Russia has announced the development of a new version of the Forpost medium-altitude reconnaissance drone with an integrated radar station.

This was reported by Russian media with reference to representatives of the Ural Civil Aviation Plant.

At the international defense exhibition IDEX-2025 in Abu Dhabi, the Russian manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles announced the emergence of a new version of the well-known Russian Forpost drone with a radar to monitor enemy targets and issue targeting instructions to military units.

“The Forpost UAV continues to be modernized and has gained new capabilities – the developers have created a version of the drone with a radar. Its task is to carry out radar control over ground and surface objects, recognize moving targets and issue targeting instructions for units of the Russian Armed Forces, including the Navy,” said spokeswoman Ekaterina Zgirovskaya.

However, no photos of the modernized drone have been shown by Russian media.

Integration of radars into Russian UAVs

It is very likely that the starting point for the modernization of the Russian drone was the latest version of the Forpost-R aircraft, which is capable of carrying a payload weighing up to 100 kilograms. These parameters allow it to carry a small-sized radar.

At the same time, the idea of integrating a radar on board a medium-altitude drone is not new in Russia. Back in 2010, the Russian government ordered the Fazotron-NIIR corporation to develop a small-sized MF-2 Kogitor airborne radar adapted for installation on Orion UAVs.

The design of the radar was supposed to be dual-band, so it consisted of two parts – a forward-looking module (Ka-band) and a side-looking module (X-band). The station was intended for reconnaissance and surveillance, while providing high and ultra-high resolution of up to 0.5 m in the centimeter and 0.25 m in the millimeter ranges.

The MF-2 Kogitor was to provide detection of ground, surface stationary and moving objects, as well as observation and tracking of air targets.

The weight of such a system in the dual-band version was no more than 55-60 kilograms, which is sufficient for installation in the Forpost drone. The integrated radar was supposed to provide a range of 0.2 to 28 km in the Ka-band and up to 160 km in the X-band, depending on the task.

In addition, the possibility of separate use of the radar parts was stated, where the Ka-band module weighed only 23 kg, and the larger X-band module weighed 35 kg.

Militarnyi reported that the complication of the situation in the airspace over the Black Sea after the appearance of anti-aircraft naval drones forced the Russian military to reconsider its counteraction tactics and abandon helicopters in favor of medium-altitude drones to search for and destroy targets. Thus, in early February, Orion drones detected and destroyed one of Ukraine’s drones in the Black Sea.