Weapon research specialists of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine have studied the new russian loitering munition that remained a mystery for a while. Their findings, along with a detailed list of components, were published on the agency's website War & Sanctions which helps lawmakers and manufacturers cut off the flow of military parts to russia.
With its name now known, the V2U is a smart suicide attack unmanned aerial vehicle with artificial intelligence. Its episodic use was recorded since February 2025, and especially increased since May. As its deployment scaled up, this kamikaze drone became arguably more dangerous than the mass-produced and established Lancet UAV.
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Until this study was released, very little information had been available about this emerging threat, except the fact it incorporated advanced and expensive electronic components which enabled highly automated attacks: without any communication with the system operator, a drone can enter a given target area using only his visual navigation, and independently find, select, and engage the target.
Although many new details have transpired with the analysis by Ukraine's Defense Intelligence, the manufacturer of this UAV remains unknown.
The disclosed specifications of the V2U include:
- electric motor, battery capacity: 34 A⋅h,
- flight time: 1 hour,
- cruising speed: 60 km/h.
There's also a new modification of this drone equipped with an internal combustion engine, increasing the range to 100 km.
With a wingspan of 1.2 meters, V2U takes off from a pneumatic catapult, carrying a warhead weighing up to 3.5 kilograms. Some units were also seen with a smaller 3-kg KOFZBCh warhead, offering a combination of anti-armor, high-explosive, and fragmentation effects.
While the UAV also has communication gadgets for direct control by the operator via cellular network, the main feature, though, is the computer enabling the UAV to carry out autonomous attacks.
The core of V2U's brains is the Nvidia Jetson Orin — a ready-made modular solution for artificial intelligence from a world-leading developer and manufacturer of graphics processors, video cards, and other PC components. This module is inserted into a Chinese-made Leetop A603 carrier board.
On a well-known Chinese marketplace, this device costs $380. It uses a 128 Gb solid-state drive, which apparently stores a database for target and terrain matching.
Another rather expensive component found inside V2U is its camera, but so far, the studied samples were not enough for its identification. The entire function of artificial intelligence algorithms depends on the quality of this camera. Given the previous findings inside other russian know-hows, V2U's camera is likely to be sourced from the commercial market, too.
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