Drones are the future of warfare. General Zaluzhny said as much this past week in his most recent essay. As US aid continues to flounder in an ocean of Republican misgovernance, Ukraine is putting faith in its own technical know-how and drone pilots.
Ukraine has developed a thriving drone production market. Startups buy parts from China and "customize” the drones to military specifications, adding battery packs and thick gauge wire to provide extra juice to the motors. These parts let the drone fly faster and make quick changes of direction, necessary abilities in combat. Any countermeasures to electronic warfare are also installed at this time.
Drones arrive individually packaged at the front, without any explosives attached. Rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) have a shaped-charge, meaning that the shape of the container holding the explosive funnels the blast in a particular direction, focusing the damage. This makes RPG warheads the perfect tool for destroying tanks and armored vehicles. Anti-personnel bombs, by comparison, are often homemade pipe bombs. Unlike an RPG, a pipe bomb is designed to explode in all directions, spraying shrapnel in a spherical pattern. For this reason, drone operators also need to be amateur bomb-makers.
Homemade pipe bombs are often filled with metal, like ball bearings — making shrapnel from the blasts particularly devastating. Wounds often reveal steel, plastic, and drone parts like batteries. Often, even survivable wounds can turn lethal, as casualty evacuation is nearly impossible during daylight.
Unlike the pressure-sensitive nose on RPGs, homemade anti-personnel bombs do not come pre-made with a trigger and fuse. These too need to be made and prepared by drone teams on the frontline. Often, this trigger is the only part of the drone that observers actually see on video.
See the wires in front of the camera lens? Imagine chain link fence wire bent into interlocking shapes. As soon as one wire deforms and touches the other, electricity —possibly something as simple as a short circuit — ignites the high explosive in the pipe bomb. New wire arrangements are constantly being used to improve efficacy.
By tailoring the drone payloads, Ukraine is able to quickly respond to different types of assaults, and by coordinating with other weapon systems, drones are proving uniquely lethal. Take a recent video posted from Avdiivka, with footage captured earlier this week. It shows an Russian assault being repelled, but as one assault group attempts to escape, a Ukrainian Bradley infantry-fighting vehicle (IFV) comes out and suppresses them with a spray of 25mm bullets. A couple US-donated cluster shells land as the IFV opens fire, and while the Russians cower behind shredded trees or in shell holes, a swarm of Yook first-person view (FPV) drones, each strapped with a pipe bomb, rush in and finish off the survivors — maybe a half-dozen in all.
Ukraine is still winning the drone war, and it is investing heavily in retaining the advantage. President Zelensky envisions Ukraine producing a million drones in 2024 alone. At that rate, the Yooks could use 2,000 kamikaze drones per day without batting an eye.
The problem is that Russia is making gains of its own. Centralizing production has helped the Russian defensive industrial base quickly increase drone supply. Though this has helped give Russia a numerical advantage, many of their drones are ill-equipped to adapt to the constantly changing electronic warfare environment. Moreover, Ukrainian long-range strikes against industrial targets deep inside Russia are having a serious impact at the front. Lancet loitering munitions — one of Russia’s most effective attack drones — have been in short supply ever since a major blast halted work at the Zagorsk Optical-Mechanical Plant near Moscow.
Perhaps most importantly, though, Ukraine is closing in on a technology that might just be able to end the war: autonomous attack drones. Early last October, Ukraine claimed that they had successfully struck Russian targets without using human pilots. These AI-guided strikes are being filmed and now the Economist has reported another pair of recent attacks. Although Russia claims to be using autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), the ability of Ukraine to showcase footage of successful strikes is a concrete indicator that these technologies will soon be widely seen in modern war.
With any luck, investing in drones might just be Ukraine’s winning strategy.