Abilities
While rarely utilized, Vanko is shown to be a capable hand-to-hand combatant, easily able to kill two presumably well trained thugs of Hammer's with little damage to himself. He also is deceptively intelligent, his accent and thuggish appearance belaying a highly skilled mechanical and programming knowledge and cunning to outwit those around him, consciously manipulating Hammer and his men with their perception of him as weak or stupid. Vanko is bilingual, able to speak fluent Russian and intermediate English.
Strength level
Ivan Vanko has the normal strength of a man his age, height and build who engages in regular intensive exercise. When wearing the Whiplash armor his strength is considerably magnified to an unknown degree. He has been shown simultaneously restraining both the Iron Man MK VI armor and the War Machine armor at once.
Weaknesses
Vanko's hatred for Stark clearly dominates him, causing him to waste considerable talent on petty vengeance. He also has an overly sentimental attachment to a pet cockatoo which immediately soured his working relationship with Justin Hammer.
Equipment
Whiplash Harness: Vanko's first Whiplash construct was an exoskeleton worn on the upper body that connected an arc reactor to a weapon system of hand-held two plasma whips. It was never revealed if the harness had any other intended uses beyond supporting the whips, but it was able to generate heat from the main harness enough to burn through a boilersuit worn over the top. The whips themselves produced enough heat to knife through the reinforced body of a luxury car with ease.
Whiplash Armor: Vanko's second Whiplash construct was a sophisticated fusion of Hammer technology armor with a miniature arc reactor adapted from Howard Stark's and Anton Vanko's earlier designs. Modelled with many of Tony Stark's Iron Man capabilities in mind, the Whiplash armor granted the wearer a wide array of enhancements. These included vastly magnified strength, a high degree of resistance to damage, and high-speed flight capability. The power output of the suit's on board arc reactor could be channelled into powering two arm-mounted plasma whips that could be controlled to have a level of prehensile grasping capability enough to firmly wrap around a person's neck.
