Leaked: The INTENSE Reality Inside a Russian FPV Drone Unit!

Leaked: The INTENSE Reality Inside a Russian FPV Drone Unit!

in this conflict one of the biggest mysteries is the Russian war machine we know their military is changing and evolving but there’s very little information and perspective about what things are like inside the Russian armed forces and a mil blogger named Patrick Lancaster has gotten inside a Russian drone unit and is going deep into what exactly the Russian military wants from its drone oper operators so I’m going to be taking a look and we are going to learn just a little bit about the new face of Warfare let’s get into it okay so again Patrick Lancaster guys is a uh M blogger who is is pretty Pro Russian um and that is just a requisite for blogging in Russia so the fact is that you know he has the Press uh badge here and actually think that he is uh he indeed is a member of the press I think he’s doing interesting journalism uh offering a perspective of this conflict we can’t get otherwise and yeah if obviously the Russian military is not going to let him in if he’s like totally dunking on them um so I appreciate what he does again I does he seem to be more pro- Russian than I am yeah but uh this sort of reporting is invaluable in and rare in the English language world so let’s take a look at what he’s got to say I’m Patrick Lancaster and right now we are in the zap roia region of the Ukraine war zone and we are here with a the Russian forces particularly the uh K or Crimea Battalion and we are going to see them uh in process of attacking Ukrainian forces with drones okay so I want to point some things out here first off I can’t he’s going to show you the Drone footage I can’t show it here on YouTube um I think he may have have censored it appropriately but YouTube’s rules if you are an American based or English language based Creator especially a small one who’s not part of a larger press Network as you can see he is um YouTube subject you to a different set of rules as far as censorship so oftentimes I will literally react or put on my channel clips that are not copyrighted and are displayed for sometimes millions of views by other legitimate press Outlets like the sun um but I get demonetized and it’s a whole thing it drives me crazy it’s one of the reasons I I guess I can mention it now just do it early in the video um I have my own website where I can make the uncensored combat videos where we can do the Deep analysis that I just can’t do on YouTube it’s called combat vet news um and it’s twice a week we find the viral combat footage coming straight to us from the front line we get it sometimes less than 24 hours old um and it really gives us insight into what the fighting is like for the soldiers on the ground um but it’s for members only because again I make war content I get very few sponsors I get frequently demonetized so literally you guys the fans uh that believe in what I’m doing and depend on my analysis uh I in turn depend on you guys um for uh support that enable me and the team to continue to do this so if you can pick up a membership um it’s definitely worth it obviously specialist any one of the tiers are going to get you access to the twice a week videos but if you want to be a lieutenant tier or Colonel tier member huge hugely appreciate it uh that’s why I shout you guys out every video you get access to the exclusive rooms on the Discord there’s a lot there for you so um you know I appreciate you guys over there on combat vet news um and we’re gonna we actually got some of the fighting not from zap aesia but from harke uh in the video on Thursday so uh again check it out but drone uh team and we’re going to talk to them about what the how the process goes and we’re going to see this live fire attack on Ukrainian forces with the Russian drone team okay so I want to point out a couple of interesting details here um first off the gear I always find the gear work the gear analysis to be really interesting right because you can learn a lot from a soldier’s equipment first off Note Patrick lanter’s equipment um he has a lot of uh protection so he has a standard PL carrier you can kind of see it here let’s see if we can back up a few frames and see if we can get a better squared up look yeah there we go perfect so he has a plate carrier right and it’s interesting this isn’t in Russian camo pattern but it is in a military kind of OD Green so it’s not Russian ratnik but it is uh military grade so he’s got his plate carrier right here you notice he’s got the Molly Loops which he would have uh if he were a combatant he would have uh his ammunition pouches here and you can see the other soldiers do seem to have their ammo pouches there um and then he has these shoulder protection and the neck protector and the groin protector and the role of these uh items is that they are um anti- shrapnel so they are Kevlar they’re soft um and their job is to absorb shrapnel so they won’t stop an assault rifle round or anything larger than that um but in the battlefield currently the number one threat Far and Away uh is shrapnel based weapons uh cluster Munitions artillery 155 shells mortars Etc and as that means that you need this kind of Kevlar padding to actually block and stop that those uh shrap from entering soft tissue and you may think well why is he protecting his shoulders seems sort of silly right the shoulder is is not you know you want to protect your vital organs right heart and lungs primarily everything else you can actually take some damage and the chances of you surviving are still pretty okay again some exceptions with major arteries like your aorta and the arteries that feed your kidneys but the reason you want that those shoulder pads is because think about what’s on the other side of a shoulder right here’s my shoulder let’s say shrapnel would have passed through the soft tissue of the arm where would it enter it would enter under the armpit well note here the armpit goes straight to the heart and lungs this is actually a really vulnerable Point um laterally when you have a plate carrier right you’ll notice here this Soldier wearing a plate carrier or these soldiers here that the ballistic plate sits right on the heart and lungs right he’s wearing it a little low lower than you’re supposed to but it sits covering the heart and lungs on the on the the face in forward but along the sides there’s no protection all the only protection are side plates that sometimes run right around the rib cage again he’s wearing his a little low so it sits on the sides kind of protecting the kidneys um this is super common this isn’t like roasting this guy US soldiers almost everybody wears their plate carriers low because it’s very uncomfortable to wear it High um but Patrick Lancaster has these in order to protect from shrapnel passing through uh you know horizontally similarly right this neck protector is to prevent what’s called spalling spalling is where one it protects the neck itself because again lot of uh very sliceable uh veins and arteries running through the neck it’s a very sensitive region but two if you’re um your ceramic plate uh blocks a rifle round often times that rifle round will shatter the the the um metal itself will shatter and it’ll travel some it’ll hit the plate and shatter and you can see how hitting the plate shattering it will fly up into the neck by having a piece of Kevlar right here it’ll catch it and prevent that from penetrating again this is all very bulky equipment but he’s a member of the press and the groin protector is kevlar for the groin right and you guys know in addition to the fact that as a male uh we have uh external uh reproductive organs so they are very vulnerable to uh shrapnel uh there’s also major femoral arteries that when damaged again when cut by shrapnel will bleed you out very quickly um and so the reason he probably has all this one as a public figure the ukrainians uh May Target him um is particularly because as I said he’s pro-russian um and uh again he’s clearly embedded in these these uh drone forces but also he doesn’t have to maneuver right he is not a light infantry Soldier so speed is not something that is a factor for him um so it’s okay that this equipment is very heavy and bulky because he’s not going to be running he’s probably going to be climbing into a van and driving to uh a more secure area in the rear okay so he said interesting he calls them fpv drones and he holds up the Drone and something called homemades uh which sounds like his way of saying DIY uh this is obviously not made in like a home but I think he’s referring to this as a DIY explosive or a or a a do-it-yourself um or field expedient is sometimes what we call it in the US military uh field expedient anti-personnel charge uhhuh uh-huh yeah so so interesting so this is these guys it’s funny this is if this is a Twan team they are operating like a shooter spotter you notice how the mavic 3 is the reconnaissance drone the Spotter and the shooter is the fpv Drone because they share the same problem uh or constraints as a sniper spotter team right if you’re a sniper you’re looking through the world through a sniper scope right you have a very narrow field of vision and cognitively you have a very narrow Focus your job is to engage a single Target which means you’re kind of shut off to the world around you that’s that’s good Marksmanship good sniping uh so you need to have this spotter whose field of perception is the whole environment um in addition to helping you identify and engage your Target and that’s exactly what this mavic’s doing it’s perceiving we’ve seen it on the Ukrainian side they use the reconnaissance drones to perceive the larger Battlefield and then the fpv drones who have a narrower field of view focus in and walk into a single [Music] Target here’s what’s also interesting one this guy has a all black Gorka suit a really classic military Uh Russian military piece of gear that uh you see a lot of Russian Forces wear and it’s it’s a real Workhorse as far as a military uniform um I actually have two pair of Gorka suits um they are top tier camping gear uh top tier like uh work uh I actually use one as kind of my my everyday um wet weather jacket if I’m expecting it to be chilly and rainy and I just want a windbreaker um you could see it it it looks it looks cool listen I’m not above saying something looks cool uh it’s cool it’s very functional um and you could see it looks like this is actually one of like the Gorka fives like something upgrade with some upgrades because it’s got these uh zipper pockets it’s got a velcro um patch but what I think is interesting is that this guy has a small I think it’s a play carrier this might even just be a chest rig right but a very small chest rig and literally I can see one round everything else he has is to facilitate the Drone operation which is fascinating he’s got a knife he I think he has a multi-tool looks like he has a a radio here but this is somebody whose weapon is the Drone and he has literally one spare mag probably for emergencies right so you notice he says for confirmation and so on yeah the mavic’s gonna film it one because sometimes uh when you hit a Target you can learn more about it using something called a battle damage assessment and so you know once the fpv Drone detonates you won’t know did you destroy the target uh what exactly damage did you do to it um how many crew in the Target uh there’s a whole bunch of other information you can gather uh once the but only once the target has been hit so again the shooter spotter pair very interesting to see a that exact kind of of dynamic play out on the Drone level [Music] this is really interesting I’ve been thinking a lot about this he ask why did you join the Crimean Battalion in particular and he says if possible I’d like to skip this question so I’m not sure what he could say or not want to say one he may not want to dox himself um he there may be information that he particularly doesn’t want to be put out there he may for example say oh I have family in sevap or something um or I participated in the 2014 uh annexation of Crimea uh and that operation my role in it was was is still um uh I still don’t want it public um I think it may my my number one theory is actually that this may not be his first Battalion um he may have left another Battalion um on bad terms and he may not want to sit there and say hey I joined the Crimea Battalion because uh I was in the Russian military and I beat the brakes off an officer um and they kicked me out and then I transferred to this Battalion um so he may just be like he may be someone who might not be totally welcomed in um if all the information was out so okay so now okay this is where things get kind of crazy to me because they literally going to show this dude putting this this drone together which is surreal now notice this guy’s gear as well you notice he has a few more magazines in there he also he he too has a knife um and and most importantly it looks like he’s got his fpv drone goggles which I find kind of fascinating por that’s actually a pretty good quality knife uh if you ever want to know if a knife’s decent or not you look at these you see how the blade the metal of the blade extends all the way into the handle it’s called Full Tang and it means that the knife is pretty heavily um it has a it’s strongly reinforced the the blade is less likely to break at the hand handle Point um but again he’s got his magazines this looks like an AR mag it looks like he may even have a pistol mag here but I don’t see him carrying a pistol but you notice he has three controllers he has a um looks like a power bank here um again I’m fascinated by the gear that an individual fpv drone operator carries looks like he might this might be another battery he’s got some uh wire some copper some stripped copper wire uh notice he’s got his watch not nothing tactical or special about about it just a just a regular Normie watch and this is one of the things guys you know there’s a lot of YouTubers that really make me drive me crazy because they are tactical like gurus and they will sit there and tell you that oh it’s a problem if your watch is a little reflective the enemy could see it and it’s like listen dude the enemy could see flipping anything and this is a guy who’s with the by the way the redut PMC notice um so he’s actually yeah the Crimean Battalion of volunte years but he’s with a a PMC um which he may so maybe actually if he’s indeed part of a larger redep PMC unit um he may be saying listen I’m in this unit because I was a criminal I joined this unit because I had a criminal record and I’m serving much like the Vagner PMC I’m here to um expunge my criminal record right but to back to the point at hand this is someone who has survived the entirety of this war in the Russian military which is a military with a very high casualty rate and you notice that again here’s somebody who’s got just a regular old watch right he’s obviously got a a good ocp camouflage right but this is somebody who draws on a lot of experience and notice what he doesn’t do right he’s not some super Elite uh tactical watch tactical everything right the things he does uh he likely does because they have real actual Battlefield tactical value and they aren’t Feelgood tactical YouTuber uh trying to sell you more dumb gear kind of guy all right so he says this projectile contains striking elements it’s aimed for infantry I think what he’s referring to I think he’s saying hey this is an anti Personnel munition so striking elements I think is is the Russian mistranslation of um uh shrapnel that is going to produce a lot of shrapnel designed to take out light infantry it’s not going to penetrate armored forces and as they said they said we found the enemy in this case ukrainians and they’re in a trench so I wonder you notice this has a a mortar like this has the same tail or a similar fin structure as a mortar but what I think this may be this looks plastic like 3D printed what I actually think this is is like a small grenade a small explosive charge wrapped with shrapnel I think this is actually a a piece of 3D pinched plastic so it’s not that heavy and I think it’s shaped like that because the Drone is going to be guiding straight and you have to think this thing could actually be a fin right like like imagine if you strap something to the outside of an aircraft and imagine if the weight of that thing you strapped or the aerodynamics of that were were asymmetric right as the aircraft flew through space the asymmetric thing you strap to it would push the aircraft and keep it from maneuvering effectively so I actually think that it happens to look similar to a mortar shell because they have kind of the same need right a mortar round has to fly vertically straight but this has to pass through the air horizontally but still straight still without the air pushing it left and right right zip ties look at this this is also interesting he’s got a bunch of mags behind his uh plate carrier he also has a MAG pouch here and the mags behind are fascinating because one they’re really hard to access and it implies to me that when his unit he’s going to expect not him but one of his buddies to be able to get at the mag so it’s not like saying hey do do I need these mags I can’t get at them he’s like if my battle buddy needs a MAG he can take them out of this it may also be something where he may be able to like quickly drop the pouch but it looks like it’s it looks like it’s attached to his plate carrier so you wouldn’t really drop that let here another absolutely outstanding tactical piece of gear is a fleece man fleece zip up again I have a army military or an army surplus um in ACU gray it was literally like $16 on eBay this thing is the best fleece it’s just it’s wonderful it’s great cold morning I mean it was great when I was in the military and it’s great now that I’m a civilian does it look cool no but it’s military grade gear man it it doesn’t have to look cool to be effective and the fact that people think oh the ACU looks dumb means that you can get this stuff at a steel again interesting this looks like a 22 volt battery pack uh powering this thing you could see it looks like some carbon fiber uh frame so tough and extremely light uh I’d be curious to know what the um the quadcopter fins are made out of but you can see there’s like a single engine looks like just uh actuators kind of powering each of these for um uh uh rotors but very simple design and you can see that basically most of the weight of this thing is the explosive the slav squat listen in combat in the in in the field when it’s wet you learn to not sit down if you don’t have to right nothing sucks worse than getting your uniform wet and then you’re wet all day and all night so instead you want to just yeah I’m dunking on people for doing the slav squat you too want to do the slav squat oh interesting so this so it sounds like the drones have a a Detonator on the front right I think it’s that copper wire and it hits something and it completes a circuit and blows the Drone but he’s like it also has a plunger on the front so if the Drone is shot down if anything jostles or uh contacts the plunger it’s going to it’s going to self-destruct the Drone it’s a very simple self-destruct sequence which is really [Music] Nifty interesting he says they don’t want to use the frequency so I think this is their um like a Russian military uh frequency they keep open to surrender 49200 I bet that’s uh the Russian military is like hey we keep this open you you contact us on this frequency in order to surrender we know that Ukraine has their own version of that um numbers uh phone numbers that Russian soldiers can text to defect here’s what I find really fascinating Patrick Lancaster seems like a very uh devout guy because look he has um like prayer seals here this is a wax seal with an orthodox prayer this the what I find most interesting about this is that you might find them uh it might be a little familiar because it’s also something from the Warhammer 40K L um let’s see let’s see we can find if that’s if I’m right um yeah okay so this looks like uh what seems to be called a proofo seal this is from the Orthodox Church uh literally stamped with this the Seal of the Holy Spirit let’s see yeah I think that’s what this is see these are all the seals from the Orthodox Church uh let’s see and I I I’ll bet it’s accompanied with a uh prayer in Russian so uh seemingly a a very devout guy [Music] [Music] yeah this is uh I mean nothing further to add yeah if you can hit them they can hit [Music] [Applause] you notice here it’s a 511 cap which I find really interesting that’s a us-made brand very popular okay I can’t show this uh let’s see they observe the soldiers in a trench now it looks like he’s coming out interesting to oh okay so it’s it’s not on his back it’s on his side no we we saw it it looked like it was on his uh oh no I guess these are way in the back okay I guess you could get them uh okay I like the Winnie the Pooh on the back that’s that’s a funny touch know’s this guy another pretty professional dude he’s got his uh pistol here and a lanyard uh I I I want to know more about this guy uh seems like pretty clean gear but seems like a very pretty Savvy drone operator I wonder if three-man teams is the Russian Standard for running drones like this he is doing [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right this is incredibly weird all right so I can’t show you this but I just want to just want to make the observation here this is every Soldier has a sense of humor man okay the Drone takes off uh interesting oh he also is subject to the same censorship look at this he has the Drone in flight and then he cuts it out and he’s like and now it cuts oh no no nope nope never mind he was going to he’s going to show this okay let’s see looks like they’re running a [Applause] second okay see he said to wait until they get out of their trenches and start an evacuation this is extremely common and uh actually something that we also saw Iraq and Afghan insurgence would do um is that they would have a primary IED hit a military Target um and then when the kavac crew arrived then they would launch or detonate a second IED um and so this idea of following up and exploiting a cavac is a very common uh a classic military tactic again something that if you’ve ever seen Enemy at the gates you know that uh I think it’s more apocryphal um because it’s it’s something in it’s close to a law of War violation but if you ever saw sniper movies like Enemy at the gates you often saw this where um a skilled sniper would uh wound a combatant and then would wait for the combatant’s uh battle buddies to come try to Evac them and then the sniper would take out two additional troops okay he said it’s better to go inside I’ve received information that their drones are working too and they’re going to lift up their reconnaissance again this is exactly what you’d expect from a sniper spotter people their whole focus is the Drone the attack drone and his focus is the whole tactical situation this is really interesting right this idea of Highly individual cat and mouse games um again mark my words someone’s going to make a movie about this um you know two drone operators on either side of a war fighting each other again Enemy at the Gate style right straight out of that movie major Koenig and um vasil what’s his name interesting calls them uh so he says the elder brother will work with us and use a mortifier uh he’s saying big brother will come in with mortars uh that implies that’s kind of a a I think it’s a Russian euphemism or a Russian military euphemism for the progressive uh escalation of forces right so you have uh drones with small anti-personnel charges then you have mortars 60 and 120 millimeter which pack a bigger punch then you have artillery and then finally you have things like cast Glide bombs um Shah heads and other like big heavy ordinance I love the fact that there’s very little editing here um you know they letting all of these scenes kind of play out right the way that the crew watches kind of in anticipation and this makes sense right he’s watching not just because it’s interesting because he’s going to have to either one of these guys could have to walk the Drone onto the target so they need to see the battlefield to understand because they’re going to be piloting a drone through this space as well [Music] yeah ukrainians know they’re being watched they’ve gone to ground this is the this is I mean listen if you ever been hunting you know this is how it is man uh you you get that one shot a day those animals aren’t coming back man and human beings some of us are at least as smart as a deer um you know okay but certainly those same principles uh still apply right you know the enemy’s watching you you get extra careful again this is an experienced team where he says I’m coming back and he doesn’t need to tell his his battle buddy hey call it in he guy goes I know I’ve seen this okay you you and he does he just calls his we used to call it x-ray it sounds like the Russian call sign is Center so probably like headquarters um this is this is air this is your air asset um for this Mission I’m I’m rtb I’m returning to base [Music] interesting they don’t want to show the Drone Landing sequence really interesting but clearly it’s happening clearly he’s walking the Drone onto its landing pad or the Drone might be walking itself I’m not sure if mavix can like Auto Land [Applause] [Music] yeah so this is a good point right he says listen there’s still guys on the front line who are watching um who have direct observation right and that’s not as good as a drone in the air um but there may also be other drone Crews there may be kind of a relief system where one drone pulls off another drone gets Airborne so it sounds like again you know sometimes with these kind of of tactics uh especially something like a drone or mortar fire just knowing that the enemy the enemy like your enemy sending the message hey I know where you are and that’s the message they probably sent to the ukrainians is say Hey listen we saw your machine gun position we hit it with the Drone and we know if you put that machine gun back out in that position we’ll hit it again because we’re watching and you know we’re watching so even without producing casualties you can still force uh an advantageous change to the battlefield situation it sounds like that’s what they did here for so this is really interesting right he’s he’s like listen if there’s more targets will hit him if not we’ll wait Yep this is the classic move hurry up and wait around but you see why Russia wants these drone operators to be on standby because they they’ve got a a speed and a turnaround time that’s so short that the it’s it is just too good for them to not have them on standby so you’ve heard and seen what the real situation here is on the ground and we bring you this information because no one else uh will we want you to get as much information from every source as possible don’t just watch my reports because I don’t have all the information to show you everything don’t just watch uh the the uh Western media reports CU they won’t show you everything see watch things from both sides of the line so you can educate yourself as I always say don’t get led by like sheep by the W MRE media think for yourself make your own opinions uh you can uh support our work with the link on the screen are in the description okay so again that was interesting that was one of the most interesting and uncensored unvarnished insights into the Russian military’s operation and like he’s right that I got value out of that reporting now what I appreciate is that he didn’t you know he didn’t extol upon the the whether the Russian operation is good or bad whether the ukrainians are good guys or bad guys and that you know I I I can appreciate information and I hope you guys got some value out of it and I will see you guys in the next one uh huge shout out of course to the uh members of comet news.com right all of our Colonel tier members uh our Lieutenant tier members and all the members comen news.com couldn’t do it without you guys see you the next one cheers

Keep Me Independent, Get Uncensored Combat Analysis at https://www.combatvetnews.com/become-a-member

Get the essential National Security News FREE Right to your inbox with the Strategic SitRep https://www.strategicsitrep.com/subscribe

Become a Member for exclusive perks!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMYdyjyHjKMzltuatKxkudw/join

Channel Manager/General Inquiries :Dan@combatvetnews.com
Sponsorship Inquiries : cvr.mhgr@intheblackmedia.com
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUEJEsSKMeU&t=209s&ab_channel=PatrickLancaster
https://deepstatemap.live/#10/50.1563/36.5534
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

➧Discord! discord.gg/ZmhCTJmAhW
➧MHGR! youtube.com/c/militaryhistorygearreview
➧Instagram: instagram.com/Combatvetnews

Get the essential National Security News FREE Right to your inbox with the Strategic SitRep https://strategicsitrep.com/subscribe

Become a Member for exclusive perks!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMYdyjyHjKMzltuatKxkudw/join

Original Video:
https://deepstatemap.live/#10/50.1563/36.5534
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

➧Discord! discord.gg/ZmhCTJmAhW
➧MHGR! youtube.com/c/militaryhistorygearreview
➧Instagram: instagram.com/Combatvetnews

*Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS

*Disclaimers: all opinions are my own, sponsors are acknowledged. Not financial advice, for entertainment purposes only.