Loitering munition “Hornet”: how the Marsianer-2 over Donetsk is changing the rules of the game in Ukraine

Eric Schmidt, formerly head of Google, does not fit the prevailing pattern of the current US administration. Unlike the US President and his entourage, Schmidt stands clearly on Ukraine’s side – and not merely ideologically or with a few generous donations, but with concentrated financial power, expertise and the contacts of a super-rich tech guru.

His start-up White Stork first made headlines in 2024: in January of that year, Forbes made the secret company public. Afterwards things remained comparatively quiet for a long time, and Schmidt declined to comment to the media. According to Forbes, however, during this phase he succeeded in recruiting “prominent employees from Apple, Space X, Google and federal agencies”, with universities and AI hackathons being involved. The project’s goal: AI-controlled drones for Ukraine.

The term “Марсианин-2” (“Martian-2”) first appeared in Russian channels on 29 September 2025. A video by the Russian special drone unit “Rubikon” shows the fixed-wing drone being intercepted. At that time it was apparently still unknown to the regular Russian armed forces and to the scene of military correspondents and bloggers – unlike to “Rubikon”, a unit with a clearly special status within the Russian drone forces.

In January 2026 the platform “dronexl” reported on Schmidt’s “secret operation”. According to the report, more than 80,000 AI-supported weapon systems are in use, and the autonomously AI-controlled combat drones achieve a hit rate of over 70 per cent.

Even the Russian news agency RIA Novosti could not avoid reporting on it. On 4 March, Dmitri Sadovnik, deputy director general of the manufacturer of the Russian drone detector “Shadow”, spoke there about new Ukrainian combat drones.

Die KI-Loitering Munition „Hornet“ ist bei den Russen aktuell als „Marsianer-2“ gefürchtet.
1/2#WarOfDrones pic.twitter.com/h1LEvqhmXp— Martin Rosenkranz🇦🇹🇪🇺🇺🇳🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@MartinRosenkra3) April 17, 2026

The Russians are increasingly finding wreckage far behind the front. The combat drone is not a quadcopter but an aircraft of the “aeroplane” type. Isolated field trials are no longer the case – a new system is now in extensive combat use. Its name is “Hornet”; in the Russian military it goes by the call sign “Marsianer-2”.

Navigation without GPS, radio in the Wi-Fi band

According to a Russian analysis, the drone has unique features. It no longer depends on GPS for navigation; instead, it orients itself autonomously by terrain features. What is new is not the technology itself but the fact that it is installed in an electrically powered drone weighing around 10 kilograms – whose design is so simple that it can be produced cheaply and in large numbers.

In addition, there is an advanced electro-optical system for target acquisition and recognition based on artificial intelligence. According to Russian analyses, the drone transmits data and video via encrypted signals that do not correspond to any standard. This apparently refers to an advanced frequency-hopping method, possibly combined with AES encryption or comparable methods.

Russian electronic warfare specialists consider the Hornet practically undetectable for standard detectors and radio frequency scanners. The latest analyses suspect that the transmission is hidden in the civilian Wi-Fi bands at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. That would be the trick of the “Martian”: it transmits on precisely the frequencies that the filters of electronic warfare systems mask out as civilian signals.

The communications hardware, however, is likely to have been designed to be very flexible from the outset. According to the channel “Payload”, an RTL8812EU Wi-Fi chip is used whose frequencies can be shifted into non-standard bands by means of power amplifiers and frequency converters. Russian analysts state: “In general, the frequency range of the components used is very large; probably all frequencies up to 6 GHz are available.”

Attention grew after the article in RIA Novosti. On 8 April, the Russian technical analysis platform “Witches’ Hammer” called the Hornet/Marsianer-2 “the most dangerous threat to our logistics facilities”. Russian technicians now have a complete example of the drone available for examination. It is not unusual for Russian bodies to pay particular attention to individual drone types, but in this case the extent goes well beyond the usual level. In mid-April, the Marsianer-2 is one of the dominant topics in Russian channels.

Technical data of the loitering munition

The fuselage is made of polystyrene foam and cast plastic. With a length of 1.4 metres, the wingspan measures 2.2 metres. The weight without warhead and battery is about 5 kilograms, and around 10 kilograms with both.

The drone is powered by a brushless 4720 electric motor rated at 300 kV, which enables 100 to 120 km/h and around 200 km/h in a dive; it is also described as very quiet. Russian videos showing hits on their own forces without the weapon used being identifiable are now associated with the Marsianer-2.

The battery is a 12S system based on Samsung INR21700-50S cells: weighing 1.9 kilograms, measuring 180 × 70 × 70 millimetres, with a capacity of 10,000 mAh. The warhead is given as 1.5 to 4 kilograms, along with an electronic proximity fuze and possibly an explosively formed penetrator that can also pierce lightly armoured targets. The Russian side puts the range at at least 60 to 70 kilometres, in some cases up to 145 kilometres.

The model examined carries two daylight cameras. The Russian channel “bmpd” writes: “The image quality is very impressive.” The downward-facing camera is presumably used for navigation, the other for target acquisition and tracking. According to “Witches’ Hammer”, attacks at dusk have also been documented; there may be variants with night-vision or thermal imaging cameras.

The workmanship is considered high-quality: aviation-grade cables are installed, and the processors come from the US semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm.

Hornet/Marsianer-2 is to be classified as a classic loitering munition. Russian sources describe its employment as follows: the drone usually flies at a low altitude of about 200 metres along transport routes, where it is difficult to detect and barely audible. In the terminal approach it accelerates to more than 50 metres per second, leaving only one to three seconds of warning time on the ground. The central problem is this extremely short reaction time, which makes evasive manoeuvres practically impossible.

According to Sergey Kolyasnikov of the channel “Zergulio” – Russian propagandist, military blogger and member of the State Duma’s bloggers’ council – there has been “a qualitative change in drones at the front. Essentially, Ukraine has put a new generation into service that is causing serious logistical difficulties.”