The first fuselage of what became Ukraine’s workhorse strike drone was built by model aircraft specialists, with their own money. Formal financing was not there yet. Ukrainska Pravda described that start in May 2024, citing interviews with people who worked on the program.
The aircraft is the Liutyi, widely called the An-196. It began with a weapons meeting convened by Yurii Husiev, then head of Ukroboronprom. The team first thought about a conventional armed drone, decided it could not compete with systems such as the Bayraktar TB2, and switched to a one-way aircraft able to fly roughly 1,000 kilometers.
Why Kyiv wanted its own
In the first months of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine had almost nothing of its own that could reach Russian airfields, fuel depots or defense plants near 1,000 kilometers. It leaned on imported missiles, limited Soviet-era stocks, converted reconnaissance aircraft and improvised drones. Western governments also restricted where many donated weapons could be used. A system needing no foreign approval had obvious appeal.
Ukroboronprom unveiled the aircraft on 17 October 2022, describing a 1,000 kilometer range and about 75 kilograms of useful load. The timing was not accidental: Russia was sending Iranian-designed Shahed drones against Ukrainian cities that autumn. That October statement is still the only official performance specification. The company later gave a conditional maximum of 1,200 kilometers. Figures of 1,500, 2,000 and 3,500 kilometers that circulate elsewhere come from strike geography, intelligence statements or unattributed aggregation.
A rough road to serial production
It first flew on 22 October 2022, five days after the announcement. A prototype crashed in December and was back on the runway within three days. The program counted that as proof the aircraft could be repaired quickly.
The worst incident came in an armed test against Snake Island in late April 2023. The aircraft carried 50 kilograms of explosives. Told to dive onto the target, it did not: the autopilot would not fly it into the ground, so it leveled off and headed for its programmed home point, near the launch group on the Odesa Oblast coast. Military leaders and developers watched their own armed aircraft come toward the command post. Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk ordered combat aircraft scrambled to shoot it down. Operators got the control signal back about 30 kilometers offshore, before that was needed. Because the trials were secret, coastal residents got no air raid warning.
Takeoff caused trouble as well. The nose gear let the aircraft wander off the runway centerline, and compass calibration errors skewed its ground steering. Operators followed it in a vehicle at up to 150 kilometers per hour to correct its direction by eye. It still passed initial testing in December 2022 and completed a 1,000 kilometer trial in June 2023.
What it is
The Liutyi is a low-wing monoplane with twin tail booms and a rear-mounted piston engine turning a pusher propeller. Reported dimensions are 4.4 meters long and 6.7 meters in span, with a maximum takeoff mass of 250 to 300 kilograms. No official Ukrainian data sheet confirms those numbers.
Wreckage examined by Russian forces points to an engine matching the German Hirth F-23, a two-stroke producing 50 horsepower and costing roughly US$5,000. Cruise speed is reported at 150 to 160 kilometers per hour. Early warheads weighed 50 kilograms; a payload of about 75 kilograms was later reported, and sources do not separate total payload from explosive mass. In the author’s assessment, such a load cannot wreck a whole industrial complex but can halt production if it lands on a distillation column or pumping assembly.
Both sides now target the factories
Forbes, in an analysis republished by Yahoo, notes that Ukraine has used the Liutyi and modified UJ-22 variants to hit targets hundreds of kilometers inside Russia. Operations have reportedly reached Tatarstan, over 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian territory.
Russia has answered by striking facilities around Kyiv linked to Liutyi production. Ukraine, for its part, hit the Atlant Aero plant in Taganrog with Neptune cruise missiles on April 19, 2026, and struck the VNIIR-Progress plant near Cheboksary on May 5, 2026. That plant makes the Kometa navigation modules used in Shahed-type drones. Neither side holds large stockpiles, the analysis says, so hits on production cut the number of drones available. Supply chains are dispersed and repairs are quick, though, and production will recover over time.
Sources
- Russia And Ukraine Are Now Destroying Drones Before They Are Even Made
- An-196 Liutyi: Ukraine's Long-Range Strike Drone
