The leadership of Russia’s Armed Forces has used the introduction and diversification of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) as a means to boost target acquisition in combat operations. The role of both UAVs and unmanned aerial combat vehicles (UACV) in Russian military planning is extending into developing such systems for conducting strikes. A key example of this technological process is the effort to combine the Su-57 fifth-generation fighter with the heavy-strike UCAV S-70 Okhotnik (“Hunter”), first publicly seen in early 2019 and which underwent its first test flight in August of that year (see EDM, November 19, 2019). The Okhotnik remains at its testing stage, yet advances in its design suggest it will offer a formidable strike capability for the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil—VKS) (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, October 10, 2021).
Russian Military Enhances UACV Strike Capability – Jamestown
