The National Guard of Ukraine has shown some of the episodes of their combat training, featuring operating the Kazhan unmanned aerial vehicle. Despite these systems being spotted now and then in the Ukrainian military and being used for a while now against the russian invasion army, there is still little information about them.
Here we collected some of the scattered facts about this UAV and videos of its combat application.
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To start with, Kazhan is often referred to as a hexacopter in Ukrainian media, although as we can see, there are different variants: 4-rotor and 6-rotor. Regardless of the version, Ukrainian military servicemen with experience of operating it in real combat, state the same specifications.
According to them, the Kazhan UAV can stay up in the air for 20 to 40 minutes, moving at a speed of up to 120 km/h. The drone can lift up to 20 kg of payload, primarily explosives. Operators say they use 60mm, 82mm and 120mm mortar shells to drop them onto russian personnel or equipment.
"If we have an enemy armored vehicle at a distance of up to 6 kilometers, instead of using ten munitions to try and destroy it, we use these drones. They fly to the exact location and drop explosives directly on top of the enemy equipment," a soldier with a call sign Horynych said in an interview to Obiektyv media, recorded in October last year. The ejection mechanism is quite simple: a strap with a ring holds the munitions; then the lock releases the ring, and they fall.
In a newer report from Ukrainian positions published in March 23 this year, a drone operator nicknamed Balu echoes his words and adds that this drone can also deliver anti-tank mines and plant them on the road in a remote-mining manner.
The name of the UAV, Kazhan, means "bat" because it has a thermal camera for night missions referred to as "simple but effective", as well as a 10x zoom camera for daytime sorties. Work of the IR camera is clearly seen in the video below:
In open sources, we can also find mentions of two variants of this UAV: Kazhan-1 and Kazhan-2. The exact difference is not specified, the former is said to be launched from an off-road vehicle, while the latter is man-portable. Both developed by the Ukrtekhno-Atom enterprise in Ukraine.
As mentioned, Kazhan drones are used by the National Guard, Ukraine's gendarmerie, but also they were seen in the hands of the regular army's Special Operations Forces, the Ukrainian Navy, and the KRAKEN special unit subject to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
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