Ukrainian nonprofit Wild Hornets is one of many producers now turning out FPV drones by the thousand
Small drones, in particular FPV kamikazes, have become a key weapon in the war of attrition currently being waged in Ukraine. A NATO official recently told Foreign Policy magazine that FPVs caused more than two thirds of Russia’s tank losses in recent months, eclipsing artillery, guided missiles and other weapons. Both sides are now turning out vast quantities of FPVs, but recently Russia’s battlefield drone strikes have faltered while Ukraine’s have surged as never before. What is behind Russia’s failure?
A War Of Production
A home FPV assembly setup. Thousands of FPVs a month are made in living rooms and kitchens.
The FPV drone, a small racing quadcopter converted into a kamikaze, is a low-cost precision weapon capable of knocking out tanks and other targets from 20 km/ 12 miles away. They have proven equally effective against artillery, infantry positions and trucks. As 2023 wore on and thousands of FPVs were deployed both sides started to appreciate just how important this new weapon was becoming.
“I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it again now — If our state doesn't throw large resources into this industry [FPVs] now, the situation will worsen dramatically for our troops in a couple of months,” Ukrainian drone fundraiser warned last November.
On the Russian side, in December President Putin himself declared that “there is a need to significantly increase the production and supply of high-precision munitions and drones”
FPVs can be assembled from commercial components for less than $500 and Ukraine is sourcing them from dozens of small organizations including the startup Escadrone and non-profit Wild Hornets. A government initiative even encourages people to assemble FPV drones at home in their spare time, with more than ten thousand participants now signed up.
These diverse efforts seem to have paid off. Ukraine reportedly produced some 50,000 drones in December, and averaged more than 100,000 a month in January and February, well on the way to President Zelensky’s goal of a million drones in 2024.
Russia does things differently. While many small operations produce FPV drones including the Ghoul and the Joker, these are financed by donations without government assistance. In Russia production appears to be more centralized, and the Sudoplatov Group, a volunteer brigade turned drone-making startup now receives funding from the Russian Ministry of Defence to produce drones. In December, Sudoplatov claimed to be making 1,000 FPVs per day, a claim which was supported by imagery of their production process.
This is in line with other Russian drone efforts. They only have one official long-range drone, the Iranian-designed Shahed, now produced at a single factory in Alabuga, and one tactical attack drone, the Lancet made by Kalashnikov. By contrast, a variety of Ukrainian companies make at least 15 types of long-range drone and several types of Ukrolancet tactical drone.
Up until December, Russia appeared to be carrying out as many if not more FPV attacks than Ukraine though it was not clear who was ahead.
“Russian and Ukrainian commentators and bloggers note often that the adversary has more drones and can better operate them,” says Samuel Bendett, an expert Russian drones and adviser to both the CNA and CNAS.
Soviet-style centralization can bring economies of scale. But the Soviet system had some huge disadvantages too, and these may lie behind the dramatic fall off in the effectiveness of their FPV effort.
Ukrainian FPVs are taking an increasingly heavy toll, but despite increased production Russian FPVs ... [+]
Decline And Fail
This week OSINT analyst Daniele published a detailed report on FPV strikes by both sides up to the end of March.
“December 2023…marked a turning point for the usage of FPV drones in infantry operations. Since then, Ukrainian forces have continued to conduct more strikes than their Russian counterparts. The highest level of usage thus far for Russia has occurred in January 2024, with a steady decline observed thereafter,” states the report.
The report notes an increasing gap between the numbers after December, with Ukraine’s lead increasing month by month. Ukraine’s increased FPV production is producing visible results on the battlefield in terms of burning Russian vehicles and infantry casualties. Russia is not advancing at the same rate.
Russian site Lostarmor, which logs FPV strikes against Ukrainian forces, notes 605 successful attacks in December, 887 in February plummeting to just 227 in March.
It has been argued that the reason why more Russian vehicles are destroyed is because they are on the offensive and present more targets. But FPVs are now so abundant that they target individual footsoldiers and again Ukraine is far ahead.
OSINT analyst Andrew Perpetua, whose personal mission is to log and record every single attack notes: “In our stats, averaged over the past few months, we’ve counted an average of 45 drone attacks on Russian infantry per day, and 12 on Ukrainian per day.”
On average, each antipersonnel FPV attack causes on one casualty. And the numbers are rising.
Losing The Jamming War
Ukrainian soldier with a handheld Skysweeper drone jammer
Bendett suggests that Russian efforts may not be paying off due to the increased effectiveness of Ukrainian electronic countermeasures against FPVs. This certainly seems to be a major factor. For example the Ukrainian UNITED24 effort recent suppled 2,000 tactical jammers to the front, while Russian jammers have proven less effective.
How is it that Ukrainian jammers are stopping Russian FPVs while the same effort by the Russians is failing to protect them? The one message that I hear consistently from everyone involved in electronic warfare in Ukraine is that it is a cat-and-mouse game: jammers are constantly being updated and upgraded, and drone communications need to be updated every few months to stay ahead. Anything which cannot keep up – like the Skydio drones supplied by the U.S. – quickly becomes toast.
The Russian FPVs are not keeping up.
WarTranslated quotes a Russian journalist writing in March that Sudoplatov’s drones initially looked good but : “The drones turned out to be of poor quality, plus the enemy released separate electronic warfare for them … the drones began to turn over on approach.”
He notes that the two Abrams tanks destroyed by FPVs were hit by Ghoul and Piranha varieties from small suppliers, not by the far more numerous Sudoplatov VT
Such reports are rare because any criticism of the armed forces or giving ‘false information’ – that is, contradicting the official narrative — is punishable with a prison sentence under a 2022 law against ‘discrediting Russian armed forces.’
Another WarTranslated source, a military instructor, made similar points in a post last week, noting that in the Bakhmut region “Sudoplatov drones still operate at the same frequency specified by the manufacturer, and the enemy successfully puts them down.” (My emphasis)
He says the drones only work when there is a pause in the jamming, and the usual pattern is that the first drone gets through and those following it all fail. He also notes poor build quality, with a third of drones failing to take off and many of the rest not reaching the target.
“By saturating the active army with attack drones from the Sudoplatov project, one can throw dust in the eyes of the top military-political leadership, but in fact, the effectiveness of these drones dropped sharply last fall due to the enemy's fairly rapid adaptation to the fixed frequency set by the manufacturer, and continues to remain very low,” writes the instructor . (My emphasis).
Ukrainian jamming is bad enough, but Russian FPV operators have another problem: their own jammers.
Faced by constant attacks by Ukrainian FPVs, the Russian defenders are cautious about turning off their jamming defenses. This has unfortunate consequences for their drone operators. Newsweek quotes Svyatoslav Golikov, a prominent Russian commentator noting "a total lack of interaction between [Russian] FPV groups and electronic warfare units” on the Avdiivka front, with the Result that many FPVs are “suppressed by our own electronic warfare."
As Bendett notes, this situation is aggravated by “direct orders to front-line soldiers prohibiting them from reporting problems to those arriving from higher command bodies.” Bad news must be covered up.
All this starts to look like karma at work. A corrupt and autocratic system is the victim of its own corruption, as yet again Russian cash is siphoned off by a contractor without providing a weapon system that works, while potentially more capable competitors who did not make the right friends are starved of funds.
Meanwhile Ukraine has its own issues with corruption in military procurement, but seems far more efficient at rooting it out. In Ukraine a thriving culture of free-enterprise innovation has produced a diverse drone ecosystem with healthy competition. This difference is likely why they are moving steadily ahead in the small drone arms race.
FPVs will not win the war on their own. But Ukraine can build FPVs faster than Russia can build vehicles and they are steadily eating away at Russian forces. As their numbers rise to millions, that effect will only increase. A million drones, averaging one casualty per FPV, will surely have an effect.
