Ukraine adds mast-equipped ground drone to official arms inventory

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has officially codified and cleared for service the Pliushch, a ground-based unmanned reconnaissance and relay platform developed by Ukrainian defense technology company Robotic Complexes, the firm announced Thursday.

The certification opens the door to formal procurement by Ukrainian armed forces units and marks another milestone in Kyiv’s effort to field domestically developed unmanned systems at scale across a front line that has consumed equipment at a pace no conventional procurement cycle could sustain.

The Pliushch (Ivy) is built around a 10-meter extendable mast mounted on a mobile ground platform weighing 1,000 kilograms, and that mast is the system’s defining feature. Lifting sensors, communications equipment, or electronic warfare payloads well above ground-level terrain and vegetation, it extends their effective operational range in environments where line-of-sight is the difference between a functioning network and a dead one. The platform travels at up to 12 kilometers per hour and carries enough capacity for a 40-kilometer operational range, according to Robotic Complexes.

Robotic Complexes describes the Pliushch as capable of functioning as a communications and relay node, carrying electronic warfare systems, and performing reconnaissance and observation tasks — a combination that addresses a persistent challenge on the Ukrainian contact line, where pushing communications infrastructure and sensor coverage forward without exposing personnel to drone-saturated, artillery-heavy conditions has become one of the defining tactical problems of the war.

Operating autonomously in ambush mode, the Pliushch can remain active for up to four days without human intervention, according to the company, allowing units to deploy the platform in forward positions and leave it to monitor, relay, or conduct electronic warfare independently. That capability reduces both the manpower burden and the radio emissions that can reveal a unit’s location to adversary direction-finding systems, a threat Ukrainian commanders have learned to treat as seriously as direct fire.

Robotic Complexes confirmed the system is already in use by combat units on the front line, meaning the codification process followed operational deployment rather than preceded it. That sequence is characteristic of Ukrainian defense development, where battlefield necessity drives rapid fielding and formal certification catches up afterward. The Ministry of Defense’s codification now regularizes that status, allowing the Pliushch to be officially supplied to Ukrainian Defense Forces through standard procurement channels rather than the informal arrangements that have characterized much of Ukraine’s front-line technology adoption since February 2022.

The platform will also become available for military units through Brave1 Market using E-points, Ukraine’s digitized procurement mechanism tied to the Brave1 defense technology cluster. Launched by the Ukrainian government in 2023, Brave1 was designed to accelerate the pipeline between domestic developers and front-line units by cutting the bureaucratic friction that has historically slowed military procurement to a pace incompatible with active combat. Making the Pliushch available through that channel signals that Robotic Complexes intends to reach units that have already accumulated E-points rather than waiting on centralized Ministry supply contracts.