Ukraine's Drone Army Was Born In a Crucible of Conflict

Ukraine is building an unmanned air force for 21st-century warfare.

On the eve of combat, Ukraine's unmanned aerial forces were woefully out of date.

Almost three years ago, when confrontation appeared imminent over Russia's annexation of Crimea, Ukraine's military relied on Soviet-era Tu-143 "Flight" drones, a technologically inferior warbird that didn't even have video cameras. These bygone drones shot stills on film that had to be developed afterward. Predictably, in the opening salvos of conflict, Russian-backed separatists easily shot them down.

Ukraine desperately needed replacements, for reconnaissance and, ideally, for attack. There was only one problem—money, or rather a severe lack of it. The country's defense procurement budget is about $500 million with nearly a quarter of that "disappearing" into the mire of political corruption. Considering only one U.S.-made RQ-4 Global Hawk costs nearly $130 million, Ukraine needed to get creative.

Drones By the People, For the People

So the country turned to the consumer market. To sidestep the corrupt and bureaucratic procurement process, crowdfunding initiatives like The People's Project solicited donations for hardware including consumer drones for military use. This funded two DJI Phantom 2s, a Skywalker X8, and an Oktopcopter, among others. Unfortunately, the civilian drones didn't fare much better on the battlefield. Their communications were vulnerable to jamming, had a short flight range, and cripplingly short battery life.

Then in late 2014, a new startup, UKRSPEСSYSTEMS, began building new drones from scratch with commercial components. Their first crowdfunded drone was the PD-1 ("People's Drone-1"), a piston-engined aircraft with a ten-foot wingspan. This carried a gimbal-mounted video camera with flights lasting more than six hours, providing eyes in the skies on the frontlines.

 An incredible assortment of small, privately developed drones like the PD-1 appeared from odd sources, with some being provided directly to militias like the Spectator, designed by students from Kiev Polytechnic Institute. There was also the Stork-100, Rama, and Apus 1505—all small tactical drones with similar roles. A report on the official Ukrainian military news site says 30 different kinds of drones have been used.

But one drone that stood above the growing multitude was the A1-CM Furia ("Fury"), made by startup Athlone Air. Founder Artem Vyunnik says he began working on a consumer drone long before the war, but modified the design to meet the country's needs when fighting erupted in Donbass on June 2014. The electric-powered Fury has a seven-foot wingspan and an two-hour flight time. Its camera has a zoom powerful enough to distinguish whether someone is carrying a gun or a shovel from 500 meters away, and has performed well in the field. A Fury costs anywhere from $10,000 to $22,000, a manageable price for a cash-strapped military.

Seeing the Ukrainians need for drones, in July 2016 the U.S. did include some in a military assistance program, supplying 72 RQ-11 Raven drones worth about $12 million. Although proving capable in Iraq and Afghanistan, they quickly became a horrible vulnerability in the field. Russians are much more adept at 'radio-electronic warfare', and Russian-backed rebels had little trouble countering them. Now surviving Ravens are gathering dust in storage.

Could the Fury succeed where the U.S. Raven had so clearly failed? In a 2015 interview, Fury developers described how its drone uses multiple radio channels. Even if two are jammed, the drone still operates. Fury can survive GPS jamming, and when all signals are blocked, the autopilot can carry the drone out of the jammer's range by flying a pre-programmed route. The new RQ-11 Raven has a jam-resistant secure digital data link, but wasn't the version provided to Ukraine. So where a U.S. drone failed, Ukraine's homemade remedy provided an answer.

Drones Get Deadly

But surveillance drones like Fury are only half of the military equation, and in 2016, Ukraine started hunting for the other half.

Antonov, once famed for building some of the world's biggest transport planes, is now just a part of the state-run UkrOboronProm, a giant defense conglomerate which some say is riddled with corruption and inefficiency. In summer 2016, Antonov unveiled a prototype of a fixed-wing drone called the AN-BK-1 Horlytsia ("Turtle Dove"). With a twenty-foot wingspan, it's the biggest Ukrainian-made drone ever made, able to "engage targets with onboard weapons" like a cut-price Reaper. Sources say the Turtle Dove could be in the Ukrainian military arsenal later this year.

Another deal with Polish company WB Electronics, will add a second lethal drone called the Warmate– a portable kamikaze attack drone resembling the U.S. Switchblade. Ukraine will make up to a thousand Warmates under license; these can take out targets including light armored vehicles from several miles away.

Finally, there's New Energy of Ukraine's Yatagan-2 ("Scimitar"). Costing around $5,000, it launches from a tube, like the Warmate and Switchblade, unfolds its wings, and cruises in search of targets for up to twelve minutes before delivering a two-pound explosive charge in a kamikaze dive. With these three options, Ukraine began to resemble a modern day drone force.

Survival of the Fittest

The Ukrainian drone acquisition system is chaotic—the military is bureaucratic, while the militias will use anything they can get. But this chaotic process also produces rapid evolution, going from zero to full-blown combat drones in less than three years all while on an extremely tight budget.

Because of the country's immediate needs, drones are tested in action almost immediately, and then redesigned, upgraded, or discarded in a fierce aerial Darwinian competition. The original Spectator drone was quickly replaced with a much larger version. Consumer drones were superseded by the PD-1 in a matter of months. UKRSPEСSYSTEMS newest project is the PC-1 tactical multicopter, and after the first three were delivered, users requested changes and has now been reconfigured with eight engines instead of four.

With the conflict unfortunately flaring up in recent weeks, Ukraine may remain outnumbered and outgunned, but they won't remain out-droned.