Ukraine codifies the MAC OWL 'Sova', an MRAP built to carry a 10-module jamming dome against FPV drones

Ukraine's MoD cleared an MRAP designed to mount up to 10 electronic-warfare modules into a jamming dome against the FPV drones now hunting vehicles across the front.

Kyiv has put a new counter-drone vehicle into service. Ukraine's Defense Ministry codified and approved the MAC OWL "Sova" MRAP, Ukrainska Pravda wrote, citing the ministry, clearing it for the defense forces. Its headline feature is room for up to 10 electronic-warfare modules that form a protective "dome" against FPV kamikaze drones.

The "dome" is jamming, not a shell. Those 10 slots let a crew stack EW emitters across the radio bands FPV pilots lean on for video and control, hoping to break the link before the drone closes on the hull. The rest reads like a heavy MRAP. Pravda, Rubryka and the outlet Mezha give it a V-shaped hull and 16 mm side armor the ministry calls the thickest in its class, with STANAG 4569 protection against a blast of up to 10 kg of TNT. Depending on fit it weighs 14.2 to 15 tonnes, runs an 8.9-litre, 450-hp turbodiesel, and seats two crew plus six to eight troops behind a rear servo ramp.

Its origin is told two ways. Euromaidan Press and Pravda call it a Ukrainian-European product from MAC HUB and Paramount Greece, worked up from South Africa's Mbombe 4. Rubryka, Mezha and PRM.ua frame it more plainly, as built at a Ukrainian plant that borrowed the Mbombe concept.

The dome answers a specific battlefield. Russian FPV drones have become the dominant tactical threat to Ukrainian vehicles this year, and Euromaidan Press, citing Ukrainian data, counts more than 11,000 documented Russian FPV strikes on civilians alone. Jamming is the cheap first ring, and it does not close the door. A module only covers the bands it is built for, the effect thins with range, and the fiber-optic FPVs that trail a spool of glass have no radio link to jam in the first place. That last gap is pushing a parallel track. ArmSpecTechnology has bolted a hardware-tested active-protection system onto a BRDM-2M, 32 launchers throwing anti-drone nets, and in proving-ground footage it knocked an incoming FPV down short of the hull, Defense Express detailed. Put jamming, nets and cage armor on one hull, the outlet noted, and the target gets hard to kill.

So the Sova lands as the opening move in that stack: a codified hull whose first counter-drone layer is electronic. What to watch is how many of the 10 slots a fielded vehicle fills, and whether net launchers end up riding beside the antennas.