A Ukrainian remote weapon station that shoots down drones with standard 7.62mm rifle ammunition has been tested aboard a NATO member state’s frigate, engaging both an aerial drone and an uncrewed surface vessel during the trial, UGV Robotics stated.

The company did not identify the country or the ship involved.

The system, called Predator, uses thermal and optical cameras along with lasers to detect a target and compute its distance, speed and trajectory. UGV Robotics is part of the UFORCE group and says the weapon has been in use in Ukraine since 2024, deployed specifically against drones since 2025.

According to the company, operational data from Ukraine shows the system neutralises up to 90 per cent of drones within a 200-metre radius and can engage larger targets out to 554 metres, at an average cost of less than €10 per drone destroyed. The company also describes it as the only combat-proven system capable of countering fibre-optic FPV drones.

Those drones are the reason a machine gun on a stabilised mount is being taken seriously as a naval weapon. First-person-view quadcopters flown down a spooled fibre-optic cable receive no radio signal at all, which makes them immune to the jamming that Western forces have relied on as their principal counter-drone measure. Both sides in Ukraine now field them in quantity, and defeating them requires physically hitting the aircraft.

The cost argument follows from the same problem as naval close-in weapon systems fire 20mm or 30mm rounds, and the missiles used against drones in the Red Sea have cost figures in the hundreds of thousands of pounds against targets worth a few thousand. Rifle-calibre ammunition on a directed mount changes that arithmetic, provided the fire control is good enough to hit a small moving target.

UFORCE chairman Oleksiy Honcharuk, a former Ukrainian prime minister, has argued that interceptor systems now provide a workable answer to Shahed-type long-range attack drones while fibre-optic FPVs remain largely unaddressed, and that those drones account for a significant share of casualties on both sides.

The company says the mount is designed for fitting across uncrewed ground vehicles, helicopters, armoured vehicles, static positions, uncrewed surface vessels and larger warships, giving operators the same system across domains.

Remote weapon stations of this kind have been standard on Western armoured vehicles for two decades, allowing a crew member to aim and fire from under armour using a screen and a joystick. Applying them to air defence is newer, and several navies have been experimenting with the idea as small drones and uncrewed boats have moved from novelty to routine threat. The Royal Navy has trialled a range of options against fast attack craft and drones, and fitted Martlet lightweight missiles to Type 45 destroyers, which were used against Houthi drones in the Red Sea.

UFORCE is one of a number of Ukrainian defence groups now marketing systems into NATO markets on the strength of combat use, an argument that has proved effective in a period when few Western products have been tested against a peer opponent. Ukrainian firms have signed agreements with Danish, British and Baltic partners over the past two years, and several NATO governments have set up funding routes to buy Ukrainian designs for their own forces.

UGV Robotics describes the frigate trial as demonstrating the system’s effectiveness in protecting naval platforms, and says it follows recent NATO exercises that highlighted the threat posed by autonomous maritime systems.