Russia’s AK-47 manufacturer is making special bullets for its assault rifles to knock drones out of the sky

• Russia is looking to make a big splash in the anti-drone ammunition game with its new 5.45mm rifle round.

• Kalashnikov Concern has said it plans to mass produce fragmented bullets to kill drones.

• Ukraine is already developing similar projectiles as such designs are infiltrating the global defense industry.

Russia’s leading small arms manufacturer, Kalashnikov Concern, said on Thursday that it has developed 5.45mm rifle rounds specifically designed to disable drones.

Although similar types of shells have appeared sporadically on the Russian battlefield since last year, Kalashnikov Concern has said it plans to mass produce the bullets and formalize a national effort to do so. make drone killer ammo for individual troops.

The 30-round magazine is designed for the AK-12 gas-operated assault rifle, and each round ejects a “multi-element projectile that significantly increases the likelihood of hitting UAVs,” the gunmaker said.

Kalashnikov Concern said the projectile can be used in burst and single-shot modes and has been tested against a hovering drone and another drone flying along a predetermined path.

Ukraine does it on its own anti-drone rifle bulletsWith a bullet called the “Horoshok” or “Little Pea”, which expands its area of ​​effect by breaking into multiple pieces. Kyiv announced in December that it planned to produce 400,000 of these bullets per month.

However, Ukraine’s 5.56mm round sees the bullet travel some distance before fragmenting, increasing firing range.

During tests against fast-moving small unmanned aerial vehicles, bullet fragments were “systematically separated after exiting the barrel,” Kalashnikov Concern said in its announcement.

Some Russian units were thought to have first publicized the general idea, such as a group of soldiers who filmed themselves using steel shot and heat-shrink tubes to convert 7.62mm bullets into makeshift shotgun shells in February 2025.

The entire concept evokes the past now widespread use of shotguns As the last line of defense against first-person view drone attacks in the Ukraine war. The tactic became particularly popular as both sides began using it. fiber optic dronescannot be remotely compressed.

The West is also testing rifle bullets against unmanned aerial vehicles.

The U.S. Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center, for example, said in February that it had developed a “drone killer cartridge” containing bullets that break into three pieces. Other American and European startups sell their own split-split rifle bullets.

Meanwhile, the concept is also attracting the attention of the larger defense industry. The Belgian arm of France-headquartered Thales is building a 70mm airburst rocket loaded with steel pellets to counter one-way attack drones like the Shahed.

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