Trembita ‘People’s Missile’ Drone Makes First Public Appearance

On Feb. 21, the 2025 Defense Tech Innovations Forum, hosted by Brave-1, held a large-scale exhibition of defense technologies including drones, electronic warfare, missiles and military training systems.

Among various equipment displayed was the Trembita surface-to-surface cruise missile, first reported on by the Militarnyi website back in April 2023.

Work on the missile has been carried out by engineers from volunteer design bureau PARS, and with help from volunteers from the anti-Russian Vidsich protest group, to help boost the fight against Russian forces.

At the time in 2023, the designers had limited ambitions for their creation. The Trembita would be a small cruise missile-type drone modeled on the World War II German V-1 flying bomb. It would be powered by a top-mounted gasoline-fueled pulsejet engine and fitted with four glide wings. The designers demonstrated the missile motor by way of a YouTube video at the time.

It was designed to carry a 20-kilogram (44-pound) warhead, launch from a pneumatic “catapult”, and have an estimated range of around 140 kilometers (87.5 miles).

The group admitted that their DIY-missile would not have the same precision as a GPS guided missile system, but said the plan was to fire the Trembita in swarms of 20 or so missiles to “overcome enemy air defenses and hit targets up to a sufficient depth.”

The designers put out a call for other volunteer engineers who could manufacture the relatively basic missile components in garage workshops throughout Ukraine.

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Ukraine’s Army TV published a video of the Trembita at the exhibition.

The final version of the Trembita displayed on Friday was far more sophisticated than the prototype displayed in what seemed like someone’s backyard two years ago. It comes in two variants launched by a pneumatic system along a take-off ramp.

The smaller model has no warhead and is designed to act as a decoy target. The larger model boasts a 20-kilogram (44-pound) payload, a range of 200 kilometers (125 miles) and speed of 400 kph (250mph). It comes at a cost of around $4,000 a throw.