FPV drones in the Ukraine war: attack on a vehicle shed and a kill in mid-air

As weapons, FPV drones – first-person view (FPV) – are a “child” of the Russia-Ukraine war. These drones were originally developed as toys for sport and leisure; the first videos of them appeared online around 18 months ago. They can now be used for attack and, more recently, for defence as well, and hardly any other weapon system shapes the image of this war as much.

Tanks hit inside a shed

This week the so-called “Bulava Shock Unit” of the Presidential Brigade “Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi” released a video showing an FPV drone attack on tanks and vehicles parked in a shed. The drones used were produced by the so-called “Wild Hornets”; their value is likely to be around 5,000 euros. This compares with damage running into millions from destroyed main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and trucks; the shed also burned down completely.

How far the target was from the front line and Ukrainian positions is unclear. Because the battery indicators in the drone videos show only low reserves, an attack a few kilometres behind the lines seems likely. Repeaters were probably used in any case: even from inside the shed the drones still transmitted fairly good images, whereas quality otherwise drops noticeably close to the ground.

Dogfight between two FPV drones

The second remarkable video released this week comes from the Birds of Magyar (see above). It shows a “drone dogfight”: an unarmed Ukrainian FPV quadcopter drone collides with an armed Russian FPV fixed-wing drone.

Electronic warfare units intercepting and analysing the video feed of enemy FPV drones is no longer considered unusual. Most of the technology used is still civilian components, and both sides transmit in analogue: a noisy analogue image still contains more information than a digital image, which does not build up at all if there are too many transmission errors. The Ukrainians must either have located the Russian drone precisely by its radio signal, or been able to identify its position and heading well enough in the intercepted image. In any case, they launched an FPV quadcopter drone, which its pilot guided to the target and with which he was finally able to destroy it. After the collision, the Russian fixed-wing drone crashed.

This “aerial victory” is notable for another reason: FPV drones carry no zoom and/or HD cameras, because the transmission technology could not handle the huge data volumes of such cameras, or only with difficulty. In addition, the transmission power required would be immediately detectable by the other side's electronic warfare. Objects this small can therefore only be spotted at correspondingly short distances.

Nevertheless, in this case an FPV drone intercepted an incoming Russian FPV drone. This was hardly a coincidence, as unarmed models of this type have so far been very unusual at the front. That could change: without a payload, a drone flies better and is therefore superior to incoming threats. “Interceptor FPV drones” are therefore likely to be seen in action more often in future.