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Russia and Ukraine have increasingly turned to small drones controlled by fiber optic cables.
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These drones leave their fiber optic cables strewn across the battlefield.
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A Ukrainian special operator said they were forcing soldiers to move cautiously.
Small, inaccessible drones controlled by fiber-optic cables have become so integral to combat operations in Russia and Ukraine that they leave trails of cables everywhere, turning areas of the battlefield into a tangled web.
To counter extended electronic warfare, fiber-optic drones are becoming more prevalent on both sides. And with cables stretched across the battlefield, soldiers move more cautiously.
“You see the little webs and you never know — is it from the fiber-optic drone? Or is it part of a trap,” Khyzhak, a Ukrainian special operator who could only be identified by his call sign (“Predator” in Ukrainian) for security reasons, told Business Insider. Mines and traps were also prominent threats in this war.
At the start of the war, first-person-viewing (FPV) drones—small quadcopter-style drones fielded by both Russia and Ukraine that often carry explosive warheads—relied on radio frequency connections. However, both sides quickly figured out how to use signal jamming to stop them.
In response, Russia and Ukraine began developing fiber-optic FPV drones that connected to their pilots using coils of long, thin cables. The cables kept a stable connection and made the quadcopters resistant to traditional electronic warfare tactics.
Soldiers’ best chance of stopping fiber-optic drones is to shoot them out of the sky, but that requires precision, quick reaction times, and a lot of luck.
Russia has introduced long-range fiber-optic drones to the battlefield, a senior Ukrainian official said.Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
The fiber optic cables that give these drones their greatest advantage are also their greatest vulnerability, as they can become entangled in the environment and stop flying suddenly. And even if they don’t tangle, cables are still left draped on the battlefield after use.
Khyzhak, a soldier in the 4th Ranger Regiment, a Ukrainian special operations unit modeled after its counterparts in the US Army, said it’s very common to see fiber optic cables everywhere because there are more and more of these drones in use, and the cables frequently get stuck in trees and fields.
The 4th Ranger Regiment shared combat footage earlier this month showing Khyzhak, along with two other operators and their driver, narrowly avoiding a Russian fiber-optic drone strike while speeding back to base after a front-line mission.
The footage shows fiber optic cables strewn across the field next to the road and right onto Khyzhak’s gun.
“It was all over the place,” he recalled, speaking of the September incident, in which the driver deftly maneuvered out of the way of the Russian drone, which detonated on the side of the road.
Other video footage taken from the battlefield shows fiber optic cables criss-crossing like spider webs, sometimes visible only in direct sunlight or when viewed from a certain angle.
Khyzhak said the cables are especially annoying during night missions, when special operators can’t use much light. He described them as “a tactical problem”.
Fiber optic cables are seen on the side of the road in footage shared by Ukrainian special operators earlier this month.Ukrainian Special Operations Forces 4th Ranger Regiment/Screengrab via X
Soldiers can’t immediately tell if it’s a harmless fiber optic cable or something far more dangerous, like a booby trap. This forces them to think carefully about whether they should call in an engineer, destroy the network with explosives, stop, or advance.
It can certainly slow down the mission, Khyzhak said, and becomes a greater concern the closer the special operators get to the front lines or if they work covertly in Russian-held territory.
Ukraine and Russia have expanded production of fiber-optic drones over the past year, and both sides are racing to develop variants that can fly further over the front line.
Russia, for example, has begun using fiber-optic drones with a range of 50 kilometers (31 miles), which exceeds the distance most known variants can travel. The length of the cable usually limits their range to between 10 and 25 kilometers (about 6 and 15 miles).
In Ukraine, fiber-optic drones have become such a threat to critical supply routes that soldiers have covered roads with nets to protect vehicles from attacks, though it does not always guarantee their safety.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defense industry is developing new countermeasures to defend against these drones. The innovations also caught the attention of NATO leadership, which used the lessons of the war to inform its own military planning.
Read the original article on Business Insider