Botch in Russia gives Ukraine victory in drone war

On paper, Russia and Ukraine produce more than 100,000 of the most important first-person-view drones every month. These tiny, inexpensive drones – each weighs just a few pounds and costs about $500 – can carry nearly their own weight in explosives over a distance of several miles, all under the control of operators wearing virtual reality headsets and watching what the drones see with their forward-facing cameras.

An FPV attack can maim or kill an unprotected infantryman, or damage—or even destroy—an armored vehicle. When Ukrainian brigades were starved for artillery ammunition this spring—a direct result of pro-Russian Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress blocking further aid to Ukraine between October and April—Ukrainian-made FPV drones helped fill the firepower gap and prevent major Russian gains.

According to analysts counting losses on the Ukrainian battlefield, the number of Ukrainian FPV attacks exceeds the number of confirmed Russian attacks by at least three times, if not six times – and this despite the fact that Ukrainian workshops and Russian factories produce about the same number of drones.

Build quality is the most likely reason. In Ukraine, FPV drones come from two main sources: centralized domestic or foreign production financed with state funds, as well as the joint effort of many small Ukrainian workshops, which often receive their funding from private and nonprofit donors. Ukrainian UAV development and production is diverse, uneven, and responsive to demand signals.

In Russia, on the other hand, the government has limited the production of FPV drones to a few large state-owned companies where nepotism reigns, inviting corruption and fraud. And slows down innovation.

The consequences for Russian drone operators on the front lines, according to Samuel Bendett, a drone expert at the Virginia-based think tank CNA, are “generally poor quality” and “significant technical problems, such as FPVs not being able to get airborne right out of the box on the front lines.” Sure, the Russians may build just as many drones as the Ukrainians, but how many Russian UAVs actually work?

When it comes to countering drones, the quality differences may be even greater—especially when it comes to jammers designed to block signals between drones and their operators. As the war in Ukraine entered its third year and Ukrainian FPV production ramped up, Russian regiments responded by outfitting vehicles and infantry with jammers, and lots of them.

But many of the Russian jammers simply don’t work – and for the same reasons, Russian drones often don’t work either. “Absolutely poor build quality,” admitted one Russian observer.

In early April, a Ukrainian brigade carried out a daring three-night raid to steal a disabled Russian tank that appeared to be equipped with a new multi-frequency jamming system – only to find that the jammer was ineffective. “It was a makeshift operation,” said one of the Ukrainian soldiers who retrieved the Russian tank.

The individual jammers and their antennas may have been factory standard, but the overall arrangement – ​​several radio transmitters tied together on a wooden transport pallet – was “homemade” and probably not very effective.

For the Russians, it was not an isolated case. A multi-frequency jammer promoted by at least one popular Russian social media channel is worse than useless, according to a recent report by a Russian blogger. The blogger identified a “huge list of technical errors” and also criticized the “weight and size of the jammer (and) the carrying handle, which breaks.”

These technical errors include mismatched and misaligned antennas and an improperly installed cooling fan – completely unsuited to dealing with the tremendous heat generated by a jammer. Not only does the $2,400 jammer not work as promised, it could also instill false confidence in frontline troops. “It’s frightening to think how many people died in false hopes” when they were attacked by swarms of Ukrainian drones, the blogger wrote.

In the Ukrainian drone race, the Ukrainians are clearly ahead. Not because they build more drones and jammers, but because the Russians’ drones and jammers are poorly made.