Estonia’s CATA Launcher: The Silent Catapult Behind Ukraine’s Long-Range Drone Strikes

Here's one Estonian launcher worth talking about

If you’ve been tracking the nightly highlights reel from the Russia-Ukraine war, you’ve probably seen clips of long-range drones arriving like uninvited, very persistent party guests over Russian territory.

Especially Russia’s oil refineries.

This map snapshot does a great job of consolidating Russian refineries attacked in a single view:

Without a direct look at the Kremlin’s accounting books, the exact impact on Russia’s oil empire is hard to quantify. But consider this: if Ukraine takes down ~1 million barrels/day of refining capacity, and that margin is, say, $10–$20 per barrel, the hit to Russia could conservatively amount to $10–20 million per day in lost margin (on top of direct repair costs and lost export value). Over a month, that’s in the hundreds of millions, potentially crossing into low billions if sustained.

So while we may not be able to pinpoint “Ukraine cost Russia exactly $X billion this quarter from drone strikes,” the signals are unmistakable: Russia’s refining business is under stress, its internal fuel market is spiking, and its export model is being forced into less profitable configurations.

Some of these strike drones have been in the news, but I think the more interesting question is, how does Ukraine launch these long-range drones?

Well, a good chunk are catapulted into the wild blue yonder from a tidy little Estonian box called the CATA B.

It sounds less glamorous than a dedicated strike drone base, but in modern war, “works reliably and quickly” is way sexier than “expensive and delicate.”

Estonia’s Threod Systems makes the CATA B pneumatic launch system, and since 2022, Ukrainian units have been using it for strikes at a distance. The launcher does a deceptively simple thing, and it does it fast: it launches heavy long-range UAVs, multiple times, with a crew of two, and a training class short enough that even the perpetually busy get bored before they finish.

What the CATA actually launches

Therod Systems

Okay, think of the launcher as a vending machine that can spit out several different flavors of trouble, each tailored to a mission.

Below, I’ll break down the common classes of aircraft you’ll actually see being catapulted, what they carry, how they navigate, and why each type makes Russia sweat in a different way.

First up, the workhorses, the endurance strike UAVs. The Bayraktar TB2 would fall into this bucket. These are the slow-burners that loiter, search, and then either strike or hand off targeting data.

They tend to carry electro-optical and infrared sensor stacks, rule-of-thumb navigation suites, and modular payload bays. In practice, that means a powerful camera, a laser rangefinder or designator for teaming with guided munitions, and room for a purpose-built warhead or submunitions. But their real trick is persistence; they can ride weather and thermals for hours, turn into a long-range eyes-on-target asset, and then either die gloriously on impact or call in something else that does the finishing blow.

Other launch systems Threod makes.

Then there are the kamikaze-style, strike-optimized loitering munitions.

So, models like the Switchblade 300 and Leleka-100. These are built to be cheap, lethal, and precise enough to wreck a truck or a radar van. They carry shaped charges, explosive fragmentation heads, or even fuel-rail penetrating warheads when the target is armored.

Their guidance is usually a mix of inertial navigation plus GPS, with a real-time datalink for last-second human intervention. When a human helps the machine pick a hit point, accuracy climbs and collateral damage falls, which is why savvy operators prefer a mixed autonomy approach, at least for now, until narrow AI becomes more ubiquitous.

You also have the recon-centric variants like the AeroVironment RQ-20 Puma. Ukraine received dozens of these, and they are currently in use with at least one Ukrainian unit, the 148th Artillery Brigade (Air Assault Forces). These look a lot like endurance strike UAVs, but their emphasis is on sensors, not explosives.