Ukraine’s Bulava drone can now hunt in the dark—one camera handles day and night

Ukraine's Bulava strike drone can now hunt around the clock, its crews no longer switching optics between day and night. Its maker, DeViRo, showed the upgraded drone at a defense exhibition in Poland, the Military news outlet Militarnyi reported. The overhaul brings a new camera and lengthens the drone's flight time, and the developers say they substantially improved its flight characteristics. The company said every future production batch will carry the new optics.

Ukraine's war effort increasingly runs on small private firms that keep sharpening cheap drones in months, reworking weapons already in the fight rather than waiting years for a new model. A drone that sees in the dark can work the same targets after sunset that it hunts by day.

One camera for day and night

The updated loitering munition carries a multispectral optical station that lets it operate at any hour, a company representative told Militarnyi at the MSPO defense exhibition in Poland. The station packs a daytime channel and a thermal-imaging channel into one body, so crews no longer swap in different camera modules depending on the time of day. Operators flip between the two modes in the control station's software while the drone is already in the air.

Explore further

Ukraine shows a home-built missile designed to hit ballistic targets for the first time, the Koral, at Poland’s MSPO

Longer in the air, 120 to 130 km out

Bulava now stays aloft for up to 110 minutes, and its guaranteed working range runs from 120 to 130 km, with room to grow depending on conditions and crew training.

DeViRo tied the drone to a summer campaign against Russian logistics, in which it says Bulava crews cleared the way for deeper strikes.

"We knocked out enemy radars and air defenses so that deep strikes could fly as deep as possible," the company representative said.

The company says its crews took a very active part in that campaign, which hit Russian supply routes across the south.

An interceptor in the same family

DeViRo builds more than strike drones. In March, it introduced the Sokyra interceptor, a prototype built to shoot down Russian attack drones. The prototype was listed at 240 km/h, a 45 km range, 30 minutes aloft, and a 750-gram warhead at the alpha-testing stage.