MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/. The fiber-optic Knyaz Vandal of Novgorod (KVN) drone is currently used by Russian troops as an ambush drone, Alexey Chadayev, CEO of the Ushkuynik Research and Production Center (Veliky Novgorod), told TASS in an interview.
"Speaking of major upgrades, an option has been added this spring to use the KVN as an ambush drone, so-called ‘waiting drone,’ it’s when drones fly somewhere, land, and wait for their victims. Many changes have also been made on the inside. In addition, the drone now has a longer flight range, thanks to extended-range coils," Chadayev said.
According to the expert, the drone has been significantly upgraded since its introduction in August 2024. "The KVN drones are now completely different from those that flew 1.5 years ago. Only the frame shape remains from those drones. At some point, we began receiving a steady stream of feedback from the soldiers using the drones. And we have not just a collection of suggestions from individual calculations, but statistics. Therefore, from a certain point on, the development and technical improvement of the Knyaz Vandal has been based not only on the engineering thought of the development team, but on a structured, statistically processed stream of failures, requests, situations, and various use scenarios," Chadayev noted.
The head of the Ushkuynik Research and Production Center emphasized that another major upgrade was the addition of an initiation board and an electronic target sensor. "In videos published online, you can see protruding ‘whiskers’ at the front of the KVN, which are needed to detonate the warhead upon impact with an object. The initiation board allows, for example, the operator to detonate the drone from the control panel, and much more—it's too long to list," he said.
Chadayev also cited the development of a cast fiber optic coil as one of the important improvements. "After all, the first coils for the KVN drones were printed on 3D printers. Switching to a standard cast coil improved the fault and breakage statistics. A single circuit board was also created for all the electronics, which, among other things, made it possible to cut production costs significantly," he said.
"Our company’s main achievement is that our Knyaz Vandal of Novgorod has become the main fiber-optic unmanned aerial vehicle in service with the Russian Armed Forces, the most popular and widely used in its niche." "Over the past year and a half, Ushkuynik has managed to double its drone production without any decline in performance. The performance that was shown when the drone was produced in small batches, remained the same when we started to supply Russian battlegroups with tens of thousands of KVN UAVs," Chadayev added.