The crew flies with the Black Sky unmanned-systems battalion of the National Guard's 3rd Operational Purpose Brigade Spartan. The commander, callsign Arti, said the crew's middle-strike drones can strike Russian military vehicles as close as 50 and as far as 150 kilometers behind the front line, mostly trucks and passenger cars, Army Inform reported.

The war now reaches deep into the Russian rear, where strike drones hit vehicles once safe from the front. Every Russian vehicle this crew burns is a blow to the invasion's logistics, leaving fewer supplies and fewer troops able to reach Russian positions. (edited) 

Arti said the drones' main advantages are their range, speed, and stealth, while navigator Schultz, another crew callsign, said they are particularly effective 50–60 kilometers from the line of contact.

How the crew works

The four-person crew includes a pilot, navigator, technician and sapper. Arti joined the military intending to fly drones and first served as a second pilot on another crew before moving to middle-strike aircraft.

Schultz was mobilized in September 2024 and spent nearly a year and a half flying Mavic drones for reconnaissance, dropping munitions and delivering supplies to Ukrainian troops. That experience helped him transition to middle-strike drones.

“I navigate the terrain and give the pilot the course to fly,” Schultz said. “I already know the areas where enemy vehicles may move and where they may stage near the treelines.”

Schultz said Russian forces have become increasingly reluctant to move vehicles close to the front line after repeated Ukrainian strikes.

"At 50 to 60 kilometers from the [frontline] they're quite effective. Right on the line we won't find anyone now — nobody drives there anymore, because our guys worked them over for so long. The occupiers are already afraid to drive closer. It knocks out all the enemy's logistics," he said.

Schultz said this can mean fewer supplies and personnel reaching Russian positions.

He recalled the first time he watched one of the crew’s strikes in real time. Reconnaissance operators tracked a vehicle carrying Russian personnel while the drone crew moved in to attack.

“We saw it ourselves—we saw how we hit it, how everything exploded and burned,” he said.

The crew began flying middle-strike drones only a few months ago.

“We’re a young crew. There’s still a lot ahead,” Schultz said.

Ukraine's drone force is killing most of its targets close to the front, not in the deep strikes that make headlines. In July, fighters of the Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) struck 53,755 unique Russian targets, including 11,609 Russian personnel, SBS commander Major Robert "Madiar" Brovdi said on 1 August.

The force killed a Russian soldier roughly every four minutes all month.

"We destroyed 374 occupiers every day, a full assault complement of an enemy battalion every 24 hours, or one enemy every four minutes," Madiar said, per his own count of the month's work.

The famous deep strikes are a small share

The operations that make news are the smallest part of the total. Madiar noted that while the SBS is best known for deep strikes on Russian oil infrastructure (51 targets), the shadow fleet (206 targets), power nodes (166 targets), air defenses (35 targets), the blockade of Crimea (2,008 targets), and logistics centers (13 targets), the largest share of strikes falls on the line of contact.

Almost all the work is at the front

Some 95.1% of the targets hit were in the tactical depth, an average of 3.73 kilometers from the line of contact, Madiar continued.

Another 4.4%, or 2,415 targets, were struck at operational depth of Crimea and other occupied territories, and only about 0.5% of strikes were deep strikes at strategic range.

The tactical drone war is where attrition happens

The numbers reframe what Ukraine's drone force mainly does. The refinery fires and shadow-fleet strikes shape the war strategically, but the daily grind of 374 killed occupiers a day is the drone-driven attrition holding the front, one FPV or bomber drone at a time.

This is a single-source count from the SBS commander that EP cannot independently verify, and it covers only claimed strikes, not confirmed kills.