Ukraine and Russia Escalate Long-Range Drone War as Both Sides Seek Air Supremacy

The FP-2 is a miniature monoplane with a 6-metre wingspan and more than 100kg of explosive. The Guardian described a night launch by Ukraine’s 413 Raid drone regiment, in which the drone’s main piston engine sounded like a scooter’s buzz while its launch booster produced a jet sound. The craft were lined up for an attack mission into occupied Luhansk, over 200 miles away.

Raid is a specialist drone unit created two years ago and has been operating Ukrainian-designed and built FP-2 attack drones since last autumn, according to Skipper, a former corporate IT worker with a master’s in computer science who is now one of its commanders. He said that if only one crew could run two missions a week when they started, today the unit can do “10 times more, or even more.” Asked whether long-distance wars are easier to fight because nobody has to be killed visibly, Skipper cautioned there is “a flipside.” “They can do it as well,” he said, adding: “Maybe you don’t see the enemy with your own eyes, but still it’s a very dangerous game.”

The FP-2 was first publicly acknowledged by Ukraine last September. It is designed to attack hardened targets at mid-range and to disrupt Russian logistics to the frontline. The Guardian reported that the success of Raid and others engaged in mid-strike bombing has helped grind the pace of the invaders’ advance to a near halt. Russia gained a modest 90 square kilometres of Ukraine in August, compared with 505 sq km a year earlier, and western officials estimate it is losing 6,000 more soldiers a month than it can recruit.

In Ukraine’s sprawling military, specialist drone units of the Unmanned System Forces, including Raid regiment, work and overlap with army units closer to the frontline and special forces. A major attack, such as the attack that disabled the Moscow refinery about 300 miles from the border on Sept. 20, involves several working at once. A long-range attack could involve launching up to 300 drones, though the target is to be able to launch 1,000 a night, in what soldiers describe as an “orchestra,” where cheap drones identify an air corridor towards the final target.

The long-range FP-1, sister to the FP-2, costs $75,000 and has been used to repeatedly attack warehouses, refineries and other military-economic sites at a depth of 1,800 miles inside Russia, causing the country’s crude oil production to fall by 7.7% in a year, according to figures from the International Energy Agency, and interest rates to remain at 14%. Sidharth Kaushal of the Royal United Services Institute said: “Both sides are getting better at translating deep strikes into economic effects.”

Mission planning is rarely shown, but a short-range drone unit operating on the eastern Donetsk front—Unit 17, Special Operations Centre—showed The Guardian its war work from a dacha. Znakhar, 33, a software coder before the full Russian invasion, is one of a squad of English-speaking men in their early 30s. During the day, he clicks on fresh, static targets—artillery and electronic jamming systems—that have been added to a common system from western satellites or Ukrainian reconnaissance drones, studying their pictures for extra information.

At night, the crew use a $25,000 Sych drone, which looks like a large model aeroplane. If the rain holds off, they can fly two to six bombing runs, dozens of miles behind enemy lines. Znakhar draws up an initial flight path in seconds with a few clicks on a map, then adjusts the route to avoid population centres, high ground and known interceptor drone launch sites. Asked what has changed recently, he said: “More drones. Russian drones.”

Colleagues such as Ananas, 30, head out at night, taking more precautions than they did when the unit started drone work two years ago, preparing launches underground where once they could work in a field.