On the front line with Ukrainian drone pilots
Drones are transforming the battlefield, with both Ukrainian and Russian forces relying on them extensively. Ukrainian drone pilots near Avdiivka, in eastern Ukraine, are using them to counter what analysts are calling the biggest assault by Russian forces since Bakhmut.
Transcript
00:00 We're heading towards Avdiivka, a city Vladimir Putin has already spent more than 12,000 Russian
00:05 soldiers' lives trying to take.
00:08 "We've had intelligence that the Russians are planning to send in 250 infantry soldiers
00:15 today to attack our positions.
00:19 That's 250 soldiers attacking just our small section of the front here, which is basically
00:24 two small bits of forest.
00:27 We have to stop their attacks with kamikaze drones.
00:30 If we send our infantry in to stop them, we'd lose a lot of people.
00:33 As it is, we send in a piece of plastic carrying some ammunition, and we stop them in their
00:39 tracks."
00:40 This is what counts for a trench round here.
00:42 In a matter of days, they'll have to move on again, keenly aware that they themselves
00:47 are prime targets for Russia's drone pilots.
00:50 "Look how many of them there are.
00:54 Where are they going?
00:55 Are they heading over there?"
00:58 "The Russians take advantage of the bad weather to attack.
01:03 With fewer of our drones up in the air, we have trouble directing artillery fire against
01:07 them."
01:08 At about $1,000 each, you can get three or four of these kamikaze drones for the price
01:19 of a single artillery shell.
01:26 "The signal's really bad.
01:30 You've lost your connection."
01:31 "We lost the drone in exactly the same place."
01:40 "The Ukrainian team just behind me has just lost the drone, and they're trying to work
01:45 out whether that was due to Russian electronic warfare or just simply the weather."
01:51 "One day the signal's great and you can fly over long distances.
01:55 The next day, jamming will stop you from doing anything useful."
01:58 "The Russians' electronic warfare systems can't be on 24/7.
02:04 They don't have unlimited capacity.
02:07 They switch them on when they're under attack, but they also have to switch them off again
02:10 after a few hours."
02:13 Russian signal-blocking technology is one thing.
02:16 Other challenges are more fundamental.
02:19 Humidity reduces signal quality, and cold is poison for batteries of all kinds.
02:24 Often enough, pharmacy-bought heat packs are the only way to get the drones to even switch
02:28 on.
02:29 To push down prices, Ukrainian forces are increasingly building these drones out of
02:33 wood or even chipboard, good enough for a single-use weapon.
02:38 "We need quantity over quality.
02:41 The more drones we have, the more chances we get to hit our targets.
02:47 It's scary for us to watch it all.
02:48 The landscape is covered in bodies.
02:50 The Russians advance over their own dead, and sometimes they even pretend to be dead.
02:55 We find them anyway.
02:56 I can't imagine what they're thinking.
02:58 They must be very scared of their commanders."
03:00 In the space of a year, these improvised weapons have transformed the battlefield on both sides.
03:07 They paralyze tanks, long thought key to winning battles, forcing them to stick to cover and
03:11 unable to move without attack from above.
03:15 It's this technological revolution that many believe got in the way of Ukraine's summer
03:18 offensive, just as it's now slowing Russian progress here in Avdiivka.
03:24 Thousand-dollar drones taking out million-dollar tanks has become the norm rather than the
03:28 exception.
03:29 "This war has proven that all the old ideas and strategies for fighting a war don't work
03:35 anymore.
03:40 The whole world is watching us, and they're realizing what still works.
03:45 Look, one of them is lying on the ground, and there's another one underneath."
03:55 Giving directions is far from straightforward.
03:58 Covered in snow, most buildings and even trees destroyed, there's little to go by.
04:02 And because they're flying at different altitudes and with different optics, reconnaissance
04:07 and kamikaze drone pilots see very different landscapes.
04:11 Processing all that information still makes or breaks these missions.
04:15 For all the tech, AI has still not replaced humans for this kind of navigation.
04:19 "There's two of them lying on the left-hand side."
04:22 "Slow down, don't rush."
04:24 "No, that's not the target.
04:26 What we need is those two.
04:27 Look, they're over there."
04:29 "We need one of you to take over."
04:31 "It's clear hit.
04:34 Two Russian soldiers caught out in the open.
04:37 Realizing the danger, they pretended to be dead.
04:39 But it didn't help.
04:41 The Ukrainian drone pilots here tell us they've flown over this landscape so many times, they
04:46 navigate by the abandoned Russian corpses.
04:49 Those two men have themselves now become new landmarks."
04:52 [BLANK_AUDIO]