Direct proof of use
RIFF appears in the 2014 Russia-Ukraine War record as a Ukrainian counter-UAV electronic-warfare system. Defense Express reported that InterProInvest developed RIFF after working with users of the Volcano/Malyuk rifle, especially intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and special-operations units deployed in eastern Ukraine, where UAVs had become a tactical threat.
The same report said RIFF technology had matured by late 2020, had been adopted into Ukrainian army service, and that some special-operations units had evaluated the RIFF-P anti-drone gun's technical and combat capabilities in actual battlefield situations. The available public reporting does not name a specific engagement, unit, or drone defeat attributable to RIFF-P.
Sources: Defense Express RIFF
Timeline
InterProInvest publicly showed the first RIFF-P working prototype at the 2019 Arms & Security exhibition in Kyiv, then Ukrainian defense media profiled the system in July 2020 as a portable anti-drone complex intended for military bases, checkpoints, critical infrastructure, and border-security tasks.
By late 2020, according to Defense Express, RIFF had moved from prototype maturation into Ukrainian army service and special-operations battlefield evaluation in eastern Ukraine. In October 2021, Ukrainian reporting on Zhytomyr Military Institute training listed RIFF-P among Ukrainian anti-drone complexes shown to security-force UAV specialists.
Sources: Defense Express RIFF, ArmyInform RIFF-P, Zhytomyr anti-drone training
Operational role
The documented role is short-range force protection against small UAVs rather than kinetic air defense. InterProInvest describes RIFF as a system for countering rotary-wing and fixed-wing unmanned aircraft, with operational uses including protection of critical infrastructure, military bases, and checkpoints.
For the portable RIFF-P variant, public specifications describe a shoulder-mounted directional jammer that disrupts drone control, video, and satellite-navigation links at roughly 1.5 km. Defense Express framed this role around the Donbas theater, where Russian-produced UAVs and commercial multirotors were used for reconnaissance and battlefield support.
Sources: InterProInvest RIFF, ArmyInform RIFF-P, Defense Express RIFF
Evidence limits
The strongest public conflict-use source supports adoption into Ukrainian army service and battlefield evaluation by special-operations units in eastern Ukraine. It does not provide a date-stamped combat incident, unit designation, location beyond eastern Ukraine, or confirmed effect on a named UAV.
Later counter-UAS trade reporting connected RIFF-P to public video coverage around Ukrainian anti-drone jamming guns and the Donbas frontline, but its clearest battlefield-use details concerned Lithuanian EDM4S-UA systems rather than RIFF-P. RIFF-P should therefore be treated as documented Ukrainian counter-UAV fielding and evaluation in the war, not as a publicly documented shootdown case.
Sources: Defense Express RIFF, Unmanned Airspace Donbas jammers
