How Ukraine and Russia are playing out a deadly cat and mouse drone war from underground bunkers
Ramzan darts about his garage workshop with gleeful enthusiasm, showing off a small blue mortar bomb from “Holland or Poland”, a whopping thin tailed bulging headed shell from America, Ukrainian bespoke high-explosive packed grenades and even an anti-tank mine – all for dropping on the heads of Russians.
A former infantry soldier, he’s been at war for three years and says he misses the thrill of fighting up close, but, as the armourer for a four-man drone team flying an unmanned bomber in the National Guard drone unit Typhoon: “This is the best way to kill Russians.”
In a war of constant front line improvisation, workshops like Ramzan’s garage – where he makes his own detonators and devises new types of incendiary bombs – have taken on the value of billion pound industrial-military research centres in Nato countries.
Drone war was pioneered by self-funded Ukrainian soldiers adapting civilian toys to mortal effect. Kyiv now has the capacity to produce drones by the million, but on the front lines the model remains a killer startup.
His crew, Team Grey, is led by an older former infantry officer whom we are not naming, who has been at war for 10 years and has family living under Russian occupation in the Donbas. He is waiting in a bunker not far away but within range of the enemy in Kamyanske, south of Zaporizhzhia.
Russia’s army has tried to punch through Ukrainian lines here over the last three weeks. They have used armoured attacks but been stalled by Ukrainian drones, and infantry – they are taking and losing ground at a staggering and bloody cost.
Ramzan’s pick-up is loaded with charged briefcase-sized drone batteries and boxes of bombs as he sets off to join his crew.
The last few miles are driven along potholed roads and dirt tracks at eye-screwing speed in darkness illuminated only by sidelights. Ramzan would rather die in a cash crash than a Russian drone strike and this is the hunting ground of the (FPV) First Person View Kremlin drone pilots.
Working under red torchlight, the team unload the car which is tucked under camouflaged netting and head into a strip of woodland. Ukrainian artillery fire sporadic shells south – they ignore the outgoing blast, and mutter annoyance. Artillery attracts Russian drones.
“Noisy neighbours,” someone says in the pause that follows.
In near silence, a tarpaulin is torn off the Typhoon and it’s checked for the night’s operations. They have five missions with targets assigned by Ukraine’s intelligence system. They also have to react to live reports of Russian troop movements.
Ramzan tucks some bombs under a bush, ready to arm the quad copter: a six feet square box of carbon fibre Meccano struts with a wig of aerials.
It is flown remotely from a bunker dug into the earth by hand, roofed with dirt and tree trunks, that is about eight foot square. Half the space is taken up with a computer showing a live feed from the Typhoon that Avi, the pilot, will use to fly.
Another computer shows a multiscreen feed from drones flying the battlefield. Chillingly, some of these are Russian hunter-killer FPVs seeking targets – like the Grey crew’s bunker.
