Ukraine is being forced into a new era of drone warfare as its basic models succumb to Russian jamming
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Sinéad Baker
Jan 18, 2024, 21:24 IST
Ukrainian military members learn to fly drones with bombs attached in May 2023 in Ukraine's Lviv region.Paula Bronstein /Getty Images
Ukraine has used cheap, civilian drones to spy on and hit Russian forces.
But they are losing effectiveness, forcing Ukraine to keep innovating, an operator and expert said.
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Ukraine's drone forces are becoming less effective, forcing it to innovate to not be left behind.
While Ukraine used to be able to rely on off-the-shelf civilian drones, Russia is getting better at countering those, forcing Ukraine to seek more advanced tech.
A Ukrainian drone operator and an expert described the situation to Business Insider.
Jammed and spoofed
They said Russia improved its jamming and spoofing equipment, making those cheaper drones more likely to fail.
Cmdr. Vitaliy Kryukov, a loitering-munition commander for Ukraine's elite Adam Tactical Group, said he believes basic drones will soon be obsolete.
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Civilian-grade gear, he said, would have little worth without major software and hardware improvements to extend their range and resist jamming.
Ukraine relied more heavily on the kind of drones ordinary people buy to record weddings or vacations, said James Patton Rogers, a drone expert at the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute.
Near Dibrova in the Luhansk region, a Russian tank was struck by an FPV drone and burned out. Work by the 100th Territorial Defense Brigade. pic.twitter.com/ZaNAbS3lJg
Ukrainian soldiers prize the drones highly, and have gone to great lengths to raise money for more through crowdfunding.
Rogers agreed with Krykuov's assessment that the cheap drones were waning in effectiveness, a "worrying" development given how much they are relied on.
Neither country will stop using civilian drones completely, Rogers said. Ukraine instead will increasingly upgrade them or use parts to create new drones.
He said Ukraine has an "innovative startup hotbed of a drone industry" and a growing expertise in drone production that can give it powerful battlefield abilities.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed a million extra drones would be made in Ukraine in 2024.
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Kryukov said civilian drones with heavy upgrades were effective enough on the front lines for now, as Ukraine works to boost its arsenal.
He said Ukraine's drone makers are "working hard. They are not sleeping."
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