A donation campaign has raised $13.5 million to pay for 200 gadgets
In a field outside the Ukrainian capital kyiv, a van kicks up dust as it rolls down a hill with its passengers singing the tune of the hit 1980s sitcom “Police Academy.” But it is not a US police vehicle, but a Mitsubishi L200 of the Ukrainian army in pursuit of a quadcopter surveillance drone.
these soldiers train to be the eyes of the ukrainian army, which embarked on a massive expansion of its fleet of surveillance drones. This day, the ten soldiers learn to pilot their devices from a moving vehicle.
“It’s very important to have a drone in every combat unit because they are our eyes in the sky,” says Lt. Anton Galianshinski, 40, a visual data analysis expert taking part in the exercise.
The Turkish combat drones of the Ukrainian army have been the talk of the town since the beginning of the conflict, inflicting severe damage on Russian armor. But Ukraine had no surveillance drones before the war. Not having a unit of this type, they must have rely on patriotism and donations for the equipment and training of pilots.
The soldiers that AFP accompanies participate in courses at the Global Drones Academy, a company run by Anton Veklenko, a drone pilot since 2015 and “in high demand” since the start of the war. “One of the most important aspects of training is safety,” Veklenko told AFP.
A specialist in photos taken by drone, Veklenko, 35, teaches how to fly – and above all how to avoid Russian fire. “At the start of the war, a lot of our military died because they didn’t know they were being watched,” he said. “We developed a method that allows the pilot not to reveal his position,” he added without elaborating.
Small drones allow kyiv reconnaissance along the front line, spot Russian troops and equipment, and even direct artillery fire from a distancea. They save Ukrainian lives, but they are expensive and scarce.
The two sides have also used smaller radio-controlled machines, but kyiv says Russian electronic countermeasures are increasingly interfering with their communication systems.
At the beginning of July, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, asked for donations from all over the world in order to create a Ukrainian “dron army”. 13.5 million dollars were raised to finance a first series of 200 devices equipped with thermal cameras, GPS and mapping software. “The essential thing is that they are difficult to detect so that they are difficult to bring down,” says the website linked to Zelensky’s appeal.
According to Yuri Shchygol, head of the Ukrainian cybersecurity and intelligence service, a contract has already been signed with Polish manufacturers and four tactical drones have been received. His teams are studying possible contracts in Portugal, the United States, Japan and Israel, he added this week at a press conference.
Zelensky also called for “dronations” of these small devices to countries like the United States and Poland. Hobbyists and commercial drone pilots began donating their drones to bolster the “drone army,” but Ukraine is aiming higher.
“We have received 30 drones in the framework of the “Donate your drone” program, both from Ukrainians and from abroad. Our goal is to collect 1,000″, Shchygol says.
The campaign took on an urgent tone this week, with US officials warning that Russia intends to acquire hundreds of combat drones from Iran. Learning to operate civilian drones takes two weeks, according to Shchygol, while military reconnaissance drone pilots receive a month’s training.
However, Shchygol believes that the Ukrainian drone army will bear fruit beyond the conflict with Russia. After all, he reminds himself, “Elon Musk himself has said that the wars of the future will be decided by drones.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism