19:00 02-05-2026

Russia to deploy combat lasers to protect border from Ukrainian drones

독서하는 자, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Military expert Yuri Knutov said Russian combat laser systems, possibly linked to the Posokh project, will soon protect the state border from Ukrainian drone attacks.

Russian combat laser systems will soon be deployed to protect the state border from attacks by Ukrainian drones, military expert Yuri Knutov told aif.ru.

Earlier, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree under which interceptor drones and laser weapons are included in the duty forces responsible for protecting Russia’s state border in the airspace.

Knutov suggested that the matter may concern the Posokh project. According to him, the laser systems underwent testing for several months, during which they were repeatedly refined and upgraded. The expert said the systems are now fully ready to protect state borders.

The Posokh project was created as a means of protecting troops and facilities from unmanned aerial vehicles. The system is based on a ytterbium laser that strikes targets with a directed energy beam. During tests in 2025, the installation managed to burn through a drone’s wing at a distance of 50 meters in 0.1 seconds.

According to Knutov, the initial laser systems were designed to hit targets at a range of up to 700 meters. This figure was then increased to one kilometer, and later it was proposed to extend the range to 1.5 kilometers. The expert emphasized that the strike takes place much faster than one second: the system automatically tracks the target and destroys it with a laser beam. In his assessment, such speed indicates fairly high laser power, since with lower power it would take much longer to act on a single point of the drone.

Knutov noted that the first demonstration of this laser weapon took place last autumn, after which the system was sent for revision twice.

The expert believes that laser systems should prove effective against Ukrainian drones. If their current range is from one to one and a half kilometers, then their power, in his estimate, may reach about 35 kilowatts, which is enough to destroy such targets. He added that similar systems are currently being developed in India, Turkey, the United Kingdom and other countries.

Knutov also pointed out that many countries are trying to develop such weapons, but not always successfully. In the case of Russian laser systems, he said, the tests were successful.

According to the expert, if a protective line is created from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and proves effective, such lasers could later be used to protect cities as well. Knutov stressed that the cost of one pulse is dozens of times lower than the cost of a missile and several times lower than the cost of a shell.