The Ukrainian special forces unit “Kraken” has published a rare video showing the Black Hornet micro-drones received from the governments of Great Britain and Norway.

While the short footage is by no means impressive, it illustrates how these “pocket” drones can be used inside buildings, trenches and other types of targets inaccessible to other types of equipment to gather intelligence on Russian positions.

Such information can be critical for Ukrainian military personnel engaged in combat operations, as numerous videos have emerged over the past few months of Russian soldiers being destroyed by artillery fire after being captured by FPV (video-capable) drones.

However, recently such records have become rare, after the Ukrainian troops began using kamikaze drones for direct strikes on Moscow’s military.

The Kraken unit also released a separate video on Tuesday showing its soldiers engaging in combat:

It is considered one of the elite units of Ukraine, subordinate to the Main Directorate of Intelligence in Kyiv, the military intelligence service headed by General Kyrylo Budanov.

At the beginning of this year, the Kraken unit announced the destruction of the Russian command center during a spectacular night operation in the city of Soledar, Donetsk region.

What micro-drones “Black Hornet” Ukrainian troops received

In August of last year, Norway and Britain announced that they would supply such micro-drones to Ukraine to help in the war with Russia, which was announced by the Ministry of Defense in Oslo at the time.

The total cost of drones, the full name of which is “Teledyne Flir Black Hornet”, promised by the two NATO member countries at that time, amounted to more than 9 million euros.

According to comments made during the announcement by Bjorn Arild Gram, Norway’s defense minister, the Black Hornet micro-drone is easy to operate, reliable, hard to detect and particularly suitable for combat in urban areas.

Prox Dynamics AS, the Norwegian manufacturer of this micro-drone, claims that the Black Hornet is “extremely light, almost silent and has a flight time of up to 25 minutes, fits in a pocket, is battle-tested and transmits live video to the operator and HD still images.” .

The microdrone was purchased as part of the company’s framework agreement with the Norwegian Defense Materials Agency.

In addition to covering part of the purchase costs, the British side, in cooperation with the Norwegians, took care of training Ukrainian personnel in the use of microdrones and their delivery to Kyiv troops.

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