- The US imposed sanctions against Russian manufacturer Zala Aero, which produces the Lancet drones.
- The Lancet drone is a loitering munition that stays near its target before crashing into it.
- The vehicle is small and lightweight — and effective against Ukraine’s advances.
The US imposed sanctions on Thursday against a Russian manufacturer of lightweight drones that has been impeding the progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
To “further target companies that are complicit in supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine,” the Department of State announced sanctions against Zala Aero, the Russian maker of the Lancet drones.
The US has already applied a long list of sanctions on Russia since its invasion last year, putting restrictions on the country’s energy imports, freezing billions of dollars of assets from Russian oligarchs, and barring Russian banks from the global banking system SWIFT.
It’s not immediately clear what the sanctions against the Lancet manufacturer will do. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. But the US also has previously blacklisted Russian arms dealer Igor Zimenkov and other companies that have worked in concert with him to supply “Russia’s military-industrial complex” through proxies, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a press release in February. The sanctions prohibit Zimenkov and the companies from doing business with the US.
Lancet drones are what’s known as loitering munitions, or drones with explosive payloads that can hover near their targets before crashing into them. Some, including the State Department, have dubbed these weapons “suicide” or “kamikaze” drones.
Lancet drones are small and lightweight, with its latest iteration, the Lancet-3M, weighing about 26.5 pounds — including the payload —and measuring less than 6 feet long, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Samuel Bendett, a Russian military technology expert at the Center for a New American Security, told Reuters that each drone costs about $35,000 to produce.
Despite their small size, the drones have proven effective against some of Ukraine’s weapons and defense systems, hobbling the country’s efforts to make advances against Russia.
Videos online have purported to show Lancets taking out an IRIS-T air-defense system donated by Germany and a Leopard tank.
James Patton Rogers, a drone expert at the Cornell Tech Policy Institute and the University of Southern Denmark, previously told Insider that Lancet drones are most effective against older tanks and he’s skeptical that they work against more advanced armored vehicles.
“I wouldn’t believe all the hype, especially when it comes to attacks on more advanced tanks and armored vehicles,” he said.
Still, Patton Rogers said the Lancet is “most certainly a thorn in the side of Ukrainian forces” but “by no means a war-winning weapon.”
One video circulating online appeared to show a Lancet drone dropping explosives on a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet that was sitting on the tarmac of an air base.
The target was hit from about 50 miles away, double the previous range the Lancet was believed to have.
“They are a serious problem,” a Ukrainian officer deployed in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, where Ukraine is making some headway for its counteroffensive, told the Journal.
Ukraine’s military personnel and air defenses appear to have attempted to thwart the Lancet drones, in one case building decoy tanks made out of wood that the drones would mistakenly target.
Ukraine’s Lieutenant Commander Oleksandr Afanasyev told Insider that the decoy was made of empty boxes of 155 mm shells.
Zala Aero did not respond to a request for comment sent during the weekend.
