Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has formally codified a new drone, the Dovbush T40, and the numbers attached to it are large: a range beyond 2,000 kilometers and more than 24 hours in the air without landing. A Ukrainian manufacturer built it entirely at home.
On paper, that reach would put the Urals and western Siberia within range of Ukrainian forces.
What the ministry says it can do
The T40 is a strategic-level unmanned system. Its jobs, as described, are deep reconnaissance, fire correction, and precision strikes on infrastructure, equipment and personnel far behind the front line. It can be set up as a strike aircraft itself or as a platform that releases munitions.
Officials involved in the program point to a high-performance engine with electronic fuel injection and a notably low radar signature. The ministry also cited resistance to electronic warfare and what it called advanced onboard equipment. In testing, the drone met the technical specifications its developers had set beforehand.
Lineage
The company behind the T40 also makes the Dovbush T20 and the Kotyhoroshko systems, both on the battlefield since 2022. The ministry says those platforms performed well in combat across several operational settings. The T20 began as a medium-range tool for reconnaissance, real-time artillery adjustment and precision strikes on nearby objectives. Engineers drew on that program to build a longer-range, more powerful aircraft.
The unveiling fits a wider push to rely on weapons made inside Ukraine rather than supplied from abroad. Russian outlet Agentstvo recently reported that Ukraine has sharply stepped up its use of domestically produced Flamingo cruise missiles against sites in Russia.
What is not known
Officials have not given a production timeline or said how many T40 units are planned. They have not stated the payload either, or explained how the drone’s resistance to electronic warfare was tested in real combat conditions.
Those gaps matter. Claims about radar visibility and jamming resistance are hard to confirm outside controlled tests, and wartime defense ministries tend to stress capability while leaving out limits and failure rates. If the stated range holds up, it would be a significant technical achievement for a domestic Ukrainian system. Independent judgment of how the T40 performs in battle will probably take months of verified combat reporting.
