Ukraine's B-2 Drone Is A Mystery
Its strikes aren't
This story was commissioned by Euromaidan Press. Since Substack pays only around a fifth of my bills, I have no choice but to take on a lot of freelance work. I still want my Substack audience to know where to read those freelance stories, however. Hence this excerpt.
We know very little about Ukraine’s new one-way attack drone aside from its name. We do know what the “middle-strike” B-2 is doing. (Some sources call the B-2 the “V-2.”)
It’s helping a growing array of Ukrainian drone units strike Russian bases, supply convoys and air defenses in the middle zone stretching as far as 200 km behind the disputed gray zone threading 1,200 km from northern Ukraine to southern Ukraine.
The B-2 broke cover recently, when the new 13th Detachment—a drone unit formed around veteran drone operators from the 414th Brigade—circulated footage of its work.
The footage depicts the B-2s from the drones’ points of view as they strike four Russian air defense systems in one night on or just before April 23: three Tor-M2s and an Osa system. The 13th Detachment hunted down the mobile surface-to-air missile systems in occupied Ukraine as well as in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, just across the border.
The hits on Russian SAM vehicles are a clear indicator that the B-2s are supporting Ukraine’s slow-burn effort to suppress Russian air defenses across occupied territories and adjacent Russian oblasts.
The suppression campaign—at least 492 drone strikes on Russian air defenses between June 2025 and early March 2026—is clearing the way for Ukraine’s drone teams and fighter regiments to target Russian headquarters, drone teams, supply convoys and, yes, any surviving air defenses in the middle zone.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.