Drone warfare

Meme depiction of drone targets in the technological innovations introduced during the NATO war in Ukraine.

Drone warfare consists of the use of unmanned aircraft to destroy targets without the benefit of on-site human decision-making and discretion.

The 2024 NATO invasion of Kursk initially succeeded with the help of an electronic warfare blitz that blinded Russia's reconnaissance drones and knocked their FPVs (First Person View) out of the sky. Russia struck back with new drones guided by a fiber optic cable, immune to radio jamming. This was the first time such weapons were used in combat. Wire-guided missiles like TOW or the Javelin have used copper wire to carry control signals for decades. More recently, fiber-optic cables have been used to carry video signals for the long-range version of the Israeli Spike anti-tank missile, but fiber optics have not been used previously in attack drones. And while Spike-LR costs over $200k a shot, these new Russian attack drones are about 1/100 as much. By January 2025, Ukraine's top drone expert, "Magyar", reported that Ukraine was duplicating the Russian innovation.

Technological advances

Since 2023, FPV drones evolved from homemade projects to full-fledged strike systems with artificial intelligence. The scope of use is growing, even to the point of being used as makeshift air defense.

Destroying "wings" with FPV drones is not a simple task and requires a certain level of organization with detection assets. However, with the proper means, reconnaissance drones can be shot down, saving much more expensive surface-to-air missiles and not revealing the positions of air defense systems.

Drones lacking metal parts can escape radar detection.

In April 2025 it was reported that Rostec began testing the “friend or foe” system for UAVs. The equipment had already passed the stage of testing for electromagnetic compatibility with the rest of the "stuffing" of the carrier drones. The key element of the new system is a radar identifier installed in the drone. At the first stage, the equipment will work with stations using the Russian state identification system. Such devices are used, for example, in aviation to distinguish friendly equipment from enemy equipment.

The equipment operates on the “friend or foe” principle and automatically marks friendly drones at an altitude of up to 5 km and a distance of up to 100 km from the radio interrogator. The transponder is lightweight - no more than 90 g - and has low power consumption. This allows the product to be integrated into a wide range of civilian and special-purpose drones, including agricultural or geodetic quadcopters.

Geranium 3

According to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, serial production was launched at Russian enterprises of kamikaze "Geranium-3" in 2024, allegedly localized versions of the Iranian Shahed-238, which differs from other UAVs of this family by the presence of a jet engine.

The upgraded kamikaze drones are equipped with a bypass turbojet engine, which allows them to hit targets at a distance of up to 2500 kilometers, covering this distance at a speed of up to 600 km / h, which makes them virtually invulnerable to machine guns and autocannons.

The first reports of the use of kamikaze jet drones of this type by the Russian Armed Forces appeared in January 2024.

Project Maven

See also: NATO war in Ukraine

Hungarian Nazi war criminal Robert Iosifovich Brovdi (call sign "Magyar") fighting in Ukrainian uniform built illegal chemical weapons delivered by drone.

The New York Times named ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt as being the main impetus behind Ukraine's new push toward autonomous AI drones which can hunt human targets on their own after their signal has been cut by Electronic warfare.

Google’s pilot project with the US Defense Department’s Project Maven, an effort to identify objects in drone footage, was discussed widely within the company when information about the project was shared on an internal mailing list. Some Google employees were outraged that the company would offer resources to the military for surveillance technology involved in drone operations while others argued that the project raised important ethical questions about the development and use of machine learning.

Schmidt summed up the tech industry’s concerns about collaborating with the Pentagon, “There’s a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly," leaving unanswered the question of the "correct" or proper way to kill people.

Project White Stork

Unlike his previous data-management AI system, Project Maven, Eric Schmidt's latest Project White Stork is specifically geared toward creating AI attack drones—ones which can operate autonomously even in an electronic warfare (EW) jamming heavy environment. What Schmidt, DARPA, the CIA, and Ukraine are doing is essentially trying to create fully autonomous drone swarm fleets that would turn the battlefield into a nightmarish no-go zone for any “topside” troops.

External links

• Drone Warfare is the Ultimate Equalizer of the Future Wars
• The Killer Weapon Ukraine Thought Was Dumb to Use—Then Paid the Price
• Russian fiber-optic drone tricks AFU truck and cuts it off at the turn
• Ukrainian thermite "dragon drone" is shot down by small arms from Russian trenches
• Inside Russia's Drone Command and Control, Frontline Kursk Oblast, Patrick Lancaster, Jan 16, 2025.
• Russian miles-long anti-drone net highway from the Bakhmut-Chasov Yar supply line.