Nathan Rennolds
Updated Sun, January 28, 2024
Video footage shows Ukraine's new "Ironclad" combat drone in action.
It portrays the vehicle firing its M2 machine gun on a Russian outpost.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense shared the video on X, formerly Twitter.
Video footage released by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense earlier this month appears to show Ukraine's new "Ironclad" combat drone vehicle in action against Russian forces.
The video, which the ministry shared on X, formerly Twitter, bears the insignia of Ukraine's 5th Separate Assault Brigade, and it appears to show the remotely controlled drone firing its M2 machine gun on a Russian outpost.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, said in a Facebook post in September that the military was using the drone to "assault enemy positions, conduct reconnaissance and provide fire support to the military."
"This is a revolutionary product from Ukrainian engineers at Roboneers that changes the way warfare is conducted and helps save the most valuable thing - the lives of our military," Fedorov said.
He continued that the drone can hit speeds of more than 12 mph and comes with a Shablya M2 machine-gun turret, adding that it also had "an armored shell that protects it from small arms."
Screenshot from the video.Ukrainian Ministry of Defense
The Shablya system is a remotely operated "combat platform" designed to be attached to certain vehicles or objects, the manufacturer, Roboneers, says on its website.
The manufacturer says the system can rotate 360 degrees and detect human-sized targets up to 1,800 meters, or around 5,900 feet, away. It also features a thermal-imaging camera.
The prevalent use of drones and technological advances has marked the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly turned to Iranian-made Shahed "kamikaze" drones in its attacks on Ukraine.
Ukraine has also looked to develop drones that can attack enemy positions from land and sea.
In July, Ukraine unveiled a new sea drone designed to limit the Russian fleet's operations in the Black Sea to CNN. The report said the drone was packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and could hit targets 500 miles away.
One video shared on X also highlighted how Ukrainian soldiers were building their own "kamikaze" ground drones, with the footage appearing to show a vehicle strapped with 55 pounds of explosives traveling through over "4 km of enemy-controlled territory" to take out a road bridge.
But drone warfare has arguably ground the war to a halt, especially along the eastern front and the Dnipro River, where fighting has been particularly fierce in recent months.
"Nobody really knows how to advance right now. Everything gets smashed up by drones and artillery," Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator, told The Guardian.
"It's a war of armor against projectiles. At the moment, projectiles are winning," he added.
ECOCIDE
Ukraine appears to be attacking Russia's oil-and-gas industry with small, cheap drones that can bypass its air defenses
Alia Shoaib
Updated Sun, January 28, 2024
Firefighters extinguish oil tanks at a storage facility in the Bryansk Region in Russia on January 19, 2024.Russian Emergencies Ministry/Reuters
Oil and gas facilities in Russia have caught fire in recent weeks following suspected drone attacks.
Ukraine appears to be targeting energy infrastructure to hamper Russian supply lines.
Russia's air-defense systems have proven to be less effective against small drones.
Ukraine appears to be targeting Russia's oil-and-gas industry with small, cheap drones as it seeks to disrupt Russian supply lines.
Fires have broken out at several Russian energy-infrastructure locations over the past few weeks following suspected drone strikes, including at a Rosneft oil refinery in Tuapse, a Rosneft storage facility in Klintsy, and Novatek's Baltic Sea Ust-Luga terminal.
Videos posted on social media appeared to show fires at facilities in Tuapse and Klintsy.
Ukraine is likely targeting the facilities to disrupt Russia's military operations.
"Strikes on oil depots and oil storage facilities disrupt logistics routes and slow down combat operations," Olena Lapenko, an energy security expert at the Ukrainian think tank DiXi Group, told The New York Times.
"Disruption of these supplies, which are like blood for the human body, is part of a wider strategy to counter Russia on the battlefield," Lapenko added.
The strikes also aim to damage a lucrative industry that the West's economic sanctions have not badly hampered. Lapenko told The Times that Moscow had made more than $400 billion from oil exports since the war started in February 2022.
But the attack on the Baltic Ust-Luga terminal and bad weather in the region have helped disrupt Russia's seaborne crude shipments, which fell to their lowest rate in almost two months, Bloomberg reported.
If the attack is confirmed to have been carried out by Ukraine, it would show Kyiv can hit targets deeper inside Russian territory than usual with what are thought to be domestically produced drones, Reuters reported.
To add insult to injury, a military source claimed that Ukraine sent a drone flying over President Vladimir Putin's palace during an attack on a St. Petersburg oil depot.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his purported secret palace in Valdai, Russia.Getty Images, Navalny.com
En route, one of the drones that flew 775 miles into Russian airspace traveled over one of Putin's palaces in Valdai, an unnamed special-services source told the Ukrainian news agency RBC.
The vast woodland complex, next to Lake Valdai, halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, is one of Putin's favorite boltholes.
Why Ukraine can embarrass Russia's air-defense systems
Russia's air-defense systems have proven to be less effective against small drones because they struggle to detect them.
"Russia boasted of having layered defenses before the war, the sensor electronic warfare, different missile batteries, kinetic batteries, radars, that can sort of identify and interdict the threat," Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, previously told Business Insider.
But "most of these defenses were built to identify and destroy larger targets like missiles, helicopters, aircraft. Many were not really geared towards identifying much smaller UAVs," or unnamed aerial vehicles, he added.
'Bringing the detonator'
Ukrainian soldiers build homemade drones.Ignacio Marin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Forbes noted that Ukraine's effective approach reflected a drone-warfare strategy of "bringing the detonator," or the tactic of using small amounts of drone-carried explosives to detonate larger amounts of explosive materials in or on the targets, which are often aircraft, vehicles, fuels, and ammunition dumps.
T.X. Hammes, a research fellow at the National Defense University, wrote that small, low-cost drones with a minimal bomb load could wreak havoc if used against flammable targets.
"Even a few ounces of explosives delivered directly to the target can initiate the secondary explosion that will destroy the target," Hammes wrote.
Ukrainian forces are using 'flocks' of FPV drones led by 'queen' drone to attack Russian positions, soldier says
Rebecca Rommen
Sat, January 27, 2024
Ukrainian forces are using "flocks" of FPV drones led by "queen" drones, a Russian soldier said.
It may allow smaller drones to land and conserve battery power.
FPV drones have been particularly crucial to Ukraine's war effort.
Ukrainian forces are using "flocks" of FPV (first-person-view) drones led by "queen" drones to attack Russian positions, a Russian serviceman said in an interview with Russian newspaper Izvestia.
In a video shared on X, formerly Twitter, by a military blogger, the soldier described an encounter with a swarm of drones led by a "repeater drone queen."
He said Ukrainian forces sent a "large wing with a repeater" that broadcasted a signal to a group of smaller FPV drones flying underneath it.
These then dropped onto Russian positions, he added.
"A flock of around 10—the Queen is somewhere above at a high altitude in a small detection range. It brings the flock of drones, which then descend onto positions and start working," he said.
Izvestia correspondent Dmitry Zimenkin, who interviewed the soldier, said the tactic allowed Ukrainian drone operators to "land and wait" with their smaller drones, "saving batteries," Newsweek reported.
"When a large mother drone spots targets, the kamikazes take off, sometimes several meters from the target, and attack. If the Queen is eliminated, then her entire flock can be neutralized," Zimenkin said, per Newsweek.
FPV drones have been used by both Russian and Ukrainian forces since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and they have proved to be an effective and low-cost weapon.
They have been particularly crucial to Ukraine's war effort, enabling Ukrainian drone squads to attack deep into Russian territory while helping to limit losses to their ground forces.
But drone warfare has meant both sides are struggling to make any advances, Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator, told The Guardian.
"It's a war of armor against projectiles. At the moment, projectiles are winning," he added.
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