One unfortunate Russian soldier became an unwilling test subject for a new kind of Ukrainian drone this week. A drone operator with the Ukrainian army’s 118th Mechanized Brigade, holding the line in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast, was patrolling the front with their quadcopter-style drone when they spotted a solitary Russian marching along a dirt path.
As a second drone observed from overhead, the explosives-laden FPV drone—probably weighing just a few pounds—zoomed over the soldier’s head then dove. The direct hit killed the Russian. “Maneuverability is impressive,” noted They Say Sniper, a popular Ukrainian blogger.
The technology on display in the bloody combat trial promises to transform Ukraine’s drone force as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its 32nd month. Russia’s own drone force is undergoing the same transformation.
Both sides in the wider war deploy hundreds of thousands of FPV drones every month, striking vehicles, trenches and even individual soldiers. Tiny explosive drones are some of the most lethal weapons in the war.
But for the first two years of the wider conflict, the drones’ lethality depended almost entirely on the skill of their operators. Typically, a human pilot wearing a virtual reality headset remotely steers an FPV in real time. The overall greater experience and talent of Ukrainian operators, including famed drone commander Robert Brovdi, explains why Ukraine’s FPVs are often more effective than Russia’s.
Early this year, the Russians introduced new tech that erased some of the Ukrainians’ skill edge. Artificial intelligence installed in an FPV’s onboard processor can recognize the outline of a human being and automatically steer the drone in the final few seconds of its flight, when aiming is most difficult for many operators.
Brovdi realized the Russians had deployed these guided FPVs back in January. In a video he shared with his many followers, Brovdi outlined a hypothetical A.I. drone sortie by an untalented Russian operator “who may not be very good at controlling.”
“He goes somewhere into the target zone, notices [a target] and points at it,” Brovdi explained. “And then the drone directs even at a moving target to hit.”
The Ukrainian military moved quickly to develop its own guided FPVs. By this spring, Ukraine’s A.I.-assisted drones were in testing. Six months later, they’re on the front line for combat use—and further refinement. If the 118th Mechanized Brigade’s brutal test strike against a live Russian is any indication, the drones already work pretty well.
Brovdi promised Ukraine’s guided FPV drones would get better, fast. “We will continue to develop them further,” he said.
Read the full article here