'A kill range of 20km' The fibre optic drones spreading fear on the frontline of Ukraine war

The fibre optic drones spreading fear on the frontline of Ukraine war

- Dan Sabbagh

On the battlefields of Ukraine, new sights emerge. Threadlike filaments of wire, extended across open fields. Netting rigged up between trees along key supply roads. Both are responses to a hard-to-detect weapon that is able to sneak into spaces previously thought safe. It is hi-tech and low-tech all at once.

At a secret workshop in Ukraine's north-east, where about 20 people assemble hundreds of FPV (first person view) drones, there is a new design. Under the frame of the familiar quadcopter is a cylinder, the size of a forearm. Coiled up inside is fibre optic cable, 6 miles or even 12 miles long, to create a wired kamikaze drone.

Capt Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of a specialist drone unit, the Achilles regiment, said fibre optic drones were an experimental response to battlefield jamming and rapidly took off late last year. With no radio connection, they cannot be jammed, are difficult to detect and are able to fly in ways that conventional FPV drones cannot.

"If pilots are experienced, they can fly these drones very low and between the trees in a forest or tree line. If you are flying with a regular drone, the trees block the signal unless you have a re-transmitter close," he said.

Where tree-lined supply roads were thought safer, fibre optic drones have been able to get through. A video from a Russian military Telegram channel from last month demonstrates their ominous capability. A fibre optic drone, the nose of the yellow cylinder housing the coil clearly visible, flies with precision a few centimetres from the ground, to strike a Ukrainian howitzer concealed in a barn.