{"id":171407,"date":"2025-08-24T09:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T09:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/171407\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T09:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T09:48:10","slug":"a-drone-lab-on-the-front-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/171407\/","title":{"rendered":"A drone lab on the front lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00bb READ MORE: DRONE GLOSSARY<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

KHARKIV REGION, Ukraine \u2014 Last month, for the first time in this or any other war, Ukrainians captured Russian troops in this region using only robots and killer drones.<\/p>\n

The tale sounds like something out of science fiction, yet it was simply an early episode in the evolving era of unmanned warfare.<\/p>\n

Drone pilots from the legendary 3rd Separate Assault Brigade dropped a first-person view attack drone into a Russian trench, and a ground robot launched a rocket. The robot also broadcast a message: Surrender or die. Seventeen Russians emerged, hands up, and an aerial drone guided them toward waiting Ukrainian soldiers who took them prisoner.<\/p>\n

The capture only burnished the group\u2019s reputation, already lauded for its tough fighters and its popular recruitment campaign.<\/p>\n

But the brigade\u2019s special battalion for intercepting enemy drones, known as \u201cSQUADRON,\u201d has also become famous for its prowess.<\/p>\n

In June, I met SQUADRON\u2019s commander, call sign Betsyk (an abbreviation of his hometown), and his chief of staff Zakon (meaning law), 26, in a basement headquarters in the region. They became friends and joined up together in the first weeks of the invasion.<\/p>\n

Not far away is the city of Izyum, briefly occupied by the Russians, and the war crimes committed there are always on these men\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n

Betsyk, who was already in university and working for a tech company, was only 18, but he downed a helicopter before reaching 19. Zakon was an oil and gas lawyer and said he\u2019s now \u201cmarried to drones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery battalion or even company in the 3rd has a drone lab that also works on ground robots,\u201d Zakon told me. Most labs are small, he explained, but this one expanded to \u201c120 smart guys,\u201d so it could make a bigger impact on the innovation process and share their expertise with other brigades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is to instill AI and best business processes into the army,\u201d Zakon said. He tells potential recruits that \u201cyou can do what you did privately in tech firms or as gamers, but join the army. We have hundreds of new recruits.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this elite unit, that is no doubt true, but drone innovators as well as pilots are an endangered species, with each side eager to kill the other\u2019s experts. That makes the work of this unit more vital and more fraught.<\/p>\n

In daily contact with drone pilots, they constantly update Ukrainian forces and private manufacturers about shifts in Russian technology. As Betsyk tells me, \u201cThe Russians learn fast. They are starting to use artificial intelligence to maneuver [drones], but our guys solve all Russian maneuvers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is how Ukraine maintains its technological edge.<\/p>\n

The battalion also maintains contact with NATO allies and private European drone makers that send representatives to test its products at the front. This helps Europeans keep up with critical technological changes in drone warfare \u2014 and with Russian techniques. \u201cLots of small European countries call us,\u201d says Betsyk.<\/p>\n

And they are working with one U.S. company (which they won\u2019t name) on new methods to destroy the Shahed drones that are causing havoc in Ukrainian cities.<\/p>\n

In the battalion\u2019s manufacturing center \u2014 a maze of rooms lined with towers of drones for engineering, programming, and testing \u2014 the techie soldiers explore new features on a drone simulator. The atmosphere and dress code are casual, the focus intense.<\/p>\n

The name of our unit is \u201cRevenge,\u201d I\u2019m told by a 26-year-old who goes by the call sign Steppe (meaning fields) and who is working on a simulator. \u201cRevenge is what keeps us motivated, because of all our comrades killed and wounded. We solve technical problems for the front line [positions]. We need to modify drones and adapt to different frequencies\u201d when the Russians change theirs, he said.<\/p>\n

His colleague, call sign Obriy (meaning horizon), chimed in: \u201cWhen the Russians beat our solution, you need to find new solutions. We have a specific group doing only R&D, so we can react quickly to new threats. They go to the [front line] positions and test, sometimes upgrade, sometimes something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

The battalion is constantly looking for new ways to kill Russian drones. \u201cWe can connect manufacturers directly with [military] units, which makes their products more effective,\u201d Obriy added.<\/p>\n

On this visit, I heard the same from every forward drone unit I visited about U.S. drones brought for testing by the U.S. military earlier in the war: They didn\u2019t work well. They were either unable to overcome Russian jamming or flew shorter distances than expected.<\/p>\n

Would that more American drone producers, along with the Pentagon, were still making use of the opportunity to test or coproduce drones with Ukraine.<\/p>\n

But I also wish that President Donald Trump could hear why these young volunteers will not stop fighting if he tries to hand Ukraine over to Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw pictures of \u201844 Dresden,\u201d Obriy said heatedly. \u201cWell, here, Russia levels nine story apartment buildings, so many lives are taken. When other countries say, \u2018you should have peace\u2026\u2019 How? When whole families are slaughtered? When people who speak Russian, in Crimea and Mariupol, fought with their bare hands against Russian killers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Call sign Dev, who had just returned from the front line, jumped in. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was so much terror in Izyum. There were 500,000 people living here and now there are 100,000. We have been repressed by Russia for 100 years. We have no option but to fight because Russia came to kill our independence.\u201d <\/p>\n

Steppe added: \u201cWe will continue to fight for our independence and to prevent the enemy from coming again.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the message I got repeatedly from frontline drone units.<\/p>\n

Before I left, Zakon repeated: \u201cThe United States has an excellent opportunity to test here. You need to test weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s correct. Instead of undermining Kyiv, the United States badly needs to learn from Ukraine how to counter Russia\u2019s advanced drone skills before they are used against the rest of Europe \u2014 or us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00bb READ MORE: DRONE GLOSSARY KHARKIV REGION, Ukraine \u2014 Last month, for the first time in this or…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":171408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,97907,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-171407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-squadron-ukraine-drone-lab-assault-brigade","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115083116719965142","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}