Cheap drones rigged with explosive devices have become extremely prominent and have emerged as the leading anti-tank weapon for the Ukrainian military in Russia's war against it.
A Ukrainian officer told The Washington Post in a report published on Wednesday that first-person-view (FPV) drones, which are operated remotely with the use of a controller and headset, "have become the main anti-tank weapon" against Russian forces, compared to alternatives like anti-tank missiles.
The inexpensive homemade explosive-laden one-way attack drones have been destroying Russia's more advanced T-90M tanks, worth millions of dollars, and other armored vehicles on the battlefield, Senior Lt. Yuri Filatov, drone systems chief commander for Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, told the Post.
In a single day, Filatov recalled, Ukrainian forces used the exploding drones to wreck four Russian tanks, all while keeping Ukrainian troops a safe distance from the destruction.
"As we use more drones," the officer told The Washington Post, "we are losing fewer people."
In recent months, these low-budget attack drones, which cost between $400 and $500, have wreaked havoc on the battlefields in Ukraine. They're being used by both the Ukrainians and the Russians.
"It's a revolution in terms of placing this precision guided capacity in the hands of regular people for a tiny fraction of the cost of the destroyed target," drone expert Samuel Bendett of the Center for Naval Analyses told the Post.
"We're seeing FPV drones strike a very precise spot, which before was really the domain of very expensive, high precision guided weapons. And now it's a $400 drone piloted by a teenager," he added.
The expert explained that the use of the unmanned aerial vehicles could have a "tremendous psychological effect" on would-be targets. "You almost never know where an FPV drone is coming from," said Bendett.
A deputy company commander in Ukraine's 80th Separate Assault Brigade told the Post that Russian troops use FPV drones the same way as Ukrainian soldiers but noted that it appears Moscow has more equipment.
"It's like a chess game," said the commander who goes by the call sign Swift. "They're winning it. Just in terms of quantity." While that may be the case, experts previously told Insider Ukraine has demonstrated better top-level support for the production of these systems than Russia.
Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, for example, has said that the country is dedicated to building up a cutting-edge "army of drones," and that project has seen the introduction of thousands of unmanned platforms into combat.
The Associated Press recently reported Ukraine has already trained more than 10,000 new drone pilots this year.
