• Ukrainian forces used a specialized drone to carry out back-to-back rescue missions this month.
• The drone, called StarGate, is a heavy hexacopter that carries an enclosed stretcher underneath.
• Business Insider spoke with the pilot and one of the rescued soldiers about the mission.

Izyum thought he was going to die. A devastating blast had taken part of the Ukrainian infantryman's left foot, and he had lost a lot of blood. To make matters worse, Russian soldiers were closing in on his position, and there was no easy escape.

Then came a drone — a massive six-rotor aircraft with an enclosed stretcher underneath. It landed roughly 10 meters away from Izyum's position, in tall grass beside a minefield. Fiber-optic cables were strewn across the area, and he worried the hazards would prevent the rescue drone from taking off.

Dizzy and nauseous, Izyum's comrades helped him over to the unusual aircraft. Summoning what little strength he had left, he hoisted himself into the stretcher capsule. As the drone lifted off, he breathed a little easier, at last feeling some sense of relief.

Izyum is one of two Ukrainian soldiers who have been airlifted out of combat by the StarGate uncrewed aircraft, the first specialized drone for aerial evacuation, which was recently unveiled by Ukrainian company SkyFall. The wounded soldiers were medically evacuated this month in back-to-back rescue missions.

Izyum and KVN, a drone pilot in Ukraine's 475th Separate Assault Regiment who flew StarGate during the rescues, described the missions to Business Insider in interviews this week. Both spoke through a translator and were identified only by their call signs for security reasons.

Casualty evacuation by aerial drone is a new concept being pioneered in Ukraine. This month's rescue missions were among the first of their kind in combat. Skyfall, other defense industry officials, and soldiers say they expect to see more of these missions in the future and believe this experimental tactic is a critical capability, especially in moments when neither medical teams nor robots can reach wounded troops.

Right now, this approach is seen as a last resort — a break-glass option for when battlefield conditions prevent all other evacuation methods.

A daring mission

KVN's first daughter had just been born when the call came in. The 475th assault regiment, known as CODE 9.2, was preparing for a special operation, and leadership needed him to fly the main drone. A car was on its way to pick him up.

He soon arrived at an undisclosed location in Ukraine for the operation, the rescue of a wounded soldier from the 129th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade.

At the center of the operation was StarGate, a heavy hexacopter that SkyFall developed specifically for casualty evacuation purposes. The drone — which SkyFall said is the first of its kind — was unveiled in mid-October, only days before KVN's mission.

Ukraine is increasingly turning to robots to evacuate wounded soldiers in combat. With surveillance and attack drones swarming the front lines, almost any movement carries tremendous risks, making it dangerous for teams to retrieve casualties. Ground robots are one solution, but tough terrain can limit where they can go.

Heavy hexacopters have emerged as an option when other extraction methods are not possible. Earlier this month, Ukraine carried out its first casualty evacuation using an aerial drone, rescuing an infantryman from the 30th Separate Mechanized Brigade with a Heavy Shot Ayudag-6 heavy lift drone developed by Gurzuf Defence.

There have since been two more missions. KVN was the pilot for both, flying Skyfall's StarGate drone.

KVN recalled that his first evacuation happened at night. There were dozens of people — most of them from CODE 9.2, but some from other military units — involved in the rescue operation. The SkyFall team also participated in the planning.

KVN was nervous.

Reaching the casualty meant flying 20 miles out and back through areas flooded with Russian drones and electronic warfare that threatened to derail the mission.

So the Ukrainians assembled something akin to a strike package, with more than a dozen drones flying alongside StarGate to protect it from attack, draw Russian attention away from the rescue, and bomb enemy positions near the evacuation point.

Russian first-person-view (FPV) drones initially prevented the rescue drone from taking off with the wounded soldier, but eventually the skies cleared. KVN said his hands were shaking, but he relied on StarGate's built-in stabilization technology and his teammates' support to steady the drone and his nerves.

The first evacuation took 30 minutes. StarGate didn't have the range for the full 40-mile round trip, so KVN had to land it halfway on each leg so ground teams could swap out the batteries.

After the mission, KVN grabbed some much-needed sleep. When he woke the next morning, he learned that a second evacuation had been approved and would soon be underway.

Flying like a ninja

Izyum, an infantryman in Ukraine's 1st Territorial Defense Brigade, sat down on the ground to rest.

His team had been tasked with holding a position they had just assaulted. When Izyum stood up, he triggered a blast that tore off part of his left foot. His comrades pulled him into a dugout and immediately applied a tourniquet.

They radioed back to their commanders that Izyum had suffered a severe injury and needed evacuation.

The situation was dire. Any attempt to walk to higher-level care would mean navigating roughly 20 miles of Russian drone and mine threats. Izyum had lost so much blood, and his strength was fading fast. Given the severity of his injuries, he would never have been able to make that trek on his own. His fellow soldiers would have had to risk their lives to help him make the journey.

And ground robots, increasingly used by Ukraine to evacuate wounded soldiers as the front-line kill zone grows more perilous, couldn't reach his position because ponds, small rivers, and tree lines blocked their path.

Brigade leadership concluded that the only option was to evacuate him by air. And with crewed helicopters effectively out of the question, they needed a drone. StarGate was chosen for the mission.

Izyum didn't think he was going to make it home. His crew was so deep on the front lines, and the Russians were close. At one point, the enemy was only 5 meters out.

Eventually, the rescue drone arrived. As the StarGate drone landed amid a mess of mines and cables, Ukrainian forces used Vampire drones, smaller hexacopters made by SkyFall, to bomb the Russians and keep them at bay.

KVN said landing near the minefield was one of the biggest challenges he faced during the mission, though Russian drone and electronic warfare threats were also problems. He said he had to fly "like a ninja" to avoid them.

Even with new technologies such as drones and ground robots, evacuating wounded soldiers isn't an easy process, and it takes time to plan, prepare, and execute. Nearly two days passed between Izyum's injury and his rescue. When he landed and opened the capsule to see friendly faces, he finally felt safe for the first time since the blast. KVN, too, felt an overwhelming sense of relief when the mission was finally over.

Izyum had four surgeries and is missing half his foot. He will soon be transferred to a rehabilitation facility. Speaking from a hospital in northeast Ukraine, he said that he is grateful to everyone who saved his life.

Some Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that large rescue hexacopters could be easy targets for Russia and said that they should only be used in the most extreme circumstances.

Both KVN and Izyum, however, said that aerial drone casualty evacuations should be expanded as standard practice; CODE 9.2, for instance, plans to create dedicated units for these missions, and SkyFall is aiming to build out a department within the firm specifically for evacuations.

StarGate drones — which cost roughly $50,000 a unit, can carry up to 330 pounds, and can fly at speeds over 60 miles per hour — are equipped with survivability features, such as artificial intelligence-enabled navigation and communication redundancies. SkyFall said it aims to be able to make 1,000 drones a month by the end of 2026.

• A Ukrainian unit says its ground robot completed 93% of a 12-mile supply mission autonomously.
• The robot used AI navigation, cameras, and 3D mapping to navigate the route.
• The unit hopes to expand autonomous missions and reduce reliance on services like Starlink.

A Ukrainian military unit said on Wednesday that it successfully sent a ground robot on a 12-mile supply run, using AI to navigate for nearly the entirety of the mission.

The Lava Unmanned Systems Regiment of the 2nd Corps, or Khartiia Corps, of Ukraine's National Guard announced the completion of the autonomous logistics mission in a statement shared with Business Insider, calling it the "first of its kind under combat conditions."

The unit said that the robot completed 93% of its 20-kilometer trip on its own, delivering cargo and returning to its starting point autonomously, with an operator intervening for only 1.4 kilometers of the journey.

Before departure, a separate ground robot equipped with light detection and ranging technology, or LiDAR, mapped the route and terrain in 3D. Cameras on the supply bot detected obstacles while AI-powered navigation guided the robot.

"This mission has shown that autonomous ground systems are already capable of operating in real combat conditions," said Andrii Kopach, who serves as commander of the Lava Regiment's Unmanned Ground Systems Battalion.

"The biggest change is that the operator is no longer a driver but a dispatcher," he said. "Instead of controlling the vehicle every second, they monitor its movement and step in only when needed."

Kopach said that the unit's next ambitions are to enable a single operator to oversee multiple robots at once and expand autonomous missions to casualty evacuations. He added that more AI-powered ground robots would reduce dependence on "a constant control link," such as Starlink, a satellite internet service which recently saw major speed disruptions in Ukraine, negatively affecting front-line operations.

Ground robots have become an important tool for Ukraine, carrying out resupply, casualty evacuation, and assault missions. The Ukrainian military, and Western military leaders studying lessons from the war, hope that increased reliance on ground robots and aerial drones, as well as the increased integration of AI capabilities into these systems, can help reduce the risks to the troops who would otherwise perform those missions on increasingly dangerous battlefields.

• Ukraine has been waiting nearly a month for the US to sign off on crucial missile interceptors, its president says.
• Kyiv said it is specifically waiting for the Pentagon to approve Patriot and NASAMS missiles.
• Ukraine has repeatedly faced low stockpiles of interceptors as it defends against Russian missiles.

Kyiv has been waiting nearly a month for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on crucial missile interceptors, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine has been waiting on approval to procure interceptors for its Patriot and NASAMS systems. The former is the country's most reliable defense against Russian ballistic missiles.

The Ukrainian president said that he instructed his team "to raise this with the American side once again. Conversations with other countries are also ongoing."

Most of the interceptors for Ukraine's air defense systems, including its Patriot batteries, are supplied through NATO's Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, in which allies and partners buy weapons from the US and then transfer them to Kyiv.

It is unclear how many interceptors have been held up, or why Hegseth had not signed off on their transfer.

A senior Pentagon official told Business Insider "there has been no change" to department policy "regarding intelligence sharing or any capabilities we are enabling Europeans to provide to Ukraine."

The PURL initiative "continues unaltered," the official added.

Ukraine has faced repeated interceptor shortages, making it difficult to effectively defend against worsening Russian ballistic missile attacks, which, alongside armed jet-powered drones, have hammered Kyiv in a series of deadly bombardments.

The American-made MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile system is a key piece of Kyiv's defensive umbrella. Ukrainian officials have urged the US and European allies to send more interceptors — PAC-2 and PAC-3 models in particular. Global munitions stockpiles, however, are under increased strain.

"We are working on several tracks — with the United States, Europe, and other partners that have stocks of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles," Zelenskyy said Monday in a social media post.

The Iran war has put tremendous stress on munition stockpiles. Col. Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, said on Monday that the Patriot interceptors fired by the US and its Middle East allies during the Iran war could have supported Kyiv's defenses for several years.

The NASAMS (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) — a joint US-Norwegian project — is another important element of Ukraine's air defense network. It is not designed to engage ballistic missiles like the Patriot, but rather short- and medium-range targets such as aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones.

Zelenskyy's comment comes amid broader tensions between Ukraine and the US, which have escalated in recent weeks.

The Trump administration has publicly denounced Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian energy facilities, with Washington blaming Kyiv for high oil and diesel prices. Industry experts, however, have identified the Iran war as a major source of disruption in global markets.

In October, Ukrainian officials reported multiple instances where Kyiv did not receive any advance warning of Russian ballistic missile launches from international partners through usual channels, leaving it little to no time to detect them before impact. The apparent suspension of intelligence sharing was lifted after a few days.

Ukraine also experienced a sudden disruption of its Starshield services, the military-grade version of Starlink, earlier this month, with speed caps affecting drone operations, logistics, and communication, said sources in Kyiv's defense ministry.

On Saturday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara said that monitoring systems had recorded speed recovery for Starshield and Starlink, SpaceX's commercial satellite internet service.

The incident has raised alarms among Ukrainian officials. Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO, accused Kyiv of breaching Starlink's terms of service by using the civilian service for drone strikes and said last weekend that this ultimately led to the disruption. Some of Kyiv's top drone advisors have pushed back on that argument.

• Drones in Ukraine act as flying communications bridges between operators and mission drones.
• They repeat the operators' signal to allow drones to fly farther while staying connected.
• The signal-repeating drones make other drones more resistant to Russia's electronic warfare.

Ukraine has created drones that act as flying relay towers, allowing its drones conducting missions to fly farther while making them harder for Russia to jam.

In a war where drones gather intel and account for more than 95% of Russia's front-line losses, Ukraine wants its operators to keep control of their drones over longer distances with stronger signals that are harder for Russia to break.

One solution is the signal repeater drone, a flying signal booster that operates between a pilot and a mission drone, relaying commands to the aircraft and sending back video and intelligence to the operator. Able to fly much higher than a ground antenna, airborne repeaters can extend a drone's range and help preserve the connection under pressure.

It increases the mission drone's operational range by extending how far it can fly while staying connected to its pilot. It's a similar principle to how wifi repeaters work.

Ukrainian arms maker Twist Robotics makes a signal-repeating drone, born from its Saker Scout drone.

Rostyslav Olenchyn, the company's co-founder and chief information officer, told Business Insider that the drone was widely used for reconnaissance and strike operations, but this war changes rapidly, with arms and warfighting technology quickly becoming obsolete. And without updates, this drone was at risk of falling victim to that pattern in the cat-and-mouse technology race.

Drones needed to be effective at longer ranges, and the Saker Scout's range was "not enough" for many missions. So, the drone was redesigned "for another objective. It became the signal relay station," Olenchyn said.

The Saker Scout, able to also be used in other combat roles, can extend the operational range of drones by more than 50 kilometers, according to the company.

The concept of using aircraft as signal middlemen isn't new. Militaries have used helicopters and planes to relay communications between assets and forces disconnected by the terrain, though usually troops rather than drones. These crewed aircraft, however, struggle to operate over Ukraine, but while such air assets are few and far between, drones are prolific.

Large crewed aircraft cannot "necessarily survive in the heavy saturated air of the battlefield," where drones and air defenses are a threatening presence, Olenchyn said. "So the small, versatile platform was a solution." He said that serial production of the Saker Scout with this function started in 2023.

The company's strike drone, the Signal Hunter, can also be used as a relay.

Other Ukrainian companies are also working in the space, with some updating existing drone types and some designing new ones. Roboneers, for example, developed a version of its Wardog drone that can carry relay equipment weighing up to three kilograms, and Skyriper makes the Skyriper-R Airborne Repeater, a dedicated drone with the single function of acting as an airborne repeater.

Volodymyr Zinovskyi, the CEO of the Ukrainian defense firm TAF Industries, told Business Insider that his company started making relay drones last year at the request of units, describing the technology as going from optional to essential.

Brave1, Ukraine's state-backed innovation platform, wrote last year that "the use of UAVs over long distances or in difficult terrain requires the use of repeaters - special devices that help increase the range of a stable signal several times."

Some Ukrainian drones are built for this relay mission, while others can be fitted with add-on repeater equipment.

Beyond overcoming geographical challenges, airborne repeaters also help counter Russian electronic warfare by strengthening the communications link between operators and mission drones, making it harder to disrupt, though Russia can still target the relay itself.

An analysis published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think tank, last year described the creation of relay systems as a response to growing electronic warfare tactics, including the ability that both sides have to trace drone control signals back to their source for strikes on operators, priority targets in this war.

Dmytro "Liber" Zhluktenko, a former drone operator who now serves as a lessons-learned analyst with Ukraine's 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment "RAID," told Business Insider that Ukrainian forces are "keeping somewhat a stable radio link by mass utilizing signal repeaters."

He said that some uncrewed repeater aircraft are fixed-wing drones, while some are repurposed bomber-type drones. Instead of bombs, it just carries the signal repeater," he said.

"We optimize those signal repeater carriers to just stay in the air for an extremely long time, like one hour plus," he said. "That's their only job: to be in the air." Working with strike drones, they give operators a "great radio link over the target."

Oleksiy, the commander of the 2nd UAV engineer platoon of the International Defense Legion of Ukraine, told ArmyInform, the official information agency of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, last year that his unit uses repeaters on drones to expand the radio horizon of the drones they want to use and fly further to target Russia.

Russia is using the technology too, including to help attack drones fly deeper into Ukrainian territory.

And these lessons aren't limited to the Ukraine war. The US military is also experimenting with ways to extend drone operations and keep operators connected from farther away. The Marine Corps, for instance, has experimented with using helicopters as FPV motherships, as well as handing off control after launch.

Though different from Ukraine's airborne repeater work, both address a similar battlefield problem, which is that drones are only useful if operators can launch them, control them, and keep receiving information at tactically relevant distances.

Olenchyn said that updates, like the signal repeating ability, are critical in combat. He said that every two weeks, the company has "a new update, new kinds of techniques, new kinds of drones or functionality which are released."