Ukrainian company Vyriy Industries is bringing a new tactical reconnaissance drone, Slavic, to the market, Oboronka reports, citing information from the manufacturer. The control system of the new drone will be familiar to DJI Mavic operators, the company also said.

Mavic has long been one of the main reconnaissance tools used by Ukrainian forces, with Ukraine relying heavily on supplies of these drones from abroad. After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said China had stopped selling drones to Ukraine, the country began seeking alternatives. Slavic is one of these domestic alternatives, designed not only to replace Mavic but also to adapt its capabilities to current battlefield conditions, allowing reconnaissance crews to operate farther from the line of contact and reducing risks to personnel.

Slavic has a tactical range of up to 30 kilometers without GPS

Slavic can remain airborne for up to 1.5 hours because it is equipped with a 40,000 mAh solid-state battery, the media outlet notes. The drone has a tactical range of up to 30 kilometers, the report says.

The aircraft can operate without GPS, as Slavic uses optical positioning for navigation. The pilot can also select a less congested channel and operate more effectively in difficult terrain because the communications system operates across a wide range of channels.

The manufacturer notes that for surveillance, Slavic is equipped with a daytime 2K digital camera mounted on a three-axis stabilized gimbal, with 10x optical and 30x hybrid zoom.

The system is supplied as a ready-to-use package “out of the box,” with all the equipment needed for operation without additional field modifications.

The drone is designed to keep crews farther from the front line

The company said its new drone has successfully completed initial combat trials with seven units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces and is preparing for scale-up, the media outlet notes.

“The war has changed, and so have the working conditions for crews. The kill zone has expanded, while available commercial drones have a limited tactical range. The main task now is to provide the military with a specialized platform that can fly longer and farther, so crews can operate farther from the line of contact. This is exactly why we began developing Slavic,” said Oleksii Babenko, founder and CEO of Vyriy Industries.

At the same time, the team is working on new Slavic configurations, including testing thermal imaging modules for nighttime reconnaissance. The manufacturer is also preparing the platform for scaled-up production and deliveries to the Ukrainian Defense Forces, the company told the media.

“Frankensteins” and Ukrainian-made drones are among the options for replacing scarce Mavics

The Ukrainian military had widely used Chinese DJI Mavic 3 drones, including to adjust artillery fire, monitor infantry positions and conduct surveillance, prompting Ukraine to seek ways to replace the shortage. More than five alternatives to the Chinese drone had already been developed in Ukraine, the Ministry of Strategic Industries of Ukraine confirmed to RBC-Ukraine in July 2025.

There are also other options for replacing them. The main work in military units is being done with “Frankensteins,” drones assembled from two or three damaged aircraft, Mavic UAV pilot instructor “Dobryi” said in an interview with Militarnyi in July this year. At the same time, such drones are less reliable than new ones, he added.

Ukrainian soldiers have built a drone that carries a combat ground robot into battle and drops it where needed, a trick the US has pursued but never fielded. The Alter Ego battalion of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade has paired a bomber drone with a purpose-built robot, the Desantnyk, and took it from idea to combat in 10 days, the Brave1 defense cluster said.

The system answers a problem that has long hobbled ground robots: getting them to the fight over mined, cratered terrain they cannot cross on their own.

A drone carries the robot dozens of kilometers behind the lines and drops it precisely, in a pairing engineers call a "marsupial", one carrier delivering another. The US worked on such systems for more than 30 years, Brave1 said.

And it is not alone: the 3rd Army Corps has been air-dropping robots behind Russian lines in its Vivaldi offensive.

A drone carries the robot in

The Desantnyk is a compact wheeled platform. Alter Ego built a way to release it accurately from a heavy bomber drone, dropping it well beyond the range a ground robot could reach on its own. It lands deep in the enemy rear and drives on to its target. The point is to spare the robot the most dangerous, exposed leg of the journey.

Confirmed kills follow fast

According to Brave1, just 10 days passed from the idea to its first combat use, and the Desantnyk has already carried out confirmed strikes: the unit used it to destroy Russian shelters and troops. Only a handful of Ukrainian units have mastered the tactic so far.

Brave1 moves it to production

The defense cluster, a state platform for scaling battlefield inventions, said it took notice of the Desantnyk and helped the battalion find a manufacturer to move it from prototypes to serial production and out to other units.

Ukraine's former top commander has a warning for anyone betting that new gadgets will win the war, he wrote in a column for Ukrainska Pravda. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the country's Commander-in-Chief until 2024 and now its ambassador to the UK, argues 2026 is a war of technologies and, no less, of the strategies and doctrines that must keep pace with them. Bolting modern tech onto an old Soviet playbook, he says, drove mobilization into a dead end.

A year ago, Zaluzhnyi warned that Ukraine would need thousands of counter-drone systems and mass drone production to cope with the growing role of UAVs in war. A year later, those capabilities still aren't there at the scale he called for, mobilization has hit the dead end he now describes, and the four measures he proposed have not kept pace with how quickly drones are spreading.

Drones are already cheap, widespread, and shaping the war, and the front has gone static, Zaluzhnyi writes, while Russian strikes keep reaching railways and fuel stations far behind it.

This is no longer a drone war

The drones filling headlines no longer exist on their own, Zaluzhnyi writes. They have evolved into more familiar weapon types, cheaper and more effective—anyone still treating drones as a stand-alone class is about three years behind. Fixating on individual gadgets, he argues, misses the real contest: strategy and doctrine.

He reaches back to World War I for the danger he sees, running the line from Verdun and the Somme to Robotyne and Bakhmut. Before that war, soldiers in one army marched in bright red trousers that were supposed to help against repeating rifles, machine guns, and long-range artillery, and later against tanks and aircraft.

Today's faith in old security guarantees, he warns, is that same proud symbol worn onto a modern battlefield.

"The red trousers taught them nothing," he writes of those still moving tanks and artillery toward the fight by yesterday's logic.

New weapons, old strategy

The war has surrendered itself to marketers and wheeler-dealers, Zaluzhnyi writes—people who, without understanding or strategy, stoke it for quick profit while flaunting the pace of technological progress. Trying to retake land with Soviet methods and new weapons drove mobilization into a dead end, and fewer and fewer people were willing to take the one chance it offered.

"Damn marketing that kills," he adds.

The way out, he argues, is to treat technology as a new weapon, build tactics around it, and only then reshape the force.

That is what he calls doctrine, built through resource and technological alliances into a strategy for victory. Ukraine and Russia, he writes, have become real-time testing grounds.

What he warned a year ago

In September 2025, Zaluzhnyi named the four fights Ukraine had to win to survive mass drone warfare: counter-drone systems at scale, state-level drone production, integrated battlefield networks, and channeling tech talent into defense industries.

The counter-drone systems he put first are still short of the scale he warned Ukraine would need. Mobilization, he writes, has hit a dead end, and marketers—not the doctrine he calls for—are setting the pace.