02/19/2025

Ukraine’s Drones are Devastating

Russians want to catch them with nets

While Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin decide Ukraine's future in Saudi Arabia, the war keeps raging on in Europe. Kiev doesn’t give up and continues to unleash a seemingly endless swarms of drones against Moscow’s assets, from heavy bombers to light first-person view (FPV) drones, explosive-loaded kamikaze flying vehicles controlled with gamepads and AR goggles designed to eliminate armored vehicles, trucks, and infantry units. The drones have had a devastating impact on the much larger Russian forces, so effective that Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces—the first of its kind in the world—has inaugurated a new era of warfare and jump-started a novel arms race.

On the ground, the relentless barrage of ultrafast FPVs has forced Russian forces in the Bakhmut sector—in Eastern Ukraine—to resort to a low-tech, desperate measure: a mile-long tunnel constructed of netting designed to intercept the tiny, explosive wasps.

In theory, this construction—which stretches along a critical supply route between Bakhmut and the city of Chasiv Yar—stops the FPVs before they reach their targets, too far from the troops on the ground to do any damage. The Russians claim it works, though requires constant maintenance because the FPVs keep piercing the improvised structure. According to Ukrainian drone operators, however, it is not as effective as the Russians had hoped.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.