UJ-25 Skyline
Jet-powered Ukrainian loitering munition with extended strike range.
Last updated
The UJ-25 Skyline is a jet-powered, one-way attack drone used by Ukraine’s military and built by UkrJet. It is a modified version of the company’s UJ-23 Topaz target drone. Both share a missile-like body, forward-swept wings, a V-tail, and a rear-mounted turbojet engine with a top air intake. The Skyline is set apart by small canards near the nose.
While the Skyline’s exact performance figures are not public, the Topaz cruises at 600 km/h, reaches 800 km/h, flies for 90 minutes, and has a 400 km mission radius while carrying a 10 kg payload. It can be guided manually or follow a preprogrammed path. As a kamikaze drone, the Skyline likely has a strike range of about 800 km—enough to reach Moscow. Its jet engine makes it harder to stop than Russia’s piston-engine Shahed-136 drones: higher speed, small size, and low observability give air defenses less time to react.
The UJ-25 first appeared in public in September 2023, visible in the background of a CNN interview about drone warfare during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its first known combat use came on 22 December 2023, when one crashed into a house roof in Russian-occupied Berdyansk, in eastern Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and failed to detonate.
Background
The UJ-25 Skyline is a one-way kamikaze drone derived from the UJ-23 Topaz target drone. Both aircraft share a missile-like main body, forward-swept wings, a V-tail configuration, and a top-mounted air intake at the rear of the fuselage feeding into a turbojet engine.
The UJ-25 differs outwardly only by having forward canards. Its specifications are not known, but the Topaz has a cruise speed of 600 km/h, a top speed of 800 km/h, endurance of 90 minutes, and a mission radius of 400 km with a payload weight of 10 kg. The UJ-25 is guided either by manual control link or by following a preprogrammed route.
The UJ-25 was first shown publicly in September 2023 in the background of a CNN interview about drone warfare during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its first known combat use was on 22 December 2023 when one crashed into the roof of a house and failed to detonate in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Berdyansk in eastern Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
More in Military Drones of Asia, Europe and the Americas
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: UJ-25 Skyline (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced