Drones are crowding Ukraine’s skies, largely paralyzing battlefield

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — So many drones patrol the skies over Ukraine’s front lines — hunting for any signs of movement — that Ukrainian and Russian troops have little ability to move on the battlefield without being spotted, and blown up.

Instead, on missions, they rush from one foxhole to another, hoping the pilots manning the enemy drones overhead are not skilled enough to find them inside. Expert drone operators, their abilities honed on the front, can stalk just a single foot soldier to their death, diving after them into hideouts and trenches.

The surge in small drones in Ukraine has turned the area beyond either side of the zero line — normally known as “the gray zone” — into “the death zone,” said Oleksandr Nastenko, commander of Code 9.2, a drone unit in Ukraine’s 92nd brigade. Those who dare to move day or night under the prying eyes of enemy drones “are dead immediately,” he said.

Cheap drones deployed in Ukraine have transformed modern warfare — and initially gave Ukrainian troops an advantage on a battlefield where they are perpetually outnumbered and outgunned. “This is the evolution of our survival,” Nastenko said.

But the Russians quickly caught on and began mass producing their own drones.

What followed was an overabundance of disposable, deadly drones and electronic warfare devices known as jammers that disrupt their flights. Most common are first-person-view, or FPV drones, typically controlled by a pilot wearing a headset and holding a remote controller.

“What we’re witnessing right now is blitzkrieg drone warfare,” said Andrew Coté, chief of staff at BRINC Drones, a Seattle-based drone company sending equipment to Ukraine. Coté said that drones in Ukraine are as game changing as tanks were in World War I. “It is pretty stalemate,” he said, “because if you are out in the open, you will be hunted.”

The technological advances probably have saved lives because drone pilots can work slightly farther from the zero — or contact — line than traditional infantry. But the saturation of drones, many with thermal cameras that work at night, has also shrunk the space where troops can move safely without being spotted — leading to high casualties and, in recent months, largely preventing either side from making major breakthroughs.

These conditions — combined with widespread minefields and shortages of ammunition and soldiers — now make it virtually impossible for Ukraine to retake swaths of territory as it did in 2022.

Russia, which has ample missile stocks and superior aviation power, capitalized on Ukraine’s ammunition shortages to seize the strategic eastern town of Avdiivka, and is now pushing to take more land. On Saturday, Ukraine’s commander in chief Oleksandr Syrsky warned that the situation on the eastern front had “significantly deteriorated.”

Ukraine will rely largely on drones to make it difficult for the Russians to press forward without putting expensive Russian fighting vehicles at risk whenever they move.

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