NoviTechNet

NoviTechNet is a Kyiv-based Ukrainian firm, also styled Novitehnet Laboratory and a member of the Association of Ukrainian Engineers, that debuted the Ursula river drone in July 2025. The Ursula is a compact battery-powered surface vessel — about a metre long — that the company first showed in three configurations: a reconnaissance build with stabilised optical and thermal cameras on a folding mast, a floating mine carrying a small explosive charge, and a waterborne carrier that launches FPV drones from the water. Its low profile is intended for covert work in the shallow rivers and swamps of contested basins such as the Dnipro near Kherson. The boat was named, somewhat pointedly, after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The platform has since grown. By April 2026 NoviTechNet had fielded a larger iteration with an upgraded propulsion system and bigger batteries, pushing payload to a reported 500 kilograms and operational range to roughly ten kilometres. In that form Ursula is pitched less as a single-purpose weapon than as a quiet logistics and barrier vehicle: resupplying isolated units holding river positions, towing anti-pontoon and anti-submarine mines, deploying nets and underwater barriers, and carrying platforms loaded with strike drones. The company says several Baltic and Nordic states, alongside Ukrainian units and border guards, have expressed interest.

NoviTechNet develops the Ursula line with backing from the Brave1 innovation cluster, the government-run defence-tech accelerator. Its founding year and leadership are not publicly disclosed, and the firm has stayed deliberately low-profile. It sits among the new crop of Ukrainian river-drone makers alongside Hard Cat Drones and Crocus Manufacture , and complements the larger sea-going naval programmes Magura and Sea Baby, which operate on the open Black Sea rather than the inland waterways Ursula was built for.