How the speed of drones development affects the war

Markiian, a successful pilot of one of the RUBAKs (a unit of reconnaissance and strike UAVs), says this about the development of FPV (First-person view) drones. He destroyed a vehicle of the powerful Russian electronic warfare (EW) complex Borysoglebsk-2.

This is one of the most expensive targets destroyed by FPV drones in the entire war, with a total cost of about $200 million. The Russians claimed that it was indestructible because it suppressed all radio frequencies around it. But the Ukrainian drone could not suppress this electronic warfare system. Because the drone had top-of-the-line characteristics at the time and was flown by a skilled pilot.

But when Markiian was just starting to work with drones, the technology was far from the best.

The command believed

What was the day when the command believed that drones could repel attacks?

"My first combat flight was very short: the drone exploded in midair because we were using low-quality initiation boards," Markiian recalls. "These were very cheap boards that we attached to the munition itself, not soldered to the flight controller. The drone didn't explode because of stroke but simply in the air during the flight. It was in the summer of 2023."

On the eighth flight, our interviewee hit an enemy infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) with infantrymen, killing several of them and wounding and disorienting others. It was an assault by the Russians, and both the tankers and the javelin gunner who were standing in that area had already been ordered to destroy that IFV.

They were ready to use tank ammunition worth several thousand dollars per shot or a Javelin missile worth about 100,000 dollars to stop the assault. But they didn't. The assault was stopped by a talented drone pilot with a small FPV drone, saving expensive ammunition.

The assault was stopped by a talented drone pilot with a small FPV drone

It was a big event.

"Immediately, Mavics of neighboring battalions came with grenades and started to finish off the infantry that had jumped off the IFV. It was really such a furor. Then the command believed that the drones were capable of repelling assaults, and our company proved that we were combat-ready."

But the piloting process was difficult: imperfect equipment that was difficult to use. Markiian described the details of that event:

"The navigator corrected me not via streams (online broadcasts from the battlefield - Ed.), as it is now, but simply through the radio. That is, the guys were sitting in the trench, receiving information from the сontrol observation point, shouting to my navigator, the navigator passing it on to me, and all this was a kind of Chinese whispers. And to connect to the antenna, I had to stand in a full-length position in the trench, even though it was dangerous."

The race of technology

It's interesting that during the first flights of Markiian and other pilots of his unit, the Russians didn't use FPV at all on their part of the front. But after a while, they started, and even saturated that area with electronic warfare (EW). Thus, the drone pilot became part of perhaps the most important process in the war — the race of technology, knowledge and skills.

So, Markiian says, three months after our successful assault, the Russians not only started using FPV kamikazes themselves, but also installed EW:

“They had EWs on all key positions and equipment, all the IFVs were equipped with EWs and "barbecues", trench EWs or EW guns were at the strongholds. It became impossible for us to fly. We had to quickly learn to counteract this by changing frequencies (i.e. the length of the radio waves used to control the drones — Ed.)

The pilots mastered changing frequencies, then began to use repeaters, i.e. radio signal amplifiers, which allowed them not to lose the radio signal between the drone and the "base" on uneven terrain. For some time, we flew in comfortable conditions.

But the enemy was evolving and actively developing more powerful and effective electronic warfare equipment. "Then we encountered a "curtain" when it was not the control signal that was jammed, but the video frequencies, and at a certain distance the drone's image was interrupted by white noise."

The pilots' ability to use the properties of radio waves was a countermeasure:

"We learned how to switch channels in the air and find the frequency that is not jammed by enemy electronic warfare at a particular moment. But we lost some period of effective flights at that time."

At least one step ahead

Of course, top-of-the-line drones, which are technologically more advanced than those of the enemy, are capable of destroying what the enemy considered indestructible.

Markiian destroyed the enemy's Borysoglebsk-2 electronic warfare system mentioned earlier precisely because the drone he was flying was technologically superior to those in use at the time. We won't tell you in detail how exactly he managed to hit the electronic warfare system. But over the next week, in addition to the Borysoglebsk-2, they destroyed another 9K35 Strela-10, an infantry fighting vehicle, and a BM-21 Grad. There were dozens of damaged vehicles, thanks to drones with technology that was one step ahead of the enemy.

Now Markiian is working with drones created by the best Ukrainian developers. They are reinforced by powerful control and signal transmission systems that increase the flight range, provide a clear image from the drone's video, etc.

"Long", "warm" and "fat"

Markiian's fleet of drones is now quite diverse. And each drone has its own specialization.

Night drones, or "warm" drones (because they have a thermal imaging camera), are designed to operate at night. They were created in the spring of 2023 because "standard" FPV drones had already paralyzed the enemy's movement during the day, and they began to move at night, so a solution was needed to fly both day and night.

In the late summer of 2023, the drone manufacturer Wild Hornets wrote on its Telegram channel: "We aren't standing still, now it will be possible to strike even at night. We are launching mass production of FPV drones with night cameras." Other companies were also working on night drones, and by the end of 2023, they began to appear in the military.

Markiian explains:

"If in December 2023 it (drones with night cameras - Ed.) was such an expensive novelty that we were given one drone only if we needed to destroy some important equipment, now (in the fall of 2024) it is so commonplace that you can send a night FPV to destroy one person."

There are "long" drones that operate over long distances. They were created because at some point (again, due to the saturation of the frontline with drones), enemy vehicles and personnel stopped moving close to the line of contact and, in order to find a target, you need to fly further, into the enemy's near rear.

The Ukrainian army has many FPVs specialized for different tasks: "fat" drones, anti-aircraft drones, queen drones, FPV wings, and other models.

A striking development is the Queen of Hornets queen drone, which carries small FPV kamikazes over a long distance, drops them in the air to increase their range, and simultaneously works as a signal repeater for them. The Queen was created by one of the best Ukrainian developers, Wild Hornets.

The "fat" drones carry a significantly higher weight of ammunition than the "standard" ones. "The Queen of Hornets belongs to this category as well — it's a heavyweight drone. In June 2024, a video was posted on the Telegram channel of its creators showing it lifting a 9.5 kg tank mine. "The flight time is 7 minutes, or 5 km one way. And this is not even the XL version. More to come," the Wild Hornets wrote in their publication. It can also be a bomber, a kamikaze, carry cargo and carry out remote mining.

Interceptors against reconnaissance drones

Anti-aircraft FPV interceptors are a countermeasure to enemy reconnaissance drones. In the summer of 2024, the situation with reconnaissance drones was catastrophic. Enemy drones not only continuously monitored the frontline, but also hovered over peaceful cities.

The case of July 1, 2024, when reconnaissance men fired missiles at a military airfield in Myrhorod was a relevant example. Ukraine's military aircraft fleet suffered losses, although the details were not disclosed.

For a long time, there was no response to this. And then, at the end of July, the number of scouts sharply decreased.

The Wild Hornets wrote on August 28: "We have modified our drones to destroy the UAVs of the Russian scouts. We have more than 100 downed drones" (link). Other manufacturers have also been working on anti-aircraft interceptor drones.

This chain of reconnaissance drones and interceptor drones is another vivid example of the struggle between technologies. Because the Russians are also already looking for a countermeasure.

Western media reported that the Russians are installing rear-view cameras and equipping their wings with electronic warfare. Serhii Flesh, a blogger and radio communications specialist, notes that a solution has already emerged.

"Our enemy isn't standing still and is looking for options to protect themselves from anti-aircraft drones," he writes in his Telegram channel. The principle of operation is as follows: the device is placed on the UAV and scans video channels in flight, finds the video signal from our anti-aircraft drone, understands by the level when our drone is nearby, and turns on an interference stronger in level at the same video frequency. The jammer interrupts the signal from our drone, and the Ukrainian pilot loses the picture. The interference is set for 60 seconds and repeated if necessary." However, there is no official confirmation of the use of such technology, and this is a positive indicator.

EW against drones, AI drones against EW

The struggle of technologies in the drone-EW chain looks like this: Ukrainians have turned civilian FPV drones into full-fledged weapons and saturated the frontline with them.

The Russians had to do the same and put up protection in the form of various electronic warfare systems: all vehicles, equipment, strongholds and significant points are equipped with a whole bunch of antennas that jam the entire (or most of) the range. Our response to this technology is drones with auto-capture and auto-following, which are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI).

The principle of operation of AI drones is as follows: as soon as such a drone flies to a distance from which the camera can see the target, the operator fixes it, and then the drone flies to it on its own, without the operator's participation and without regard to the effect of electronic warfare.

In the future, AI will also be able to control a swarm of drones to attack targets en masse and simultaneously. After all, people can manually synchronize the flight of up to five drones. And it will not be a problem for artificial intelligence to simultaneously pilot a swarm of hundreds of FPVs.

The primary task now is to train the AI to navigate well, to understand objects, so that the AI drone can distinguish between an enemy tank and a tree shadow. So that it could decide how to catch up with a moving, fast, maneuvering target.

Dmytro, Markiian's brother-in-arms, a RUBAK (a unit of reconnaissance and strike UAVs) engineer, gives an example: "If the Russians are walking across the field and see a drone, they start running, dodging, falling into the bushes, into the trenches. And the drone's artificial intelligence will most likely not understand that it needs to fly into a trench because the target is hiding there. But the pilot will. Auto-tracking, as it is now, does not always cope with a moving target."

AI-powered drones have so far existed in the form of exhibition and test models. Now, Ukrainian developers The Fourth Law, Vyriy Drone, Swarmer, and other non-public companies are making rapid progress in creating a working model of AI drones, because when your friends are being killed and your homes are being destroyed, the pace of development accelerates many times over.

What would help now

The main strategy for finding and implementing technological solutions or improving existing ones in this war is to think about what would help on the battlefield right now.

There is a major modern war going on, and information is spreading instantly — under such conditions, you cannot find a solution that would be effective today and in years to come. Even a few months is a very distant prospect.

Drone developers are desperately trying to find something that will help those at war solve the problems that arise right now.

Ideas are tested immediately in combat conditions, and the battlefield highlights shortcomings that could not be seen at the development stage in the rear. The large number and speed of product iterations make it possible to quickly create a working model and weed out non-working versions.

A good example of weeding out is the infrared illumination on light-sensitive drone cameras. Back then, we were looking for a solution to fly at night. And they wanted it to be as cheap as possible. We came up with the idea of backlighting.

Drone engineer Dmytro explains: "It didn't catch on — you had to either fly above the ground, but then the pilot would sooner or later get lost in the landscape in the dark, or go up, but even at low altitude, the lights didn't illuminate anything unless there was a full moon." But drones with light-sensitive and thermal imaging cameras are now in widespread use.

However, a drone with a thermal imaging camera still has drawbacks. For example, a common problem last winter was that at low temperatures, the camera glass froze, and it became impossible to control the drone. This year, Odd Systems, a Ukrainian manufacturer of FPV drones, announced that they had created a thermal imaging camera with a fully sealed housing that eliminates this problem. And this is just one of its advantages. But we will find out if this version works only in the winter when we have combat missions at sub-zero temperatures.

What's next

As we can see from a number of specific examples, it is difficult to predict what technologies will appear in the future. Developers do not publish their future plans in open sources and do not talk about what they are working on, so as not to give the enemy a clue in which direction to look for counteraction.

However, Markiian lists the latest innovations that have just appeared on the battlefield and are already known to many: "There are fiber-optic drones that the enemy actively uses, there is artificial intelligence, which is being used to the maximum extent possible by everyone who can. There are more and more kamikaze wings and bomber wings, as well as ground drones — both for mining and tracked turrets that work on assault with infantry."

fpv drones war eng UAV drones