During the early hours of 30 May Moscow was attacked using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A senior U.S. official and a congressional staffer with knowledge of the matter said the drone strikes appeared aimed at what were believed to be the Moscow residences of Russian intelligence officers.
At least one of the apartment buildings hit in the drone strikes has ties to Russia’s SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, according to Strider Technologies, a Utah-based strategic intelligence startup that uses open-source data.
According to the Strider Global Intelligence team, the building was owned by a Russian state budgetary organization, which has held contracts with a military unit known to be a cover for the Foreign Intelligence Service.
It was not clear whether any SVR officer’s home was damaged or whether any Russian intelligence personnel were injured.
“This was not some random attack on a wealthy suburb,” said Eric Levesque, the chief operating officer and a co-founder of Strider Technologies. “The strike gets to the heart of the psychological warfare elements of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which for the first time is reaching Moscow neighbourhoods.”
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the Russian Federation has claimed that “the Kyiv regime launched a terrorist attack with UAVs on objects in Moscow”.
The MoD claims that multiple types of UAVs were used in a series of attacks. Images posted online indicate that there is one type of UAV that struck residential complexes or apartments.
According to the imagery, the UAV wreckage suggests that the aircraft belongs to the mini category (Janes classification of UAVs weighing between 2 and 20 kg). The UAV features a flying wing configuration, attached with dorsal fins on either side of the fuselage centre module rather than a conventional empennage. Imagery also indicates that the UAVs are mostly propelled by an electric or a rotary engine.
Source: Janes
According to Janes analysis, the UAV has an estimated wingspan of about 1.6 m (5.5 ft), a maximum flying range of 150 km (93 mile), an endurance of two hours, a maximum altitude of less than 8,200 ft (2,500 m), and a cruising speed of 55 kt (100 km/h). Such UAVs could be programmed with automatic or semi-automatic en route flight programming or corrections, given the co-ordinates, and often can be operated on an inertial navigation system/Global Positioning System (GPS) or GLONASS.
Considering the maximum range of the UAV and the catapult ground launch capability, Janes understands that the UAVs were deployed from within Russia.