles hit Kyiv before the air-raid alert reached people, with no advance data on launches from Russian territory. The next day, US President Donald Trump said Washington was still sharing intelligence. Two days later, Zelenskyy said Kyiv had received no US warnings of incoming ballistic missiles while it paused its strikes on Russian refineries at Washington’s request. That pause followed the energy ceasefire Trump declared on 11 October, which Russia never confirmed.
Starshield, the military version of Starlink, still cuts out above 161 km/h, Zelenskyy said, too slow for Ukraine’s interceptor drones to catch Russia’s jet-powered Shahed-type drones. NBC News, which aired the interview, separately reported that Starlink services had resumed at normal speed. He said Ukraine’s generals and government believe the order came from the US government and SpaceX carried it out, though he did not know who exactly made the call. Ukraine had instead asked SpaceX and Trump to open Starlink over Russia so it could hit ballistic missile launchers, he said.
“If [Trump] will personally decide to lift this decision, it will immediately work as it was before,” he said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who appeared on the same show, called Zelenskyy’s charge “very reckless” and said Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had denied any administration role. Asked about the break in intelligence sharing, he said he did not know anything about it but that Zelenskyy should be “very careful about making statements like this that aren’t true.” Reuters had reported, citing three officials, that White House officials ordered the Pentagon to limit the service.
Asked whether Ukraine could win without the United States, Zelenskyy said it would be very difficult.
“But if the United States will support Putin, I mean, it’s unbelievable, it’s tragedy. It’s historic mistake and big tragedy,” he said.
He also said his team had received word that US negotiators wanted to meet, and that he had offered to meet in Brussels or London, hoping the US team would be ready this week.
The warnings are back, but they stopped once without explanation. Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s missiles still runs through decisions made in the US.
Key developments on Oct. 17-18
Two Romanian F-16s shot down two jet-powered Russian Geran attack drones over Romania’s territorial waters near Sulina on the evening of 17 October, Romania’s Defense Ministry said. The ministry released cockpit images of the mission the next day, as NATO allies prepare to discuss Black Sea security at a special session Romania requested.
This comes as Moscow continues its air attacks on Ukraine, while the US is trying to make deals with Russia over its diesel and lift sanctions. Russia keeps striking Ukraine’s energy system and cities, while its drones and suspected saboteurs keep turning up inside NATO, from tankers hit off Romania to a foiled arson attempt at a Starlink site in Lithuania.
The F-16s took off from the 86th Air Base at Borcea at 17:43 after radar detected a group of air targets about 120 km east of Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, flying southwest, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported, citing the ministry. The first drone entered Romanian airspace at 17:59 and was shot down at 18:01 southeast of Sulina. The second entered at 18:01 and was downed at 18:05 east of Sulina.
Both were jet-powered attack drones of the Geran family, the ministry said. The Geran is Russia’s version of the Iranian-designed Shahed. When first detected, the drones were about 65 km from the coast of Russian-occupied Crimea and 140 km from the Ukrainian-held shore, and their southwest course may point to Russian origin, Militarnyi calculated.
The ministry posted the cockpit images on 18 October, showing a missile launch and a fireball over the sea. “Targets spotted, identified, engaged and neutralized!” it wrote.
A special session of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s top decision-making body, will discuss defense and deterrence in the Black Sea on 20 October at Romania’s request. Romanian President Nicușor Dan has confirmed that the two tankers that caught fire near Sulina last week were hit by drones, and a NATO military source told Reuters they were Russian.
Romanian radar has logged 54 drone intrusions into the country’s air and sea space since Russia’s full-scale invasion, 35 of them this year, and the military has shot down six such targets in 2026, Defense Ministry data show.
Within hours, Poland’s Operational Command said it was checking a possible airspace violation by an unknown object overnight into 18 October. Troops, police, and military police searched for a possible crash site south of Lublin after residents reported the loud sound of a flying object around 02:00, Militarnyi reported.
On the morning of 18 October, an unknown drone entered Lithuania’s airspace and triggered air raid alerts, the country’s crisis management center said. NATO jets accompanied it but could not shoot it down because of bad weather, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said. Debris preliminarily identified as drone parts was later found in the village of Juodžioniai in Pasvalys district, and the army said the drone may have entered from the direction of Poland.
Romania moved from escorting Russia’s stray drones to firing on them in July, when its F-16s downed three in 72 hours.
Someone tried to set fire overnight to a Lithuanian company that stores Starlink communication equipment, but tipped-off guards foiled the attempt, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said. He linked the attack to Russia’s hybrid war against Europe. It is the third suspected sabotage of Starlink infrastructure in Europe in under a month.
Russia keeps attacking Ukraine at the front and from the air while running a sabotage campaign behind the lines in Europe, which ISW has linked into one pattern. Starlink keeps Ukraine’s drone units and front-line troops connected, and Poland pays for much of that service.
The attack came just after midnight, the prime minister wrote. Security services had warned the company about possible attacks, security was stepped up, and the attempt failed.
The company provides connectivity through nine Starlink satellite antennas used by Ukraine, Sinkevičius told Lithuanian public radio LRT. At almost 2 a.m., intruders tried to burn the antennas and their control unit, leaving behind incendiary liquid in canisters of 3 to 10 liters.
“It is obvious that this is part of Russia’s hybrid war with elements of sabotage,” he said, adding that the client was likely “the Russian side.”
He said he believes the people involved, and how many there were, are known, but gave no details, citing the investigation.
Police Commissioner General Arūnas Paulauskas said no suspects had been detained, any damage was minimal, and the company kept working. A pretrial investigation is under way.
Hours later, an object that apparently entered from Poland crossed northern Lithuania, and NATO jets failed to identify it, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said. Possible fragments were found in the Pasvalys district near the Latvian border. Latvia’s military said the object may have blown itself up on a course toward Latvia.
Sinkevičius said the sabotage version had to be checked for the drone too. He called the National Security Commission for Monday, 19 October, to examine both incidents and consider giving services more powers to neutralize drones.
In September, a fire destroyed the distribution panel at a Starlink ground station in Wola Krobowska, Poland. Germany detained two Turkish nationals on 12 October, and Warsaw blamed Russian intelligence. In Bulgaria, masked intruders burned 11 of 17 Starlink antennas near Sofia.
Russia has started fitting its enlarged Gerbera-2 drones with a 10-kg warhead and an extra bag of incendiary mixture, Ukrainian military outlet Militarnyi reported on 18 October. The setup is designed to start a fire where the drone hits and is probably meant for attacks on critical infrastructure and warehouses, the outlet said.
Russia’s industry makes about 3,000 jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones a month, Ukraine’s military intelligence has said, and Russian strikes have destroyed 2.1 million m² of Ukraine’s modern warehouse space since the full-scale invasion began. A cheap drone that carries fire adds one more threat for air defenses that already let nearly half of Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds through.
Ukrainian Telegram channel Polkovnyk HSh posted photos of the payload on 17 October. Gerbera-2 strike and reconnaissance drones had begun to appear with a 10-kg high-explosive fragmentation-incendiary warhead and an extra package of incendiary mixture, the channel wrote. They navigate with Kometa-M12, a 12-element antenna array designed to resist jamming, it added.
In the photos, the incendiary mixture sits in a separate soft plastic tank behind the main warhead, Militarnyi said. Gerbera-2s have been seen with warheads of 4 to 10 kg depending on range, while strike versions of the original Gerbera usually carried up to 5 kg, the outlet noted.
Russia has mainly fielded the Gerbera, a cheap drone shaped like a Shahed, as a decoy and reconnaissance platform flying alongside Shahed-type strike drones. It has also used bigger Gerberas to drop FPV drones.
Serhii Beskrestnov, now an adviser to Ukraine’s president, flagged a much bigger Gerbera in Ukraine’s skies on 7 August. The Gerbera-2 has a larger airframe, a reshaped wing, and a bigger tail fin, Militarnyi said. In August, the outlet reported it had a stronger piston engine: half of the one in the Shahed-type Geran-2, at about 275 cm³. Production of these engines was set up at the Izhevsk Motorcycle Plant, according to preliminary information the outlet cited.
Earlier versions ran on a Chinese DLE60 model-aircraft engine of about 61 cm³. The switch was likely possible because Geran-2 engine output partly freed up as jet-powered Geran-4s took a growing share of Russia’s drones, Militarnyi said. The Gerbera-2’s fuel tank also holds up to 63 liters, against 10 liters on the original.
In September, a drone preliminarily identified as a Gerbera-2 was recovered from the Baltic Sea near Rusinowo, on Poland’s coast. It carried a high-explosive fragmentation warhead of about 4 kg, a Polish military prosecutor said.
Ukrainian drones struck St. Petersburg’s oil terminal, a fuel depot, an Ozon distribution center, and a VK data center overnight, setting off fires across the city, monitoring channels reported. Russian outlet Meduza called it apparently the largest attack on the city and Leningrad Oblast since the war began. Russian officials acknowledged fires, damaged homes and substations, and power cuts.
Russia keeps fighting along the front while bombarding Ukrainian cities and the grid behind it. Ukraine’s long-range drones, in turn, target the oil exports and logistics that fund and supply that war, and Russia’s Baltic oil ports have been hit repeatedly this year. St. Petersburg is a symbolic place: Russia’s so-called second capital and Putin’s hometown.
Ukrainian forces struck the Petersburg Oil Terminal with FP-1 drones, starting a fire, Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point said. The company described the terminal as one of the region’s largest, handling 12.5 million tonnes of petroleum products a year, including for export.
Piter port and oil facility in one shot pic.twitter.com/KfptwkhsDS
— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 18, 2026
St. Petersburg Governor Aleksandr Beglov acknowledged fires at the terminal and in four city districts, adding that Pulkovo airport had restricted flights. By morning, firefighters were still battling blazes at the terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, and industrial warehouses in the Kolpinsky district, he wrote. He claimed one person was killed and five injured. Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported that the Ruchyi depot had been burning since the night.
An Ozon distribution center in Kolpinsky district caught fire after the attack, the company said, Russian independent outlet Astra reported. Astra’s open-source intelligence analyst described it as one of Ozon’s busiest fulfillment centers in northwestern Russia, covering up to 79,000 m².
Ozon in St. Peterburg pic.twitter.com/tA9iwRJf7d
— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 18, 2026
FP-1 drones also hit a VK data center in Novosergiyevka, Leningrad Oblast, causing serious damage, Fire Point said. VK acknowledged a drone attack on the site but claimed its services were working normally. Leningrad Oblast Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko claimed air defenses downed 145 drones over the oblast alone. He acknowledged damage to the data center’s transformer equipment and warehouse complex, and minor damage to the Vostochnaya substation. Two other substations in Yanino went offline, cutting power to about 20,000 people, he said.
A drone also hit the cable-stayed bridge over the Korabelny fairway, part of a toll highway linking the city’s north and south, Exilenova+ reported, adding that the extent of the damage was still being clarified. The channel also reported a fire near a Russian Aerospace Forces radar company outside the village of Kaporskoye.
To reach St. Petersburg, Ukrainian drones had to cover 1,000 km across four Russian regions guarded by air defenses and electronic warfare, said Serhii Beskrestnov, adviser to Ukraine’s president on defense technology.
“And these are not cruise missiles with special systems, these are drones that fly at speeds of up to 200 km/h,” he wrote.
The same night, Russia hit Ukraine’s grid again, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy counted 76 Russian strikes on energy since the ceasefire was announced. US President Donald Trump declared the truce on 11 October. Ukraine paused its refinery strikes for three days at Washington’s request, but Russia struck a Kharkiv power plant within hours and kept hitting the grid. Zelenskyy then said Ukraine was resuming strikes on Russian oil and would stop again only in exchange for more US interceptors for its Patriot systems. Trump called the renewed strikes “a disgrace” and said he found Zelenskyy “more difficult to deal with than Putin.”
Ukraine has hit the St. Petersburg area before. In July, drones set fire to Wildberries warehouses near the city. In August, Ukraine began striking Ozon hubs, starting in Samara Oblast. The hubs move dual-use goods such as electronics and drone components.
Russia has kept striking Ukraine’s energy sector throughout the week since US President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 18 October. From overnight into Sunday, Russian drones and a ballistic missile hit substations, homes, and industrial sites from Odesa to Volyn. They killed civilians and left tens of thousands of families without power.
Russia fights along the front line while hitting cities and the grid behind it with drones, missiles, and glide bombs. Ukraine says Moscow plans up to 1,000 such munitions against 60 key infrastructure sites this winter, and jet-powered drones partly free it to concentrate missiles on fewer targets, the Institute for the Study of War assessed. With Graham Act penalties on hold and US sanctions on Russian diesel suspended, Russia faces no new US cost for its strikes on Ukraine’s grid. Protecting and restoring the grid falls to Ukraine’s air defenses and repair crews.
Zelenskyy counted 76 deliberate Russian strikes on energy and oil-and-gas facilities since Trump’s announcement. Overnight, Russia hit substations in Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, and Odesa oblasts, he said. In the past week, Russia fired almost 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 missiles, most of them ballistic, mainly to cause a blackout. His message was aimed at Washington.
“America must see that Russia is not taking steps in return for the lifting of sanctions or deals. On the contrary, they take every signal that they can make money as proof that their bet on war is working and they can keep fighting,” Zelenskyy wrote.
Overnight, Russia launched one Iskander-M ballistic missile and 180 Shahed-type drones, 26 of them jet-powered, the Air Force reported. Air defenses downed or suppressed 152 drones, but strikes hit 20 locations.
Strikes left about 24,000 consumers in Odesa Oblast without power, oblast head Oleh Kiper said. In Vinnytsia Oblast, the attack damaged critical infrastructure and forced emergency outages, oblast head Natalia Zabolotna wrote. Drones hit three energy facilities in Ternopil Oblast, one of them for the second time, and cut power to some consumers, oblast head Taras Pastukh said.
A Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia killed a 27-year-old woman and injured two others, including a 16-year-old, the State Emergency Service reported. In Poltava, an evening attack killed one person, injured four, and damaged 10 detached houses, city council secretary Kateryna Yamshchykova said.
A drone hit a high-rise in Odesa and set its roof on fire. A 13-year-old girl was hurt, city military administration head Serhii Lysak said, and Kiper put the number of injured at two.
In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Russian drones and artillery injured three people, oblast head Oleksandr Hanzha said. In Donetsk Oblast, Russian attacks killed seven civilians on Saturday, six of them in Sloviansk, oblast head Vadym Filashkin reported.
A morning drone strike set warehouse and production buildings ablaze at an enterprise in Manevychi, Volyn Oblast, oblast head Roman Romaniuk said. With heavy smoke blowing toward the town, Romaniuk urged residents to stay indoors, shut windows and doors, and switch off ventilation. A repeat strike set an enterprise in the district on fire again, the State Emergency Service said, adding that air tests found no dangerous concentrations outside the site. In Lviv Oblast, drone debris damaged a logistics warehouse and two houses, oblast head Maksym Kozytskyi said.
Polish military aircraft operated in Poland’s airspace twice during the attack, as the Government Security Centre warned residents of Lublin Voivodeship and later alerted Subcarpathian Voivodeship. In Lithuania, NATO jets failed to identify an object that apparently entered from Poland, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said.
Trump announced the energy ceasefire on 11 October, news that surprised Zelenskyy. A White House official said Russia was still weighing it. Hours later, Russia hit a Kharkiv power plant, and on 14 October it fired 39 ballistic missiles at the grid. Then Trump waived Graham Act penalties on buyers of Russian oil, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration wants 60 days to weigh the economic effects.
Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
Ukrainian drone operators need masses of relatively simple drones without a bunch of flashy features, a soldier with firsthand experience explained, cautioning the West against making them too complicated as it readies for future drone fights.
Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion is a grinding war of attrition that is consuming weaponry so fast that combatants need affordable weapons in huge numbers, and battlefield technology becomes obsolete so quickly that soldiers need systems they can update easily to keep them relevant in battle.
Dmytro "Liber" Zhluktenko, a former drone operator who is now a lessons learned analyst in Ukraine's 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment "RAID," told Business Insider that "we need something that works great but doesn't have superfluous features."
"That is something that most of the Western defense technology manufacturers, they get it so wrong," he said. Consider first-person-view attack drones, "we need something that is really basic."
"We are yet to find Western manufacturers that are able to produce, let's say 500,000 FPV drones, simple ones that just work, that are fine-tuned without any extra autonomy or extra navigation or any features like that," he added, describing what Ukraine needs most as something pilots can easily take straight into combat.
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Western-made drone tech, he said, is often "too complicated, often detached from the battlefield, and much more expensive than Ukrainian options doing the same job. Therefore, most of the drones used at Ukraine's battlefield are Ukrainian-made."
His assessment of the situations draws on both his experience as a drone operator and his role as an analyst, where he looks at battlefield trends, interviews operators, meets with foreign defense manufacturers, prepares briefs for higher command, and organizes the sharing of information between Ukrainian units.
Part of the appeal of simpler drones is that Ukrainian operators can adapt them themselves.
Near the front, soldiers routinely modify weapons to keep them useful as the battlefield changes, and some units even have their own R&D centers.
They often want drones and other combat systems that are basic, generic platforms they can rework, upgrade, or configure for different missions, much like ground robots that can be assembled with different weapons or components like Lego sets.
Ukrainian companies and foreign companies that work with units know this is happening, work with unit engineers to help keep products updated, and are often surprised by the ways soldiers modify their gear. Companies are increasingly making their products modular, both so they can upgrade the products more easily and so soldiers can make their own changes near the front.
Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Zhluktenko said Ukraine's operators want products they can "tune ourselves, we would change the components or whatever as we need, because that's the normal process. But something like the basic platform that it could build upon."
He said it's "bonkers" that, despite the West's "significant industrial capacities," they aren't seeing anyone produce something simple and effective at scale.
Zhluktenko said that many Western manufacturers are still "stuck in this doctrine of building tools in small quantities that maybe yes, they do have some extra features, but that's not something that is way too relevant for Ukraine's combat."
Zhluktenko's comments echo warnings from Western and Ukrainian officials that this war has shown the West the limits of relying on smaller numbers of exquisite, highly advanced weapons.
Modern, large-scale warfare, as the situation in Ukraine has demonstrated, may also require much larger numbers of cheaper, less capable gear.
Ukraine is still buying and building advanced drone technology with cutting-edge features like autonomy, which can be critical for warfighting tasks such as intercepting Russia's attack drones or executing long-range strikes that need to break through the enemy's electronic warfare.
Carlo Bravo/Anadolu via Getty Images
Zhluktenko said that it's about "balance," arguing that simpler drones remain essential and are often needed in far greater numbers. Ukrainian companies like SkyFall and General Cherry are producing these kinds of drones at scale, he said.
A representative for Ukrainian drone and technology company TechEx told Business Insider that Western manufacturers often have to deal with heavier, peacetime regulations.
They may have "levels of additional software and hardware that's put on top of it instead of making it a bare, functional, ready to go system here and now," she said.
That can "overcomplicate the operation of the system," she added. It can also make the manufacturing process more complex, so it's harder to produce the large volumes that some Ukrainian manufacturers can.
She described it as the contrast between "wartime operations and the peacetime operations." She said Western companies might have different processes and priorities if they needed to work faster and on a bigger scale.
Western officials say the war shows that allies need much larger volumes of cheap weapons, with leaders like Danish defense minister Troels Lund Poulsen previously telling Business Insider that "one of the lessons" from Ukraine is that the West needs far greater quantities of inexpensive weaponry.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last year that "speed is of the essence, not perfection."
Drones are central to Ukraine's fight, and it says they now cause as much as 95% of Russia's front-line losses. But using drones effectively can require deploying large numbers of them, knowing that many will never reach their targets. That means making systems that are cheap and workable is key.
Zhluktenko said that when it comes to drones, the mindset should be about "spending thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands."
A pilot flying an F-22 Raptor fighter has issued commands to a YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone in a first-of-its-kind test. This is an important development for the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program, as its F-22s are set to be the first aerial ‘quarterbacks’ for these uncrewed aircraft once they enter operational service.
The Air Force and Anduril, Fury’s prime contractor, announced the “airborne tactical-control demonstration” today, but it occurred sometime earlier this month. An Anduril spokesperson confirmed directly to TWZ that this was a first for an F-22 and a pre-production YFQ-44A. Last month, the company disclosed tests involving Fury flying in formation with F-35 fighters, but stressed that the latter were not yet issuing commands to the former in mid-air. A Fury drone also launched an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) for the first time earlier this year.
The Air Force has orders in now for production of FQ-44As, as well as General Atomics’ FQ-42A Vengeance drones, under the first phase, or Increment 1, of its CCA program. The service is still planning to acquire additional CCAs, which could be of entirely different types, through a follow-on Increment 2. The goal now is to have a fleet of at least 500 Increment 1 CCAs by 2032. The recent test is part of efforts to lay the groundwork for an initial tranche of CCAs to start entering operational service around the end of the decade.
“During the demonstration, an F-22 pilot served as an airborne ‘quarterback,’ issuing high-level tactical directives to a single YFQ-44A,” according to a press release from the Air Force. “The aircraft’s onboard autonomy software interpreted and executed those directives in real time, conducting dynamic flight maneuvers and simulated combat tasks.”
“The event brought together personnel from the 412th Test Wing, 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, 309th Software Engineering Group, Experimental Operations Unit, F-22 System Program Office and the CCA Software Autonomy and Teaming Branch,” according to the Air Force release.
The Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) mentioned here is based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and has been leading efforts to pave the way for future Air Force CCA operations.
The “Fury and an F-22 both took off [from] Edwards AFB [Air Force Base in California] and joined up midair,” according to a separate release from Anduril. “While in flight, the Raptor pilot sent an updated mission plan to Fury using a tactical data link, commanding Fury through operationally-relevant maneuvers from the cockpit of the crewed quarterback.”
Neither the Air Force nor Anduril provided further details on how the F-22 was configured for this test. Past Air Force budget documents have mentioned the need to integrate “tablets, cables, and associated materials” onto the Raptor for this purpose. A single Raptor is also expected to be able to manage multiple CCA drones simultaneously.
The Raptor’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, has certainly been working with the Air Force to develop the relevant control architectures and user interfaces for that fighter, as well as the F-35. In terms of in-cockpit user interfaces for controlling drones, known work to date has centered largely on the use of touchscreen tablet-like devices, but this is understood to just be a starting point. Though tablet-based interfaces are a workable option, questions and criticisms about increased workload, especially for pilots in single-seat fighters, have been raised in the past.
It is also worth noting here that General Atomics announced a similar demonstration involving a Raptor and an MQ-20 Avenger back in November 2025. General Atomics has been using the MQ-20 as a CCA surrogate in various types of testing. What the plan might be now to demonstrate the F-22’s ability to control an FQ-42A in flight is unclear. General Atomics has previously released a picture of a Vengeance drone flying in formation with, though not being directly controlled by, Air Force fighters.
In addition, Fury and Vengeance are set to make their debut in a large-scale exercise before the end of the year. Bringing the CCAs to the next iteration of Exercise Emerald Flag will give the Air Force further opportunity to test them in a more operationally relevant context alongside crewed fighters.
“We have not yet done a LFE [large-force employment exercise] with these [CCAs], for real. The first one is going to be Emerald Flag. That’s in December,” Lt. Col. Lyndon “OTTO” Bartlett, the EOU’s Director of Operations, said during a panel at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September, at which TWZ was in attendance. “That’ll be our first tip [sic] dip of the toe in an actual force integration.”
The EOU, working together with other Air Force elements and industry partners, still has to answer a host of other outstanding questions unrelated to tactical operations. CCAs will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated in ways that are distinct from their crewed counterparts, and for which new policies and procedures will need to be developed. Just making sure human pilots have trust in their uncrewed wingmen operating as expected will be critical, underscoring the specific importance of the demonstration disclosed today. All of this applies equally to the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy CCA programs, which are being run in very close coordination with the Air Force’s efforts.
When it comes to the recent test involving the F-22 and the YFQ-44A, “this achievement demonstrates what is possible when we are aligned with industry on a shared imperative: delivering capability to the warfighter at unprecedented speed,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said in a statement today. “We are driving urgency into every part of acquisition from rapid integration and flight learning to disciplined assessment, so we can turn promising technology into combat capability at the pace the threat demands.”
“This flight shows the power of crewed-uncrewed teaming and the advantage it provides our warfighters,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach also said. “We must test often, learn fast, and give commanders what they need, when they need it.”
“The U.S. Air Force’s CCA program is the fastest moving, most mature CCA program anywhere in the world, and will be the first to field operational aircraft,” Mark Shushnar, Anduril’s Vice President of Autonomous Airpower, said as well. “Getting there demands that Anduril and the U.S. Air Force work together to prove out the capability, define the operational procedures, and build trust between operators and their semi-autonomous wingmen.”
With all this in mind, an F-22 issuing orders to a YFQ-44A in mid-air is an important new sign of what is on the horizon for the U.S. Air Force, though there is still work to be done.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
The post F-22 Pilot Controls FQ-44 Fighter Drone From The Cockpit For The First Time appeared first on TWZ.
America’s adoption of long-range one-way attack munitions like the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) is evolving quickly. Training on how to fold these relatively low-cost, but potentially highly destructive systems into a joint force playbook for targeting adversaries on land and at sea, from the Pacific to Europe, and anywhere in between, continues.
How exactly LUCAS drones, and other types to come, will be used in future fights globally was highlighted during a panel at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium earlier this week, at which TWZ was in attendance. The discussion was centered on how Army training is changing to meet the extreme combat demands of the future.
The U.S. military first announced it had begun fielding LUCAS, which was reverse-engineered from the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, in December 2025. This came just months after TWZ laid out a detailed case for why the U.S. military should start acquiring Shahed-136 clones in large volumes. LUCAS made its official combat debut in the opening phases of major combat operations against Iran earlier this year. The pusher-propeller, combustion-engine-powered kamikaze drones, which are employed from static launchers that can be positioned on the ground or installed on ships, and with the help of a small rocket booster, were subsequently praised as “indispensable” by America’s top commander in the Middle East.
With all that in mind, “long-range strike drones like LUCAS, how is that fitting into your planning and training?” our Howard Altman asked the panelists at AUSA.
“We’ve taken our Bayonet Academy, as we call it, a training area at JBLM [Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State], and have started incorporating the employment of long-range one-way attack. Like, how do I maintain it? How do I employ it? How does that then get orchestrated in order to achieve that effect?” Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington, head of the 7th Infantry Division, responded. “So we see that playing a key role in order to be able to achieve that effect at mass, … [and] in an affordable manner, while also being able potentially to preserve something that’s more exquisite for something that requires an exquisite munition.”
Earlier this year, the Army brought the 7th Infantry and the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force together under the umbrella of what it now calls the Multi-Domain Command-Pacific (MDC-PAC). Maj. Gen. Harrington is also now the commander of MDC-PAC, and has talked previously about how he sees uncrewed capabilities as critical to overwhelming adversaries in future conflicts. The service’s MDTFs, of which there are now four, have been at the leading edge of fielding new long-range strike and other advanced capabilities.
In his response to Altman’s question, Harrington elaborated more on how he sees long-range one-way attack munitions like LUCAS factoring specifically into future fights in the Pacific, such as one against China. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has already established extensive anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) bubbles in the Western Pacific and is continuing to expand on that strategy.
“So as we start modeling out what it looks like to be able to penetrate a portion of the anti-access/area denial network in support of the joint task force in the PACOM [U.S. Pacific Command] area of operations, we started looking at, well, how do I bend – how do I achieve mass at a cost curve?” the 7th Infantry and MDC-PAC commander explained. “What effect am I really trying to achieve on a system in order to provide that window of opportunity for that joint force commander?”
“So maybe I don’t necessarily need to sink a ship, but if I take out certain systems on that vessel, well then it creates this temporal window opportunity,” he continued. “Then that joint force commander can surge in that carrier strike group or bomber task force.”
What the general is describing here is typically referred to as a mission kill. For years now, TWZ has repeatedly highlighted how long-range one-way attack drones and loitering munitions could be used in exactly this way against even larger warships. Damaging or destroying radars, communications antennas, and other subsystems could severely degrade a ship’s combat effectiveness and increase its vulnerability to follow-on attacks. The time and effort required for repairs could keep it sidelined for a protracted period of time.
“So when we started looking at that, we saw great value. That maybe I don’t have to use specifically or unmask an exquisite system to achieve that effect,” Harrington added. “If I can achieve [the] effect of mass utilizing lower cost systems, hey, maybe that will get me there. So we modeled that, and what we saw was, particularly with our unmanned surface vessels [USV], long-range one-way attack, long-range launch effects, the ability to synchronize and mass that could potentially get us to achieve that effect.”
As with long-range one-way attack drones, the adoption of kamikaze USVs by the U.S. military is evolving rapidly. America’s first use of this capability in real combat also came against Iran in July.
Yesterday, using multiple one-way attack surface drones, CENTCOM forces successfully struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. Three Corsair unmanned surface vessels hit the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, marking the first time American forces have employed sea… pic.twitter.com/bOM2kmgRxz
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 13, 2026
The term “launch effects” that Harrington used here is a catch-all term the U.S. military now routinely applies to a diverse array of uncrewed aerial systems designed to be launched from other platforms in the air, on the ground, and/or at sea. This includes loitering munitions, but also designs configured for surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, signal relay, and other tasks. The lines separating long-range one-way attack drones, launched effects, and traditional cruise missiles and decoys are in many cases now very blurry.
None of this is limited to the Pacific region or the Middle East, either.
“So, in terms of launch effects, I think you mentioned LUCAS. Covenant’s out there. There’s other systems that are out there,” Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter, head of Multi-Domain Command-Europe (MDC-E), another one of the panelists, also said in direct response to Howard Altman’s question. “In Europe, we like that, more than accepting risk in an area, maybe we’re disintegrating an anti-access/area denial bubble in the center, and then way up north, we’re going to go ahead and accept some risk there. We like to use those systems to create counter-fire parity, long-range fires parity with an adversary.”
Similar to the establishment of MDC-PAC, MDC-E was formed last year by blending together the 56th Artillery Command and the 2nd MDTF, both of which are forward-deployed in Germany.
The “Covenant” mentioned by Carpenter is a U.S.-Israeli company that has been developing a long-range strike weapon system called Anthem. It was just confirmed in September that the U.S. Army has been actively engaged in testing of Anthem. This includes a live-fire demonstration in Morocco earlier this year. You can read more about Anthem and the current plans for it here.
“The reason we like those types of systems is because they’re EMI [electromagnetic interference] resilient, they’re longer range, and they’re higher yield, so they can go ahead and destroy like SS-26 systems, SS-21 systems,” the MDC-E commander added.
SS-26 Stone and SS-21 Scarab are the NATO reporting names for Russia’s Iskander-M and the older Soviet-designed OTR-21 Tochka short-range ballistic missiles, respectively. They are both fired from road-mobile launchers. Russia and Ukraine have employed Tochka in the course of their ongoing conflict, though their role on both sides has steadily diminished amid shrinking inventories. Tochka is also increasingly limited in service elsewhere globally. Iskander-M is a much more capable design that has factored heavily into U.S. military planning in Europe for years now. The U.S. military has previously acknowledged that war in Ukraine has led to improvements to that missile that make it even more dangerous and difficult to intercept.
Long-range one-way attack munitions like LUCAS are well suited to striking surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missile launchers, along with other high-value and time-sensitive targets, as TWZ highlights regularly. It’s also worth noting that Iran’s Shahed-136, specifically, traces its roots back to pioneering Israeli developments in munitions of this kind, where the focus initially was explicitly on finding new avenues to neutralize hostile air defenses. Iran has shown Shahed-136s and other related designs being employed in exactly this way in large-scale exercises in the past, as seen in the video below.
More recently, Iranian forces demonstrated just how effective these capabilities could be in a real-world context in retaliatory attacks on prized air defense radars on the opposite side of the Persian Gulf after the United States and Israel launched their open waves of strikes back in February. TWZ previously explored the far-reaching ramifications of this in a detailed feature that you can find here.
Overall, as we’ve previously written:
“When it comes to this class of drone, speed and advanced guidance concepts do not define its utility. Range and cost do. Survivability comes in numbers, and due to their smaller size, use of composite materials, and small internal combustion engine, as well as their slow speed. These attributes, along with their low-altitude flight profile, mean they possess a reduced signature and general level of detectability that can be a challenge for traditionally configured ground-based radars. Despite their smaller signature, the fact that they are still somewhat vulnerable to interception is actually a positive, but we will get to that in a moment.”
“Above all else, the Shahed-136 and other long-range one-way attack drones exist to put a relevantly-sized warhead on a target far from their launch position at the lowest possible cost. It was previously estimated that the Russian Shahed-136 variant costs around $50,000 per copy, with some estimates being far lower. This cost has also likely declined significantly since Russia has mastered the design and drastically ramped up serial production. By comparison, traditional cruise missiles with similar range have costs in the millions of dollars per round, so the price differential is very dramatic. The Shaheds are also just far easier to build and can be produced in much less time than a typical cruise missile.”
The ‘mass’ afforded by LUCAS and other long-range kamikaze drones also imposes problematic cost calculations for opponents when it comes to the air defense equation, and offers a way to rapidly drain an opponent’s stocks of vital interceptors. These are realities the U.S. military is currently grappling with after expending thousands of anti-air interceptors in conflict with Iran and in other crises in the Middle East in recent years, as well as supporting allies and partners, such as Ukraine.
LUCAS, specifically, is already in line to become even more capable through the introduction of a swarming capability, made possible by the Hivemind autonomy software package from Shield AI. As we’ve explained before:
“Using the software, multiple LUCAS drones will be able to share tasks and maneuver cooperatively, making saturation attacks even more effective. As well as the drones dynamically rerouting, avoiding air defenses, and otherwise adapting to changing battlefield conditions, an AI pilot makes it easier for missions to continue despite hostile jamming or loss of datalink connectivity. Indeed, using AI, drone swarms can maintain near-perfect combat efficiency even if it loses members. Drones can be configured with all different payloads, with the swarm’s makeup tailored to each mission, and the AI system can maximize their collective effectiveness at all times.”
The U.S. Army still has many questions to answer about how it will field LUCAS and other long-range one-way-attack drones on a more widespread basis, as well as train personnel to employ them. As evidenced by the establishment of the MDTFs, and now the MDC-PAC and MDC-E formations, the underlying force structure that will go along with all of this is still evolving, as well.
The remarks from Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington and Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter at AUSA this week show senior Army leaders are working hard now to lay the groundwork to answer these questions. A clear vision for how LUCAS and similar weapons will be employed in future fights against land-based and maritime threats is taking shape already.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
The post The Army’s Plan For Employing LUCAS Kamikaze Drones Against Its Adversaries appeared first on TWZ.
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