Russia is pouring more and more resources into deploying uncrewed vehicles in Ukraine, but Kyiv has no intention of conceding its long-running lead in the bitter drone war, which is fast approaching the 2-year mark.
Ukraine is closely monitoring Russia’s advances in drone development and the significant resources it is dedicating to unmanned vehicles, according to Mykhailo Fedorov, Kyiv’s minister of digital transformation, who is leading the drone efforts against Moscow, in an interview with Newsweek.
Kyiv has a multi-pronged approach to combat this. It is acquiring tens of thousands of first-person-view (FPV) drones, developing interceptor drones, expanding its protection against Russian loitering munitions, and increasing domestic UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) production.
“The front line situation depends on drones,” Fedorov said. “This is a 24/7 war.”
To finance its grand drone plans, Kyiv has organized fundraising campaigns, including the two “Operation Unity” bids launched by the United24 platform, the Ukraine-based Come Back Alive Foundation, and Monobank. The initial fundraiser collected around $6.3 million in August to buy 10,000 first-person-view attack drones, many of which are already on the front lines.
A second round of fundraising for Operation Unity earlier this month took just three days to raise enough money for 5,000 more FPV drones. An estimated 224,059 donors from Ukraine and 59 other countries contributed to the drive “for a New Year’s fireworks show for Ukraine’s enemies,” United24 said.
Ukrainian soldiers learn to fly drones at night using thermal vision on May 11, 2023, in the western Lviv region. “The front line situation depends on drones,” Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, told Newsweek, adding: “This is a 24/7 war.”
The funds will buy 3,000 FPV drones kitted out with thermal cameras, plus 2,000 more with daytime cameras, with a range up to 22 kilometers, or just over 13 miles. An initial batch of 3,000 drones will arrive in Ukraine shortly after the new year, with a second batch following in February 2024.
Kyiv has also launched a separate fundraiser to shield the country’s cities and infrastructure from Russia’s notorious Shahed kamikaze drones.
All of this is being done with the awareness that Russia is attempting to catch up with Ukraine’s initial dominance with UAVs.
Moscow has certain drone types which Ukraine doesn’t have yet, Fedorov told Newsweek, adding, “They have more money” to funnel into development and production of high numbers of drones.
“It’s hard to compete with Russia on quantity,” he added, although Ukraine picks apart what is going well—and not so well—with the drone war “on a daily basis.” Much depends on how quickly Kyiv can implement design changes to its battlefield drones, he said.
Russia has “significantly ramped up” its production of FPV drones, like those bought by Ukraine through its fundraisers, Samuel Bendett of the Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S.
