The Legion North Unmanned Systems Battalion of the 44th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade was created in March 2024 on the basis of the Company of Strike Unmanned Aviation Complexes of the brigade without withdrawal from the combat zone. Captain Viacheslav Shutenko, who was the deputy commander of the 61st Separate Rifle Battalion of the 44th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, was appointed the battalion commander in May 2024.
A year after its creation, the battalion took part in combat operations in the Kharkiv region (Kupyansk and Borivskiy directions), and also began working in an additional direction in the Donetsk region. The battalion’s units continue to participate in the defense of a number of important settlements for the SOU, conducting reconnaissance and defeating enemy personnel, equipment and shelters.
The formation and development of the battalion directly in the combat zone and during the performance of combat missions, although not easy, made it possible to quickly gain combat experience, achieve a good level of combat coordination of the crews, and most importantly, made it possible to immediately test the knowledge and skills acquired during the exercises in practice in a real combat situation.
The rather high intensity of the combat operations, as well as the active use of countermeasures by the enemy of the SOU UAV, contributed to the constant work on improving the skills of pilots, technicians, command staff of the strike companies and the battalion as a whole. Active assault operations and a fairly wide defense zone created the need for a constant increase in the number of unmanned systems teams and the creation of new starting positions, both reconnaissance and strike ones.
Today, the battalion has a significant number of reconnaissance and strike teams, including teams of heavy bombers “The Vampire” and “The Bat”, teams of FPV-kamikazes, FPV-bombers and reconnaissance teams on Maviks and Autels.
