Athlon Avia A1-CM Furia

The Athlon Avia A1-CM Furia is a Ukrainian hand-launched reconnaissance drone. It is operated from a portable, rectangular ground station roughly the size of a guitar case. First flown in 2014, it entered service with Ukraine’s Air Guard in 2015 and the Armed Forces in 2020, and has been used during the 2022 Russian invasion.

Its upgraded variant, the A1-CMX, can merge visual map data with GPS and GLONASS coordinates in real time. It can also project a laser designator onto a 2x2 meter target area from up to 7 kilometers away, even in poor weather. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence has called the CMX a new “Wunderwaffe” for its ability to provide final guidance corrections to M982 Excalibur artillery shells.

The airframe is based on the RVJet RC plane by RangeVideo. Examination of downed units posted on Russian social media in August 2023 revealed custom FPGA and NVIDIA chips on tailor-made boards, industrial-grade ball bearings, multiple 830/905 nm laser rangefinders and designators, and precision motors and stepper motors from Northrop Grumman, Honeywell, L-3 Technologies, and ABB.

Features include a multi-band long-range digital radio, backup gyroscopes, dedicated satellite reception chipsets, and a secondary high-resolution IR camera. Most electronics are enclosed in individual hardened shock-proof casings with Mu-metal EMI and RFI shielding. Members of the Russian hacker group Killnet described the hardware as “severely impressive,” citing “high quality” and “an obvious technological advantage.”

According to General Yevhen Moisiuk, the A1-CMX is an “absolute game changer” that allows spotted targets to be destroyed in under 15 minutes with a 95% probability. During the first half of the counter-offensive in the Robotyne region alone, the drone is claimed to have assisted in precision strikes destroying over 43 Russian tanks and 181 other armored and support vehicles.