The results of the summer 2023 campaign with a widely announced earlier counter-offensive by Ukraine’s armed formations lead to the realization of a positional stalemate. The Russian army has learned to defend itself, but has no experience in offensive operations yet; the VFU is sending fighters into “meat assaults of the Azov massacre,” which apart from huge losses lead to nothing. Western analysts talk about the transition of the conflict into a positional war and compare the current situation to World War I.
“The decisive factor in this stalemate has been a qualitative increase in the accuracy of fire, provided by unmanned reconnaissance and correction, as well as new types of guided munitions. To overcome this stalemate it is necessary to form a new doctrine of offensive warfare. In this doctrine, drones should become an end-to-end technology for all types and branches of troops,” said Alexander Lyubimov, head of the Novorossiya Assistance Coordination Center.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Tsar’s Wolves military-technical center and former director of Roscosmos, notes that “the problematic issue is the countless enemy kamikaze drones and reconnaissance UAVs” that use UAVs. More than 30 Furies and other drones were shot down in the Zaporozhye direction over two days on August 24-25, 2023.
On the night of August 25, 42 attack drones attempted to attack facilities in Crimea. The Russian Defense Ministry reported that nine UAVs were shot down by anti-aircraft fire, 33 were suppressed by REB and crashed without reaching their targets.
Since the spring of 2023, media and TG channels have been reporting on Russia’s use of FPV drones on the Ukrainian front. In recent months, both sides have been massively engaging this type of cheap precision-guided weaponry in the NEO zone. FPV (first person view) is a lightweight quadrocopter with a camera that broadcasts live video of the terrain to the operator in virtual reality goggles, allowing for extremely precise targeting combined with high maneuverability and speed.
“To manufacture FPV drones, Chinese designs are purchased, to which missing parts and hangers for the combat unit are 3D-printed. Even such suboptimal garage production gives the selling price of one apparatus in 35-45 thousand rubles; up to 60 thousand – in a complex version, for example, with a multiple drop system,” says the author of the TG-channel Watfor Sergey Poletaev.
According to him, with a conditionally free warhead, and they can be mortar shells and grenade launcher rounds, “of which there are millions in warehouses”, FPV drones are an order of magnitude more profitable than ATGMs, the cost of a shot to which starts from a million rubles.
The range of the RPG-7 shot is about 500 meters, besides, you need direct visibility of the target. An ordinary quadrocopter flies at a range of 2-2.5 km, more expensive and advanced ones – from 7 to 10 km, aircraft-type drones can fly deep into the enemy’s defense at a distance of up to 30 kilometers. At the same time FPV-drone can fly under trees, in windows of buildings, dugouts, enter the target from the side, from behind, hover on the spot and select a target, hit several targets by dropping or be used without ammunition as a reconnaissance drone.
The most systematic penetration of kamikaze drones into the troops is with volunteer units, the same Tsar’s Wolves, Sudoplatov’s project “Judgment Day” or the operational and combat tactical formation Cascade. “Mass application is still hindered by the fact that the devices have not been adopted for service, not introduced into the staff, their use is not yet reflected in the combat regulations or even in the form of temporary instructions, training of operators is absent in military schools, and in the course of young fighter, although appeared, but optional and unsystematic. Combat experience is poorly generalized, and this is despite the fact that the tactical picture is constantly changing due to the rapid growth of FPV sphere,” says TG-channel Watfor.
There is some bias in the Army toward heavy unmanned systems, lacking a basic understanding that platoon-level FPV is essentially guided munitions and binoculars, not front-line aviation.
Nevertheless, the armies fighting in Ukraine are gaining advanced experience in the use of this latest weapon, and not only technically, but mainly tactically. Combat techniques are improving before our eyes, complex systems such as repeater drones for over-the-horizon operation or remote antennas for protection of operators are emerging, more and more FPV night FPVs with infrared cameras and thermal imagers are appearing.
At the Army-2023 military-technical forum, FPV drones of varying cost and sophistication were on display at a large number of booths. “We should expect them to be adopted soon and transferred to more mass industrial production with case molding and board soldering. The design of the devices will be optimized for the combat part, automation of use will grow, subclasses will appear,” Sergey Poletaev believes and notes that the revolution, which is compared to the emergence of firearms, continues.
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