Russia’s elite drone unit says it used 1 million FPV drones

Russia’s Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies claims its operators used more than 1 million First-Person-View (FPV) drones and struck over 280,000 targets in Ukraine between January 2025 and August 2026, according to a statement the unit posted to its official Telegram channel. The figures come only from Russia’s elite drone unit itself and have not been independently verified.

Rubicon said the 20-month total makes it “the undisputed leader” in FPV drone use among all Russian units fighting in Ukraine. The unit also said it has published more than 45,000 videos of strikes on its Telegram channel, with new footage posted daily showing operations, tactics and the unit’s history.

As with the strike and drone-use figures, these numbers are self-reported by the unit and cannot be independently confirmed.

Rubicon was established on August 2, 2024, by order of Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, according to reporting by the newsletter Two Marines, run by analyst Rob Lee and Ukrainian marine drone operator Dmytro Putiata. The center was created partly in response to Ukraine’s own specialized drone units and its “Drone Line” initiative, and was designed to centralize Russian research, procurement and combat deployment of drones, ground robots and unmanned boats under one command, rather than leaving that work scattered across volunteer-funded projects.

An investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty identified the unit’s commander as Colonel Sergei Budnikov, a 37-year-old former artillery and marine officer, with facilities including a training site at Patriot Park near Moscow.

Independent reporting has documented Rubicon’s rapid growth. The unit expanded from roughly 1,450 personnel in 2025 to about 5,000 by 2026, organized into battalion-sized detachments that each field dozens of quadcopter and fixed-wing strike teams, according to the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s analysis of the Two Marines data. That same analysis cautioned that Rubicon’s fast expansion has strained its recruitment pipeline and diluted the specialized training that made its early detachments effective.

Rubicon first drew significant attention for its role helping Russian forces cut off Ukrainian supply lines during the fighting in Russia’s Kursk Oblast in late 2024 and early 2025, after Ukraine’s surprise incursion there in August 2024. Ukrainian commanders quoted in independent reporting described the unit’s fiber-optic guided drones, which resist electronic jamming, as a serious problem, and Rubicon has continued operating on active fronts including the Kupiansk axis, where a Ukrainian brigade officer told Ukrainian outlet Suspilne in October that the unit’s use of remote mining and FPV drones was disrupting Ukrainian logistics.

Independent assessments diverge from Rubicon’s own self-promotion, however. While the unit’s tactics contributed to Russian gains around Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad and Kostyantynivka in 2025, the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s analysis found that Rubicon did not fundamentally change the broader stalemate in drone warfare along the front, and that by 2026 Ukraine had regained an edge in mid-range drone operations. Neither Rubicon’s claimed strike totals nor its claim of “undisputed” leadership among Russian drone units have been corroborated by Ukrainian officials or independent battlefield analysts.