**About the very real, non-military threats posed by unmanned aerial vehicles**

In October, the Ukrainian Armed Forces conducted the **first evacuation of a wounded soldier from the front line using an unmanned aerial vehicle.**

Footage of the operation was **made publicly available** by the enemy. A **heavy, six-rotor (hexacopter) drone, the "Ayudag-6"** from the Ukrainian company **Gurzuf Defence**, was used to transport the wounded infantryman from the 30th Mechanized Brigade, who had been stationed at the position for a long time (allegedly 500 days).

According to the stated specifications, the "Ayudag-6" is capable of carrying a **payload of up to 90 kg over a distance of up to 25 km, with the ability to return (a total range of approximately 50 km).**

Another Ukrainian company, **SkyFall**, has developed and is testing the **heavy UAV StarGate** – a specialized platform for air evacuation of the wounded from the front line. The SkyFall six-rotor multirotor (hexacopter) is equipped with a **capsule for evacuating a soldier weighing up to 150 kg () over a distance of 15 km in one direction.

For Russia, which has one of the **longest land borders in the world**(over 22,000 km), the widespread use of such drones **means potential vulnerabilities on the state border**, through which **hundreds of kilograms of contraband goods, drugs, weapons, or explosives**, as well as **illegal migrants, or even entire groups of terrorists or saboteurs**, could be smuggled.

The key problem is that these drones are **manufactured using components readily available on the commercial market**, and the technology for creating such UAVs is being disseminated around the world, making it possible to produce them in small workshops. This will **inevitably lead to their widespread use () by transnational criminals in the near future.

In these circumstances, it is important to understand **how prepared the border service is for new challenges** () in the form of unmanned threats, although there is **no public information** about this. For example, the Americans have been **building their anti-drone wall on the border with Mexico since the spring of 2026**, and similar projects are being implemented **along all the eastern borders of the EU countries.

[Two Majors](http://t.me/two_majors)