• 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.

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• Once experimental tech, AI turrets are now becoming an "integral part of air defense" in Ukraine's war.
• These are guns that can detect and lock onto targets by calculating speed and trajectory.
• Ukraine has deployed over a dozen of these and is looking to surge their production and use.

Ukraine is using machine gun turrets controlled by artificial intelligence in battle, and they're working well enough that Kyiv wants to roll them out at a faster pace.

While Ukraine began revealing prototypes of these systems last year, Brave1, the country's defense innovation platform, said on Thursday that they've now become "an integral part of air defense" for its forces.

"In the last month alone, automated turrets have destroyed dozens of enemy drones over Kyiv," Brave1 said, adding that it started work on these weapons in 2024 as experimental technology.

Not much is publicly known about the core capabilities of these turrets, such as their range or how their software works, but they've primarily been described as an air defense tool against Russian drones.

The idea is that artificial intelligence helps the turret detect, acquire, and track a target, making it more accurate than human operators at engaging high-speed air targets such as jet-powered Gerans.

More than a dozen such systems are now deployed in the Kyiv area, with another eight planned for the region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in early October.

In a sign that Ukraine plans to lean further into the technology, Zelenskyy later praised the systems further, saying on October 19 that AI-powered turrets have "proven highly effective against shaheds."

"We are increasing orders, and it is important to accelerate every process as much as possible — organizational, financial, and production-related," Zelenskyy said.

One such system, the Sky Sentinel, is a .50-cal M2 Browning turret developed and operated by private air defense firm Carmine Sky. It can spin 360 degrees and lock onto a target while firing by calculating speed and trajectory.

Each one costs about $150,000, a Ukrainian commander told Business Insider's Jake Epstein last summer, and can distinguish between birds and drones. The turret still requires a human operator to authorize when to fire, the commander said.

Brave1 released a montage on Thursday indicating that Ukraine is also fielding other types of automated turrets, showcasing clips of several designs.

It said turrets had shot down at least 60 targets under its Private Air Defense Project, a pilot that allows private Ukrainian firms to buy air defense equipment and train civilian staff to use them against drones threatening factories, warehouses, and other important sites.

Notably, Brave1 said these turrets took down Russian Geran-5s and Banderols — jet-powered drones and cruise missiles that can reach speeds of 375 to 400 mph.

A similar claim was made by Yuriy Ihnat, the Ukrainian air force's spokesperson, in early October, when he said that AI-powered turrets had shot down Russian jet-powered drones for the first time. Ihnat did not say which system was used.

Kyiv has eagerly integrated AI into much of its war effort, using machine learning models for other functions, such as predicting enemy drone strikes and autonomously conducting supply runs with robotic buggies.

The turrets do have limited range, making them more useful as a final defense against drones or against low-flying targets.

They'll likely be one of several tools Ukraine is developing to counter Russian jet-powered threats.

Over the last few months, the Kremlin has been ramping up production and deployment of cheap cruise missiles or drones equipped with turbojet engines. These weapons, flying at nearly half the speed of sound and launched by the thousands every month, have become a major challenge for Ukrainian air defenses.