GLEFA

GLEFA is a Ukrainian defence-technology firm that, together with Culver Aviation — the partner reporting also renders as “Culver Aerospace” — developed the Behemoth, a mid-range strike drone unveiled at the Wild Drones event in late May 2026 and widely described as a Ukrainian answer to the Iranian-designed Shahed loitering munitions Russia fires at Ukrainian cities. The two companies say the system has entered serial production and is already in service with Ukraine’s defence forces. GLEFA’s own corporate details — its headquarters, founding date and leadership — have not been disclosed in public reporting, an unusually low profile for a wartime drone maker.

The Behemoth has a stated combat range of up to 300 kilometres, a 2.28-metre wingspan and a 2.2-metre fuselage. It carries a tandem payload of about 75 kilograms: a 40-kilogram high-explosive fragmentation warhead in the nose and a 35-kilogram thermobaric charge behind it, a combination shaped to crack hard targets such as roadways and shelters. The airframe is launched with rocket-booster assistance — crews are said to set it up in five to fifteen minutes — cruises at 170–180 km/h and flies low to complicate air-defence detection. It communicates over Starlink and can be flown in fully autonomous, semi-automatic or first-person-view modes, the autonomous-with-manual-override pattern that has spread across Ukraine’s deep-strike fleet to survive jamming on the approach. Reported unit cost runs from roughly $35,000 to $50,000. A longer-range Behemoth Deepstrike variant has been announced, with specifications kept private.

The drone drew attention through June 2026. Its first known combat use came in a strike on the Chonhar bridge between occupied Kherson Oblast and Crimea on 7 June — flown alongside Fire Point FP-2 munitions, with a follow-up on 9 June closing the crossing again. Ukrainian reporting then placed Behemoth variants among the systems used near Donetsk on 17 June and in daylight strikes reaching toward Moscow on 18 June. The aircraft sits in a crowded field of domestically built deep-strike systems, part of a broader push to field cheap, mass-produced strategic strike capability at home.