A1-CM Furia () — is a Ukrainian hand-launched,

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

(UAV) designed for aerial

reconnaissance In military operations, military reconnaissance () or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, the terrain, and civil activities in the area of operations. In military jargon, reconnai ...

. It is controlled using a dedicated rectangular, guitar-case sized, portable station (displayed behind UAV in photo).

History

It made its first flight in 2014 and was commissioned by the Air Guard of Ukraine in 2015 and

Armed Forces of Ukraine The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are the Military, military forces of Ukraine. All military and security forces, including the Armed Forces, are under the command of the president of Ukraine and subject to oversight by a permanent Verkhovna Rad ...

in 2020. A1-CM Furia UAVs are used in the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

Capabilities

According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, its latest modification, the A1-CMX, is able to correlate and pinpoint visual map data with GPS and

GLONASS GLONASS (, ; ) is a Russian satellite navigation system operating as part of a radionavigation-satellite service. It provides an alternative to Global Positioning System (GPS) and is the second navigational system in operation with global cove ...

coordinates in realtime, and can reliably beam a laser target designator up to 7km away onto an area of 2x2m - even in harsh weather conditions. The CMX version was dubbed a new "

Wunderwaffe ''Wunderwaffe'' () is a German word that roughly translates to "wonder-weapon" and was a term assigned during World War II by Nazi Germany's propaganda ministry to some revolutionary "superweapons". Most of these weapons however remained pr ...

" in the fight against Russia due to its ability to give final guidance correction to the

M982 Excalibur The M982 Excalibur (previously XM982) is a 155 mm extended-range guided artillery shell developed in a collaborative effort between the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineerin ...

artillery shells.

Design

Airframe is based on the RVJet RC plane by RangeVideo. Analysis of destroyed versions that floated on Russian social-network VK at the end of August 2023 showed custom

FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a type of configurable integrated circuit that can be repeatedly programmed after manufacturing. FPGAs are a subset of logic devices referred to as programmable logic devices (PLDs). They consist of a ...

and

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chips on tailor-made motherboards and daughterboards, expensive industrial grade ball-bearings, multiple 830/905nm laser range finders and laser designators as well as precision electric motors and stepper-motors from

Northrop Grumman Corporation Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military technology provi ...

, Honeywell International Inc., L-3 Technologies, and ABB. Features included multi-band long-range digital radio, backup gyroscopes, designated chipsets for satellite reception and a secondary high-resolution IR camera. Almost all electronic parts were enclosed in individual hardened shock-proof casings with Mu-metal EMI and RFI shielding. Members of the Russian hacker-group Killnet commented that they were "severely impressed" and attributed "high quality" and "an obvious technological advantage". The A1-CMX is claimed to have assisted in precision strikes to destroy over 43 Russian tanks and 181 assorted armored and support vehicles during the first half of the Counter-Offensive in the Robotyne region alone. It was described by General Yevhen Moisiuk as an "absolute game changer“ that "leads to spotted targets getting destroyed in under 15minutes at a 95% probability“.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web , url = http://ukr.lb.ua/news/2014/08/03/274968_artilleristi_zone_ato_ispolzuyut.html , title = Артилеристи в зоні АТО використовують безпілотник для стрільби по бойовиках , date = 3 August 2014 , publisher = Лівий берег , archive-url = https://archive.today/20140828195439/http://ukr.lb.ua/news/2014/08/03/274968_artilleristi_zone_ato_ispolzuyut.html , archive-date = 28 August 2014 , language = uk Unmanned aerial vehicles of Ukraine Reconnaissance aircraft Military equipment of the Russian invasion of Ukraine