Four foreign volunteers serving in the Babai rifle battalion are training to operate FPV drones in Ternopil Oblast in western Ukraine, where they have formed a dedicated drone team, Suspilne reported on 22 September.

Ukraine's military increasingly looks to unmanned systems for roles traditionally carried out by soldiers. In May, an adviser to the commander of Ukraine's Third Army Corps said the corps planned to replace roughly 30% of its infantry with ground robotic systems by the end of 2026 "to save the lives of our soldiers." The plan concerns ground robots rather than FPV aircraft, but reflects the broader move toward using unmanned systems on the battlefield.

From mortars to FPV drones

The team was assembled by Harry, a British volunteer who has fought in Ukraine since arriving in March 2022. He served as a machine gunner in Kharkiv and during the Kharkiv counter-offensive, as well as in Bakhmut and Zaporizhzhia.

Before coming to Ukraine, Harry served with People's Defense forces against ISIS in Syria. He said Ukraine's battlefield is fundamentally different, with drones and artillery making combat more dangerous.

For Fuzzy, a former British Army infantryman and counterterrorism specialist, the transition came after more than two years as a mortar operator. He arrived in April 2022 and initially trained Ukrainian defenders before moving into combat roles.

Fuzzy said he had initially been reluctant to switch from mortars to FPVs but found the drones not as difficult to operate as he had expected after training for more than two months.

Not everyone on the team flies. Rupert, who served in the British and Israeli armies, called Ukraine the clearest case of right against wrong since 1939 and said anyone who does nothing will regret it. His role on the team is technical: setting up antennas and checking drones before flights. "The younger guys can fly," he said.

Mac, an American with no previous military service, joined the war in a different role. He arrived in February 2025 and served with the Azov brigade as a logistics specialist in Donbas. Ukraine first appeared on his radar with the 2014 Maidan protests, he said, and when Russia's full-scale invasion began—"seeing the massacre in Bucha, the maternity hospital blown up in Mariupol"—he called it a higher calling and began preparing to come.

Adapting to the battlefield

The volunteers came to Ukraine with different backgrounds and have taken different roles during the war. Harry assembled the FPV team from fighters he had served with in different Ukrainian units. Fuzzy said the changing nature of the war made the transition necessary.

"The war has changed so much that what I was teaching could no longer be applied everywhere," Fuzzy added. "At this stage of the war, we have to keep pace with the times—everything is improving now."

Harry said his long-term goal is to live permanently in Ukraine and open a business. "I see Ukraine as my home," he said. "I want to defend not just the Ukrainian people but also the place where I want to live the rest of my life."