Ukraine to Export Combat-Proven Vampire Heavy Drone for Night Strikes and Mine-Laying.

Ukraine’s SkyFall Vampire heavy hexacopter has emerged as a reusable battlefield drone capable of delivering bombs, mines, and supplies to frontline units at night. The platform fills a tactical gap between expendable FPV drones and costly artillery or loitering munitions, offering small units a precision strike and logistics tool.

Ukraine’s SkyFall has turned the Vampire heavy bomber drone into a reusable night-attack and battlefield sustainment system that gives frontline units a low-cost way to hit armor, fortifications, and logistics targets while reducing exposure for manned vehicles. Examined by Army Recognition at BEDEX in Brussels, the six-rotor platform belongs to the now-famous “Baba Yaga” family of Ukrainian heavy multirotors, but its real importance is doctrinal rather than symbolic. It sits between expendable FPV drones and far more expensive tube artillery, rockets, or loitering munitions, giving small units a precision drop capability they can launch repeatedly in one night.
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SkyFall’s Ukrainian-made Vampire heavy hexacopter, displayed at BEDEX in Brussels, is a battle-proven strike and resupply drone designed for night operations, remote mine-laying, and precision attacks with payloads of up to 15 kg (Picture source: Army Recognition Group).

The Vampire’s development reflects wartime urgency. A SkyFall representative told Ukrinform that the prototypes were built in a garage, initially as a tethered observation concept, before the team realized the airframe could be adapted into a drop-capable strike system; the first Vampires reportedly reached the front on July 6, 2022. Serial production began during the full-scale invasion, and by 2025, SkyFall said it was producing thousands of Vampires per month. The system has also been absorbed into Ukraine’s institutional drone ecosystem: the Army of Drones and Brave1 procurement framework made the Vampire a standard battlefield commodity, with one 2025 report listing the drone at 43 bonus points for frontline units earning combat credits.

The BEDEX display card seen by Army Recognition lists a payload of up to 15 kg, a communications range of up to 45 km, and a top speed of up to 80 km/h. The exhibited aircraft also showed a four-station underbelly release arrangement and a stabilized sensor package beneath the fuselage. Open-source reporting suggests the communications figure should be distinguished from practical combat radius: other reporting has described effective mission ranges of roughly 10 to 20 km, endurance around 23 minutes, and operating altitude up to 400 m, depending on payload, weather, routing, and electronic warfare pressure. The Vampire is credited with bispectral day-night optics, thermal imaging, GNSS-supported navigation, and hardened links, and it can deliver fragmentation, thermobaric, cumulative, and mine payloads, including TM-62 anti-tank mines.

Operationally, the Vampire’s value lies in versatility. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence says it is used to bomb forward positions, destroy equipment and fortifications, conduct remote mine-laying, support communications, and perform humanitarian tasks. After the Kakhovka dam disaster, Ukrainian forces used Vampires to deliver water, food, and medical supplies to civilians cut off by flooding. SkyFall has also said one brigade moved four tons of cargo in a month with Vampires, underscoring the platform’s importance as a battlefield logistics mule as much as a bomber. Tactical employment strongly favors darkness: thermal sensors, lower visual signature, and the drone’s ability to hover over trenches, tree lines, or assault routes make it especially effective for night interdiction and engineer-style obstacle emplacement. The Ministry of Defence has even highlighted short basic operator training times, which help scale crews quickly.

As far as confirmed users are concerned, Ukraine remains the only clearly documented operator. Public reporting shows service with Ukrainian Army formations, air assault brigades, mechanized units, National Guard elements, and other security formations, while foreign partners have so far appeared mainly as enablers rather than operators. The Netherlands has financed contracts that meet the needs of particular Ukrainian units, and Denmark is in talks with SkyFall about possible local production, but open-source reporting still does not show fielded service outside Ukraine. For any military considering a similar system, the best use case is at the brigade or battalion level as a reusable night strike, remote mining, and last-mile resupply asset integrated with ISR, EW, artillery, and engineers rather than employed as a stand-alone strategic weapon.

Against competitors, the Vampire appears strongest when judged as a combat system rather than on a single specification. Aerorozvidka’s earlier R18, developed in 2017, represents an older heavy multirotor benchmark with about 5 kg payload and longer endurance, while Reactive Drone’s Kazhan 620 and 630 advertise 15 to 20 kg payloads, up to 25 km combat range, anti-EW navigation features, and broader mine compatibility. Vampire, therefore, sits in a contested class, but SkyFall’s edge is battlefield maturity: simple crew generation, large-scale production, and demonstrated employment across strike, mining, and logistics missions. The Vampire is not merely another Ukrainian drone. It is a field-proven template for how medium-weight reusable multirotors can reshape tactical fires and sustainment in high-intensity land warfare.