Guide
Every Drone in Rainbow Six Siege
Six things in Siege get called a drone and they do very different jobs. Here is each one, and which of them people mean when they say the R6 drone.
Short answer: the standard attacker recon drone is the famous one, the two wheeled thing you throw in and drive. The others are operator gadgets: Twitch's Shock Drone, Echo's Yokai, Flores' RCE-Ratero, Lion's EE-ONE-D and Mozzie's Pest.
The recon drone
Every attacker
The one everyone means. Two wheels, a camera between them, drives and spins on the spot, and it can jump. Attackers get two each and spend the prep phase driving them under furniture looking for defenders. It is the most used gadget in the game by a wide margin, which is exactly why it is the one that ended up as a real object on people's desks.
Shock Drone
Twitch
A recon drone with a taser. Twitch trades the jump for the ability to fire darts that destroy defender gadgets from a distance, which makes it the pre-breach tool for clearing out cameras, traps and bulletproof gadgets. Smaller magazine than people remember, so it is a scalpel rather than a hammer.
Yokai
Echo
The hovering one. Yokai sticks to ceilings and fires a sonic burst that disorients anyone looking at it, which is why it is used to break defusers. It is the exception to the rule that Siege drones drive: this one flies, which matters if you are searching for a flying R6 drone replica rather than a ground one.
RCE-Ratero Charge
Flores
A drone that is also a bomb. It drives like a normal drone, then locks on and detonates, taking out gadgets and walls. The catch is that it always explodes: there is no driving it back out, and it becomes uncontrollable once armed.
EE-ONE-D
Lion
Not a drone you drive. Lion calls in an aerial scan that flags any defender who moves during the window. It is a drone in name and in fiction rather than something you pilot under a table.
Pest
Mozzie
The counter. Mozzie launches Pests that hijack attacker drones, turning your own recon against you and giving the defence a free camera. Worth knowing about, because losing both drones to Pests in the first thirty seconds is a genuinely bad round.
The one people actually want on a desk
Almost every replica, print and prop is of the standard recon drone, and that is not an accident. It is the one every player has driven thousands of times, so the silhouette is instantly readable to anyone who plays. The RCD-01 is a driveable version of that one: twin treaded wheels, spins on the spot, working LED lights, 2.4GHz controller in the box. All the ways to get one in real life are compared here.
Common questions
How many drones are there in Rainbow Six Siege?
There is one standard recon drone that every attacker carries two of, plus a set of operator-specific drones: Twitch's Shock Drone, Echo's Yokai, Flores' RCE-Ratero Charge, Lion's EE-ONE-D scan and Mozzie's Pest, which hijacks attacker drones rather than being piloted itself.
Which R6 drone is the famous one?
The standard attacker recon drone. Two wheels, camera in the middle, jumps. When people search for the Rainbow Six Siege drone in real life, or buy a replica, this is essentially always the one they mean.
Does the R6 drone fly?
The standard recon drone drives on the ground on two wheels. Echo's Yokai is the hovering drone. Lion's EE-ONE-D is an aerial scan rather than a piloted drone.