Ukraine’s Ruta missile to get EW-immune navigation system

The Ruta OWA drone — actively used by Ukrainian forces for strikes at ranges up to 300 km — is being improved with a new visual navigation system, tested in combat conditions.

The Ruta, manufactured by Destinus, is essentially a miniature cruise missile. It is often referred to as a “missile drone.” It will receive a new navigation system enabling high-precision strikes in GPS-denied contested environments, especially those from enemy electronic warfare (EW) countermeasures.

The new navigation and guidance system will be provided by Spanish company UAV Navigation, part of Grupo Oesía, which entered an agreement with the Ukrainian Destinus on May 13.

The agreement will focus on Ruta in its first phase. Ruta is the first low-cost missile (LCM) drone developed by Destinus designed to operate in highly contested scenarios. The system incorporates an advanced guidance, navigation and control system, developed by UAV Navigation-Grupo Oesía, which has been validated in real-world combat conditions, including GNSS-denied environments or under jamming and spoofing attacks.

Ruta offers autonomous flight capabilities, target-referenced navigation, terminal optical guidance, and coordinated swarm operations, enabling the execution of complex synchronized attack maneuvers to saturate or deceive defense systems. The platform flies at a cruising speed of Mach 0.8, has a range of up to 500 km, and a terminal impact accuracy of 15 square meters.