Terminal Autonomy AQ-400 Scythe

The AQ-400 Scythe is a one-way attack drone produced by the Ukrainian company Terminal Autonomy, which was founded in mid-2022 by two veterans of the British and Australian militaries and a Ukrainian engineer. The company, originally called One Way Aerospace, focuses on low-cost, domestically built kamikaze drones.

The AQ-400 was first shown in spring 2023, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces received the first batch in December 2023. Initial production aimed for 100 units per month, scaling to 500 per month by the second quarter of 2024, with a long-term goal of 1,000 monthly. In July 2026, a factory in Kyiv that made the AQ-400 and the AQ-100 Bayonet was destroyed by a Russian ballistic missile.

The drone is designed for quick assembly, mass production, and low cost. Its fuselage uses milled plywood sheets from civilian furniture factories, a more scalable material than 3-D printing or fiberglass. No technical training is needed for manufacturing, allowing production without skilled labor.

Design

While some parts come from abroad, the focus is on maximizing Ukrainian production. It has two sets of wings (forward and rear) with a 2.3-meter wingspan, and 30 fully assembled Scythes can fit in one shipping container. Takeoff can be from short airstrips using its tricycle landing gear, or from a catapult with rocket boosters.

The drone weighs 100 kg, with a 43 kg payload, including a 32 kg warhead that can be thermobaric or hold two 122 mm artillery shells. Using a standard gas engine and pusher propeller, it cruises at 144 km/h, reaches a top speed of 200 km/h, has a 6.5-hour endurance, and a strike range of 750 km. With different engine options, range can extend to 900 km, or payload can increase to 70 kg at a reduced range.

For guidance at low altitude, it uses a laser altimeter to fly at 30 meters, reducing the impact of electronic warfare that jams GPS until close to the target. At high altitudes of 3,000 meters, it navigates with a visual positioning system using roads and landmarks. A video link option allows an operator to manually guide the drone to moving targets, but this adds cost and works only at shorter ranges. The basic airframe costs USD $15,000, rising to $30,000 with a guidance system and other features; for comparison, a Russian Shahed-136 costs around $20,000.