Ukrainian drone operator
“When a tank appears it’s like dropping a plate of food
in front of a table of hungry drone operators”
Putin's unjustifiable war against the Ukraine has taken what appears to be a very dark turn. The NYT reports (not paywalled) that about 70% of injuries and deaths are inflicted by drones:
Left: remote controlled machine gun drone kills on the ground
Right: drone kills from the air by dropping molten metal on people
When a mortar round exploded on top of their American-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, the Ukrainian soldiers inside were shaken but not terribly worried, having been hardened by artillery shelling over three years of war.
But then the small drones started to swarm.
They targeted the weakest points of the armored Bradley with a deadly precision that mortar fire doesn’t possess. One of the explosive drones struck the hatch right above where the commander was sitting.
“It tore my arm off,” recounted Jr. Sgt. Taras, the 31-year-old commander who, like others, used his first name in accordance with Ukrainian military protocols.
Scrambling for a tourniquet, Sergeant Taras saw that the team’s driver had also been hit, his eye blasted from its socket.
The two soldiers survived. But the attack showed how an ever-evolving constellation of drones — largely off-the-shelf technologies that are being turned into killing machines at breakneck speed — made the third year of war in Ukraine deadlier than the first two years combined, according to Western estimates.
Dropping molten metal on Russian troops
The article points out that war has killed and wounded more than a million soldiers, according to current estimates. Drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined. Nineteen of the 31 sophisticated Abrams tanks that the United States sent to Ukraine in 2023 have been destroyed, disabled or captured. Many of those were disabled by drones. Nearly all of the others have been taken off the front lines because they are big sitting ducks for drone swarms.
Ukrainian FPV drone operator
Open ground has turned into a killing zone for both Ukrainian and Russian troops. Soldiers have only speed for protection. They use quadbikes and motorcycles to outrun the reaction time of FPV (First Person View) drone operators. It is often impossible to move, but staying in one place is also dangerous. Fortified trench systems are obvious targets. Armored vehicles have been virtually neutralized. Drones that cost a couple of hundred dollars to make and arm can destroy vehicles and weapons costing tens of millions.
Drones are now being deployed that cannot be radio jammed. They operate by trailing a thin fiber optic cable that is directly connected to the drone operator's screens.
Center & left: fiber optic lines left by drones
Right: Russian drone spinning out fiber cable
Ukrainian soldiers assembling FPV drones
in a destroyed house near the front lines
Ukrainian drone destroys a tank
It is hard to imagine the unwarranted hell the Ukrainian people are suffering. And it is all because of Putin's monstrous ego. For djt and MAGA to back away and leave the Ukraine to Putin's tender mercies is literally evil, a ghastly moral stain and a deep betrayal of democracy and the American people.
