Ukraine turns to land drones to survive the drone-saturated frontline • FRANCE 24 English

Ukraine turns to land drones to survive the drone-saturated frontline • FRANCE 24 English

loading up an unmanned ground vehicle or land drone to take food and ammunition to an infantry position further ahead. The buggy is then towed by car a little closer to what’s known as the kill zone and then it’s off into the night. These pilots will now guide the drone to the frontline position where it will deliver those supplies. With a top speed of only 10 km an hour and along muddy paths, it’s a journey that can take more than 3 hours. When you’re bringing supplies, at least it’s not live cargo. When you’re evacuating a wounded soldier, you have to go much faster over certain sections because they’re exposed to airborne drone attacks. If they hit you, then they hit a human being. The danger from above is the very reason that the land drones, which can carry far heavier loads than even the biggest airborne ones, are needed. Enemy drones on fiber optic cables can fly up to 30 km. So, it’s very dangerous to drive around in pickups or even armored vehicles. With travel to and from forward positions so risky, infantrymen often stay on them for months on end. I can’t say we always had enough food and water because sometimes the supply drones get destroyed. There are too few of them. Baton has also had the unenviable task of strapping wounded comrades to a buggy. They’re afraid, but otherwise it would mean risking five men on an evacuation instead of one. Of course, you try to reassure them. Okay. Kachoro, a Colombian who joined the Ukrainian army in 2022, is one of many who’ve refused land drone evacuation when wounded. In a land drone, I would have to go inside a bag and play dead to trick the enemy. But the enemy attacks anyways, whether you’re dead or alive. His shrapnel wounds fed for two weeks before he was able to get out by other means. But he lived to tell the tale.

Ukrainian troops in the Kharkiv region rely on slow, unmanned ground buggies to move supplies and evacuate the wounded through a drone-saturated frontline. Highly vulnerable to airborne attacks, these land drones have become essential as soldiers stay in exposed positions for months and traditional vehicles are too risky to use. Some wounded troops even refuse drone evacuation due to fear, but the machines remain a lifeline. FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports.
#Ukraine #LandDrones #KhakivRegion

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