The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine reportedly used Warmate loitering munitions, also called suicide drones, to destroy Russian enemies.
Ukraine’s border guard posted brutal war footage showing the Warmate drones flying straight into enemy targets hiding in household and maintenance buildings, in southern Ukraine.
“Together with other units of the Defense Forces, the border guards destroy the invaders and inflict significant losses on them, using aerial reconnaissance units,” the border guard service said in a release.
Warmate is a small, vaguely plane-shaped unmanned system with a centrally-mounted wing and a v-tail, which weighs, at most, just under 12 pounds. It has a top speed of just over 90 miles per hour and can remain aloft for around 70 minutes, on average.
The drone, which is designed to be operated by just two people, can perform localized surveillance and reconnaissance functions, giving troops important added situational awareness. It also offers a way to immediately strike at any enemy forces, including light armored vehicles, that it discovers.
The Warmate constitutes a good alternative for anti-tank guided missiles with its capability to operate in a significantly larger radius, allowing comfortable detection and observation of the potential target in a relatively large time span.