Horynych: Ukraine turns Skyranger ultralight into ‘strategic’ bomber drone
October 21, 2025
Ukraine has unveiled a remarkable new addition to its long-range strike arsenal: the E-300 “Horynych”, a French-designed ultralight aircraft converted into what Kyiv is calling a strategic bomber drone.
The home-grown system, operated by Ukraine’s 14th Regiment of the Unmanned Systems Forces, has reportedly carried out dozens of deep-strike missions up to 3,000 kilometres inside Russia, targeting oil facilities, weapons plants, and key infrastructure.
The Horynych is another example of the extraordinary pace of Ukraine’s drone innovation, where garage-built ingenuity is reshaping air warfare. Unable to secure air superiority with conventional jets, Ukraine has turned light aircraft into long-range bombers, filling the strategic gap left by its grounded air force.
Ukraine’s long-range bomber drone ‘Horynych’
The E-300 Horynych, based on the French-designed Skyranger ultralight, has been re-engineered into a long-range, heavy-payload platform capable of carrying up to 300 kg, flying for 23 hours, and costing around $50,000 per unit.
Preparation and launch of E-300 "Gorynych" long-range strike drones. The unit that launches them has vast experience is deep strikes up to 3,000 km inside Russia. It targets Russian oil, energy and military sites.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 20, 2025
Ukrainian operators prepare and launch E-300 “Gorynych”… pic.twitter.com/GZ1AG9Sbf4
According to Ukrainian outlet Babel, which interviewed the engineers behind the aircraft, the Horynych can evade Russian air defences, including the Pantsir, Buk, and S-300 systems. It is also reported to navigate through GPS-spoofed zones, land autonomously, and deliver munitions with metre-level accuracy.
Ukraine claims the aircraft has already completed 78 successful missions, though battlefield figures are impossible to verify. Kyiv has suggested that the Horynych alone has inflicted $3–5 billion worth of damage to Russian targets, an extraordinary claim that underscores both the scale and psychological impact of these attacks.
When light aircraft start strategic bombing
The Horynych may be based on a single-seat light aircraft, but Ukraine has gone as far as to classify it as a strategic bomber. While that label stretches the definition, the drone does meet some of the traditional criteria: long range, deep-penetration capability, and the ability to strike high-value strategic targets.
Conventional strategic bombers — such as the US B-52, B-1, and B-2, Russia’s Tu-95, Tu-22, and Tu-160, or China’s H-6 — are designed to deliver heavy payloads over intercontinental distances. The Horynych, in contrast, relies on endurance, precision, and cost-efficiency rather than brute force.
Its emergence also follows Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb in June 2025, during which drone strikes destroyed as much as 20% of Russia’s operational strategic bomber fleet. With Russia’s long-range assets damaged and Ukraine’s own air force limited, light aircraft bombers have become a pragmatic stopgap and a powerful symbol of adaptation under pressure.
Horynych strikes deep into Russian territory
According to Babel, one of the Horynych’s most notable missions took place on the night of 5–6 October 2025, targeting the Yakov Sverdlov Plant in Dzerzhinsk, an industrial city near Nizhny Novgorod known for its vast chemical and explosives production.
Footage published on Telegram suggests a fire in Dzerzhinsk at the Sverdlov plant, one of Russia’s largest producers of explosives for military and industrial use. The site is near Nizhny Novgorod and Kstovo, where a fire/flaring was filmed at a local refinery yesterday. pic.twitter.com/pUyvporrLC
— Tatarigami_UA (@Tatarigami_UA) October 6, 2025
The writer of this article visited the city in 2018, and it felt like stepping into a post-apocalyptic world filled with many closed and decaying Soviet factories.
However, these days Dzerzhinsk has had a new breath of life, supplying Russia’s war effort. It is home to several large chemical plants, and the bomber drone’s target was the Yakov Sverdlov Plant, owned by Russia’s state-run Rostec Corporation. Babel claims almost 5,000 workers are employed at the plant producing explosives.
The drone reportedly dropped two 120 mm artillery shells and a Soviet-era OFAB-100-120 bomb, then circled back in a kamikaze dive, detonating a thermobaric charge to ensure the aircraft’s destruction and deny recovery by Russian forces.
The strike, flying nearly 1,000 km from launch to impact, ignited fires at one of Russia’s largest explosives factories, which employs around 5,000 workers and is owned by the state conglomerate Rostec. Telegram footage appeared to show multiple secondary explosions and subsequent drone arrivals, indicating a coordinated strike pattern.
The Horynych joins Ukraine’s expanding long-range strike family, which now includes the Neptune cruise missile, the FP-5 Flamingo heavy cruise drone, and other improvised long-range aircraft. Together, they form a new generation of unmanned strike systems built on a philosophy of affordability and scalability rather than raw power.
Whether or not the Horynych truly qualifies as a “strategic bomber”, its success illustrates how quickly Ukraine’s drone sector is evolving, and how far the boundaries of modern air warfare are shifting. In the age of low-cost autonomy, even a French ultralight can become a weapon of strategic consequence.
Featured Image: Babel
