Furia_mission_2025: Athlon Avia holds competition for reconnaissance drone pilots

Defender Media has become a partner of the Furia_mission_2025 competition, the final of which will take place in Kyiv in the near future. The event is a professional competition for reconnaissance drone pilots organised by Athlon Avia, the manufacturer of the Furia unmanned aerial system.

The goal of the competition is to capture best practices in combat mission execution, document crews’ real-world experience, and lay the groundwork for changes that will improve the effectiveness of reconnaissance UAS employment and combat task execution overall.

The organisers stress that Furia_mission_2025 is the first initiative in which a Ukrainian UAS manufacturer has launched a systematic study of the real combat experience of reconnaissance drone crews, followed by analysis, generalisation, and the development of practical solutions for the military.

Insights from the Furia_mission_2025 roundtable

At the end of 2025, Athlon Avia held a roundtable dedicated to the interim results of the competition. The discussion brought together commanders of Ukrainian Armed Forces units, representatives of the General Staff, and military educational institutions.

The aim of the initiative was to gather successful practices in combat task execution, capture crews’ real experience, and establish a basis for changes that would improve the effectiveness of reconnaissance UAS use and combat operations as a whole. Participants shared their personal experience and discussed specific tools for cooperation and training.

According to Serhii Mokreniuk, Deputy Director for Development at Athlon Avia, the competition became a tool for rethinking the combat experience of pilots and commanders. “The competition showed that it is impossible to properly describe and analyse a completed combat mission without interaction with other services and units,” he said. “For us, this was a signal that the available information should not just be collected, but systematised and transformed into practical solutions.”

Andrii Rodionov, Colonel and adjunct at the Zhytomyr Military Institute named after S. Korolev, highlighted the importance of crew training in achieving better results. “The equipment is the same across units, but the outcomes differ. Some crews use 100% of the system’s capabilities, while others employ it less effectively. This is not a question of hardware — it is a question of training.”

According to Athlon Avia representatives, the materials collected will serve as the basis for further improvements in both crew training approaches and the systems themselves.

Following the results of the Furia_mission_2025 competition and the expert discussion, all findings and recommendations will be submitted to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for implementation. Crew materials are expected to be used as a foundation for training programmes, methodological guidelines, and manuals at military training centres and higher military educational institutions.