Ukraine’s unprecedented drone rescue of a wounded soldier from the battlefield has shown once again how battlefield necessity can spur innovation. The operation was revealed just days after separate Ukrainian drones designed for casualty evacuation were deployed for frontline testing—taking a step beyond the US military’s decades of experimentation with similar concepts.
The drone evacuation of the injured soldier took place at an undisclosed time and place on the frontline where the presence of Russian drones and landmines made it impractical to send in a wheeled ground robot , according to The Kyiv Independent . On October 19, Ukraine’s Army shared a video of the drone evacuation, showing the wounded soldier securing himself in a harness suspended beneath a heavy hexacopter drone with six rotors before being flown to safety.
“This is a historic event, the next stage of evacuating the wounded, which we will all come to,” said Napalm, a programmer of the 92nd separate assault brigade’s unmanned ground systems company, who went by his callsign per Ukrainian military practice, in a statement. “Now the serious systematic work begins, so that such missions are carried out constantly.”
To perform the improvised aerial evacuation, the 92nd brigade prepared and tested a heavy hexacopter drone—the Heavy Shot AYUDAG 6 model—provided for free by the Ukrainian manufacturer Gurzuf Defence. Special carabiners were first delivered to the wounded soldier so he could attach himself to the drone that was equipped with a winch, according to a blog post by Gurzuf Defence .
The wounded soldier, who serves with Ukraine’s 30th separate mechanized brigade, had already spent nearly 500 days at a frontline position while under threat of Russian fire, according to Gurzuf Defence. Like many soldiers at frontline positions, he had been relying on friendly drone deliveries for ammunition and other supplies.
The drone evacuation flight took 1 hour and 14 minutes from start to finish while covering a distance of nearly 39 miles (62 kilometers). This particular hexacopter can reportedly carry up to 200 pounds (90 kilograms).
