Russia patents a robot tank that flies its own tiny drone

A small tracked robot that can launch its own quadcopter, watch a target from the air, and then land the drone right back on its own chassis has surfaced in a newly published Russian patent, a design open-source trackers have nicknamed the “tracked Mavic” after the popular DJI consumer drone it resembles in miniature.

The patent describes what its filing calls an unmanned ground-flying vehicle, a system built around a tracked or wheeled ground platform that carries cargo or other payloads while doubling as a mobile launch pad for a separate flying platform, essentially a small quadcopter equipped with a video camera and a thermal imaging camera for seeing through darkness or smoke.

According to the patent’s own description, the flying platform can lock onto the ground vehicle for transport using dedicated fastening hardware and then release itself to fly independently, giving the combined system a way to scout terrain from above without needing a separate drone crew standing nearby with a controller.

The concept solves a problem that has dogged ground robots throughout the war in Ukraine, since a small tracked vehicle crawling along the ground has a limited, low-angle view of its surroundings and often cannot see over a ridge, through a tree line, or around a building corner without exposing itself to danger first.

Pairing that ground vehicle with a companion drone that launches, climbs above the obstruction, and streams a wider view back to the same operator addresses that blind spot directly, letting a single crew scout an area from the air before committing the ground vehicle to move through it, or letting the ground robot serve as the drone’s mobile base and battery source rather than requiring the drone to fly the entire distance from a fixed launch point.

Russia has built an unusually active domestic ground robot industry over the course of the war, one that a Kyiv-based think tank called StateWatch documented in an April 2026 report identifying 32 distinct Russian ground robotic system models from at least 20 different manufacturers, with at least 20 of those types already confirmed in combat use across Ukraine and Russia’s own Kursk region. That industry has scaled from small workshop experiments into serialized production backed explicitly by the Kremlin, with Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov confirming in April 2025 that forces received several hundred unmanned ground systems during 2024 alone, alongside plans to increase production by an order of magnitude the following year under a broader national robotics program the government has funded through 2030. Platforms like the Kuryer, a tracked vehicle capable of hauling up to 200 kilograms (441 pounds) at speeds up to 35 kilometers per hour (22 mph), and the Impulse-M, which has reached hundreds of delivered units, illustrate how far that industrial base has already scaled well before this new patent’s concept ever reaches a production line.

This is not the first time Russian engineers have tried to combine ground robots with aerial drone capability, either. NPO Android Technology’s Marker robotic platform has already been positioned by its developers as capable of deploying swarms of drones alongside its ability to carry a Kornet anti-tank guided missile, and Russian forces have separately mounted improvised rocket pods onto tracked robotic chassis in systems like the recently reported Kultivator, showing a consistent pattern of trying to merge different weapons and sensor categories onto a single unmanned platform rather than fielding each capability separately. The newly patented ground-flying vehicle pushes that integration further by making the aerial component a docking, launchable module built directly into the ground vehicle’s own structure rather than a separate payload carried loosely on top.

None of Russia’s existing ground robots have proven immune to the same battlefield hazards that threaten every other unmanned system operating near the front line. Internal Russian military assessments referenced in the StateWatch report found that most current UGV platforms rely on standard radio control links vulnerable to electronic warfare jamming, prompting a shift toward fiber-optic tethering and relay-based communication systems that avoid broadcasting a signal jammers can detect and disrupt. Weight constraints aimed at maximizing payload capacity and battery life have also left many of these platforms with minimal armor protection, making them vulnerable to the same first-person-view drones that have devastated conventional armored vehicles throughout the war, a vulnerability that would presumably extend to any hybrid ground-flying design carrying an exposed quadcopter on its exterior.

A patent filing confirms only that Russian engineers designed and formally registered this concept, not that any working prototype currently exists or that the system will ever reach frontline units in meaningful numbers. Russia’s defense-adjacent research institutions have filed a wide range of unconventional patents throughout the war, some of which, like the Kuryer and Impulse-M ground robots described earlier in this report, have gone on to reach genuine serial production and combat deployment, while others remain paper concepts that never progress past the patent office. What this filing does confirm is that Russian designers are still actively hunting for ways to give small, vulnerable ground robots the kind of aerial situational awareness that has become essential to surviving on a battlefield now saturated with drones on every side, even if the solution looks, at least on paper, like a toy-sized tank that carries its own miniature air force strapped to its back.