How Drones Have Frozen the Front Lines in Ukraine (Key Points and Summary) – A report from Sunday, 13 July, in the Wall Street Journal finds that with unmanned vehicles – both aerial and ground models –dominating the battlefield in Ukraine, there is virtually no way for either personnel or equipment to move anywhere without being destroyed.
Drones are now utilized not just for surveillance, but also for destroying targets with kamikaze attack drones.
They are also laying mines, delivering munitions, and medical supplies.
They are even being used to evacuate the wounded and the dead.
The Frozen Ukraine War
POLAND, WARSAW – The front lines in the Ukraine war are, for all intents and purposes, frozen and at a standstill.
The reason for this dynamic is not just the number of drones themselves.
It is because, in the mode of “necessity is the mother of all invention,” the intensity of the war has driven both sides to develop rapid innovations in drone technology.
At the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian side utilized a small number of commercial and homemade drones.
These were only used to locate the movements of Russian units, specifically the long columns that came from the north out of Belarus.
These were the popular “wedding drones” that people would typically use to film their nuptial ceremony.
They were available in hobby stores for about $2,000.
The beauty of their design from the standpoint of being able to keep tabs on enemy movements is that the set of cameras they were equipped with gave a perfect panoramic view of the battlefield.
These drones were assigned to army units, sometimes even controlled by non-military personnel. In the end, they were able to track all the movements of large Russian formations and provided the data on when and where they were.
This was how Ukraine was able to attack these columns and bring them to a standstill.
Today’s Crowded Skies in Ukraine
More than three years later, unmanned vehicles are now what controls almost every inch of the battlefield.
Each side operates hundreds of them at one time in the air across a 750-mile front line.
But their presence was not always this pervasive. The first development was when these surveillance drones changed from being in that category of “nice to have” to now being “necessary for survival” no matter where you were on the battlefield.
The famous Wedding Drones soon began to be used not just to locate movements of Russian units, but the operators began providing images in real time of significant enemy movements.
Artillery units then used these images for targeting. Then the operators discovered that they could rig the drone with a claw apparatus that could be opened to drop grenades on the enemy below while simultaneously providing reconnaissance images.
The FPV Barrier
Ukrainian soldiers then learned that they could take old, Soviet-era munitions and reconfigure them, making them lighter by replacing metal fins with plastic ones and using newer and lighter casings.
But it is the kamikaze drone that has had the most significant effect on the war.
These first-person-view, or FPV, drones could be flown directly into targets. This was now a new low-cost kamikaze bombing air vehicle that could be built in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and could reach targets that were concealed in a manner that artillery could not be called down on.
The FPVs did not carry a warhead the size of an air-to-ground rocket, but they were much more accurate.
Several of them together could destroy a target like a main battle tank. Four or five kamikaze drones could do the job of one US-made Javelin anti-tank guided missile – and at a fraction of the cost.
FPVs had started being used on the battlefield in 2022, but it was not until late in 2023 that they began to have an enormous impact on the combat environment. In that year’s winter
Ukraine was running low on artillery ammunition while waiting for a US military air package, which was stuck in the US House of Representatives, pending approval before shipment.
FPVs became the only weapon the Ukrainians could muster to use against Russian units.
They became the weapon that was used to hold the Russians back. They could be built in almost infinite numbers because all the necessary materials could be sourced within Ukraine or imported through commercial channels, utilizing domestically manufactured and affordable technology.
The Russians have been playing catch-up and have since adopted FPVs in large numbers as well. It is both sides operating these air vehicles in such large numbers that they have virtually stopped all movement of the front line.
Anything within around 12 miles of the line of contact can now be destroyed or killed by an FPV. They have also become so cheap that using one drone to kill one infantryman and then another and then another is entirely affordable.
Ukraine has now learned how to deploy FPVs far from the front lines. In Operation Spiderweb, hundreds of these drones were surreptitiously brought into Russia and positioned outside of air bases where they were used to conduct one of the most daring operations of the war: an unheard-of large-scale attack on 40 of Russia’s bomber aircraft in June.
What this drone war does now is it puts the two sides into a standoff where neither side can conduct a major attack or change the dynamic on the battlefield. This essentially moves the conflict deep behind the lines – drone attacks on strategic targets that support Russia’s war effort.
This is a fight that the Ukrainians are much better equipped to take on. A combination of US intelligence and satellite data, a wide-scale partisan movement inside the occupied territories, and other activities of Ukraine’s intelligence services will bring the war to the Russians’ doorstep.
A new phase in this conflict is about to begin.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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