Russian Kamikaze Drones Fly New Mine Warfare Missions Against Ukrainian Armour
Eastern Europe and Central Asia , Aircraft and Anti-Aircraft
The Russian Aerospace Forces have begun to utilise Geran-2 single use flying wing drones to deploy PTM-3 anti-tank mines, which are housed in canisters attached under the aircraft’s fuselages. Footage from the frontlines showed two Ukrainian vehicles being hit by mines dropped by the aircraft. The ability to deploy mines from the air using very widely fielded low cost aircraft provides a new degree of flexibility to Russian mine warfare efforts, and is a potential low cost means of countering Ukraine’s very large quantities of armour, which includes both thousands of tanks and other vehicles inherited from the Soviet Union, and hundreds more Soviet and Western designed vehicles being delivered from across the Western world.
The Russian defence sector’s capacity to produce Geran-2 drones has expanded tremendously since 2022, with The Economist reporting in May that output at the primary production facility, the Alabuga Factory in Tartarstan, had increased more than tenfold from 300 a month to over 100 per day. Industry was reported at the time to be on track to be able to produce 500 Geran-2 drones daily. Increased numbers are expected to result in the aircraft taking on a wider range of roles, with mine warfare potentially being the first of many.
Commenting on the new footage, the NGP-Razvedka Russia-based military Telegram channel reported that it was “the premiere of the latest drone tactics against ground-moving targets.” “The Geranium conducts remote mining of enemy supply routes in real time, resulting in one transport unit going down, while another with shredded infantry manages to escape, though not very far in such a state,” it added, noting: “The guidance system will be refined, the tactics of use expanded, and the logistics of the Nazis will be turned into a complete nightmare. The range of the Geranium is over 1,000 km, do you get what that means?” Russian sources have frequently referred to Ukrainian forces as ‘Nazis,’ stressing the participation of Neo-Nazi units such as the Azov Battalion in the Ukrainain War effort for public relations purposes. The report implies that roads up to 1000 kilometres into Ukrainian controlled territory could be mined from the air, causing tremendous difficulties for logistics efforts.
The PTM-3 mine being used is small, allowing several to be carried by each Geran-2, and has a magnetic detonator optimising it to react to the passage of vehicles overhead. Ukrainian armour losses have been significant since the outbreak of full scale hostilities in February 2022, with the T-64 that previously formed the backbone of its fleet playing a diminished role due to a lack of replenishments, while continuous deliveries of T-72 and PT-91 tanks from Poland in particular have become critical to sustaining tank numbers. High expectations for the American M1A1 Abrams tank were disappointed, with 87 percent of the vehicles supplied to Ukraine estimated to have been destroyed or captured by July 2025.
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