It was recently one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and from those early stages, things have changed a lot, where both forces are much more balanced than at the beginning.
And one of the keys in this regard, and for which Ukraine seems to be balancing the war, it is thanks to drones and those drone operators who do not hesitate to put their own lives in danger to save their country.
Recently correspondent Nick Schifrin and cameraman Eric O’Connor, who work for PBS News Hour, traveled to the Donetsk province of Ukraine to report on soldiers using drones in search of Russian troops.
Specifically, they moved to the forest on the outskirts of Bakhmut where Ukrainian soldiers are fighting alone and who are using all kinds of weapons to face the Russian invasion, but who stand out for having a series of 10,000 Chinese-made drones. $ that take them off above the trees and use as cover to hunt Russian troops.
Basically the drone locates Russian targets and they transmit their location to the artillery commander of the Ukrainian brigade for instructions.
He comments that it takes 3 to 5 minutes to react quickly and accurately to the movements that the Russian troops are making and that have been previously hunted by drones.
In any case, they say that the Russians also have their own drone operators, and they use the drones to discover the positions of the Ukrainians. That is why, on more than one occasion, drones from one side and the other cross paths.
Russian technology against these drones
They also comment that the Russians have technology capable of disabling drones by turning off their sign and losing unity. They explain that they are like signal jammers, where the drone is permanently lost.
They are using different types of drones, some of them technology new, but also old dating from 2014, drones that are not so elegant and that are more specialized in photography.
The bad thing about these drones is that they have to return to the operator to extract their memory card and be able to see the photographs they have taken, since they are somewhat old and are not capable of retransmitting in real time.
Starlink, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, also plays an important role, which uses this Internet to send images and guarantee communications in those devastated areas that do not have another type of connection.