Reconnaissance drones in drone dogfights: Russia protects Zala 421-16 with Ukhilyant system

Since summer 2023 at the latest, and increasingly since summer 2024, Ukraine has been investing considerable effort in intercepting Russian reconnaissance drones with its own drones.

It uses first-person view (FPV) drones, steered deliberately onto a collision course with the Russian reconnaissance aircraft, and drones with warheads that detonate near the enemy drone. This approach has proved extremely effective: hundreds of successful interceptions are documented on video.

After an intensive search for countermeasures, Russian manufacturer Zala, known for the dangerous Lancet drone, has now put the Ukhilyant (“Evasive”) system into mass production. It is integrated into the Zala 421-16 reconnaissance drone to help it survive longer in operations.

While first theories about how it works were still circulating, one of the Russian drones had already fallen into Ukrainian hands.

How Ukhilyant helps reconnaissance drones evade

Until then, only a rear-facing camera system was known, allowing operators to observe the area behind the drone. Zala, however, has apparently done more: an image recognition and AI system automatically detects FPV interceptor drones. If such a drone is detected, the reconnaissance drone independently flies sharp evasive manoeuvres until the pursuer is shaken off and its battery is drained.

However, the system did not always work as planned. One of the intercepted drones crashed as a result of its own evasive manoeuvres. Ukraine was thus able to analyse it in detail – in the laboratory of Scream Industries.

Ukrainian radio specialist Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov sees a possible solution in drones with their own image processing system that take up pursuit automatically. Another option would be to attack a single reconnaissance drone with several interceptor drones at once.