I fought in Ukraine and here's why FPV drones kind of suck

FPV drones for combat are a hot flash in the pan. They have had a major effect for now, but naturally as these countermeasures evolve, so weakens their effect.

I keep telling people that the terrain and the strategies that Russians use is the primary reason for the effectiveness. Mortars and artillery already handle the same requirements as the author says. The reason they are effective in 2024-25 is that the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running over vast fields / unarmoed vehicles driving over known routes is the only way Russians make progress. For a moving target they are great, but multiple moving targets would get shredded by competent artillery anyway.

Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.

By far the best use of drones still is as battlefield recon/fire correction to adjust existing artillery/mortar capabilities.

Source: I’m one such drone hobbyist and I’ve watched way too much footage from the front. None of what i’m writing is in absolute terms. I just don’t see the same way as commenters in the public who think they are a checkmate for any combat situation. The incompetence of the Russian forces caught everyone by surprise, but they have learned. My country’s border with Russia is heavily forested and not as flat as Russia. The drones are not able to go through the canopy. Infrared recon is a way better choice than FPV suicide drones.

> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.

Citation needed.

> I’ve watched way too much footage from the front.

Did you see the videos of a drone dropping a shitload of thermite on a forest canopy? [0]

> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.

Most nations have cellular networks that penetrate buildings and forests just fine. In fact, Ukraine used the Russian cellular network for their recent attack deep behind enemy lines.

I'm not saying this will always be possible, but it's not hard to see that line of sight communication is not the end of the line for military drone control. There are many routes for providing an ad hoc line of communication if you don't just use consumer-level tech.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00-ngEj5Q9k

Travel the world or check out your favorite map software, snd look at current hot conflicts and recent ones in the past. You have Iraq and Ukraine/Russia which are relatively flat, then you have Afghanistan or Iran on the opposite side of the spectrum. Even a flat country can have forests too thick for flying wirelessly or with fiber optics.

Did you miss the part about signals jamming in the article? The reason the attack on airfields worked is precisely because they operate inland and not on the frontline. Cellular networks not only can be jammed but towers are a priority target. That’s why Starlink is/was so crucial. Even GPS is jammed so independent flight can be impossible with cheap components.

The thermite drones do attack forested areas on the farmlands, but the forests I talk about are tens or hundreds of kilometers wide. You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.

Your linked video is interesting, but I fail to see how this at all differentiates/promotes drone usage versus artillery, indirect fire.

Your video shows something that an artillery corps could accomplish just as easily and not at all be prone to EW.

Granted, moving indirect fire is probably more expensive than a single fpv drone dropping a thermite bomb, but at scale indirect fire is far cheaper, more effective, and critically not prone to EW.

> Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx.

The drones now are using fibre optic cables with the reel mounted on the drone. Having the reel on the drone avoids snagging issues and the fibre itself avoids EW jamming and line of sight issues.

All of the good footage is in /r/CombatFootage

(for anyone curious)

Think of the fpv drone like a smol guided TOW missile at extremely low cost.

The artillery, while destructive, is not going to be nearly as accurate. If you want artillery to hit something on the move accurately you want something like a laser adjusted Excalibur round.

The drone is actually extremely efficient.

Since fiber optics being used signal jamming is stopping to be a thing. You can fly with a drone into basement and have 4k video.

I watched the video of one navigating a series of nets to weave its way inside and into the open hatch of a tank. It’s ridiculously impressive.

I watched a video of one being destroyed by cutting the trailing fiber optic cable with a pair of scissors. Also impressive.

I saw some fascinating videos explaining that the terrain caused the war in first place.

The huge border between Russia and Ukraine is completely flat grassland. This means that to Russia, Ukraine joining NATO is an unacceptable risk because that border is impossible to defend against NATO tank invasion, and the flatness go all the way to Moscow.

A lot of people on internet keep poking fun at Russia inadequate tanks as "proof" Russia is stupid for invading with such crappy gear. Russia is very well aware of this, and is why they invaded in first place, they know of Ukraine joins NATO any military exchange with NATO (like what happened between Iran and Israel) would need to immediately become nuclear because their existing army can't defend the huge open flat terrain against NATO equipment.

Yes, def. possible. But right now in UA's regions where drones are used the most, there are so many used fiber-optic cables laying on the fields, that you have basically zero chance to cut them all, because you would be cutting already discarded ones.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wcMZWRJL_m4

Laser-guided artillery rounds have been around a while. The Soviets were using laser-guided 240mm heavy mortar rounds in Afghanistan.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1351804050035499...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M712_Copperhead

Provided that you catch it in time ... the window for doing that is short (several minutes) and you also likely need to expose yourself to potential other drones patroling in your proximity.

"Most nations don’t have flat open fields where signals can reach far away drones unimpeded by line of sight for tx/rx."

This is true, but flat open fields are precisely the places where major mechanized battles usually took place. For the very reason that manoeuvering other equipment in complicated terrain is hard.

Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)

The big thing that FPV drones have going for them is that they're ludicrously cheap and easily constructed from relatively basic parts by moderately skilled people.

It's literally cheaper to strap a grenade to an FPV drone and fly it into a tank hatch than it is to fire a single non-precision artillery round, let alone tens or hundreds of them.

Plus, you can deploy your drones remotely from the top of a trunk deep behind enemy lines and fly them into irreplaceable strategic aviation assets with a shot exchange factor better than 1000x.

Drone 1 (or any other means) destroys the canopy. Drones 2-10 are no longer hindered by said canopy and deliver their payload with extreme and dynamic precision.

Remember that the argument was basically that drones can do nothing useful in (heavily) forested terrain. They can with a little bit of creativity.

I would say that the events of Russo-Ukrainian war have shown that even a lot of tanks (and NATO does not have anywhere near as many as Russia did, the former Soviet stockpile was absolutely massive) aren't the crushing force that they used to be in Manstein's and Guderian's time. Of course Putin is a bit old and may think in old patterns...

On the other hand, I believe Russia made itself very vulnerable by letting its cosmic sector drown in corruption. Nowadays they have fallen so behind the US in launch capabilities that it isn't even funny. Try hiding anything from the fleet of satellites that the US has, or can have if it wishes to.

Starlink may be the single most dangerous technologic development of the 21st century to Russia.

Artillery carries more explosive and is good for destroying buildings and fortifications though.

Isn't the drip-drip-drip of single soldiers running around the response to artillery in the first place? Any concentration of manpower attracts artillery and if it's significant, HIMARS gets called in. Naturally, the response is to disperse men and make artillery less effective. The response to that is FPVs chasing down the individuals instead. They're a counter to a counter and can't be judged in isolation.

I wonder what the tech gap is to using circular polarized light from the sun as a point of reference for dead reckoning. If Bees use it why not camera systems?

I was one of the first non special operations troops to use a modern infantry-company sized drone (small, low cost) to guide conventional and guided artillery in 2008-9 for the US.

Laser guided Excalibur rounds didn't come out until much later, same for the laser guided jdams. And the cost of those is much higher, plus logistical an deployment cost, than a FPV drone.

Edit: I also don't know anybody that ever fired a copperhead round in anger. That was very much a product of 80s and 90s doctrine to counter Russian armor.

> Did you miss the part about signals jamming in the article?

"Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components)."

The currently used FPV drones use consumer level ass communication methods. Do you also think that current military-grade communication methods can be easily jammed on the battlefield?

Using the consumer level stuff as a reference point and thinking it is somehow SOTA is not going to lead to good conclusions.

> Cellular networks not only can be jammed but towers are a priority target.

The point was that there are plenty of radio signals that work fine and with high bandwidth in the 'problematic' terrain types you mentioned. Having said that, you can't rely on the cellular towers of the enemies of course. You need relay drones to create your own ad hoc cellular network.

> You could just fire an artillery round and be done with it.

At what coordinate? The whole point of FPV drones is that the operator can fly close to the target area and only then decide what the best place to strike is. A shell that is 20m off target is just a waste.

The point of destroying the canopy is reducing the attenuation of the signal for other drones to go in and be able to be precise.

Did you not read the article? One of his major points is that a mortar is significantly cheaper and faster.

there are now laser/gps guided mortars. probably still more expensive than drone but easier to deploy

3 days after russian invasion or main russian news agency was auto-published article that was supposed to be a victory lap, and promptly removed. it was very briefly mentioned only in few western publications and not many people who speak russian know about it

it gives some insights about reasons for russian invasion. this is english translation . not sure how accurate (don't feel like checking few pages of text), but close enough

https://www.aalep.eu/advent-russia-and-new-world

origin in russian. you can right-click translate it https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...

Well if they didn’t bother their neighbors they wouldn’t have to worry about NATO. Seems like a self imposed wound there.

Assuming you have good gun bunnies (term of affection, I assure you) and a spotter on the ground or in the air.

The mortar guys in my old company could put a round into a trashcan with line-of-sight but when someone else is calling in fire then they are more of an area weapon. Assuming that a fire mission is going to involve more than one or two rounds to bracket the target now you're talking more dollars and the people on the ground probably aren't going to stand there and wonder how long it's going to take to hit them.

The way I (and most other people I've heard talk about it) see it is drones are an area denial weapon.

I guess we live in different regions. Everything north of Estonia/Denmark is thick spruce and pine forest. I’ve seen what artillery does to these trees, but I’d be hesitant to say a drone could lift something heavy enough to serve like Vietnam war era ”daisy cutters”. Artillery explodes closer to the forest floor.

My point is that it is difficult to imagine another peer conflict in a similar geographical type reaching such a level that budgets should be diverted in a major way to develop these devices in the hope that they are some miracle weapon. Layperson politicians read headlines and think they are a first-level counter and not a counter-to-a-counter as you said :)

I made the error of emphasizing that I was thinking in a generalized manner of major nations with military tensions with shared borders. A lot of thought should be put towards if simple geography could make this cheap dispenable warfare more expensive than initially due to requirements for repeaters, shielded high-end comms chips or other assistive tech.

>Ofc there are significant exceptions, like the Alpine front in WWI, where Austrians and Italians faced each other in mountainous terrain for years, or the Hürtgen Forest in WWII. But a remarkable share of all major mechanized battles of history took place in flat open fields, or something at least resembling that sort of terrain (gently sloping hills with good visibility etc. etc.)

Fighting through some portion of the Ardennes has been a fairly recurrent theme in central European land warfare since vikings did it in the 800s.

I'm sure if one digs they can find a reference to a roman general doing it too.

That will give facing. Not range, nor actual bearing (your drone is moving relative to the local air, not to the ground.)

russians really didnt like this last year https://youtu.be/SUe7SJgVMmo?t=110

That is true, although I think a lot of what can be invested in, is transferable. Control software, targeting, AI could be adapted to larger or smaller scale drones. Manufacturing capabilities can be as well. ISR drones are pervasive and it used to be uneconomical to shoot down a relatively cheap one, like an Orlan, with something that cost as much or more. Now there's cheap counter-ISR FPVs. I don't think the future is manually guided at all though.

>NATO tank invasion

Invasion? Oh my, are you delusional? NATO is a defence alliance, stop consuming Russian propaganda maybe.

Drones could be manufactured from standardized components, LEGO so to speak, allowing for add hoc redesign and automated manufacturing . Foilwrapped fuelcokecans with a primer and a bus are where its at .

I haven't claimed that there were zero such instances, but my guess is that such battles in difficult terrain may be ~ 5 per cent of the total, if not less. People and animals get exhausted easily in bad terrain, and it is hard to supply the troops. Even mechanical equipment becomes less reliable and more prone to malfunction.

Notably, the German operation Sichelschnitt in 1940 was very successful because the French command considered it unlikely that German Panzers would be able to cross the Ardennes in force, even though the French command was probably well aware of their own military history.

Out of all the possible failure modes of fiber optic drones, scissors are pretty much the least likeliest issue you’ll encounter.

That same NATO that has problems getting artillery ammo because they decommissioned the plants? Is this dangerous alliance in the room right now?

Yep, 120mms I think.

You won't find them with light infantry, but you will with Cav / Mech units.

Could you use a bunch of chaff in hopes of burning the fiber optic cables?

However, they effectively bought the owner of Starlink.

I don't believe they have enough money to buy Musk. They can influence him through propaganda and memes, but outright bribery is unlikely. That would have to be a vast, vast money transfer.

Trump looks more likely to be bribe-able than Musk. Very different personalities and net worths. Musk seemed to be genuinely angry with Trump's budget, for example.

Whenever I see this reasoning, I wonder how many people really believe not a single NATO country will ever elect a nutjob that might just decide to invade someone for a bullshit reason.

For example, hypothetically, what is the chance for a major NATO country will never have a president that might decide to bomb another country out of the blue, because that country according to said president, has weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact the same country intelligence said the target DOESN'T have such weapons? This will never happen right?

special forces and other unspecified units: https://breakingdefense.com/2024/02/iron-sting-an-exclusive-...

I recommend looking up European military readiness levels before diving too deep into fantasies. Who is supposed to invade Russia? Latvia, with its tank army of exactly zero tanks? Or a major country like Germany, with its barely 100 operational tanks and enough artillery ammunition for just two days?

Even in Russia, only complete loonies treats this as a plausible scenario. That's why you can see bunkers and anti-tank ditches and defensive lines being built on the European side of the Russian border, and nothing of this sort on the Russian side. They don't even have a basic chain-link fence. Mushroomers sometimes get lost and just walk into Russia.

You mean defence of Yugoslavia/Serbia in 1999?

Sorry I'm talking US specifically.

To my knowledge there still isn't a laser guided mortar in the US inventory with dual mode laser terminal guidance. HEGM project was cancelled in 2018.

Invading eastern Ukraine isn’t going to do anything about that problem. Once Russia failed to take Kyiv in 2022 any strategic justification was gone.

Musk’s wealth is tied to Tesla, which from a business perspective is in very deep trouble. But the stock price doesn’t reflect this. I sometimes wonder how much it’s worth to Musk that the stock not reflect Tesla’s actual performance, and who might be driving those irrational price movements.

Exactly. Many are missing the big picture - while Ukraine has managed to hurt the Russsians with drone warfare, how much has all that really helped Ukraine to drive back the Russians or re-take the territory held by the Russians? The simple answer is that it hasn't. Moreover, drones are not going to give an edge to Ukranian any more as the Russian too have mastered not just counter-drone warfare but also streamlined it into their conventional warfare tactics. (For example, Russians now outproduce the Ukrainians in drones and now use WW2 style motorbikes to evade drone defence - https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/06/25/russias-motorcycle-... ).

Isn’t artillery easier to locate/ counter attack than a drone operator station?

I guess I mean in the sense of if you have the drones starting position, the end location (or approximate) and movement tracking based on terrain movement, like the cheap version of Tomahawk but instead of having a map you just use relative change from a stereo camera/lidar pointed at the ground to track relative movement? I guess the hardware to run that isn't available in mass production.

There is the possibility of a peace settlement that includes a provision prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO. Personally, I would say this is a reasonably likely outcome.

> NATO is a defence alliance

Libya?

RCH 155 which Ukraine has now can shoot while moving. That should make it harder to counter.

> people on the ground probably aren't going to stand there and wonder how long it's going to take to hit them

Lesson learned in WW1 and apparently forgotten multiple times since then: the first few shells have by far the most damage potential and they better be precise.

Dense forest scenarios aside, it seems to me that an FPV drone could perhaps serve best as an adjunct to mortar fire and other artillery, rather than as a replacement. If you knew exactly where your drone was, it could basically assume the role of a forward observer.

The article says that GPS is largely hopeless on their particular battlefield, though, so some other means of accurate positioning would probably be needed.

It's hard to tell for sure about the tanks, the Russian army used really shitty tactics. Tanks are supposed to be used with infantry support to avert "cheap shots" with short range anti-tank weapons. Turkey managed to lose a few Leopards in a similar way. Just Leopards with nothing hanging out in enemy territory.

Great insight in this comment - in the 21st century wars are so unique that hi-tech weapons emerge specifically for certain battlefield applications.

I.e. just one country over, just one slightly different conflict between different actors would require completely different looking-feeling weapon systems.

It’s not something you think about, usually - so much of what we see used is made for asymmetrical warfare.

well, if usa will get a bundle of iron dome, iron fist and iron sting, it will get a cool 30% discount

Mortar is cheaper and faster, but it is about 80mm, not a 155mm.

Good luck to hunt moving individuals with mortars, though.

Drones really helped to slow down Russian invasion.

Now FPV drones are also used as anti-air defense. $1500 FPV drone can intercept $100k reconnaissance drone or loitering munition.

GPS guided munitions like Excalibur are useless against peer adversary. Costs as much as 100 regular rounds and as 200+ FPV drones but has zero accuracy thanks to EW and jamming.

> tanks aren't the crushing force that they used to be in Manstein's and Guderian's time

Russians have assault groups of couple tanks and half a dozen ifv. Had Guderian used same forces in a single battle? The biggest Russian operations had 40-60 armored vehicles, mainly ifv.

Tanks are still a real power, especially western modern tanks.

... Not quite.

Local airborne EW platforms can relay GPS signal.

Combined with Inertial Navigation System reduces the CEP.

Laser terminal guidance gets it on point.

The US has a lot of work to do in EW - it also has done a lot of work to prepare for some of these scenarios.

> before diving too deep into fantasies

You do realise that the parent was actually making a historical reference? "Weapons of mass destruction"... doesn't that ring a bell?

So? Nothing in NATO brings the rest of the alliance along for the ride in that case. The core agreement is defensive, not offensive, and historically NATO has not at all been unified on attacks on other countries.

This seems to contradict the article, which among other criticisms, specifically says that these drones are more expensive and less reliable than mortars.

I was wondering about that. At military-industrial scale, that's a lot of fiber optic cable.

And it's glass, no? So not going to environmentally degrade over time.

Considering the fighting is mostly over agricultural fields, what are the long term consequences of years of war?

Somehow I don’t think that’s their primary concern at the moment

Granted. But it's going to be someone's concern after all this is over.

And unlike landmines, how do you detect and remove kilometers of cable?

Yeah, so Taiwan. Drones or no drones? Just poking around at the news, seeing Chinese drone carrier ships. Drone carrier aircraft, landing craft being prepared, drone swarming being practiced. Pretty sure we’re going to see a lot of drone warfare in the coming years. I hate to put a timeline on it but the Chinese did announce one so we know what it’s going to look like and where it’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen.

And there gunna be lotsa drones.

Taiwan

I’m engaging with this as though Russia’s motivations are serious, despite the fact that they’re doing nothing to actually prepare for this hypothetical NATO invasion. But even if you engage with it seriously, the failure to secure and defend Western Ukraine makes Russia totally vulnerable, NATO commitments or not. And losing so much of your military reserves doing it should terrify anyone who is actually concerned about defending Russia. Russia’s nuclear arsenal is literally the only thing protecting them right now.

Glass breaks down to sand so I wouldn’t worry too much about it

Why do you think everything can be bought with just money? He might be sold if for trivial things. Some Russian hooker, propaganda and memes, as you said, make him believe siding with Russians makes him more cool. Same things as with the orange guy.

I mean their sense of being is the defending alliance. And from their being scared by Russia and unwilling to help Ukraine, we can tell that when Russia would attack Estonia, they will do nothing and invent some excuse why Putin is a good marvellous wonderful guy with whom I’m personally a very good friend. Them attacking Russia first, looks unbelievable. They are afraid to even help the country that was attacked, as they were told by Russians they won’t be happy, and so they obediently do what they told.

There are different calibers of mortar shells, bigger size has more range and power. I think author of the article has cheated by not specifying the caliber, because a 155mm artillery shell cost is more than a $1000, precision guided one cost is tens of thousands. While a drone capable of reaching 10km+ costs less than $1000, without payload.

Don't forget that drones are evolving very fast and their potential is frightening. What about swarm of unmanned AI and computer vision capable drones spreaded across fields and forests waiting for their prey? You can make antipersonnel drones much smaller as you don't need even to kill the enemy - just to wound. You can place a big batteries across that zones so drones could go recharge theirselves and continue serving. Eventually you can just drop thousands of such killers above the territory or even some city and they will kill every human they find. Ok, then we can make unmanned drone hunters and human killer bots will start to enhance their defense capabilities. That will start another round in evolution where humans on the battlefield are just spectators. Or prey if they unlucky.

I was about to respond to your comment above by saying landmines are 1000x worse, but you just said the opposite, which is completely incomprehensible to me. Are you perchance thinking of literally just the environment, not the fact that countless lives will be harmed and lost for decades to come because of the indiscriminate nature of landmines?

The article contradicts this view. It says that drones are hardly evolving: even years into the war they still use easily jammed analogue radio links on a handful of frequencies, and the biggest "upgrade" has been tying a fiber optic cable to them with all the obvious downsides that implies (at double the cost). Nor have they become easier to pilot.

The FPV drone is used in battle largely because they're extremely cheap and use components sourceable from many suppliers backed by hobbyist markets. These devices are so cheap and basic they don't even use digital encryption for the video back to the operator, they don't even take off a third of the time, and you're talking about putting AI chips on them. There is much lower hanging fruit than AI.