Drones are a constant part of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Drones are often small, fast, and cheap. They can give a fighter eyes on the battlefield or deliver death to their enemies. When someone shoots them down, you lose a machine and not a soldier. But they’re hard to shoot down and Russian soldiers are trying everything, including custom buckshot rounds for the AK-74 assault rifle.
The DIY AK-74 buckshot started appearing on Russian Telegram channels that document the war earlier this year. The journalists at The Armourer’s Bench have put together a comprehensive look at the phenomenon.
Drones are ubiquitous in the war between Russia and Ukraine and both sides recognize their significance. After years of importing the devices from outside, both have ramped up domestic production. On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy claimed his country’s domestic production capacities could hit 4 million drones in 2025. In September, Putin claimed that Russia had ramped up its 2024 production 10 times over 2023.
Defending against the machines is hard, but not impossible. The most effective method is jamming them. Pick the right frequency and the machines will simply drop out of the air. But the average soldier doesn’t have access to that kind of tech on the battlefield. What they do have, most of the time, is a gun.
Using a rifle to shoot a drone out of the air is a nightmare. Soldiers have to stand still, take aim, and pray they hit the drone before it hits them. A shotgun is preferred because of the perception that the buckshot, which has a far wider spread than a traditional rifle round, can more easily hit and destroy a drone. But not everyone can get a shotgun on the battlefield.
Russian soldiers on the ground in Ukraine have developed a unique workaround: custom buckshot rounds that fit in a standard AK-74 magazine. There are several different ways to make this happen. In a July Telegram video, a Russian soldier showed how to make the custom cartridge.
First, they removed the projectile from a standard 5.45x39mm round. Then they poked several ball bearings into a wire insulation sleeve. When the sleeve was filled with seven or so ball bearings, he used a candle to heat up the sleeve and shrink it over the ball bearings. Then he inserted that into the shell casing, ran it over the candle again, and crimped it into place by hand.
If this sounds like a bizarre and dangerous tactic, you’re right. The Armourer’s Bench noticed the July video but didn’t see anything else from Russian sources until November when there was a sudden explosion of activity around the technique. Throughout November and early December, the journalists tracked several Telegram channels that shared videos of both techniques for manufacturing the AK-74 buckshot rounds, and ways to improve their effectiveness. There’s even a video that claims to show a soldier shooting a drone from the sky using the rounds, though it looks staged and it’s impossible to know what rounds the soldier is firing from his rifle.
AK-74s are not meant to fire rounds made from ball bearings and melted plastic. They’re reliable and sturdy rifles, but the balls and whatever’s holding them in the shell casing can leave residue behind in a rifle barrel when fired. That residue might throw off the next shot someone takes or it might cause the weapon to misfire.
Homemade buckshot rounds for a rifle are an interesting battlefield innovation that speaks to the fear and desperation drones cause. There are hundreds of videos of FPV drones killing Russian soldiers online. Sometimes they drop grenades on them, other times they simply fly into their lines and explode. In one iconic video, a desperate Russian soldier takes several shots at incoming drones, misses, and throws his whole gun at the deadly machine. The gun struck true, even if the bullets didn’t and the drone exploded.
Shotguns are the weapon of choice against drones, but the dark truth is that buckshot mostly doesn’t work. Even with a wide spread, it’s hard to hit a fast-moving target like a drone. The problem is so big that many companies have taken it on. There are several different versions of buckshot loaded with “nets,” the idea being that an even wider spread fired from the end of a shotgun can down an incoming drone.
In the U.S., anyone can buy Skynet rounds. Thirty-nine bucks will buy you three custom shotgun rounds that expand into a net when fired. A Russian company is working on a similar shotgun round that’s akin to a bola. The aim is for the string to wrap around the propellers of a drone and knock it out of the air.
In the U.S., a defense company backed by a16z is testing a more expensive solution to the problem. ZeroMark’s “handheld Iron Dome” seeks to convert a standard rifle into an autonomous machine that does the aiming for a soldier. ZeroMark’s tech consists of a bunch of rotors attached to the stock of a standard rifle and sensors on the barrel.
A soldier who sees a drone bearing down on them would simply need to aim vaguely at the drone and let the machines do the rest. ZeroMark is betting a computer is better at tracking a fast-moving target than a human. It’s a more expensive attempt at keeping soldiers safe from drones, but no less ridiculous than stuffing ball bearings into an AK-74.
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