Exclusive: Chinese-made drone, adapted and armed, is shot down in Ukraine

Driving deep into the forest, the silence between the towering pines and the clear blue sky was broken every few seconds by the sound of distant explosions from frontline battles in eastern Ukraine.

Leading us through the forest on foot, Ukrainian soldiers led us to a clearing where they showed us the wreckage of an armed drone they said they shot down with their AK-47 automatic weapons over the weekend.

The drone was a Mugin-5, a commercial unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) manufactured by a Chinese company based in the port city of Xiamen on China’s east coast.

Some tech bloggers say the machines are known as “Alibaba drones” as they are available for up to $15,000 on Chinese shopping sites including Alibaba and Taobao.

Mugin Limited has confirmed to CNN that it was the air vehicle’s fuselage was theirs, calling the incident “deeply unfortunate”.

It is the latest example of a civilian drone being retrofitted and armed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a sign of rapidly changing patterns of warfare.

“On the front lines, basically all the time we’re conducting aerial reconnaissance,” said Maksim, a 35-year-old homeland defense fighter who wants to use only his first name.

low altitude

During the night of Friday to Saturday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told CNN that their agents based in Russian-controlled territory alerted them that a UAV had been launched from there, heading towards a Ukrainian target.

The SBU then sounded the alarm with military units based in eastern Ukraine near the city of Sloviansk.

Around 2am on Saturday morning, fighters from the 111th Brigade of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces heard the drone overhead and even saw a light flashing on the aircraft.

“By the sound, by the light of the signal, the troops fired a lot at it and shot down the UAV,” said Maksim.

Maksim said the UAV was flying at very low altitude – close enough to shoot it down with small arms.

Now, lying on the forest floor, a bullet hole was visible in the nose of the machine, which had broken off and sustained significant damage.

Nearby, the soldiers also showed us a small crater in the earth that was created by the UAV’s payload – a bomb weighing approximately 20 kilograms, which was later safely detonated by the fighters.

In a video shared with CNN Ukrainian fighters showed how they attached a US-made demolition charge and ran through the woods to the truck, before speeding away.

From a distance of around 500 meters, they stopped the vehicle and turned to film the powerful impact of the explosion – a reminder of the potential damage it could have caused if the bomb had hit its intended target on Ukrainian soil.

A CNN reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on the incident, but has yet to receive a response.

“Rude, unsophisticated”

The armed commercial drone did not have a camera installed, meaning it could not have been used for surveillance and essentially makes it look like a “dumb bomb”, according to Chris Lincoln-Jones, a retired British Army officer and expert in drone warfare.

“This particular drone we’re looking at would be much more effective if it had a decent camera,” said Lincoln-Jones.

He added that the machine lends further evidence to the theory that Russia is not the military superpower the world had hoped for.

“This seems to be a very rudimentary, unsophisticated and technologically not very advanced way of conducting operations,” he said, adding that the price of the machines is very cheap in military terms.

“Ukrainians have to do what they can,” he added, so he hopes they will use “a lot more improvised weapons.”

In January, officials in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine claimed in a Telegram post that they had shot down a Mugin-5 launched by Ukrainian forces.

Ukrainian authorities have not commented on this particular incident, but experts said there is evidence that both sides in the conflict used this technology.

“Both Russia and Ukraine have used commercially available Chinese platforms like this one during the conflict, including in armed roles,” said NR Jenzen-Jones, a weapons and munitions intelligence expert and director of consultancy Armament Research Services.

“In this case, the Mugin-5 Pro was likely being used in a ‘bomber’ role rather than as a one-way attack UAV (the OWA, also called a ‘sacrifice’),” said Jenzen-Jones.

The munition loaded onto the drone was likely a “high explosive fragmentation” design, which was “simple and not very aerodynamic”, he said.

Jenzen-Jones added that the bomb’s release mechanism appeared to be made with 3D-printed components, which “suggests that the UAV was quickly retrofitted.”

“We are not happy about it”

As weaponry evolves in real time across Ukraine’s battlefields, the civilian companies behind the technology being weaponized to kill are now scrambling to find ways to stop their products from entering the military supply chain.

“We do not condone the use. We are doing what we can to stop it,” said a spokesman for the Mugin Limited The CNN .

In an earlier statement posted on the company’s website on March 2, Mugin Limited said it “condemns” the wartime use of its products and said it stopped selling products to Russia or Ukraine at the start of the war.

A CNN he also looked at half a dozen other companies whose electronics were visible on the downed UAV.

This includes servos manufactured by MKS a Taiwanese manufacturer of electronic devices.

“Some UAV manufacturers may adopt MKS servos in their finished products for military use, we are not happy about this and it is against our company’s mission and vision,” a company spokesperson said in an email to CNN .

The MKS website’s disclaimer also states that its products are “prohibited” for any illegal or military use.

A sensor on the adapted circuit board of the UAV was manufactured by novatel part of the group hexagon based in Canada, which supplies parts to industries such as “agriculture, construction and automotive”.

“For all export controlled products, we have extensive control processes in place to ensure they are sourced in compliance with applicable export laws,” a Hexagon spokesperson told CNN by email.

“In April 2022, we also took the decision to freeze all commercial activities in Russia.”

Despite signs that the use of UAV technology in this conflict is increasing, Ukrainian fighter Maksim denies that this has turned into a drone war.

“It’s not a tech war,” he said. “War is primarily a war of the people.”