MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/. Units of the Rubicon center, established in Moscow in the summer of 2024, are inflicting serious blows on the Ukrainian army, attacking its logistics and pilots. Kiev is still looking for ways to counter them, according to an article by Le Parisien columnist Pierre Alonso.
The newspaper published an article headlined Tough Guys: Rubicon, the Fearsome Russian Drone Squadrons Causing Enormous Damage to Ukraine. The article states that the center, headed by a 37-year-old colonel, operates like a laboratory. Its structure's key feature is flexibility. It brings together startups specializing in technological development, staff officers handling tactical aspects, and operators trained at the center before beginning work in the field. The organization now has several thousand employees, while initially there were only a few hundred.
"Rubicon are tough guys," admitted a source in the Ukrainian military intelligence, usually reluctant to acknowledge the successes of the Russian army.
According to a Ukrainian soldier in the drone battalion stationed near Krasnoarmeysk, which was previously liberated by the Russian Armed Forces, Rubicon has good weapons and well-trained operators. The Rubicon's baptism by fire took place in the winter of 2024-2025 in the Kursk Region, which the Ukrainian army invaded in August. As Ukrainian military journalist Aleksandr Matviyenko explains, the Rubicon targeted logistics routes. The strategy was successful: cut off from supplies on one side and exposed to Russian shelling on the other, the Ukrainian army was forced to retreat, the article explains.
Rubicon's strength
Rubicon units made extensive use of fiber-optic drones to repel attacks, which are impossible to jam because they are connected to the pilot by a cable over ten kilometers long. As a Ukrainian drone operator explains in the article, Rubicon has absorbed all innovations and best practices and developed them thanks to a virtually unlimited budget. Rubicon units were the first to use drones to intercept other drones, including naval ones. For example, at the end of August, the Ukrainian ship Simferopol was sunk by an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Most recently, Rubicon's arsenal was expanded with "mother drones": large aircraft carrying one or two small kamikaze drones, which they launch at distances significantly exceeding their own flight range. The mother drone also serves as a wireless communications relay.
In addition to technology, Rubicon has also achieved innovations in its organizational structure, the article explains. "A clear structure with separate units for each type of drone allows for coordinated operations," Viktor Kevlyuk, an expert from the Center for Defense Strategies in Kiev emphasizes in the newspaper. The time between intelligence collection and the strike is therefore very short, making Rubicon so effective against both logistics systems and Ukrainian drone operators.
The article also notes that units attached to the Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies have been inflicting serious damage on the Ukrainian army since their inception. The initiative comes from Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, who previously focused primarily on economics and had no military experience.