Ukraine combat experience shapes Redwire’s new drone

Russia’s war against Ukraine has turned unmanned aircraft from a supporting capability into one of the central elements of modern battlefield operations. It has also forced drone manufacturers to confront a problem that peacetime testing cannot fully reproduce: how to keep an aircraft useful when tactics, electronic warfare threats and operational requirements can change within weeks or even days.

Redwire Defense Tech has been dealing with that challenge through the deployment of its Penguin fixed-wing unmanned aircraft in Ukraine since 2022. The company says the platform’s combat experience has influenced not only the aircraft itself, but also the way Redwire approaches training, maintenance, engineering support and the introduction of new configurations.

According to Redwire, one of the main lessons from Ukraine is that endurance, range and payload are only part of what determines whether a tactical drone remains useful in combat. Repair times, operator workload, local support, the ability to reconfigure the aircraft and the speed at which manufacturers can respond to battlefield changes have become equally important.

In an interview with The Defence Blog, Josh Stinson, co-president and chief growth officer of Redwire Defense Tech, discussed how sustained operations in Ukraine changed the company’s assumptions about tactical drones, what Redwire has learned from operating in a contested electromagnetic environment, and how those lessons are shaping the Penguin family and its future NATO deployments.

Q: Redwire has delivered more than 250 Penguin aircraft to Ukraine since 2022. Looking back at that experience, how has daily combat use changed your understanding of what it means to build a drone for an actual war rather than for a procurement specification?

A: Ukraine has reinforced that an aircraft is only useful when it is available to the unit, in the configuration needed, at the moment it is needed. A procurement specification can measure endurance, payload and range. It cannot fully capture repair turnaround, operator workload, training quality, reliability, ease of reconfiguration or the speed at which engineering and support teams must respond to a truly dynamic and rapidly evolving environment.

Redwire’s Penguin UAS has deep eastern European roots and is built for survivability in the weather extremes of the region. Its engineering, production and flight operations are anchored in Latvia, and Redwire maintains a significant presence in Ukraine for support service, Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO), training, and engineering work. In country support allows our team to engage directly with operators and their operational reality. Most importantly, Ukraine is not a test range. It is a sovereign European country defending itself, and the consequences of design and support decisions are immediate. That creates a higher standard: build for repeated operation, recovery, repair, continual adaptation, and return to service under pressure.

Screengrab from video posted to social media

Q: Which assumptions about tactical drones that appeared reasonable before 2022 proved incomplete or wrong once the Penguin entered sustained operations in Ukraine?

A: Ukraine’s use of uncrewed systems has revolutionized modern warfare and provided the operational advantage to a lesser equipped military, proving that with the right technology, David can stand up to Goliath. The impact of this extends far beyond Europe. Ukraine’s utilization of drones has forever changed warfare for everyone, challenging previously held axioms of maneuver force application.

Another incomplete assumption was that requirements would remain relatively stable after a system entered service. In Ukraine, the threat, operating environment and tactics continue to evolve—and so must the technology supporting the warfighter. A tactical UAS therefore cannot be treated as a finished product at delivery.

Ukraine also demonstrated that airframe performance alone does not equal operational capability. Training, maintainability, logistics, configuration control, local support and the ability to integrate new mission equipment are all part of the capability. Endurance, range, high altitude capabilities, and sensor performance remain essential, but they must be balanced with operational footprint, ease of use and adaptability. The most valuable system is not simply the one that performs best during a controlled demonstration. It is the one operators can employ repeatedly, support locally and adapt in response to adversary innovations and as the mission changes.

Q: Ukrainian and foreign drone manufacturers have faced powerful Russian electronic warfare, particularly against navigation and communication links. Has Redwire encountered the same challenge with the Penguin, and how has it changed the way you approach the aircraft’s design and continued development?

A: Penguin operates in a heavily contested electromagnetic environment where there is also risk of kinetic interception and other counter-UAS capabilities. This is the battlespace all UAS in Ukraine must survive, and it would be misleading for any manufacturer to suggest immunity from electronic warfare. For operational-security reasons, we do not discuss specific configurations, countermeasures or mission performance.

The central lesson is that navigation and communications cannot be treated as guaranteed resources. Development must consider how the complete system, including the aircraft, mission equipment, software, procedures and operator, functions when conditions are degraded or rapidly changing. This has reinforced our emphasis on modularity, mission adaptability and growth capacity. Electronic warfare is not a problem solved permanently by one feature. The adversary adapts, so the more effective tactic is to design an aircraft and support model that can also adapt quickly and incorporate new technology as innovative solutions emerge.

Octopus E140 MWIR. Photo courtesy Redwire

Q: Another challenge in Ukraine is that operational experience and information do not always move quickly between different military units. Has this affected your ability to collect feedback, identify common problems and deliver updates to Penguin operators? 

A: Feedback from a distributed force does not arrive as a single, clean dataset, and one unit’s experience may reflect its mission, configuration, terrain or operating methods rather than a fleet-wide issue.

Our response has been local presence. With the help of a translator, our Chief Technology Officer even had a virtual meeting with a Special Operations Forces (SOF) commander in a bunker in Ukraine where they discussed the changing tactics on the ground and how our engineers might mitigate risks or adapt our capabilities to overcome those challenges.

Redwire has an office in Ukraine where our team works directly with warfighters, while our Riga-based Flight Operations team trains Ukrainian personnel and maintains recurring contact with operators. We have training facilities in both Latvia and Ukraine. These interactions create multiple opportunities to hear questions from end users firsthand, identify recurring themes and provide actionable feedback to our engineering teams. That does not eliminate the friction inherent in wartime communication, but it shortens the route between Ukrainian operators, regional support personnel and the engineers developing the system.

Q: Can you share an example of a request or observation from a Ukrainian operator that directly changed the Penguin? What did that experience teach your engineering team?

A: The Penguin deployed in Ukraine today is not the same UAS fielded four years ago, and that is the result of direct engagements like the anecdote about our CTO having a virtual meeting with a Special Operations Forces commander in a Ukrainian bunker. Our more sophisticated Penguin Mk2X can fly significantly higher than it did in 2022, which aids in protecting the asset from targeting by First-Person View (FPV) drones during Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance missions.

Another documented example we can discuss is how Ukrainian experience changed the way Penguin training and fielding are approached. Our Riga team has developed training around the challenges operators face in real missions, with ongoing operator feedback passed to engineering. The programme is tailored to the aircraft configuration and mission rather than relying on a standard, one-size-fits-all course.

The lesson for our engineers is that usability, documentation and training are not activities that begin after a design is complete. They are engineering inputs. A technical improvement has limited value if an operator cannot employ it confidently, understand its behaviour or maintain the system under wartime conditions.

Q: Operating and supporting more than 300 aircraft during a war is very different from managing a limited peacetime deployment. What challenges emerged only after the Ukrainian fleet reached this scale?

A: Scale changes the nature of sustainment. A minor maintenance issue, unclear procedure or commonly needed component can become a fleet-level availability concern when multiplied across hundreds of aircraft and several operating units. Training consistency, configuration management, spare-parts planning, technical documentation, repair throughput and the communication of updates all become as important as production.

That experience has reinforced the need for support close to the customer. Our presence in Ukraine, our Flight Operations organisation in Riga and our wider European engineering and sustainment capabilities allow us to respond regionally rather than treating support as a distant export function. The central lesson is that the aircraft must be capable of continually evolving to meet the warfighter’s most urgent needs, but that is only one part of delivering operational capability. A manufacturer must also help operators sustain, repair and continually adapt the fleet.

Penguin Mk3 unmanned aircraft. Photo courtesy Redwire

Q: Which lessons from Ukraine are now built into the Penguin Mk3, and what will its NATO customer receive that Redwire could not have developed from testing and peacetime operations alone?

A: It is important to distinguish between the Penguin series’ combat experience and the specific Mk3 configuration. We do not assume that a new model is automatically combat proven. Rather, Mk3 has been developed using lessons accumulated through years of operational and combat use across the Penguin family.

The most important lesson is to design for change in response to an ever-shifting battlespace. Mk3 incorporates enhanced modularity, mission adaptability and growth capacity. Its public configuration includes fully automated VTOL, multiple payload bays, increased payload capacity, continuous power for mission equipment, winter-operating provisions and a compact logistics model that can be deployed by a two-person crew. Programme execution and long-term sustainment for NATO customers will be supported through Redwire’s European operations.

Testing can demonstrate whether an aircraft meets a performance requirement. Sustained combat operations reveal which issues recur, how quickly configurations must evolve, what operators need under pressure and what is required to sustain a distributed fleet. NATO customers will receive both the aircraft and a European support model informed by those operational realities.