Russia’s Elite Drone Unit Just Destroyed a Ukrainian HIMARS

Here’s How Ukraine Can Fight Back

HIMARS. Lance Cpl. Megan Ozaki. 2nd Marine Division. Public Domain.

Russia just killed a HIMARS. Again. But this time, they used a fiber-optic-guided FPV drone operated by their most elite drone unit, Rubicon.

In a grainy video near Chasiv Yar, a US-supplied HIMARS launcher is seen bouncing along a dirt road until it explodes in a fireball. The moment is more than just battlefield carnage; it's a milestone.

Unlike past HIMARS kills that relied on lucky missile strikes or reconnaissance-aided artillery, this one was surgically removed from the fight by a drone literally hardwired back to its controller.

You can’t jam a wire. That’s the problem.

Meet assholes of the month, Rubicon: Russia’s Drone Death Cult with a Government Budget

Rubicon is not your average drone unit. These aren’t conscripts with quadcopters and Wi-Fi signals. This is Russia’s first purpose-built, state-sponsored, fully operational airborne assassination squad.

Think Silicon Valley meets Wagner Group, except instead of launching apps, they launch fiber-wired flying bombs into armored vehicles.

The unit was born in October 2024 under a direct order from Russia’s defense ministry, because nothing says "21st-century warfare" like a shadowy paramilitary drone corps answerable only to Moscow’s top brass. Rubicon was given everything it needed: funding, gear, autonomy, and most importantly, freedom to experiment.

And experiment they did.

Rubicon doesn’t fight by traditional Russian military logic. They're not interested in front lines or holding territory. They are predators, hunting one target at a time with the obsessive focus of a sniper and the flair of a hacker.

Their command structure? Decentralized.

Their tactics? Unorthodox.

Their KPIs? Vehicle kill count.

Rubicon’s operators are essentially drone engineers in combat boots. Many come from Russia’s technical universities and private tech sector, lured by a war budget, patriotic fervor, or just the thrill of killing NATO equipment from a laptop.

This mix of coders, engineers, and warfighters gives Rubicon a flexibility that’s extremely rare in the Russian military machine, which usually moves at the speed of Cold War bureaucracy.

Their FPV drones aren’t off-the-shelf DJI toys, either. Rubicon builds custom hardware, some capable of digging into roads like landmines, others designed to fly nap-of-the-earth routes like miniature cruise missiles.

Every kill is recorded, analyzed, and used to refine the next attack. These are combat A/B tests with explosive results.

They're also ruthless about cost-efficiency. In one operation, Rubicon reportedly disabled $30 million worth of Ukrainian vehicles using less than $100,000 in drones. That’s not just effective, it’s depressingly scalable.

A depiction of Russian Rubicon controllers. Licensed by the author from Envato Elements.

And they’ve gamified it. Operators stream footage from drone strikes internally, not just for intel purposes, but to compete. Some squads within Rubicon reportedly keep score, comparing not just how many kills they get, but how creative those kills are.

Style points matter in Russia’s drone war, apparently.

Rubicon is less a military unit and more a startup that kills things. They're fast, innovative, decentralized, and funded by a regime that doesn’t care how many laws or Geneva Conventions get broken in the process.

If the rest of the Russian military is stuck in the analog past, Rubicon is a terrifying glimpse of its digital future.