Russia has launched a campaign against Ukrainian trains, striking rolling stock deep behind the lines to sow panic, hurt the economy and batter logistics, Ukrainian officials say. The latest strike came on Wednesday near the town of Bobrovytsya, in Chernihiv Oblast, about 100 miles from the Russian border.
A train was reportedly struck by a Shahed type drone being targeted via a night vision camera. The War Zone cannot independently verify this at this time. Video emerging from the scene shows drones hitting the locomotive first, then the train cars, but it is unclear what kind were used in this attack.
“We are all very lucky to see the work of smart drones of the Russian Armed Forces on a railway train with Ukrainian Armed Forces equipment, as well as on fuel tanks in the area of Bobrovytsia, Chernihiv region,” the noted Russian The_Wrong_Side Telegram channel claimed Wednesday on Telegram. “The drones hit their targets on the move and evade Ukrainian aircraft covering the train, giving them no chance to shoot them down.”
The claim that Shahed drones were used was made by the Ukrainian Militarnyi news outlet. If accurate, it would be another technological leap forward for these weapons.
In March 2024, it became apparent that Russia installed cameras and cellular modems on a small number of Shaheds. That likely gave them aerial reconnaissance capability and the ability to send images back home via Ukrainian wireless networks.
It’s also possible that something else was used in this strike. Even a near-field attack using short-range drones controlled by commandos behind enemy lines is a possibility, but as it sits now, the prevailing narrative is that a kind of Shahed was used.
While the Russians claim they hit a military target, the Chernihiv Prosecutors’ Office said grain cars were among those hit during the attack. Prosecutors added that the strikes caused no casualties, but left 26,000 people in the area without electricity and delayed trains.
While we can’t say for sure what types of drones were used in the strike, for Russia, having Shaheds that can dynamically seek out targets, even moving ones, far from their launch points would be a tremendous advantage. It would open up scores of potential targets that Russian airpower, with its lack of robust long-range kill chains and no air superiority over Ukraine, cannot currently address. To do this, the modified Shaheds would have to feature man-in-the-loop control and the data connectivity to support it. This is usually done by a beyond-line-of-sight datalink. That is very unlikely to exist on these Shaheds, so using local wireless networks opportunistically could overcome this limitation in a patchwork manner. A drone acting as a line-of-sight relay between the attack drones and their controllers is another possibility, but doing that over at least 100 miles and in highly defended airspace would be a challenge.
Or, they could have a level of AI-infused autonomy on board, allowing the Shahed to hit targets of its own choosing, or at least search for and make attack runs on certain targets that are preselected. We discussed how AI-enabled Shaheds could have a massive impact on the war in a story we wrote last year.
“If these types of drones were equipped with the ability to look for their own targets, they could use their high endurance to hunt for targets of opportunity, not a dozen or so miles from their launch locations like current smaller MITL kamikaze drones, but hundreds of miles away. And they can do so with considerable time on station to execute a thorough search of a defined area. They could even return home to be reused if no target is found, if they have the range to do so, or divert to a secondary fixed target pre-programmed for attack prior to launch. Otherwise, they could self-destruct.”
“The ability would open up dynamic targeting deep in contested territory. For Russia, for instance, this would be a huge advantage as it has failed to gain air superiority over Ukraine and has very limited ability to hit non-static targets far beyond the front lines. The same can be said for Ukraine. It could hunt for and strike Russian vehicles deep in occupied territory, something it cannot do today because it too lacks air superiority and is confronted with the dense air defense overlay that sits atop the entire region. Flying these drones deep into those air defenses makes sense even if they do not complete their mission. A long-range kamikaze drone may cost thousands of dollars, but the high-performance surface-to-air missile that knocks it down will likely cost much more and would take far longer to replace… Such a capability could significantly suppress movements of forces far behind the front lines, as precision attacks on moving forces can happen literally anywhere at any time, and in significant volumes.”
We will have to wait and see if similar attacks by the same drone systems occur in the near future for a better idea of what kind of capability and operational frameworks are being employed.
