Ukraine is losing its drone supremacy

Telegraph

2 days ago

In an undisclosed location near the front line, Vanya, a Ukrainian soldier, traverses through a field covered in the traces of a deadly Russian weapon.
It's not unexploded ordnance or landmines beneath his boots, however, but an endless stream of razor-thin fibre-optic cables, glistening in the sun while spooled out across the landscape.
These are the lifelines of Russia's most effective weapon – fibre-optic guided FPV drones.
Once an obscure experiment, these drones have become one of the defining weapons of the battlefield in recent months, impervious to jamming and able to strike targets far behind enemy lines with chilling precision.
What's more, while Ukraine first pioneered drone warfare, it's Russia that appears to have mastered this next phase.
'Our advantage in drones, which we have held since 2023, has been surpassed by the Russians,' a senior non-commissioned officer with Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, call sign 'Jackie', told The Telegraph.
'We did all the work of innovating drones as a weapon, but we did not scale this weapon fast enough on an industrial level for it to have a meaningful strategic effect. We were too slow.'
Pivot in drone warfare
The dominance of fibre-optic drones marks a pivot in drone warfare. In 2024, Ukrainian and Russian production of traditional, radio-controlled FPV drones surged. But these drones relied on radio frequencies, meaning they increasingly fell prey to electronic warfare (EW) jamming.
In fact, by the end of last year, up to 75 per cent of drones fired by Russia and Ukraine were being knocked out by jamming, according to military expert Pavlo Narozhny.
Enter the fibre-optic drone – a wired throwback to Cold War-era anti-tank missiles like the US-made TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided), but refashioned for modern aerial warfare.
The drones themselves appear unremarkable – quadcopters rigged with explosive payloads – except for a large, cylindrical spool mounted underneath, feeding out a strand of fibre-optic cable as they fly. This physical tether between pilot and drone makes them impossible to knock out using jamming.
The tactical implications are vast. Fibre-optic drones can fly into hangars, bunkers, dense urban terrain or tree cover with no loss of signal. Their camera feed is clearer. They don't emit detectable signals, meaning typical radio frequency detectors can't pick them up. And they don't expose the operator's location.
'They're really great when you need to fly into some kind of building, like a large shed or hangar, to have a look inside if there is something there with the ability to strike it straight away,' Oleksandr 'Skhid,' an FPV drone team commander in Ukraine's Achilles Strike Drone Regiment, told the Kyiv Independent. 'The same goes for other types of cover, and flying in forested areas.'
Technology isn't new
The drones can typically travel up to 25km, comparable to the range of the most commonly used radio controlled FPVs, with a prototype developed by Ukraine's '414th Strike UAV Battalion' reaching up to 41km.
The technology itself isn't new. In fact, Russia began deploying these makeshift drones after Ukraine launched its daring incursion into Kursk last August. But what makes the Russian deployment of these drones so dangerous is the recent increase in scale.
Once seen as clunky and niche, they are now being mass-produced and have been deployed along key front lines. 'You can barely walk through the fields after fibre optic drones have flown through,' Pasha, a senior instructor at Kyiv's Dragon Sky UAV training centre, told the Telegraph.
Russia's ruthless deployment of the drones was on full display during the recent intensive push to drive Ukrainian forces out of Kursk in an effort led by Russia's elite 'Rubicon' drone unit.
Footage captured in March showed a Ukrainian vehicle packed with soldiers hurtling along the R200 road, which linked Ukraine to the town of Sudzha, its last remaining stronghold inside the Russian border region.
It was hunted down and destroyed by a Russian fibre-optic drone, which was lying in wait on the side of the road. Within weeks, that same road was littered with the carcasses of vehicles destroyed in a similar fashion.
The drones have also been responsible for the destruction of Ukrainian armoured vehicles and key weapons – often deep behind the front line in locations radio-controlled drones would struggle to reach because of jamming and radio horizon.
In Chasiv Yar, for example, the Rubicon unit destroyed one of Ukraine's precious US-made Himars using a fibre-optic drone 10km behind the front line.
'They have pushed the safe zone to 10-15 km away from the front line, have made logistics and troop rotation more complicated and forced us to double down on digging deep down and disguising the locations and bunkers,' a spokesperson for the Khartia Brigade of the Ukrainian National Guard said.
'They're a game changer,' agreed 'Uncle Sasha', a front-line FPV instructor and officer in Ukraine's National Police Aviation Division. 'Everyone is trying to find countermeasures to fibre-optic drones – we don't have them, and neither do the Russians.'
No silver bullet
Despite their battlefield success, fibre-optic drones are no silver bullet. They're expensive – just one fibre spool can cost $700 (£520), enough to buy two conventional drones – and their range is limited by the cable length.
They are also heavier, and therefore often slower. To achieve the same speeds as a radio controlled drone, a heavier fibre-optic drone must expend more battery power, limiting its range.
As a result, most pilots flying fibre drones typically fly them at much slower speeds. They also have much lower manoeuvrability, due to the trailing cable, which must be precisely spooled to avoid tangles, and a strong wind can upend a stationary drone hunting its prey mid-mission.
'Fibre optic drones are very, very, very slow,' explained Mr Narozhy, whose Reactive Post NGO provides spare parts to the Ukrainian military. 'At the start of the flight, the weight is well centred, but by the end, it's often off-balance.'
There are signs that both sides are developing countermeasures, however rudimentary. 'In one case, a group of Ukrainian soldiers saw a Russian drone fly past them,' recalled Pasha. 'They realised it was a Russian drone so just went out and snapped the cable.'
Ukraine is also experimenting with drone-catching fishing nets, wooden decoys, and even placing soldiers with shotguns near artillery systems, a solution so manpower-intensive it is near impossible to sustain.
High-tech radar systems that can detect fibre-optic drones up to 20km away do exist but cost over a million euros each.
'Ukraine cannot afford to put this on every artillery station,' Mr Narozhy said. Such systems also produce emissions that are easily detected by Russian radar detectors.
Ironically, Ukraine may have had the head start. Fibre-optic drones were reportedly first conceived by Ukrainian engineers but shelved early on due to the effectiveness of cheaper, more agile FPV drones, and the absence of effective Russian jamming.
Now, at least on the fibre optic front, Kyiv is playing catch-up. 'While Ukrainian drone teams and innovators have achieved great success at the tactical level, we have failed to leverage our tactical advantage into strategic success,' said 'Jackie' of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. 'The window of time we held this tactical advantage has now closed.'
'It's possible we will achieve another level of technological innovation during this war,' he added. 'But it's not important that it works. It's important that we can scale it up so fast that the enemy cannot react to it.'
For Russia, the Rubicon-led development of fibre-optic drones is part of the Kremlin's wider push to gain the upper hand in the battle for drone supremacy.
Following the successful Kursk counter-offensive, Rubucion's drone pilots now operate in at least seven specialist detachments across eastern Ukraine, carrying out complex, decentralised missions.
The Russian defence ministry has also established its own version of Ukraine's unmanned systems forces to boost the use of all types of drones by Russia's armed forces, with Andrei Belousov, the Russian defence minister, announcing the creation of a new military unit planned to be completed by July 1 this year.
It is also worth noting that Ukrainian drones, both radio-controlled and fibre optic, still retain their brutal effectiveness.
With Russia currently on the offensive, Ukrainian drone pilots have an easier time striking infantry and armoured vehicles, while Ukraine's own elite drone teams regularly strike Russian logistics vehicles, air defence systems, and artillery pieces deep behind the front line.
Warning for the West
In any case, the implications – as with many new developments in the war – extend beyond Ukraine.
Western militaries, reliant on jamming and electronic warfare to counter drones, would be 'completely and totally vulnerable to fibre optic FPV drones,' one Ukrainian source warned.
'All current counter-measures used by Western militaries such as electronic warfare systems are useless against such drones, and they have no experience operating in an environment where FPVs saturate the battlefield.'
In the meantime, Ukraine is racing to find an effective countermeasure that extends beyond using wooden decoys and shooting drones down with shotguns. This is a technological arms race and Russia, even if temporarily, has the lead.
'We were laughing at them before,' said Pasha. 'But now it's not funny.'
Still, hope persists. 'This is a big problem for us,' said Uncle Sasha. 'But it's a problem for the Russians too; and I think we will solve it. We will find a solution to protect us from this technology.'