A Ukrainian service member with the callsign Talisman learned to fly four heavy strike drone platforms and now switches between them when conditions demand it, the 808th Dnistrovska Separate Support Brigade reported on 23 September. Before joining the military, he worked in business.

He began his service in a unit in Rivne Oblast, in northwestern Ukraine, starting as a driver and later moving to battalion management tasks. He was then seconded to the 808th Brigade and eventually transferred to its roster permanently. It was there that he retrained as a heavy strike drone pilot.

Four platforms, one pilot

Heavy bombers were just coming into wide use when the unit was moved onto them. They trained for a week at the manufacturer, then practiced in the unit. Everyone started on the Vampire. After nearly a year on it, Talisman tried a second platform. "When you already have the base and the foundation, mastering another platform is much easier," he said.

Talisman now operates four platforms—the Vampire, a hexacopter with six motors, and three quadcopters: the Ares A1, the Heavy Shot, and the Magura Mini. Each type has its own characteristics—some are more resistant to jamming or navigation suppression than others, he said.

"I'd probably single out the Vampire and the Ares. The Vampire is more pleasant to operate, while the Ares is more resistant to various types of jamming. I've had situations where the Vampire wasn't working, and I continued carrying out missions on the Ares," Talisman said.

The Vampire is a six-rotor bomber built by Ukraine's SkyFall, originally codified with a range of up to 20 kilometers carrying up to 15 kilograms. The company says the current range is 35–40 kilometers. The Ares A1, built by Drones of Ukraine, has been in service since 2023 in strike, remote-mining, and resupply roles.

"The hardest thing is when there's no water. For a shower. Positions are all different: for some it's harder to get there, for some it's harder to work with drones. I have this thing—it's important to me that there's water," he said with a smile.

His crews have worked the Donetsk direction, near Lyman, in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and later on tasks in Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts. In winter they drove in for the night and had to finish the task in that window, some faster and some slower depending on conditions and on Russian jamming, before the next crew took over. In warm weather they stay on position for four to seven days at a stretch, in crews of four or five.

His callsign came from his time serving alongside his fellow soldiers. "We had luck when I was with them. That's how they gave me this callsign," he said.

After the war, Talisman sees himself returning to civilian life. Before military service he was an entrepreneur and plans to go back to it.

Brigade tops remote-mining rating

In June 2026, the 808th Brigade topped Ukraine's DELTA remote-mining rating, which ranks units by how effectively they turn enemy approach routes into traps with drones.