When Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, the famed commander of Ukraine’s elite Birds of Magyar drone unit, accepted a big promotion and took command of the entire Unmanned Systems Forces, the Ukrainian military’s separate drone branch, he immediately got to work reforming Ukrainian drone groups.
And now we know why. Brovdi just declared war on Russia’s own drone groups. Brovdi “has made drone operators his main target,” explained Roy, a Canadian electronic warfare and drone expert.
Brovdi has even gamified the mission. A new app-based system allows Ukrainian drone teams to upload videos confirming their successful strikes. Hits on Russian troops and equipment earn the teams points they can trade in for new equipment.
The new targeting priority and the game—it’s all the right call for the Ukrainians. Struggling to match the quality and quantity of Ukraine’s wireless first-person-view drones and radio jammers for grounding Russia’s wireless FPV drones, the Kremlin has increasingly shifted to fiber-optic FPVs.
Sending and receiving signals via kilometers-long optical fibers that are a fraction of a millimeter thick, fiber-optic FPVs are unjammable. The only way to directly defeat them is to shoot them down, dodge them, absorb their blows, hide from them or cut their fibers.
But there are indirect ways to defeat fiber-optic FPVs. Ukraine’s long-range attack drones have been bombarding the factories, deep inside Russia, that produce optical fiber and other FPV drone components. Closer to the front, short-range Ukrainian drones can target Russian FPV operators in their dugouts just a few kilometers from the line of contact.
That’s Brovdi’s plan—and the Russians don’t like it. “Bad news from the front,” one Russian blogger intoned. “After the appointment of ‘Magyar’ as commander of the unmanned systems of the armed forces of Ukraine, the hunt for our bird houses began.”
“From my own experience,” the blogger noted, “I can say that now the pressure on logistics has been eased and all efforts have been thrown into identifying and destroying our UAVs.”
Fiber-optic drones in the crosshairs
Ukrainian drone teams will “pay special attention to fiber-optics,” the blogger warned. A few months ago, one enterprising Ukrainian drone team discovered it could track Russian fiber-optic FPV teams by scanning for castoff optical fibers, stretched across the battlefield from past FPV strikes and leading back to the operators’ positions—assuming, of course, the operators hadn’t moved.
Moving may now be a matter of life and death for Russian FPV teams. “We need to strengthen camouflage and change positions more often,” the blogger advised.
But a second Russian blogger warned that moving too often can expose drone teams to Ukrainian surveillance. “Less movement—longer life,” they wrote.
Decoy positions could help Russian drone teams avoid the deadly attention of Ukrainian drones. “Start using a large number of false antennas,” the second Russian blogger advised.
And in the real drone positions, the crews—operators who fly the drones and the engineers who maintain them—should spread out. “Separate the points with your engineers,” the second blogger recommended. “Operators sit separately and engineers sit separately.”
Regardless of any preventative measures they take, Russian drone teams should expect an uptick in aerial attacks on their positions. “The enemy understands the threat, so they use their entire arsenal to strike,” the second Russian blogger observed.
The first blogger wrote that more attacks by Ukraine’s best High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems are possible. “When they calculate [the positions of drone] nests, they use all means of suppression. They do not skimp—and send HIMARS.”
The best defense for Russia’s drone crews might be to return the increased attention—and escalate their own surveillance of, and attacks on, Ukraine’s drone crews. “It is necessary to intensify work on the enemy’s birdhouses,” the second blogger advised.
