How Ukraine and Russia are increasingly turning to 3D printing to win the drone war
In Ukraine 3D printers are working day and night to make Vampires and Shrike FPV parts while the Russians just unveiled a new 3D printed interdiction drone
Reporters from United24, on the frontline of Ukrainian war news, had the rare opportunity to visit a secret Skyfall drone factory producing Vampires and Shrike FPV drones at an industrial scale to support Ukraine’s war effort on the frontline, especially for the Phoenix unit. On the opposite side of the fence, Russian forces are also heavily using 3D printing for drone-on-drone warfare.
The video above offers an exclusive look at this one-of-a-kind high-tech hive, where the latest innovations are tested to maintain an edge over the Russians on the battlefield.
The reporter said that not everything inside can be fully shown: what emerges isn’t just a production facility. It’s a military-tech hive, churning out Vampire and Shrike FPV drones at scale to feed Ukraine’s relentless drone war.
These systems are built for Phoenix units, where every sortie counts. And the race to stay ahead of Russian countermeasures is daily, not quarterly. Engineers tweak software mid-shift. 3D printers are always running. New payloads, faster chips, smarter comms — all tested under red lights, solder smoke, and urgency.
This site doesn’t appear on maps. But it’s shaping the future of autonomous, adaptive frontline warfare. Here, iterative feedback from the trenches becomes real-world innovation within days. In this sense, Ukraine is redefining warfare, and Skyfall is one of the driving forces behind this shift.
On the other side of the battlefront, the Russians are also heavily using AM for drone-on-drone warfare. As revealed by James Acuna, Former CIA Sr. Operations Officer with UAS/CUAS expertise in the EMEA theater, Russian marines from the 155th Kursk Brigade of the Pacific Fleet have recently unveiled a new 3D printed interdiction drone with an X-shaped airframe. It’s equipped with a remotely operated combat module and dual-spectral optical targeting (thermal/MWIR and TV sensors), and it’s controlled through a wired telemetry link, making operator detection almost impossible.
This is rapid adaptation for drone-on-drone warfare. Acuna’s Baltic Ghost Wing Center of Excellence trains and tests against exactly these emerging threats — and teaches military teams how to survive and dominate in this new environment.
