Unmanned drones are dropping wires everywhere, forcing Ukrainian forces to move cautiously

• Russia and Ukraine increasingly use small drones controlled by fiber optic cables.

• These drones spread their fiber-optic cables across the battlefield.

• A Ukrainian special operator said this forced soldiers to move cautiously.

Small unwieldy drones controlled by fiber-optic cables have become so integral to Russian and Ukrainian combat operations that they are leaving cabling trails everywhere, turning battlefield areas into a tangled web.

As a counter to widespread electronic warfare, fiber-optic drones are becoming increasingly prevalent on both sides. And with wide wires spread across the battlefield, soldiers are moving very cautiously.

“You see little webs, and you don’t know — is it from a fiber-optic drone? Or is it part of a booby trap,” Khajak, a Ukrainian special operator who can be identified only by his call sign (“Predator” in Ukrainian) for security reasons, told Business Insider. Mines and traps were also major threats in this battle.

At the start of the war, first-person-view (FPV) drones — small quadcopter-style drones that Russia and Ukraine often carry explosive warheads — relied on radio-frequency connections. However, both sides soon discovered how to use signal jamming to stop them.

In response, Russia and Ukraine began developing fiber-optic FPV drones that were attached to their pilots using spools of long, thin cables. The cables secured a stable link and made the quadcopters resistant to conventional electronic warfare tactics.

Soldiers have the best chance of intercepting fiber-optic drones by shooting them out of the sky, but that requires precision, quick reaction time, and a lot of luck.

The fiber-optic cables that provide these drones with their greatest advantage are also their greatest risk, as they become entangled in the environment and can stop flight abruptly. And even if they don’t get tangled, the cable is still strewn across the battlefield after use.

Khajak, a soldier with the Ukrainian special operations unit, the 4th Ranger Regiment, modeled after its Ukrainian army counterparts, said it’s common to see fiber-optic cables everywhere because these drones are in use, and the cables frequently get stuck in trees and fields.

The 4th Ranger Regiment shared combat footage earlier this month of Khajak and two other operators and their driver narrowly avoiding a Russian fiber-optic drone strike while speeding back to base after a front-line mission.

Footage shows fiber optic cables strewn across the road and even at Khazak’s gun.

“It was everywhere,” he recalled, speaking of the September incident, where a driver skillfully swerved out of the way of a Russian drone, which exploded on the side of the road.

Other video footage taken from the battlefield shows how fiber-optic cables crisscross like spider webs, sometimes only in direct sunlight or when viewed from a certain angle.

Khazak said the cables are especially troublesome during night missions when special operators can’t use much light. He described them as “strategic issues”.

Soldiers can’t immediately tell if it’s a harmless fiber-optic cable or something more dangerous, like a booby trap. This forces them to think carefully about whether to call in an engineer, destroy the web with explosives, stop, or move on.

This can certainly slow down the mission, Khajak said, and could become a major concern if special operators close to the front lines or if they are operating covertly in Russian-controlled territory.

Ukraine and Russia have expanded production of fiber-optic drones over the past year, and both sides are racing to develop variants that can fly farther into the front lines.

For example, Russia has begun deploying fiber-optic drones with a 50-kilometer (31-mile) range, which exceeds the distance that the best-known variants can travel. Cable length typically limits their range to between 10 and 25 kilometers (about 6 and 15 miles).

In Ukraine, fiber-optic drones have become such a threat to critical supply routes that soldiers have covered roads with netting to protect vehicles from attack, though this does not always guarantee their safety.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defense industry is developing new countermeasures to defend against these drones. The findings have also caught the attention of the NATO leadership, which is using lessons from the war to inform its own military planning.

Read the original article on Business Insider