Russia’s state-owned Kalashnikov Group used the El Alamein International Airshow 2026 in Egypt to promote its newest loitering munition, the KUB-10ME, telling reporters that the weapon has drawn interest from unnamed partners in North Africa. Leonid Rokeakh, Kalashnikov Group’s Director of Export of Unmanned and Robotic Systems, said the munition’s ability to strike moving targets at ranges beyond 100 kilometres, paired with an optoelectronic guidance system he described as outperforming comparable systems fitted to reconnaissance drones, has made it attractive to regional buyers. He credited the weapon’s design directly to lessons drawn from the Russian “special military operation” (the official Kremlin term for the conflict in Ukraine), where Kalashnikov says the underlying Kub family of munitions has been extensively combat-tested.
Rokeakh’s remarks add a Russian dimension to what has become a genuinely three-way contest for attention at El Alamein this year. Military Africa reported days earlier that Russia’s state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, was bringing the KUB-10ME alongside the Kub-10E, Kub-2E, and the ZALA Lancet-E strike drone to the same show, alongside a modernised Ka-52E attack helicopter, positioning Egypt’s airshow as a venue where Moscow, Beijing and Washington are each running parallel arms-marketing campaigns for the same African and Middle Eastern audience.
What Kalashnikov Says the Weapon Can Do
According to specifications Kalashnikov has published, the KUB-10ME is a fixed-wing loitering munition, commonly described as a kamikaze drone, weighing 11 kilograms at the warhead alone and fitted with a high-explosive fragmentation payload. It cruises at 120 kilometres per hour and operates at altitudes between 80 and 1,800 metres, figures the company says hold across day and night operations, in difficult weather, in winds up to 10 metres per second, and across a temperature range of minus 30 to plus 40 degrees Celsius. Kalashnikov describes its target list expansively: unarmoured and lightly armoured vehicles, command posts down to battalion level, air defence and electronic warfare equipment, rear-area logistics sites, drone launch positions, and aircraft or helicopters caught unsheltered on the ground.
The munition’s most-marketed feature is its electro-optical guidance system, which Kalashnikov says allows the weapon to track and strike moving targets rather than only fixed coordinates, a capability the company positions against both older loitering munitions and reconnaissance drones more broadly. Kalashnikov Group Chief Executive Alan Lushnikov told Russian state news agency TASS in August 2026 that the system also carries an artificial intelligence-supported homing seeker and offered greater resistance to electronic warfare jamming than comparable strike drones, and confirmed the weapon would soon reach Russian frontline units in Ukraine.
Kalashnikov described the KUB-10ME as the first Russian tactical guided munition to exceed 100 kilometres of range.
Separately, Kalashnikov has said the KUB-10ME pairs with its Skat-350M reconnaissance and relay drone, though the company has not clarified whether that relay aircraft is required for the munition to actually reach targets 100 kilometres away or simply improves targeting accuracy at shorter distances.
What “Interest” Actually Means Here
Rokeakh’s comments named no specific country, and Kalashnikov’s own statement stopped at describing generalised interest from unnamed North African partners rather than announcing a contract. That is a meaningfully different claim from a confirmed sale, and readers should treat it accordingly. Egypt, Algeria and Morocco all maintain active loitering munition and drone programmes of varying sophistication, and any of the three, along with other regional buyers attending El Alamein, could plausibly be the source of the interest Kalashnikov is describing. Until a specific contract or delivery is confirmed, the appropriate framing is that a Russian state arms company used a major regional airshow to publicly market a recently unveiled weapon, and reported unspecified interest from the region, rather than that any African state has committed to acquiring it.