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​Vampire UAV: Works at Night Delivering Supplies to Allies and Bombs onto Enemies

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Drone operator Bereza of the Ukrainian air assault troops controls his Vampire UAV / Still frame credit: Air Assault Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Drone operator Bereza of the Ukrainian air assault troops controls his Vampire UAV / Still frame credit: Air Assault Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

The Ukrainian aerial drone has become such a menace that the russian unit in its area of operation declared the Vampire wanted for a reward

Vampire is a hexacopter drone, i.e. unmanned rotorcraft with six rays and the same number of engines, which makes it a decent heavylift aerial vehicle. Operators working with it mostly deploy at dusk or midnight to make the most of its night vision camera, thus the name.

"Vampire is most effective at night because it's equipped with a thermal imager that performs quite well, and [because] it's less noticeable," says drone operator with call sign Bereza, in a video interview published by Ukrainian Air Assault Forces Command.

Read more: New FPV Drones with Machine Vision for Automatic Target Tracking Empower Ukrainian Forces (Video)
Call sign Bereza and the crew of Vampire operators / Defense Express / Vampire UAV: Works at Night Delivering Supplies to Allies and Bombs onto Enemies
Call sign Bereza and the crew of Vampire operators / Still frame credit: Air Assault Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

The drone is versatile: from safely delivering supplies to an allied position in "the most difficult of spots" to remote mining of territories, fire support on the defensive or pinpoint strikes at locations where mortar or artillery fire would struggle to land a hit. Occasionally deployed for humanitarian purposes:

For accomplishing any kind of mission, the drone can carry up to a maximum of 15 kg, although in practice, the effective payload is up to 12 kg. The "combat radius" is 8 to 12 km for a sortie to the designated point and back. The tactic is simple: reconnaissance units deploy smaller quadcopter camera drones to find targets, then a Vampire crew is called on the spot to deliver a strike.

Vampire UAV declared specifications / Defense Express / Vampire UAV: Works at Night Delivering Supplies to Allies and Bombs onto Enemies
Vampire UAV declared specifications / Infographics credit: United24 Media

From a few other videos of Ukrainian Armed Forces using this aerial vehicle, we can find out that the weapons it uses varies from primitive explosive devices like grenades with customly attached fins to blast anti-tank mines and shaped-charge munitions. In the footage shared by the Raroh and CODE 9.2 units, we can see a T-80 and a fuel warehouse destroyed by Vampires (in different times and places).

Defense Express / Vampire UAV: Works at Night Delivering Supplies to Allies and Bombs onto Enemies
Vampire on the hunt for russian military equipment / Still photo credits: United24 fund; Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine

Bereza also recalls an intercepted russian radio conversation, the operators learned from it that some russian commander offered a reward for taking down a Vampire drone: over $500 and a seven-day vacation.

Side note, the hexacopter is one of the family of three "vampire" weapons of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Besides the drone, Ukraine operates the American Vampire anti-aircraft and land attack missile system that guides APKWS rockets with a laser beam, and the Czech RM-70 Vampir multiple rocket launcher, an upgraded version of the BM-21 Grad MLRS with an additional pack of artillery rockets to reload in the field.

Read more: ​Ukrainian Heavy Drone Kazhan: Multirotor Aerial "Artillery"