Ukraine’s deep strikes are becoming more destructive. The main reason, it seems, is the combination of a largely German-funded attack drone—and the powerful warhead, or warheads, it can carry.

As recently as last year, the Ukrainian military and its supporting agencies—in particular, the state security service, or SBU—struggled to make an impact with long-range drones. “More than half of the recorded strikes between September and February had limited impact,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight concluded in a March study.

But that’s changing as more and better drones with bigger and better-designed warheads strike more frequently many hundreds of kilometers inside Russia.

Tatarigami, Frontelligence Insight’s founder, recently sensed the change. “Based on an early look at several dozen hits over the past two weeks, both the success rate and damage from Ukrainian long-range drones have gone up compared to late 2024 [to] early 2025,” he wrote. “I haven’t put together the data set yet, but even at a glance, the results already look different.”

In recent weeks, Ukrainian drones have hit Russian airfields—destroying several warplanes and helicopters—while also blowing up key components of the refinery in Novokuibyshevsk, which accounts for around 3% of annual refining in Russia.

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One Ukrainian drone keeps smashing Russia’s top war factories—so Germany’s paying for 500 more

Thanks in large part to German largess, Ukrainian firm Ukroboronprom is building hundreds more of its best An-196 Liutyi attack drones than it had planned earlier this year.

According to German newspaper Die Welt, the government of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is providing around $100 million to pay for 500 of the propeller-driven, satellite-guided Liutyi drones. A Liutyi carries an approximately 50-kg warhead farther than 800 km. The $200,000 drone can follow a complex flight path and change altitude in order to avoid Russian air-defenses. 

Early Liutyi models may have had comparatively simple and light warheads. “One contributing factor” in the limited effectiveness of drone strikes in 2024 and early 2025, Frontelligence Insight concluded, “is the relatively small warhead size of certain Ukrainian drones, such as the Liutyi.”

For comparison, a Russian Shahed drone carries a 90-kg warhead.

It’s possible Ukroboronprom has been improving and enlarging the warhead on the An-196. Roy, a Canadian drone expert, recently observed a 60-kg OFB-60 warhead apparently recovered from the wreck of a crashed Liutyi. “The 60-kg high-explosive shaped-charge munition has a concave metal face for forming an … explosively formed projectile” that can punch through metal, Roy noted.

Warhead options

It’s not clear that all Liutyi drones have the 60-kg shaped-charge warhead. The drones are often described as carrying just 50 kg of explosives. It’s actually possible the drones can carry even bigger payloads. Missile expert Fabian Hoffman even claimed some An-196s are now packing 75-kg warheads.

A bigger warhead comes at a cost, however. “Given the long distances these [Ukrainian] drones must travel, increasing their warhead size would require adjustments to weight, fuel capacity and overall design,” Frontelligence assessed. In short, there’s a direct tradeoff. A bigger warhead means more destruction but a shorter range.

The reported recent development of a Liutyi model capable of traveling 2,000 km may imply some of the drones are carrying lighter warheads rather than heavier ones—trading away explosive payload in order to add fuel capacity.

So when Tatarigami senses Ukrainian drone strikes are becoming more destructive, there may be caveats. The most destructive raids might be the one striking closest to the Ukrainian border. Yes, a few An-196s or other drone types may range 2,000 km into Russia. But the ones dealing the real damage—potentially with the most powerful shaped-charge warheads—are probably hitting targets no more than 800 km from Ukraine.

Not coincidentally, SBU drones pummeled Saky air base in Russian-occupied Crimea on 3 August, reportedly destroying one Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet and damaging another—and also damaging three Sukhoi Su-24 bombers. Saky is fewer than 300 km from the front line in southern Ukraine.

That’s well within range of a harder-hitting Liutyi drone.

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Putin built concrete castles for his bombers—Ukraine’s drones burned them down

After 42 months of grueling fighting in Ukraine, Russia’s stocks of modern armored vehicles are low. So low, in fact, that Russian technicians are pulling out of long-term storage derelict tanks that, until now, were widely considered unfit for combat.

Closely inspecting recent satellite imagery of Uralvagonzavod, the sprawling Russian tank plant in Nizhny Tagil 1,600 km from Ukraine, open-source analyst Jompy spotted something he’d long anticipated as Russian tank losses exceeded 4,000 earlier this year. That’s as many tanks as Russia had in front-line service before widening its war on Ukraine in February 2022.

“Just like that, there are a lot of likely T-72As parked in the yards outside UVZ now,” Jompy wrote, using the abbreviation for Uralvagonzavod. When tanks appear outside Uralvagonzavod, it’s usually because they’re gradually being brought inside the factory for refurbishment and possibly upgrade before being shipped off to front-line regiments, including those fighting in Ukraine.

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Russia’s last tank yards go dark as every inch in Ukraine demands more sacrifice

The 46-ton, three-person T-72A isn’t the oldest T-72 variant, but it’s close. Just one model of T-72, the Ural, preceded the T-72 into Soviet service in the early 1970s. Russian industry produced thousands of T-72 Urals and T-72As, but the much-improved T-72B—with a stabilized 125-millimeter gun, thicker armor and a more powerful engine—succeeded it in the 1980s.

The older T-72s went into storage at bases such as the 349th Tank Storage Base, in Russia’s Topchikhinsky District 2,000 km from Ukraine. And there they remained for decades, useful only as sources of spare parts—until Ukrainian mines, artillery, missiles and drones wiped out entire generation of more modern tanks.

Too few new tanks

With Uralvagonzavod building just 300 or so of the latest T-90M tanks annually, the Kremlin has had little choice but to dip into stocks of very old T-72s in order to partially replace its tank losses in Ukraine. The 40-year-old T-72Bs began arriving at Uralvagonzavod by the dozens earlier this year, but there were just a few hundred T-72Bs in storage. There are around 1,000 T-72 Urals and T-72As.

As recently as last summer, High Marsed—another open-source analyst—concluded the first-generation T-72s weren’t of much use as long as Russia still had some of the slightly newer (but still very old) T-80Bs, T-80BVs and T-72Bs in storage. “I expect that at some point they will have to create an upgrade program for these tanks,” High Marsed wrote about the T-72As. That “should be a sign that there aren’t many T-72B, T-80B/BV left in storage.”

The sign has appeared. The T-72Bs and other 1980s-vintage tanks are running out. Now it’s the T-72As’ turn to fight in Ukraine on those increasingly rare occasions when the Russians risk tanks along the drone-patrolled front line.

How many of the 1,000 or so rusty early-model T-72s are still repairable after decades in open storage is unclear. It’s equally unclear how much Russia will invest in their refurbishment and upgrade. The T-72As lack many of the features that makes a modern tank modern—in particular, stabilized main guns that are accurate even when a tank is moving.

Ukraine’s oldest front-line tanks, its Leopard 1A5s, were last upgraded in the 1980s—but even they have stabilized guns.

The T-72As’ impending return to front-line service is the latest evidence of the steady “de-mechanization” of the Russian army as it suffers catastrophic losses in heavy equipment in Ukraine. The T-72As’ resurrection doesn’t mean the Russians are losing, however. What the Russian army lacks in modern tanks, it more than makes up for with manpower.

These days, Russian regiments in Ukraine mostly attack on motorcycles or on foot. They suffer heavy losses usually totaling more than 20,000 killed and wounded a month. But with generous signing bonuses and deceptive contracts, the Kremlin manages to recruit 30,000 fresh troops a month.

They fight without modern tanks, but they still fight. And they can still push back Ukraine’s own manpower-starved brigades.

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Russia is churning out hundreds of new T-90M tanks — but why aren’t they all in Ukraine?

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According to aviation expert Tom Cooper, the Russian air force began Russia’s wider war on Ukraine in February 2022 with potentially just seven active Beriev A-50Us—four-engine Ilyushin Il-76 airlifters with radar radomes on their fuselages and stations for up to 15 crew and battle-managers.

In the aftermath of the 1 June Operation Spider Web—coordinated strikes on five Russian air force bases by short-range attack drones that the Ukrainian state security service, or SBU, smuggled near the bases in hijacked long-haul trucks—the Russians may be down to just four flyable A-50Us. Five if they managed to repair one of the radar planes the Ukrainians damaged in a February 2023 drone attack.

The analysts at AviVector, which scrutinizes satellite imagery of Russian air bases, may have spotted one of them. But this A-50U isn’t anywhere near Ukraine. Instead, it’s staging from Vorkuta air base in northern Russia, 2,400 km from Ukraine.

“The A-50U airborne early warning aircraft arrived in June and is likely conducting missions over northern Russia, escorted by MiG-31BM interceptors,” AviVector reported.

Satellite images of Vorkuta Airfield as of August 2, 06:58 UTC

The airbase housed 1 A-50U (Mainstay), 1 Tu-134UBL (Crusty), and 3 MiG-31 (Foxhound).

The A-50U airborne early warning aircraft arrived in June and is likely conducting missions over northern Russia, escorted… pic.twitter.com/z1p6vwVZrR

— AviVector (@avivector) August 3, 2025

Precious planes

The A-50U, like the US Air Force’s Boeing E-3, flies behind the front line in order to scan the horizon for enemy aircraft and missiles. Soaring high above the ground cover and capable of repositioning as needed, the A-50Us have helped Russian commanders to keep an eye on the Ukrainian air force—and to detect, minutes in advance, incoming Ukrainian missiles and drones.

If there are four operational A-50Us and one is in northern Russia, it’s possible no more than two are within reach of Ukraine—and useful for Russia’s defensive effort against Ukrainian deep strikes. Analysts have long assumed at least one of the radar planes is in the Russian Far East for patrols along Russia’s eastern waters and its border with China.

Two A-50Us aren’t terribly useful, given that it takes at least three of the lumbering planes to maintain anything approaching around-the-clock coverage of a given area for even a limited span of time.

Early in Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine, the A-50Us “flew an average of two–three sorties per day, providing higher-resolution early-warning and vector information” in southern and eastern Ukraine, Justin Bronk, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds wrote in a November 2022 report for the Royal United Services Institute in London.

That was possible because the Russian air force had nine A-50Us prior the wider Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Now it has many fewer. The radar coverage Russian forces enjoyed in 2022 is no longer possible.

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A Ukrainian drone damaged an A-50U on the ground in Belarus in February 2023. In January 2024, a long-range Ukrainian missile—reportedly a US-made Patriot—shot down an A-50U over the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine. Six weeks later in February 2024, another Ukrainian missile, an ex-Soviet S-200, struck a third A-50U in the same area.

The Russian air force swiftly grounded its surviving A-50Us and scrambled to replace the two or three lost planes. That meant cycling at least one older and possibly unflyable A-50U—out of several dozen Beriev built in the 1980s—through Beriev’s Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex in the city of Taganrog, on the Azov Sea coast just 130 km from the front line.

So of course the Ukrainians promptly droned the Taganrog factory the following month.

The Kremlin reportedly canceled the effort to replace the A-50U with newer A-100 radar planes back in June. The upshot is that, by this spring, the Russian air force may have been down to five or fewer active A-50s—with no clear plan for complementing or replacing them.

And then, on 1 June, the SBU smuggled more than 100 short-range attack drones into Russia in modified truck trailers. The drones targeted Dyagilevo, Ivanovo, Olenya, Belaya and Ukrainka air bases. Ivanovo, 750 km from Ukraine, is the home base for the entire A-50U fleet, including active and derelict airframes.

Post-raid satellite imagery of Ivanovo depicted at least one suspicious pile of wreckage as well as a possibly scorched A-50. The imagery may point to one or more destroyed or damaged A-50U, but AviVector for one concluded the affected airframes were already derelict. At best, they were useful as sources of spare parts for the active A-50Us.

In any event, the A-50U fleet is still in very bad shape. Its few surviving jets are apparently scattered far and wide from northern Russia to the Russian Far East, leaving at most three—and potentially just two—for flights supporting the war in Ukraine.

For the Ukrainians, that’s an opportunity: to exploit gaps in Russian air-defenses … and launch more missiles and drones at targets inside Russia.

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Putin built concrete castles for his bombers—Ukraine’s drones burned them down

On the night of 3 August, the SBU’s attack drones “visited” Saky airfield, 240 km from the front line in Russian-occupied Crimea, according to the SBU.

The explosive drones destroyed one Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet and damaged another—and also damaged three Sukhoi Su-24 bombers, the SBU claimed. An aviation depot, potentially containing weapons or fuel, was also hit, according to the SBU. 

“The successful special operation of the SBU in Saky is another step towards weakening the enemy’s ability to wage a war of aggression against Ukraine,” the SBU announced. “The occupiers should remember that they will never feel safe on our land!”

What’s especially embarrassing to the Russians is that they’d just finished building at least 12 concrete bunker shelters at Saky to house the aircraft operating from the often-attacked base. “Inside these reinforced shelters, we’ve identified both jets and larger drones, including the Orion,” reported Tatarigami, the head of the Ukrainian Frontelligence Insight analysis group.

The shelters didn’t fully protect the planes at Saky, if the SBU’s claims are accurate.

The Saky raid brings to 27 the number of Russian aircraft Ukrainian drones have destroyed or damaged since 1 June. It’s not the worst month for the Russian air force since Russia widened its war on Ukraine 42 months ago, but it’s close. In all, Russian forces have lost 162 planes and 157 helicopters.

The SBU’s deep-strike campaign, mostly targeting Russia’s own deep-strike assets, dramatically widened this summer. Frustrated in their attempts to intercept Russian aircraft and their munitions in mid-air closer to their targets, Ukrainian forces are increasingly aiming “left of the boom,” to borrow the US Army’s phrasing—and hitting the aircraft and munitions on the ground, before they can launch.

On 1 June, the SBU smuggled long-haul trucks full of explosive first-person-view drones close to five Russian bomber bases.

Around 100 of the tiny FPVs, each weighing just a few pounds, swarmed the bases. Relaying signals back to their operators via Russia’s own cellular phone network, the drones homed in on bombers and other warplanes parked on the bases’ tarmacs.

Bomber massacre

In the immediate aftermath of the 1 June raid, the SBU claimed its drones had struck around 40 warplanes at Dyagilevo, Ivanovo, Olenya, Belaya and Ukrainka air bases.

But close scrutiny of satellite imagery seemed to confirm just 13 or 14 losses, including seven or eight Tupolev Tu-95 bombers, four Tupolev Tu-22M bombers, a Beriev A-50 radar plane and a transport plane. Alongside Tupolev Tu-160s, the Tu-22Ms and Tu-95s are Russia’s main platforms for long-range cruise missile strikes on Ukrainian cities. 

By eliminating a portion of Russia’s missile-carriers, the 1 June Operation Spider Web could have “significant effect that should dramatically reduce Russia’s ability to launch missiles against Ukrainian cities and kill civilians,” noted Ben Hodges, a retired US Army general. 

On the night of 27 June, the SBU’s long-range attack drones—potentially Ukroboronprom An-196s—“dealt another painful blow to the occupiers,” according to the service. The explosive drones struck the Russian airfield in Kirovske, 130 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine.

“Fire damage was inflicted on the locations of the aviation component, air-defense systems, ammunition storage depots, as well as reconnaissance and strike UAVs of the enemy,” the SBU reported.

The SBU claimed it destroyed Mil Mi-8 and Mi-26 transport helicopters and a Mil Mi-28 attack helicopter as well as a Pantsir air-defense vehicle. A reported secondary explosion may point to Russian ammunition stocks—or parked drones—cooking off.

“The SBU is systematically working to reduce the Russian Federation’s capabilities to deliver air and bomb strikes on the territory of Ukraine,” the service explained. “The occupiers should realize that their expensive military equipment and ammunition are not protected anywhere: neither on the line of combat contact, nor in temporarily occupied territories, nor in the deep rear of the enemy.”

The very same night drones struck Kirovske, the SBU and Ukraine’s special operations command, the SSO, struck a second time—and damaged if not destroyed as many as five Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bombers at Marinovka air base in Volgorod Oblast, 290 km from the front line. 

The 150 or so Su-34s that are left, after several dozen have been lost over Ukraine, are Russia’s primary platforms for dropping KAB winged glide-bombs on Ukrainian positions. The 500- and 1,000-kg KABs range as far as 64 km. They can be jammed, but the sheer number of KABs raining down on the Ukrainians—thousands per month—makes them among the most damaging munitions in the Russian arsenal.

The 27 June strikes capped a painful month for the Russian air force. The 3 August raid extended the costly summer into early August.

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Russia’s jets dropped 250 bombs to stop Ukraine’s advance—the Bradleys rolled anyway

A dramatic video, captured by the Ukrainian 225th Assault Regiment’s Black Swans drone unit and translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated, depicts an increasingly common phenomenon: Russian soldiers exploding after a nearby drone strike cooks off the ammunition the soldiers are carrying.

The blast apparently took place somewhere in Sumy Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian brigades have been slowly pushing back an incursion by Russian infantry.

Infantry self-immolation is one of the second-order effects of the accelerating “de-mechanization” of the Russian armed forces as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 42nd month. The Russians have written off more than 20,000 combat vehicles and other heavy equipment—far more than they can immediately replace through new production and the reactivation of increasingly scarce stored vehicles.

With only a few exceptions, Russian troops now march into battle in Ukraine—or ride on motorcycles. Even cargo trucks are in short supply, meaning the troops themselves are the supply line. But in carrying bullets, grenades and mines on their persons, they risk self-destruction from drone near-misses.

American analyst Andrew Perpetua noted Russia’s human supply lines while scrutinizing the battlefield just south of the eastern city of Pokrovsk earlier this year. 

Perpetua recently identified, in one shocking video, around 150 destroyed Russian trucks on a two-mile stretch of one of the several roads threading west from the Russian stronghold of Selydove toward the village of Shevchenko, a few miles south of Pokrovsk. That’s a wrecked Russian truck every 70 feet.

Roads of death

That “road of death,” which the Russians persist in using—with predictably bloody results—was patrolled by the drone team supporting one particularly aggressive Ukrainian battalion that held the line around Shevchenko and, in December, waged a successful campaign against a Russian force 20 times its size. The Ukrainian campaign halted the grinding, yearlong Russian advance on Pokrovsk—although temporarily.

The Ukrainians “moved these drone units down to this area and that’s when they started setting up their kind of drone superiority, where they took complete control of the sky,” Perpetua recalled.

“The Russians basically couldn’t fly drones,” he added. “Their drone would take off, Ukraine would shoot it down and then attack the drone pilots—and they couldn’t fly drones. The Russians were complaining of, like, a 10-to-one or worse drone ratio.”

“That drone advantage is what eventually led to this stopping the Russian attack through shutting down all of these roads,” Perpetua said. The Ukrainian drone pilots “had this policy, where they wanted to first take out the Russian drones and then—once those drones were taken out—go for the supply routes.”

Heavy hexacopter “vampire” drones fitted with night-vision gear and carrying loads of grenades or mines, many of them flown by the famed Ukrainian Birds of Magyar drone group, inflicted the most damage on the roads to Shevchenko.

The Russians are adept at downing the 50-pound vampires with two-pound first-person-view drones that blow up on contact. But having suppressed the Russian drone teams around Shevchenko, the Ukrainian drone teams could fly their vampires with impunity.

Smaller FPV drones joined the vampires, including some fiber-optic models. After blasting every Russian supply truck in sight, the drones ranged farther south and east—and located the depots where the Russian regiments were storing the trucks and other vehicles that remained.

“They went to every vehicle depot and just blew them all up so they had, like, no tanks, no BMPs,” Perpetua mused. “They took out all their MRAP [armored trucks] and then they just shut down every single road, so they starved out the Russians.”

To reinforce Shevchenko, the Russians had to walk … for kilometers. “Their engineers were saying, ‘We have to build a minefield, but we can’t bring any trucks up. So everyone has to carry two mines,’” Perpetua laughed. “So there’s these videos of infantry marching up and, you know, they’re being told that you have to march 20 kilometers. You have to bring all of the food and ammo to last two weeks and you have to carry two landmines.”

The practice is now widespread in the de-mechanized Russian military. Already harried by Ukrainian drones, artillery and mines, Russian infantry now have another problem: their own explosive baggage. 

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Russia’s last tank yards go dark as every inch in Ukraine demands more sacrifice

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A bulky, lumbering Russian vehicle that recently appeared along the 1,100-km front line of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine boasts the qualities of Russia’s “turtle tanks” as well as the qualities of its more recent “porcupine tanks.” That is: layers of shell-like metal sheeting and, atop that, metal quills that project outward. 

The quills help to detonate incoming first-person-view drones before they strike the tank itself. The plating blunts the impact of any drones that get through.

As ugly and ungainly as the hybrid turtle-porcupine tank is, it might actually work under the right circumstances. Examples abound of up-armored vehicles absorbing dozens or even scores of FPVs, which normally weigh just a few pounds and lack explosive power.

If there’s a downside to all this add-on armor, it’s that it almost certainly impedes the vehicle’s mobility by heaping weight onto its original 40- or 50-ton chassis. The extra protection surely also obstructs the driver’s visibility—and probably makes it extremely difficult for the three crew and any infantry passengers to climb onto and off of the vehicle.

This dismount speed can be a matter of life and death when an up-armored tank comes under attack—and any passengers need to get off the vehicle and spread out.

One Russian “porcupine tank”—one of two involved in an assault on Ukrainian defenses outside the ruins of Toretsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, on or before 9 July—survived more than 70 drone strikes before finally succumbing. “It was very difficult to find a weak spot,” the Ukrainian Deep State analysis group noted.

And yes, the infantry riding on that tank and other vehicles struggled to dismount as Ukrainian drones rained down. “After several hits, the tanks tried to disperse along the forest belts to safely land the infantry among the greenery,” the Ukrainian army’s 28th Mechanized Brigade reported. “In the end, there was almost no one to land. And those who still managed to escape … were eliminated.”

The rubber Stryker

Ukrainian forces have deployed their own super-armored vehicles, albeit with a different armor mix. Open-source analyst Andrew Perpetua recently noted the latest example of a drone-proof Ukrainian vehicle—potentially an American-made Stryker wheeled fighting vehicle.

“There was a Russian video attacking a Ukrainian Stryker that Ukraine turned into an invincible tank,” Perpetua observed. “This Stryker ate every single … drone Russia sent at it without even taking a scratch.”

“The armor plan was this,” Perpetua added. “You take a Stryker with the slat armor on top. On top of the slat armor you apply a thick layer of rubber. All over. Whole vehicle is now rubber. Then, take slat armor and put that over the rubber.”

“It went: Stryker, slat, rubber, slat.”

The downside, as always, is all the extra weight on top of the 19-ton basic vehicle. “This had to be the heaviest … Stryker to ever stryke,” Perpetua quipped.

To be clear, the base vehicle may not have been an 11-person Stryker, Perpetua conceded. It may have been a Soviet-style BTR weighing 18 tons and accommodating 10. In any event, “that little porker probably weighs as much as a [69-ton, four-person M-1] Abrams [tank]. But it ate drones like no tomorrow.”

Of course, add-on armor is no panacea. Yes, the most heavily up-armored vehicles stand a decent chance of surviving a few—or even a lot—of drone strikes. Most vehicles remain extremely vulnerable not just to drones, but to all the myriad dangers along the front line. Mines. Artillery. Missiles.

It’s not for no reason that the Russians have parked most of their surviving vehicles—and now mostly attack on foot or on motorcycles. Under the cover of drones, of course. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians usually defend with infantry sheltering in trenches. Also under the cover of drones.

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The Russians creep toward Siversk, losing tanks on the way

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In the span of two weeks starting in early July, the German government signaled separate investments in Ukraine’s best attack drone—the Ukroboronprom An-196 Liutyi—as well as its first mass-producible cruise missile, apparently the Bars.

With substantial stocks of the new drones and missiles, Ukrainian forces should be capable of striking Russian targets as far away as 800 km. The drones would fly slower and may carry lighter, 50kg warheads. The missiles should fly faster and hit harder with heavier warheads weighing perhaps twice as much.

There’s some evidence the German spend is already making a difference. The An-196 and Bars “are being deployed on the front line with increasing frequency,” the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team noted. On July 26, drones slammed into the Signal plant in Stavropol, in southwestern Russia 500 km from the front line in Ukraine. The plant manufactures radar and electronic warfare systems.

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A photo that circulated on Russian social media the same day may depict, for the first time in public, wreckage of one of the Bars missiles. 

In funding Ukraine’s expanding deep-strike complex, Germany is helping Ukraine do to Russia what Russia has been doing to Ukraine throughout its 42-month wider war on the country: disrupt Russian command, logistics and production where the Russians are most vulnerable—at home.

Major Gen. Christian Freuding, the head of the German defense ministry’s Situation Center Ukraine, announced the missile deal in early July. The weapons, apparently Bars, would begin arriving in Ukraine within weeks—meaning now.

Drones galore

Just days prior, Welt broke the news that Germany would also finance as many as 500 of the An-196 drones. The propeller-driven, satellite-guided Liutyi carries a 50-kg warhead farther than 800 kg. The $200,000 drone can follow a complex flight path and change altitude in order to dodge Russian defenses.

The An-196 already had German connections. The 3.5-m drone sports a German-made Hirth F-23 aviation engine producing 50 horsepower.

The Liutyis have been responsible for some of the most damaging strikes on targets deep inside Russia. Before Ukraine largely paused strikes on Russian oil facilities this spring, possibly bowing to pressure from the United States, the An-196s accounted for up to 80% of hits on refineries.

The turbojet Bars ranges around as far as the propeller-driven Liutyi does, but should hit harder thanks to a bigger warhead. And it should be more survivable owing to its likely higher speed. An An-196 motors along at slower than 320 km/hr; most cruise missiles travel twice as fast. 

The Bars is reportedly capable of ground and aerial launch. The Ukrainian air force has modified its Sukhoi Su-24 bombers to carry British-made Storm Shadow and French-made SCALP cruise missiles that are 5 m long and weigh nearly 1,400 kg. The Bars should be smaller and lighter, and may also be compatible with the Su-24s.

We don’t know how much a Bars costs, but it’s almost certainly less than the millions of dollars a Western-made cruise missile can cost. “Its main advantage is reportedly its potential for mass production within Ukraine,” CIT explained.

“The extent to which the new Bars missile will affect the front line will depend entirely on how many are made available to the Ukrainian military,” CIT wrote. Considering that Russia produces 600 or so of its best Kh-101 cruise missiles every year, the hundreds of Bars the Germans may be financing should help the Ukrainians chip away at the Russians’ missile advantage.

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A surprising Russian armored assault ended in disaster for the Russians as they tried, and failed, to break through Ukrainian defenses outside Siversk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

But that doesn’t mean the Russians aren’t creeping toward front-line settlements including Siversk. Trading a few vehicles and a lot of bodies for every meter, Russian regiments are moving toward the city—and “may begin an assault … in the near future,” according to the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies.

The doomed Russian armored assault outside Siversk, a relative rarity as Russia’s vehicle losses exceed 20,000 and the Kremlin holds back most of its surviving tanks and fighting vehicles for future use, involved six tanks, nine armored personnel carriers, an armored recovery vehicle, 12 Lada compact cars, two all-terrain vehicles and a staggering 41 motorcycles from the 3rd Combined Arms Army.

The Ukrainian 54th Mechanized Brigade and 81st Air Mobile Brigade struck back with the first-person-view drones, bomber drones and—presumably—artillery. “Most of the equipment was destroyed or damaged,” Special Kherson Cat noted after they and other Ukrainian observers scrutinized drone videos of the assault. 

“Russian infantry losses are estimated at around a company killed and wounded,” Special Kherson Cat reported. That’s potentially more than 100 casualties. 

The horrific losses belie very gradual Russian gains around Siversk, however. “Tactical gains by the enemy northeast of Siversk indicate that Russian troops have reached a line several kilometers from Siversk,” CDS wrote.

Bike tactics

It’s unclear how much the belated deployment of increasingly precious armored vehicles is helping the Russian war effort. As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 42nd month, the Russians tend to attack with infantry riding on motorcycles—or even marching on foot. 

The growing proportion of the 46-ton, three-person T-72Bs in the Russian inventory is the latest sign that Russian regiments are “de-mechanizing.” That is, evolving—or devolving—into infantry-first formations.

It’s a costly approach. But it can work. Russian infantry have exploited Ukrainian brigades’ desperate manpower shortage—Kyiv’s army is short 100,000 trained infantry—and recently marched through gaps in Ukrainian lines northeast of Pokrovsk, further closing a pincer around that city 90 km southwest of Siversk.

Russian commanders tried to hasten Pokrovsk’s fall by pulling their dwindling reserves of tanks out of the vehicles’ protective hideouts and rolling them into action on the city’s southern flank, where small Russian sabotage groups have lately enjoyed some limited success infiltrating Ukrainian lines.

The problem, for the Russians, is where the tanks went. They traveled along a notorious “road of death” for Russian vehicles threading from the Russian stronghold of Selydove through the village of Shevchenko, a few miles south of Pokrovsk.

The 155th Mechanized Brigade’s drones spotted the Russian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles—a dozen or so?—coming on Saturday. “Coordinated actions of artillery and unmanned systems forces of the 155th Mechanized Brigade thwarted another assault on the Pokrovsk direction,” the brigade reported. “The entire enemy column was destroyed.”

“Tanks have become a second priority in war,” a Ukrainian tanker named Bohdan told David Kirichenko, an analyst for the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. “It’s now a war of artillery, drones and infantry.”

Ukraine may have the edge in drones, but Russia has a lot more troops and artillery. So the wholesale destruction of rare Russian armored columns might not mean much in the end. Russia can lose more of its dwindling stocks of tanks … and still advance.

CDS announced it expects more aggressive Russian action around Siversk in the coming weeks. “The 3rd Combined Arms Army will try to break through to the northern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River between Yampil and Hryhorivka, and from the southeast—toward Siversk.”

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Russia’s last tank yards go dark as every inch in Ukraine demands more sacrifice

The Ukrainian government will spend $172 million buying vehicles, parts, training, maintenance and  other services for the Ukrainian air force’s US-made Hawk air-defense batteries. 

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy goals and national security objectives of the United States by improving the ability of Ukraine to provide for its own defense,” the State Department noted.

The Hawk is becoming one of the most important air-defense weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal. Not because it’s particularly new: the Homing All the Way Killer missile dates from the late 1950s, making it a full generation older than Ukraine’s best air-defenses, its US-made Patriots.

No, the Hawk best attributes are its simplicity, reliability and—most importantly—abundance. A new facility in the US state of Oklahoma has been refurbishing thousands of the Hawk system’s 5-m missiles. 

The Hawk is a medium-range surface-to-air missile. Each missile, fired by a three-round launcher, ranges around 48 km. The missile homes in on energy from a ground-based radar reflecting from the airborne target. The Ukrainian air force cited “experts” claiming the Hawk is 85% accurate, which is consistent with much newer missiles.

As a bonus, newer versions of the Hawk could be compatible with another, more modern missile system that Ukraine also uses: the US-Norwegian National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS. 

Norwegian firm Kongsberg—builder of the NASAMS—has developed a new digital command post for Hawk batteries that borrows its main components from NASAMS. That raises the possibility that the Ukrainian air force might, with some effort, be able to combine its NASAMS and Hawk batteries into a single force using the same radars and command posts.

Medium-range stalwart

The Hawk was NATO’s standard medium-range SAM for decades until the advent—in the 1980s—of the Patriot, which ranges three times as far and boasts a much more sophisticated seeker. Raytheon manufactured many thousands of Hawk missiles. Decades later, many of those missiles are still sitting around in various military warehouses all over the world.

Given the dire shortage of Patriot missiles—Lockheed Martin produces no more than 600 a year for all the dozens of countries that use them—those old Hawk missiles have become a priceless commodity. So far, Spain, The Netherlands and the United States, possibly with a little help from Taiwan, have donated enough radars and launchers for Ukraine to deploy maybe four batteries, each with multiple radars and launchers.

But a new US Army facility in Oklahoma, officially opened in February, is gathering up, reconditioning and possibly upgrading thousands of old missiles for those four batteries. 

The Army had already inspected 2,751 missiles from US stockpiles by the time the new Theater Readiness Monitoring Facility opened, “a monumental achievement that underscores the scale of the operation,” according to the ground combat branch.

Hundreds more missiles were inbound from Ukraine’s foreign allies. “In addition to servicing missiles from the US, the new facility has also received 825 missiles and other equipment donations from six countries, further demonstrating the global importance of the Hawk system in air defense,” the Army stated.

It’s possible, even likely, that most of those missiles have made their way to Ukraine. The recent US sale of Hawk equipment to Ukraine is just the latest in a series of US-Ukrainian deals associated with the missile system.

Of all the many diverse American and European air-defense systems Ukraine uses to defend its cities, the Hawk batteries might have the most ammunition. How many more missiles the Oklahoma facility can find for Ukrainian batteries is unclear. But it’s worth noting Raytheon built 40,000 of the missiles—and only a few countries have ever used them in anger. Ukraine being the latest.

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Ukraine just solved the hardest math problem in modern air defense – with a 1970s German gun

The growing proportion of the 46-ton, three-person T-72Bs in the Russian inventory is the latest sign that Russian regiments are “de-mechanizing.” That is, evolving—or devolving—into infantry-first formations that mostly ride into battle on motorcycles or other unarmored vehicles. Or simply walk.

The ongoing de-mechanization of the Russian military doesn’t mean Russia is losing its 42-month wider war on Ukraine. It does mean the Russian military will struggle to exploit its battlefield victories against manpower-starved Ukrainian brigades. Russian infantry may find gaps in Ukrainian defenses. But there are precious few Russian armored vehicles on hand to rush through the gaps—and drive deep behind Ukrainian lines.

Open-source intelligence analyst Jompy, who scrutinizes satellite imagery to survey Russia’s once-vast vehicle storage yards, was first to notice workers fetching more rusty T-72Bs from the 1311th Central Tank Storage and Repair Base, 850 miles east of Moscow.

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As recently as a year ago, there were several hundred T-72Bs in various states of repair at the various store yards. Now the Russians are fetching them at a rate of around 20 a month, according to Jompy. “Once the few hundreds [of] T-72B hulls are gone,” the Russians will be “in real trouble with regard to their modern MBT fleet,” Jompy wrote, using the acronym for “main battle tank.”

The T-72 has the same flaws all Soviet-style tanks have: most notably, ammunition stowage under the turret that’s prone to catastrophically exploding when hit. But compared to newer Russian tank models, the T-72B’s biggest problem might be its utterly antiquated optics, which can render the crew essentially blind under battlefield conditions.

There are worse tanks in the Russian arsenal, including 1960s-vintage T-62s and T-55s from the 1950s. But the Russians have already recovered most of the older tanks that were in reasonably good condition after decades of open storage—and then upgraded them and sent them to Ukraine, where many of them suffered the same fate that thousands of Russian tanks have suffered. Blown up by mines, artillery, missiles and drones.

Begging for upgrade

An old T-72B hull can be upgraded with new optics and layers of add-on anti-drone armor, albeit with great effort. The bigger problem for the Kremlin is supply. The several hundred T-72Bs that were extant a couple of years ago, and which are currently depleting at a rate of 20 per month, represented one of the last sizable tank reserves in Russia. 

Once the reserves are finally gone—something that might happen this year—the Russian armed forces will only have as many tanks as Russian tank-makers can build new. 

The good news for the Kremlin is that, despite successive rounds of sanctions on Russia’s arms industry, the Uralvagonzavod factory just north of the 1311th Central Tank Storage and Repair Base has managed to expand production of the latest T-90M tank. 

That’s the conclusion of a recent study from the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team. “According to our estimates, Uralvagonzavod produced 60 to 70 T-90M tanks in 2022. In 2023, amid efforts to mobilize the defense industry, output may have increased to 140 to 180 tanks, and by 2024, it may have surpassed 200 units annually, possibly approaching a production rate of 250 to 300 tanks per year.”

Three hundred tanks a year isn’t a lot of tanks, however—not for an army that’s struggling to break through along the 1,100-km front in Ukraine while also trying to preserve some mechanized forces for possible future conflicts.

More good news for the Kremlin: Ukraine’s manpower shortage is so dire—its brigades urgently need 100,000 trained infantry—that the manpower-rich Russian military can continue to advance in Ukraine without deploying a lot of tanks. 

But increasingly de-mechanized, it can’t advance fast—or at low risk to its exposed infantry.

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One river stands between Russia and Ukraine’s fortress city Pokrovsk

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One of Ukraine’s stealth attack drones has made another fleeting appearance somewhere over the 1,100-km front line of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine. A video that circulated online in recent days may mark only the second appearance of the mysterious drone.

This black-painted UAV is special. 

Most of Ukraine’s long-range attack drones feature the same basic design elements: long straight wings, narrow booms connecting the fuselage and engine to the trail and propeller propulsion. By contrast, the mystery drone is a flying wing with no separate fuselage—and it’s propelled by a jet engine. Reportedly a $2,000, US-made SW140B turbine.

ukrainian jet drone in action https://t.co/y2yQozc2Jl pic.twitter.com/v3CyptmJTE

— imi (m) (@moklasen) July 23, 2025

The flying wing planform, which lacks highly reflective right angles, scatters radar waves in all directions instead of bouncing them straight back at the emitting dish.

All that is to say, the black drone could be highly stealthy. And that should help it slip past Russian air-defenses on its way to strike targets deep inside Russia. There’s no official information about the mystery drone—we don’t even know its name—so we can’t say for sure how far it ranges. 

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But one of the black drones that crashed in Russia in June 2024 appears to be around 10 feet long. If the Ukrainian drone carries as much fuel as a Russian Shahed attack drone, which is roughly as long, it might be capable of traveling hundreds of miles. 

The mystery drone has company. There’s a slightly bigger Ukrainian jet drone, also with a flying wing planform, that has made a couple of appearances on social media since last year. The main difference between the two stealth drones, besides their size, is that the bigger model has a single vertical stabilizer; the smaller model has twin vertical stabilizers. The bigger drone is powered by a German-made JetCat P400-PRO turbojet costing $14,000.

It’s clear both stealth drones exist in small numbers, likely owing to their higher cost and complexity compared to other drone types. The Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces’ main attack drone is the straight-wing, propeller-driven An-196. Ukrainian firm Ukroboronprom builds the An-196 by the hundreds: Germany recently ponied up $100 million to pay for 500 of the drones. 

The stealth drones’ rarity may imply the USF deploys them only for the most difficult missions requiring the attacking drones to penetrate dense air-defenses. 

Russia’s got stealth drones, too

The Russians possess a similar but much bigger drone—the 46-foot-long Okhotnik. One of the few copies of the Okhotnik came to a bad end over the front line in eastern Ukraine in October when it lost contact with its operators—and began flying toward free Ukraine.

An escorting Russian Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter shot down the Okhotnik, and the wreckage fell on the Ukrainian side of the front line. Ukrainian police recovered the drone’s remains, and the precision glide bomb the drone carried, right before a Russian Iskander missile streaked down—clearly intended to destroy what was left of the Okhotnik.

It’s not clear what, if anything, the Ukrainians have done with the information they gleaned from the Okhotnik’s crash. To be fair, the Russians have also recovered the remains of several Ukrainian stealth drones. If there’s anything either side can learn from the other when it comes to radar-evading drones, they’ve both learned it by now.

The basic principles of stealth aircraft design are well-known by now, however. The challenge for both Ukraine and Russia isn’t to build a few radar-evading drones—it’s to build lots of radar-evading drones.

Until either side can scale up production, both will continue relying on non-stealthy drones for most of their attacks. The Shaheds in Russia’s case. The An-196s in Ukraine’s.

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Ukraine just solved the hardest math problem in modern air defense – with a 1970s German gun

Nine months after pledging 49 surplus M-1A1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine’s war efforts, the first batch of the American-made tanks has arrived by sea and rail in Ukraine.

Imagery the Australian defense ministry posted online on Saturday depict the 69-ton, 2000s-vintage tanks loading onto a ship. Separate imagery depicts some of the heavy combat vehicles on train cars, apparently bound for Ukraine after landing in Germany.

The tanks are a welcome addition to Ukraine’s arsenal. The country’s first consignment of 31 M-1A1s, pledged by the United States in 2023, is running low after Russian forces destroyed, captured or damaged no fewer than 22 of the vehicles.

Forty-nine fresh M-1s, supplemented by the survivors of the 31 US-donated tanks, should be enough for two battalions, which would notionally possess 31 tanks apiece. But the Aussie Abrams, which are being replaced in the Australian army by a new model of the classic tank, are arriving at a tumultuous time for Ukraine’s armor corps.

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Ukraine cuts back on tanks—and creates a deadlier kind of brigade

As recently as nine months ago, the Ukrainian army had five full tank brigades in its order of battle: the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 17th Tank Brigades. On paper, each brigade had three battalions of 31 tanks for a total of 93 tanks per brigade.

That made the brigades among the most powerful formations in the Ukrainian military. In reality, the 5th Tank Brigade didn’t fully form until this year. And the 1st Tank Brigade may have been the only one of the units to fight as a brigade, with all of its battalions and tanks.

When the Russian 41st Combined Arms Army barreled south from its staging areas around the Belarus-Russia border during the early days of the wider Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it quickly approached the city of Chernihiv, 60 km south of the border. 

It ran into the 1st Tank Brigade lying in wait in the fields and forests surrounding Chernihiv. On paper, the 41st CAA with its 20,000 troops and hundreds of T-72 tanks vastly outmatched the 1st Tank Brigade, with its several thousand troopers and—on paper—93 T-64 tanks.

Fleeting tank edge

In reality, the 1st Tank Brigade held key advantages, analysts Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds revealed in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London. The fast autoloader in the three-person T-64 and the Ukrainian army’s superior training made the most difference in the chaotic early fights around Chernihiv. 

“Better crew training combined with short-ranged engagements where their armament was competitive, and the faster autoloader on the T-64, allowed Ukrainian tank crews to achieve significant damage against surprised Russian units,” Zabrodskyi, Watling, Danylyuk and Reynolds wrote.

Stymied by the 1st Tank Brigade, the Russians were never able to capture Chernihiv, even briefly. Defeated around Kyiv, the invaders retreated from north-central Ukraine a few weeks later. That may have been the last time in the current wider war that a Ukrainian tank brigade fought with its full might.

Since then, “tank brigades have never operated as full brigade-level formations,” according to Militaryland, which tracks changes in the Ukrainian force structure. Not only has Ukraine struggled to maintain a large tank inventory after losing nearly 1,200 to Russian action, the tanks are also losing their relevance on a battlefield patrolled by tiny drones.

“The reduced time between detection and engagement, driven by real-time drone surveillance and the high velocity of [first-person-view] attack drones, has created a hostile environment for traditional armored platforms on the battlefield,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained.

Since late last year, the Ukrainian defense ministry has been gradually reorganizing its five tank brigades, reducing their tank inventories by ⅔, adding infantry fighting vehicles and transforming the units into “heavy mechanized brigades.”

Only the 4th Tank Brigade is officially still a tank brigade. But according to Militaryland, it’s already shedding tanks and adding mechanized infantry as it prepares to announce its new designation. 

With every day that passes, there are fewer active tanks in the Ukrainian inventory. Between the reorganization of the tank brigades and the reshuffling of tank battalions in other brigades, Ukraine’s tank force structure could shrink by half this year—to potentially fewer than 1,000.

The tanks that remain—up-armored to give them some chance of surviving aerial attacks—now spend most of their time indoors or underground, hiding from the FPV drones that are everywhere all the time over the front line. The giant armored vehicles normally emerge only briefly to fire a few rounds at distant targets before retreating back into hiding.

Just one brigade, the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade, ever operated the US-donated M-1s. It’s possible that brigade will replenish its armor battalion with ex-Aussie tanks. That would leave a second Abrams battalion that could join a different brigade or align under one of Ukraine’s new army corps. 

Wherever they land, don’t expect them to play a leading role in the fighting. It’s a new “era of the cautious tank,” to quote Ukrainian-American war correspondent David Kirichenko. And that applies to those fresh Aussie Abrams.

Technology is Ukraine’s chance to win the war. This is why we’re launching the David vs. Goliath defense blog to support Ukrainian engineers who are creating innovative battlefield solutions and are inviting you to join us on the journey.

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Ukraine’s new M-1 Abrams tanks are ready—but their brigade might not be

An anti-aircraft vehicle from the Cold War is enjoying a dramatic second career in Ukraine—as a top killer of Russia’s Shaheds.

As the barrages of Shahed drones get bigger, more frequent and more destructive in Ukraine, it’s becoming clear which Ukrainian-operated weapons work best against the 200-kg drones, each hauling a 90-kg warhead thousands of km under satellite guidance.

German-made Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, or SPAAGs—each armed with a pair of radar-cued 35-mm Oerlikon autocannons—are some of the most efficient defenses against the Shaheds. “Automated 35-mm gun systems produce dense projectile clouds,” pointed out a Ukrainian air-defense developer who goes by their nom de guerre “Alchemist.” 

Ukraine’s scores of Gepards, along with a much smaller number of more modern Skynex guns, “provide critical mid-range defense” against the devastating Shahed raids, swatting down the drones from a few kilometers away. “A German Gepard with twin 35-mm Oerlikon cannons once shot down multiple drones with a single burst,” Alchemist recalled.

Russia’s Shahed attack drones are relentlessly striking Ukrainian cities. Defeating the normally propeller-driven drones is “the highest priority” in Kyiv, according to Taras Tymochko, a representative of the Come Back Alive foundation.

Since launching the first Shahed at Ukraine nearly three years ago, Russia has launched tens of thousands of the explosive drones: around 29,000 in all so far, according to Ukrainian analysts. A single Shahed may cost between $50,000 and $150,000.

The pace of the drone attacks is increasing. The scale, too. An attack on July 4 involved 539 Shaheds and decoy Shaheds, according to the Ukrainian air force. The air force claimed it shot down 268 of the drones, while another 208 flew off course, likely owing to Ukrainian jamming systems, which can interfere with the radio signals connecting the drones to their navigation satellites.

Despite the defensive effort, 63 Shaheds struck, damaging buildings and killing and wounding civilians. Six days later on July 10, 397 Shaheds swarmed in. Twenty-nine got through that time. Two days after that on July 12, an incredible 597 Shaheds and decoys droned toward Ukraine. The Ukrainians shot down or misdirected 577 of them. Twenty hit.

Draining Ukrainian defenses

The low hit rate doesn’t worry Russian planners. “The Kremlin is willing to lose many Shaheds—about 75% of attacks fail—because mass waves are designed to exhaust air-defense systems,” Alchemist noted. 

If Ukrainian forces engaged every Shahed with a surface-to-air missile, Ukraine’s entire stock of missiles could run out in weeks or months. 

US missile-maker Lockheed Martin assembles around 600 multi-million-dollar Patriot missiles a year; Ukraine wages an intensive diplomatic campaign to ensure its six or seven Patriot batteries always have access to a few of the one-ton, 145-km-range missiles. 

Smaller air-defense missiles are cheaper and more numerous, but not by much: The United Kingdom has loaned Ukraine $3.4 billion to buy 5,000 Lightweight Multimission Missiles, each weighing 13 kg and ranging 8 km. That’s more than half a million dollars per missile. A Shahed is far cheaper than even an LMM.

By contrast, Ukraine’s roughly 80 Gepards and nearly identical, ex-Jordanian Cheetah SPAAGs—all German-built but some sent by the United States—are cheap. The vehicles are decades-old, surplus to their original operators’ needs and simple and reliable by today’s standards. 

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The main cost of operating a Gepard is the cost of its 35-mm ammunition. After sending Ukraine all of its Cold War stocks of Gepard ammo in 2023, Germany paid munitions-maker Rheinmetall $181 million to restart production of the 1.5-kg and produce a fresh batch of 300,000. A handful of rounds is enough to down a drone.

A subsequent German contract paid for another 180,000 rounds that should arrive in Ukraine next year. Ukraine’s Gepards should have enough ammo to blast away every time Shaheds motor across the border. 

For a Gepard crew, the cost of shooting down a Shahed might amount to a few thousand dollars. That, and the mobile gun’s accuracy, is why the Gepard is on the front line of Ukraine’s defensive campaign against the Shaheds.

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A video Ukrainian forces circulated online recently graphically depicts how little time a vehicle can linger along the front before it attracts the lethal attention of tiny, explosive first-person-view drones. 

A Ukrainian mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored truck—an MRAP—speeds up to the front to drop off fresh troops and supplies and pick up troops whose rotation is over. 

The MRAP idles for literally seconds before the first Russian drone barrels in. The vehicle suffers at least one drone impact as it speeds away. Fortunately for the Ukrainian crew and passengers, the MRAP’s thick armor absorbs the worst of the blast.

That harrowing experience is now ubiquitous. And it’s getting worse as both sides deploy more and better FPVs, including unjammable fiber-optic models and FPVs fitted with artificial intelligence that can steer them toward their targets.

“Bing on the front line is not good, and it’s mostly because of drones,” explained Andrew Perpetua, an independent open-source intelligence analyst in the United States. 

“Artillery and air strikes don’t help, but I would imagine the drones are doing the bulk of the damage right now, especially with regards to doing troop rotations, [delivering] supplies—like, any sort of driving a vehicle,” Perpetua added. “It’s not great. Especially if you’re going along a highway or any sort of major road, you’re getting hit.”

David Kirichenko, a Ukrainian-American war correspondent, has experienced dangerous rotations firsthand during his many trips to the front line since Russia widened its war on Ukraine 41 months ago.  “If you go too slow trying to avoid a mine, you can more easily get hit by a drone or any other Russian weapon system such as artillery,” Kirichenko said.

“Or if you drive too fast” to avoid the drones, he added, “you’d more easily drive over a mine. So it’s just a very dangerous game of kind of randomness of how you might die when you’re driving out.”

The peril doesn’t end when the road does. Braking to drop off and load troops and materiel, a truck might halt for mere seconds—or never fully stop at all. “The vehicle drives up and I mean, it’s: the doors open and it all happens just in a flash. Like all the supplies pop out, you hop out and you just got to run for cover,” Kirichenko said.

He recalled one drop-off where the drones were already overhead and waiting as the vehicle’s doors opened. “It’s just an extremely dangerous mission that I’ve witnessed firsthand.”

Drones as thick as flies

The sheer number of FPVs all along the front—both sides now build millions of the tiny drones every year—means it’s never safe anywhere within the roughly 30-km range of the best FPVs (which might benefit from other drones relaying their radio signals) or the bigger hexacopter bomber drones. 

Ominously, the drone kill zone is expanding as the drones improve—and fast. “At first, it was like, you know, the last 5 km were kind of the issue,” Perpetua said. “And then it became, like, the last 10, the last 15. And now it’s like the last 30. And it’s just going to keep going up.”

“I think over the course of the next few months, probably like six to eight months, we’re going to see it [the drone kill zone] go out to like 50 or 60 km” in either direction from the line of contact, Perpetua predicted.

He claimed Ukraine would benefit more from the extended drone kill zone. “The farther out you go, I think Ukraine will have the advantage because Ukraine has just simply better drones,” Perpetua said. “Russia is mostly relying on their fiber-optic drones” which range just 10 km or so. “I think Ukraine has much better long-range drones that don’t rely on fiber-optics—and that use more advanced connectivity” via wireless radio.

But Ukrainian commanders aren’t assuming better drones and a wider kill zone will definitely favor Ukraine. Kirichenko noted more Ukrainian units deploying more ground robots for more different tanks inside the kill zone—all in an effort to safeguard Ukraine’s most precious resource: its infantry.

“The more that you can get ground robots through those very dangerous missions of getting resupplies, handling your logistics,” Kirichenko said, “the more that you can save your human soldiers.”

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A Russian drone found the toughest armor on the battlefield—and lost

The Russian air force recently dropped 250 glide bombs on a single treeline near Andriivka in Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast, potentially making that roughly 3-km-long copse the most bombed place on Earth at the time.

It didn’t help. The Russian regiments and brigades the air force was supporting with its intensive—some might say “insane”—aerial bombardment have been defeated and forced to withdraw from the area.

The Russian KAB glide bombs, which range 25 miles or farther under pop-out wings and satellite guidance, rained down as a trio of Russian units—the 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade—were “really struggling near Kindrativka,” just outside Andriivka three miles south of the border with Russia, according to analyst Moklasen.

A week ago, the Russians were in danger of being surrounded and cut off from their supply lines and reinforcements. Instead, they retreated last weekend, marking the latest setback for the 50,000-strong Russian force in Sumy.

Shortly after drone-harried Ukrainian forces retreated from western Russia’s Kursk Oblast in mid-March, bringing to an abrupt end a controversial seven-month Ukrainian incursion, Russian units including the 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade counterattacked—and crossed into Sumy.

But they counterattacked on foot, bringing with them virtually zero combat vehicles. While far from unusual as the Russians hold back their surviving armor, the Sumy operation underscored the risks that accompany infantry-first tactics. 

Having lost more than 20,000 armored vehicles and other heavy equipment, the Russians made a deliberate decision in recent months to pull back their surviving armor—and send regiments and brigades into battle on foot or on motorcycles.

The shift to infantry and bike tactics preserves a vanishing resource (armored vehicles) by replacing it with an abundant resource (infantry and bikes). With generous cash bonuses sometimes equaling three years of pay, the Kremlin has managed to recruit 30,000 fresh troops a month—enough to replace the roughly 30,000 troops who are killed or wounded in Ukraine every month.

The downside is apparent in Sumy. “It certainly becomes much harder to achieve any sort of … call it a big and beautiful breakthrough,” explained Ukrainian-American war correspondent David Kirichenko.

Worse for the Russians, heavier Ukrainian units have been able to defeat lighter Russian units in some sectors, even though the Ukrainian formations are desperately short of trained infantry—and the Russian formations have infantry in abundance. 

Sumy face-off

The Ukrainian 79th and 95th Air Assault Brigades and the 225th Assault Regiment, equipped with German-made Marder and US-made Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles, faced off against the vehicle-less 22nd and 30th Motor Rifle Regiments and 40th Marine Brigade in Sumy.

If the Russians had an advantage, it was in the air. Despite heavy losses in the 41 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, the Russian air force still has 10 times as many warplanes as the Ukrainian air force has—and many more glide bombs. 

For years, the Russians have been dropping around 100 KABs a day all along the 1,100-km front line. In recent weeks, many of those KABs fell on that isolated treeline in Sumy. It’s possible the Ukrainian 79th and 95th Air Assault Brigades and the 225th Assault Regiment had positioned infantry or artillery in the treeline. It’s also possible the Russians simply believed the Ukrainians had placed forces under those trees.

In any event, the Russians bombed and bombed with what Moklasen described as an “insane” number of KABs. How many, if any, hit anything of value is unclear. Ukrainian jamming can throw the KABs off course.

Shrugging off the bombardment, mechanized Ukrainian troops flanked the de-mechanized Russians near Kindrativka last week. The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies noted Ukrainian counterattacks in Sumy that could “complicate the enemy’s advance and threaten the encirclement of Russian troops operating in Andriivka.”

But the Russians escaped just in time, fleeing northeast and straightening the Russian line in Sumy. The end result, however, is that the Russians control less of Sumy now compared to a week ago. Even a record number of glide bombs pummeling a tiny fragment of forest hasn’t been able to reverse the Russians’ declining fortunes in the oblast.

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Russians pounded one tiny spot in Ukraine with 250 bombs—still lost