• Ukrainian forces said Monday that they pulled off a "first-ever" air evacuation using a heavy drone.
• Deploying large aerial drones for battlefield casualty evacuation is a high-risk operation.
• A Ukrainian official involved in the development of such drones called them a last-resort tool.

Several Ukrainian companies have developed heavy-lift drones that can evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield, but the risks mean they should be used only as a last resort, an official involved in these efforts told Business Insider.

Denys Lohvynenko, the drone chief at Brave1, Ukraine's state-backed innovation platform, said that heavy-lift drones provide a time-sensitive means of rescuing wounded troops in highly dangerous situations where they cannot walk on their own and other evacuation methods are unavailable.

Ukraine began developing heavy-lift drones two years ago, but the complex technical requirements took time to iron out.

On Monday, a Ukrainian military unit said that it had used a heavy drone to save a wounded soldier from the front lines, carrying out what it described as a "first-ever air evacuation."

The presence of land mines and Russian drones rendered the use of ground robots — for Kyiv, an increasingly common method of casualty evacuation — too challenging.

"In these situations, heavy-lift aerial evacuation serves as a lifeline of last resort," Lohvynenko explained in remarks shared by Brave1, which has supported the development of these drones and other war technology.

Ukraine's 92nd Separate Assault Brigade said Monday that soldiers used a six-rotor hexacopter made by the Ukrainian company Gurzuf Defense to carry out the mission. Other defense companies are working on similar technology; SkyFall, for instance, recently unveiled its own hexacopter for evacuations.

Ukrainian forces also use heavy-lift drones for logistics missions, as they can typically carry more cargo than smaller variants.

A challenge is that big drones are big targets. Samuel Bendett, a drone warfare expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, a US research organization, told Business Insider on Monday that certain elite Russian military units are focused on downing such aircraft.

Lohvynenko said Ukraine understands the risk of using large drones in and around contested airspace, as is the case along most of the front lines. So they are "reserved only for high-risk, high-priority emergencies," he said.

The heavy-lift drones have also been equipped with what he described as "additional survivability systems," including electronic warfare and alternative communications. Active protection systems could be installed in the future.

"We maintain a realistic view of the technological and operational challenges associated with aerial extraction of personnel via heavy-lift drones," Lohvynenko said.

"However, establishing this technical capability is essential," he continued, arguing that a "single life saved on the battlefield justifies every engineering hour and resource invested in this program."

Combat casualty evacuation has become increasingly robotic for Ukraine as the country's officials, companies, and military units look to replace soldiers with machines in dangerous front-line missions wherever possible.

Ground robots, in particular, are seen as crucial tools for casualty evacuation and logistics. Ukraine's defense ministry said last month that the number of these kinds of missions carried out by robots has jumped more than threefold since January.

The deployment of a heavy-lift drone for an evacuation, an unusual mission, underscores Ukraine's growing efforts to use uncrewed systems in unconventional battlefield roles.

• The US Army is applying lessons from Ukraine and Iran to better prepare its air defenders.
• Forward-deployed air defense units are bringing back lessons from combat.
• Combat simulations are evolving to reflect new battlefield threats and tactics.

Intense missile and drone attacks in global conflicts are showing the US Army how it needs to train its air defenders, as well as how to protect them from threats, Army officials said.

Lessons on protecting MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile systems and crews are coming in, and Army leaders say those observations are being quickly incorporated into training to help troops keep pace with evolving threats and tactics.

In their war against Ukraine, Russian forces have hunted Patriot batteries and other air-defense systems while also trying to overwhelm them with complex barrages of one-way attack drones alongside ballistic and cruise missiles, providing lessons in mobility, concealment, deception, and dispersal. The war with Iran, meanwhile, has exposed American and allied air defenders to the challenge of defending against large-scale drone and missile bombardments while managing interceptor stocks. The Army is learning those lessons, officials say.

Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, the head of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told reporters at the Association of the United States Army conference last week that air defenders have been "probably the most aggressive community in the Army for learning lessons from Ukraine," with an emphasis on survivability and the protection of critical assets.

"How have we embraced those observations from Ukraine and then put them into action?" Rafferty said this was one of the first questions he asked when he took command earlier this year.

He said that he has seen how command teams have "put those lessons in place and how they are taking steps to protect their soldiers, to protect the critical systems of Patriots and sensors, protection, camouflage, deception, all of that."

Officials with the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command told Business Insider that observations and lessons from Ukraine are shared with its headquarters at Fort Bliss, Texas, where training materials for air defense soldiers are updated. The information is also shared with the larger Army and industry partners.

The 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command recently transferred to Army Space and Missile Defense Command and is tasked with missile defense planning across different regions. Its responsibilities include both active defenses, such as intercepting incoming missiles, and passive measures, such as camouflage and dispersal, as well as coordinating intelligence and command-and-control.

Rafferty and other officials said that the US war with Iran, which has stress-tested American air defense units, is providing valuable data on air defense. According to Rafferty, roughly 2,500 soldiers from his command are deployed to the Middle East, including both air defense formations and space specialists.

He said that roughly 25% to 30% of the command's air defense formations are deployed. These forces consist primarily of Patriot units and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile defense crews.

"We're taking the things that we're seeing in the Middle East and feeding it back to the other brigades in the formation," Col. Matthew Ingils, deputy commanding officer for operations with the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said.

Lessons include "the types of threats" as well as "the scale, the scope, the complexity of what we're seeing," and then training new formations on that insight so that individual soldiers who join an air defense unit can quickly catch up.

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East present different challenges, giving the Army a broader range of lessons to incorporate into its training.

To prepare to counter new threats or employ new tactics, soldiers use combat simulations that are being updated with lessons from the Middle East and Ukraine.

Current conflicts have shown the Army and broader US military that air defenses are essential for intercepting missiles and drones, protecting critical assets, and challenging aircraft.

Heavy expenditure of air-defense interceptors and other munitions, however, have raised concerns about whether the US is sufficiently stocked for future fights.

At the same time, air defenders themselves have become priority targets for enemy forces, making dispersal, camouflage, and mobility increasingly important to their survival.

• A new Ukrainian list of foreign parts in Russia's anti-jamming antenna is filled with US electronics.
• GUR published a catalog of US digital processors, chips, and other components found in the Kometa.
• These arrays are used to help Shaheds and Iskander-M missiles navigate and suppress jamming.

Over two dozen US processors, chips, and other components have been found in Russia's anti-jamming antenna systems, according to Ukraine's military intelligence.

The Ukrainian agency, GUR, published a list of foreign parts on Monday that it said were discovered in 16-element Kometa modules, one of Russia's more advanced systems that help drones and ballistic missiles suppress electronic warfare and navigate the skies.

US-headquartered firms produced 28 out of 37 foreign components — or just over three-quarters — listed on Monday, per GUR.

Ten American brands and their components were identified in the catalog, posted on GUR's War and Sanctions page. These include digital processors from Intel subsidiary Altera, radio-frequency and precision components from Analog Devices, a memory chip from Micron, and supporting electronics from Texas Instruments.

Another three components are built by Chinese companies, while the other six come from Japanese, Taiwanese, and Swiss manufacturers, GUR also indicated.

In a statement to Business Insider, a Texas Instruments spokesperson said the company "strongly opposes the use of our chips in Russian military equipment."

"Any shipments of TI chips into Russia are illicit and unauthorized. We devote significant time and resources to developing, implementing, and refining policies and procedures to combat illicit diversion and keep chips out of the hands of bad actors," they added.

Intel, Analog Devices, and Micron did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

The new list from GUR, which regularly publishes information on foreign parts in Russian equipment, comes as the electronic warfare race grows more vital to Ukraine's air defense.

Kyiv's forces try to stop Russian drone and missile attacks with a mix of jamming tools and interceptors, but the latter are facing difficulty as Moscow has begun mass-launching faster, jet-powered drones — the slowest of which can fly at about 185 mph.

Kometa antenna panels are among the most common anti-jamming tools on Russian long-range weapons, such as Shahed drones, Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and glide bombs.

Each antenna receives satellite signals and helps to counter jamming or spoofing.

The 16-element Kometa, which essentially has an array of 16 antennas, is one of Russia's newer versions of the system in mass production. Two years ago, Moscow was regularly using eight-element Kometas on its Shaheds instead.