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LUHANSK REGION, Ukraine — Flying above enemy lines, a Ukrainian reconnaissance drone sends a clear image back to soldiers hiding in a basement a few miles away: A Russian armored vehicle is idling along a key logistics route, looking like easy prey in the artillery-scarred green landscape.
Then, in a flash, the image disappears, and the drone operator's screen is replaced by a jumble of black and white pixels.
"Snow," says a calm commander known by the battlefield name Giocondo, who allowed the Associated Press to follow him and his unit of drone pilots on condition of anonymity to protect their identities. High-tech warfare cuts two ways, and the Russians use electronic beams to disable the drone's signals.
Seconds later, the drone pilot switches to a frequency the Russians cannot easily exploit. The bird's-eye image of the armored vehicle reappears, and a second drone — this one laden with explosives — is quickly launched. It zips toward the target.
Nineteen months into the Russian invasion, and as a grueling counteroffensive grinds on, the Ukrainian government wants to spend more than $1 billion to upgrade its drone-fighting capabilities. Whether used for reconnaissance, dropping bombs or self-exploding on impact, drones save money, and soldiers' lives. They are also more precise than traditional artillery — which is in short supply — and can deliver outsized impacts, such as real-time mapping of the battlefield, destroying tanks and ships, and bringing Russian advances to a halt.
The advantages of drones can be fleeting, however. The Russian army, which relies on Iranian expertise for its own horde of deadly drones, quickly catches up each time Giocondo's unit gains an edge. Success, he says, lies in constant battlefield iteration and innovation.
Ukraine's minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, says the government is committed to building a state-of-the-art "army of drones" and that its value to the war effort will be evident by the end of this year. The country has already trained more than 10,000 new drone pilots this year.
"A new stage of the war will soon begin," Fedorov promises.
Giocondo's unit operates near the occupied town of Svatove, in northeastern Ukraine. It has spent months modifying drones to enable them to fly deeper behind enemy lines and to better evade Russian detection and sabotage.
His drone pilots are all volunteers, and many of them had no military experience prior to Russia's invasion.
Hiding in a barn house haloed in morning light, a pilot who goes by the battlefield name Bakeneko pops on a head-mounted display and is instantly transported, soaring above verdant fields bustling with Russian combat vehicles and infantrymen. He is flying a drone loaded with explosives toward a Soviet-made tank spotted moments earlier by a reconnaissance drone.
Bakeneko listens in one ear to the German heavy metal band Powerful, explaining that he "can't fly in silence."
A few feet away, another soldier — a sales manager before the war — prepares exploding bombs. Using plastic flex cuffs and duct tape, he secures artillery shells and bulky batteries, turning an inexpensive commercial drone into a killing machine.
Combing through the vast landscape to find a target takes hours. Russian troops have gotten better at hiding and camouflaging themselves in the foliage.
When Bakeneko's target is within view, he gives the remote control a jolt, and the drone plunges. His headset shows the bucolic countryside rushing at him, and then it goes blank.
"Super, we got it," says Giocondo, who is watching on a separate screen, which shows a plume of smoke coming from the tank.
The acceleration of short-range drone warfare by units like Giocondo's is in direct response to the trouble Ukrainian forces experienced this summer using conventional weapons to try to punch through Russia's fortified defenses. The counteroffensive that began in June has depleted money, artillery and soldiers — and hasn't yielded as much momentum as Ukraine had hoped for.
Faced with these challenges, the leader of an elite drone squad called the Asgard Group, which oversees Giocondo's unit, sensed an opportunity. The leader, a wealthy former businessman who goes by the name Pharmacist on the battlefield, directed his soldiers to begin targeting Russia's large and expensive weaponry with small and inexpensive drones.
The logic was simple, Pharmacist says: Exploding drones cost roughly $400 to make, while a conventional projectile can cost nearly 10 times as much. Even if it requires multiple drones to take out a tank — and sometimes it does — it is still worth it.
With his entrepreneurial spirit, Pharmacist helped turn a ragtag group of engineers, corporate managers and filmmakers into an elite fighting force. He estimates that his 12-man team, assembled with just $700,000, has destroyed $80 million worth of enemy equipment.
The Russian army — which faces its own economic and military challenges as the war in Ukraine drags on — is also looking to accelerate the use of drones.
"The enemy learns very quickly," said Pharmacist.
The Ukrainian government has taken notice of the grassroots innovation carried out by people like Giocondo and the Pharmacist; now it wants to replicate those efforts with an infusion of cash.
The draft budget for 2024 includes an extra $1.29 billion in defense spending earmarked for drone purchases.
Contributing: Susie Blann
