Russia’s New Unmanned Systems Forces and the Strategic Role of DKO Weapons
By Roger N. McDermott
Hi everyone,
As part of our new research initiative, Strategic Failure in the Ukraine War, led by Senior Fellow Roger N. McDermott, we continue to track how Moscow is attempting to reform its armed forces in the aftermath of its shortcomings and the failed 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A major new development in this context is Russia’s decision to create an entirely new branch of its military: the Unmanned Systems Forces. Acting on President Putin’s directive, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov has proposed institutionalizing drone and autonomous warfare through the creation of this new force, as well as establishing Russia’s first Higher Military School of Unmanned Systems.
This move reflects the Kremlin’s effort to address critical gaps exposed during the Ukraine conflict. Drawing from internal military journals and expert analysis, this new doctrine casts “remote-cybernetic” weapons—unmanned and autonomous systems—as both shield and sword for future warfare. While the reform appears ambitious, it also underscores the very structural challenges and doctrinal confusion our project is designed to expose. As Russia struggles to align its military modernization with operational reality, Strategic Failure in the Ukraine War will offer timely, in-depth insight into whether such reforms are truly transformative or merely another layer of strategic illusion. Stay tuned for more updates from our team at the Saratoga Foundation as we delve deeper into these critical issues shaping European security.
Enjoy!
Russia’s New Unmanned Systems Forces and the Strategic Role of DKO Weapons
Roger N. McDermott
In the aftermath of Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, the establishment of Russia’s new branch of Unmanned Systems Forces (Voysk Bespilotnykh Sistem－VBS), stands to take on even greater strategic significance. Announced on December 16, 2024, by Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, the VBS is a direct Russian institutional response to operational lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine, or what Moscow terms the Special Military Operation (SMO). The completion of this process is scheduled for late 2025; however, it will most likely receive significant attention, modernization, and high-technology procurement in the coming years.[1] This shift signifies a formal recognition by the Russian military of the centrality of drone warfare and autonomous systems in contemporary conflict, where conventional force-on-force engagements have been increasingly shaped, and in some cases decisively influenced, by the tactical and operational use of unmanned platforms.
In Ukraine, both sides have deployed drones extensively for reconnaissance, target acquisition, and precision strikes, but Russia’s move to elevate these capabilities to the level of a dedicated service branch reflects an effort to overcome ad hoc implementation and integrate unmanned systems into coherent military art, command structures, and procurement pipelines.[2] Strategically, this change marks a transition from seeing unmanned systems as support assets to viewing them as primary instruments of warfare, capable of enabling high-precision, low-risk operations with operational autonomy. It also aligns with a broader Russian goal of achieving technological asymmetry, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, and cybernetics to offset adversary advantages in manpower, alliances, and conventional hardware. In this context, the creation of the Unmanned Systems Forces (VBS) is both a reaction to battlefield realities and a preemptive investment in the future character of war.
Structures for Drone Warfare
Both Ukraine and Russia have officially begun forming new military branches dedicated to unmanned systems. Ukraine took the lead in February 2024, followed by Moscow’s announcement in December of the same year. In this context, Russian specialists Sergei Makarenko and Konstantin Kozlov[3] co-authored an article arguing that the formation of Russia’s VBS must be accompanied by a systematic and urgent transition to automated command and control (C2) of unmanned aerial systems (UAS).[4] Makarenko and Kozlov critique Russia’s current practice of “one operator- one UAV” as inefficient and operationally unsustainable, particularly given the rapid expansion and tactical diversity of drone use in modern conflict. They argue that mass deployment of UAS demands high-level automation, drawing a parallel to how post-World War II air defense systems evolved in response to increasing complexity and speed. Manual control, they emphasize, is inherently constrained by human cognitive limits, training requirements, and vulnerability to electronic warfare (EW), where communication links are often degraded or lost.[5]
The authors highlight Ukraine’s integration of UAV modules into its Delta automated tactical control system as a case in point, enabling more coordinated, scalable drone operations. In contrast, Russia’s relative lack of automation represents a significant capability gap, estimated at 1.5 to 2 years, which poses a risk to the operational relevance of its newly forming VBS.[6] While the article makes a convincing case for automation, it largely overlooks structural impediments to implementation. The authors do not sufficiently address the organizational inertia, industrial capacity, and budgetary limitations that could slow Russia’s transition. Moreover, their assumption that manned aviation control systems can be readily adapted to unmanned systems underestimates the unique technical challenges in software architecture, swarm autonomy, and interoperability standards. Still, the core warning stands: without decisive modernization, Russia’s VBS may emerge as an underperforming force: outdated at birth and unable to rival Ukraine’s more agile, networked drone warfare capabilities.[7]
VBS and Remote Cybernetic-Weapons (DKO)
In this context, Colonel (retired) Gregoriy Vokin, Professor at the Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences,[8] published an analysis of the VBS and the opportunities this presents to further narrow the gap between Russian military thought concerning future war and near-term capabilities. Vokin’s article was given pride-of-place in the June 2025 issue of the General Staff journal Voyennaya Mysl’ (Military Thought): ‘Distantsionno-kiberneticheskoe oruzhie － shchit i mech dlya sozdavaemogo novogo roda voysk Vooruzhennykh Sil Rossiyskoy Federatsii－ voysk bespilotnykh sistem (Remote-Cybernetic Weapons － Shield and Sword for the Newly Established Branch of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation － the Unmanned Systems Forces).’[9]
Vokin explains the significance of the creation of the new VBS branch as follows:
These circumstances formed the basis for the country’s leadership to make an important and forward-looking decision to create the forces of unmanned systems, as reported by A.R. Belousov on December 16, 2024, at the collegium of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. It can now be reasonably said that DKO-type systems have finally gained both an interested customer and an owner.[10]
Vokin then introduces the reader to the concept of Distantsionno-Kiberneticheskoe Oruzhie－DKO, or remote-cybernetic weapons (DKO), noting his role in the development of the concept in his work over the past twenty years:[11]
The term “remote-cybernetic weapon” was introduced by the author more than twenty years ago, first in restricted-distribution scientific-technical reports from the 4th Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense, [12] and later in a number of open publications. According to the author, this term aptly reflects the essence, purpose, and functions of the systems proposed in those works: automated aerial systems, subunits, or cyber-blocks.[13]
The concept of distant-cybernetic weapons (DKO) represents a radical reimagining of strategic and tactical warfare, shifting focus from conventional munitions toward autonomous, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven systems capable of precision engagement across intercontinental distances. At its core, a DKO weapon is a cyber-robot: an intelligent, sensor-laden mobile unit delivered to the battlefield by a missile or aircraft and tasked with executing functions such as reconnaissance, target recognition, and lethal engagement. What sets DKO apart is its integration of AI and terrain-based navigation, allowing it to evade detection and make mission-critical decisions autonomously. Vokin’s system relies on a novel deployment mechanism: at terminal missile trajectory phases, protective casings are jettisoned, and the cyber-robots glide at low altitudes, hugging terrain to minimize radar signature and optimize survivability. This transforms the DKO from merely a delivery system into a sophisticated, flexible strike unit. In doing so, it promises to resolve long-standing problems in ballistic missile targeting, such as limited accuracy and high collateral risk, by introducing maneuverability and post-separation decision-making into the terminal phases of delivery.[14]
Vokin’s formulation of the VBS and the integration of DKO into Russian military art mark a substantive theoretical and operational shift in strategic planning. By contextualizing the emergence of this force within the historical arc of military revolutions, tanks in World War I, combined arms in World War II, and nuclear deterrence in the Cold War, Vokin draws a deliberate parallel that frames the VBS not as auxiliary tools but as definitive elements of future conflict. This is not a mere rhetorical flourish. He sees unmanned, intelligent platforms as the natural evolution of modern military capability: designed for precision, survivability, and psychological impact. In his analysis, the key advantage lies not in the incremental improvement of legacy systems but in the paradigmatic break that unmanned systems offer: the move from “mass and attrition” to “precision and cognition.” His claim is not only strategic but also political; he suggests that technological superiority, especially in AI-enhanced autonomous systems, will increasingly underpin military credibility and international influence.[15]
The architecture of DKO, as presented by Vokin, reflects a system-of-systems approach that fuses multiple technological domains into a coherent operational construct. The cyber-robots themselves, autonomous, sensor-integrated platforms capable of operating across land, air, and sea, represent a modular and scalable solution to varied mission profiles, from Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Electronic Warfare (EW) to direct strikes and automated targeting, and delivery. Vokin’s innovation lies in conceptualizing these robots not just as expendable drones, but as intelligent submunitions “subblocks” that can be launched intercontinentally, evade modern air defenses through low-altitude, terrain-hugging flight, and execute tasks with a level of tactical independence previously reserved for human combatants.[16] His detailed proposition for heat-shield separation during missile descent to enable autonomous cyber-robot deployment shows a clear understanding of aerospace dynamics and air defense countermeasures. Crucially, he extends the utility of this concept beyond kinetic operations to include command-and-control disruption, infrastructure degradation, and psychological operations－effectively treating DKO as multi-domain strategic enablers.[17]
Strategic Implications
Operationally, the implications are significant. If implemented as envisioned, DKO platforms could fundamentally alter the character of strike warfare by enabling deep, rapid, and precise attacks with minimal risk to human personnel. Vokin’s emphasis on non-nuclear strategic strikes aligns with contemporary Russian interest in escalate to de-escalate strategies, where limited but devastating conventional strikes are used to paralyze or deter an adversary. The claim that DKO can perform “decapitating” or “disarming” missions within hours reflects a doctrine aimed at preemption and paralysis, striking leadership nodes, critical infrastructure, and military C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) assets before large-scale mobilization. However, this also reveals a potential escalatory pathway: launching ICBM-class vehicles (even with conventional payloads) risks being interpreted as nuclear aggression, especially by NATO early warning systems. Vokin’s own confidence in non-nuclear DKO deterrence may underestimate the risks of misperception, particularly in high-tension scenarios where seconds determine escalation trajectories. Moreover, the assertion that increased payload accuracy can reduce nuclear warhead size and increase submunition quantity, while technically sound, hints at a strategy aimed at overwhelming adversary defenses through quantitative saturation and qualitative precision.[18]
From a strategic theory perspective, Vokin’s framework challenges classical deterrence logic. Traditional nuclear doctrine rests on the principle of mutual assured destruction (MAD), which presumes transparency, predictability, and high destructiveness. DKO, by contrast, introduces a non-transparent, highly maneuverable, and scalable threat vector. The ability to deploy dozens of semi-autonomous, high-speed robotic units from a single missile platform complicates detection, tracking, and attribution, especially when these units can perform a mix of reconnaissance and strike roles. This significantly compresses decision-making windows for adversaries and introduces ambiguity into crisis dynamics, undermining the stabilizing logic of second-strike capability. In this light, Vokin’s vision seems less like a stabilizing innovation and more like a destabilizing leap, blurring the lines between nuclear and conventional, combatant and non-combatant, offensive and defensive systems. Furthermore, his insistence on the strategic legality of DKO due to the absence of international treaties reflects a posture of legal opportunism, exploiting regulatory gaps in much the same way that cyber warfare has challenged the traditional laws of armed conflict. In the absence of international consensus, this could lead to pre-normative arms racing in the autonomous weapons domain, potentially pushing adversaries toward preemptive postures.[19]
This strategic and technological vision is not merely conceptual; it is rooted in the military experience of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The protracted conflict has served as a proving ground for unmanned systems, revealing both their transformative potential and critical limitations in real time. Russian forces have adapted rapidly, experimenting with a broad range of drone platforms, from commercial quadcopters retrofitted for frontline ISR roles to more advanced loitering munitions integrated into battalion-level operations. This iterative process has yielded a wealth of operational lessons that directly informed the institutionalization of the VBS. The battlefield has become a laboratory where military art, tactics, and procurement strategies have evolved in response to the unique challenges of drone-centric warfare.[20] These adaptations underscore the practical necessity of transitioning from fragmented, improvisational use of unmanned systems to a coordinated, strategic approach, embodied in the creation of a dedicated service branch. Far from a theoretical exercise, the development of these forces reflects an urgent response to contemporary war-fighting demands and a conscious effort to align future capabilities with the hard-won lessons of recent combat.
Conclusion
Vokin’s advocacy for the VBS and DKO weapons reflects a broader transformation in Russian military thought: prioritizing speed, precision, autonomy, and ambiguity over brute force. His vision is technically imaginative and strategically coherent within its own logic, but it carries profound implications for strategic stability, escalation management, and arms control.[21] The most pressing challenges lie not in the engineering of these systems but in the doctrinal integration, escalation signaling, and legal framing required to avoid catastrophic misinterpretation. While DKO weapons may offer Moscow a potent asymmetric tool in an increasingly contested battlespace, their deployment, absent robust political and diplomatic frameworks, could inadvertently usher in a new era of opaque and unbounded strategic competition.
In this context, Vokin’s vision, while technically bold and strategically provocative, raises serious concerns and reveals several conceptual weaknesses. First, the viability of deploying autonomous strike robots at intercontinental ranges presumes an unbroken chain of technological competencies: AI, sensor fusion, terrain navigation, and hardened communications, which even technologically advanced militaries would struggle to operationalize reliably under contested conditions. Second, the strategic assumption that non-nuclear precision strikes delivered via ICBM-class platforms can create deterrence parity with nuclear arms is questionable: adversaries may interpret missile launches, regardless of payload, as nuclear first strikes, escalating conflicts uncontrollably. Finally, the lack of legal or ethical frameworks around DKO weapons introduces risks of proliferation and misuse, especially as such systems blur the lines between conventional and strategic capabilities. While Vokin’s concept expands the theoretical boundaries of warfare, it does so in ways that challenge both the stability of deterrence doctrines and the norms of lawful, accountable conflict engagement.
Roger N. McDermott, Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHS) is a Senior Fellow on Russian Military Strategy at The Saratoga Foundation, Washington, DC. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford in Modern History and a leading authority on the Russian military. For his full bio please click here:
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SOURCES:
[1] ‘V Rossii poyavyatsya voyska bespilotnykh sistem: Belousov po porucheniyu Putina predlozhil sformirovat' voyska bespilotnykh sistem (Russia to have forces of unmanned systems: Belousov, on Putin's instructions, proposed to form forces of unmanned systems),’ RIA Novosti, December 16, 2024.
[2] ‘Minoborony planiruyet otkrytiye pervogo v Rossii Vysshego voyennogo uchilishcha bespilotnykh sistem (The Ministry of Defense plans to open the first Higher Military School of Unmanned Systems in Russia),’ Voyennoye Oobozreniye, June 10, 2024.
[3] Sergei Makarenko is a Professor of Information Security Department, St.Petersburg Electrotechnical University. Konstantin Kozlov is Deputy Head of the Scientific and Technical Center, JSC “Inteltech.”
[4] Makarenko S. I., Kozlov K. V., ‘Avtomatizirovannaya sistema upravleniya bespilotnymi letatel’nymi apparatami pri sovmestnom reshenii imi spetsial’nykh zadach (Automated Control System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles When They Jointly Figure Out Combat Missions),’
Sistemy Upravleniya, Svyazi i Bezopasnosti, No.1, 2025, pp. 131-155.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Professor at the International Academy of Informatization and the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, Chief Researcher at the Space Systems Research Institute, Branch of the Khrunichev R&D Center (Korolev, Moscow Region).
[9] Colonel (retired) G.G. Vokin, ‘Distantsionno-kiberneticheskoe oruzhie － shchit i mech dlya sozdavaemogo novogo roda voysk Vooruzhennykh Sil Rossiyskoy Federatsii－ voysk bespilotnykh sistem (Remote-Cybernetic Weapons － Shield and Sword for the Newly Established Branch of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation － the Unmanned Systems Forces),’ Voyennaya Mysl’, No.6, 2025, pp. 9-15.
[10] Ibid, p. 9.
[11] Vokin cites many of his earlier works on the development and advocacy for the DKO concept. See, for example: Vokin, G.G., Makarov, M.I., ‘Konceptual'nye osnovy sozdanija sruzhiya novogo klassa - distantsionno-kiberneticheskogo oruzhiya,’ Voyennaya Mysl’, No.8, 2020. pp. 117-125.
[12] The 4th Central Scientific Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (4th TsNII MO RF) is a leading military research institution focused on the development and support of strategic missile systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Established in 1946, it played a key role in pioneering Soviet missile technology and has provided continuous scientific and technical support to the Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN). The institute expanded its scope to include space and missile defense research, integrated other specialized research centers, and underwent significant structural reforms. Following its 2014 reorganization, it returned to the RVSN structure and now concentrates on ensuring the operational readiness and modernization of Russia’s strategic deterrent, supported by a core team of highly qualified scientists. Tyutyunnikov N.N., Voyennaya mysl’ v terminakh i opredeleniyakh: v 3-kh tomakh (Military Thought in Terms and Definitions: in Three Volumes), Moscow: Pero Publishing House, 2018, Vol.II, pp. 328-330.
[13] Vokin, ‘Distantsionno-kiberneticheskoe oruzhie － shchit i mech dlya sozdavaemogo novogo roda voysk Vooruzhennykh Sil Rossiyskoy Federatsii－ voysk bespilotnykh sistem,’ Op.Cit, p. 10.
[14] Vokin, ‘Distantsionno-kiberneticheskoe oruzhie － shchit i mech dlya sozdavaemogo novogo roda voysk Vooruzhennykh Sil Rossiyskoy Federatsii－ voysk bespilotnykh sistem,’ Op.Cit, pp. 9-15.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Author’s emphasis. Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] On the level of adaptation by Russia’s Armed Froces during the war in Ukraine since 2022, see: United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Russian Way of War Program (RWoW). How Russia Fights: Military Strategy, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Armed Forces. TRADOC G-2, Fort Leavenworth, KS: May, 2025.
[21] Vokin, ‘Distantsionno-kiberneticheskoe oruzhie － shchit i mech dlya sozdavaemogo novogo roda voysk Vooruzhennykh Sil Rossiyskoy Federatsii－ voysk bespilotnykh sistem,’ Op.Cit, pp. 9-15.