FPV drone Maus: Donaustahl cleared to export to Ukraine

Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs has authorised the German defence company Donaustahl to manufacture its FPV drone Maus and export it to Ukraine. FPV stands for first-person view. Donaustahl announced the export licence in a short news item on its own website.

According to Stefan Thumann, founder and managing director of the company, the Ukrainian drone unit Kraken will be the first. On LinkedIn he wrote: “The Maus platform and its applications, as the first western system of this class, will undergo a comprehensive evaluation by this unit in order to prove their operational capability and effectiveness”.

What the FPV drone is designed to do

Donaustahl describes Maus as the “world's first adaptive loitering munition platform for day and night operations” (IR/thermal). According to the manufacturer, the modular system covers three types of attack: against materiel (Trench Cleaner), against infantry (30mm VOG/40mm NATO/85mm Sonyashnyk) and FPV kamikaze attacks using HEAT warheads.

Donaustahl states the effective combat range as five to seven kilometres, the maximum payload as 2.7 kilograms and the rate of climb as 18 to 22 metres per second – making Maus “an effective all-round solution”. Thanks to a quick-click system, the effectors can be swapped within a few seconds. “Promising experiments” are also currently under way to integrate AI-assisted detection software.