Ukraine said the “Black Box” military project, including a UAV with a flight range of 800 km, caused more than 900 million USD in damage to Russia in the first 8 months of the year.
The General Directorate of Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR), in conjunction with the NGO Come Back Alive and Ukrainian blogger Ihor Lachenkov, called for fundraising for a secret military project called “Black Box” and collected more than 230 million hryvnia (6.4 million USD) in donations.
Come Back Alive, on November 16, first revealed information about the “Black Box” project, saying that one of the project’s secret weapons is the “Beaver” unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a flight range of 800 meters. Kilometer. This UAV has been used to attack a series of targets in Russia and territories it controls, such as the Crimea peninsula, including factories producing components for cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
“The ‘Black Box’ project has caused more than $900 million in damage to Russia in just the first 8 months of the year,” Come Back Alive emphasized, adding that the “Beaver” UAV is only part of the project.
Come Back Alive also said it had called for an additional 15 million hryvnia (more than 414,000 USD) to buy transport vehicles for Ukrainian special forces, helping them get closer to Russian territory and areas controlled by Moscow. Control, to launch an attack with weapons from the “Black Box.”
Russia has not commented on the information.
According to Kyiv Post, “Beaver” is a suicide UAV shaped like the Shahed line produced by Iran. It has a wingspan of 2.5 meters, a length of more than 2 meters, a maximum flight speed of 200 km/h, a weight of 150 kg, and can carry a warhead weighing 20 kg. UAVs can be launched from both runways and highways, making them highly mobile and flexible.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly mentioned the “Black Box” project, saying they used weapons from this project to attack Russian military bases and infrastructure, including the Crimea bridge. GUR leader Kyrylo Budanov said in June that the “Black Box” project had cost Russia more than $700 million in just one month.
Some experts believe that Kyiv used the “Beaver” UAV to attack the Russian capital, Moscow, in July.
The office tower was damaged in Moscow after a UAV attack on July 30. Photo: RIA Novosti
Ukraine has recently increased investment in UAV technology in the context that this weapon plays an increasingly important role on the battlefield. They are cheap and easy to produce but can destroy targets hundreds of times more valuable, from modern weapons to critical infrastructure.
In July, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced allocating a budget equivalent to 1.1 billion USD to invest in the UAV field. Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov also said in September that Ukraine had trained more than 10,000 unmanned equipment control experts this year in preparation for the “new phase of hostilities”.
