Fighting Russia from a Distance: Inside the Ukrainian Drone School | Russian-Ukrainian war

Kyiv, Ukraine – Andrey Pronin does not know how many drones he crashed.

“I lost count after 100,” the 44-year-old camouflage instructor told Al Jazeera as he observed three cadets of his drone flight school they pilot their buzzing plane over a withering meadow on the outskirts of Kiev.

Sitting at a plastic table littered with tools and batteries, the cadets with joysticks and cameras in their goggles looked scientific and harmless.

During Saturday morning exercises, each of them took turns flying a drone whose camera allows for viewing the flight from a first-person perspective.

Over and over again, cadets learned to maneuver the drones by flying them through two loops embedded in the wet ground.

Drones often fell at the speed of light after touching a loop or a bush, losing a red plastic propeller or a leg that had to be found in wet grass and reattached.

However, hundreds of hours of such exercises slowly turn the drone into an extension of the pilot’s body – and serve him on the front line.

“We want to live in such a way that our children are not afraid”

Some cadets are too young to become conscripts.

“I still have 10 years,” Kemal, a 15-year-old of mixed Ukrainian-Turkish descent, told Al Jazeera, referring to the draft age of 25.

Its immediate goal is to “prepare for races” among cadets of similar drone flying schools in Kiev. Other cadets who are ineligible for the draft want to pass on everything they have learned.

“We want to live in such a way that our children are not afraid, do not hide in bomb shelters, because where was I teaching all the time? In bomb shelters,” Viktoria, a teacher who will be teaching her students how to fly drones as part of a new, compulsory class, told Al Jazeera.

Ukrainian women are not subject to conscription, but many of them decide to serve in the army or in volunteer units.

Survival!’

Victoria sat next to six men in a dark classroom on the top floor of a gloomy office building in southeast Kiev, listening to the theoretical parts of the course. Pronin projected slides on the wall to explain things like the frequencies used to fly the drone and get video feedback.

Four of them were active duty soldiers sent by their military units to learn new skills. Taciturn and focused, they refused to give interviews or take photos – and only one of them blurted out “survival!” when asked about motivation.

That’s a keyword for any aspiring drone pilot or engineer, especially during the military conscription crisis in Ukraine, when thousands of fighting-age men are forcibly rounded up and sent to boot camps – or bribed to escape.

“Let’s be realistic. If conscription officers take you in, you pay 8,000 hryvnias (a little less than $200) and they let you go,” Pronin said. “This is the price of our training.”

Moreover, the 16-day, Ministry of Defense-certified training, conducted by Pronin and his partner Roman, who withheld his name for security reasons, is a path to joining the newest military elite in many ways.

Bravo for Ukraine’s zloty

Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Azerbaijan’s war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region have shown how important heavy drones such as Predators and Bayraktars have become on the battlefield. However, the Russia-Ukraine war became the first armed conflict in the world dominated by lightweight first-person view (FPV) drones.

On the way to training, Pronin’s cadets bring plastic water bottles, bought and weighed from supermarkets, so that they can practice flying with extra weight. These plastic bottles can be replaced with an explosive thrown into a Russian trench or a tank with an open hatch at a shocking value for money.

They have FPV drones that cost less than $1,000 destroyed two thirds of Russian tanks it cost millions, a NATO official said in April.

Most FPV drones are propeller-driven and resemble a helicopter. It can carry everything from heat detectors and night vision cameras to food, water and medical supplies.

Larger, more advanced ones can perform tasks comparable to Predator or Bayraktar drones.

One of them is Vampire, a heavy Ukrainian-made drone equipped with a machine gun that hunts Russian soldiers at night. Russians call her “Baba Yaga” after the child-eating witch from Slavic folklore.

More expensive fixed-wing FPV drones are more energy efficient than quadcopters and can fly farther. Large ones attack Russian command centers, fuel depots, airports and military plants.

Modern drones are fully capable of replacing snipers, whose range of several kilometers pales in comparison to what an experienced shooter with a drone can do.

“Snipers will kill with drones,” Roman said.

The downside is that even if drone pilots hide in a ditch, basement or well-camouflaged bunker, they are still searched for by enemy drones, which look for signs of their presence, such as protruding antennas.

“This is dangerous. This is goal number one,” Pronin said.

Meanwhile, the Russian side is surprisingly quick to imitate any tactical or technological tricks invented by Ukrainian drone creators.

“We have a jump. They have a jump,” Pronin said. “And then they start increasing it all, because everything is at the government level there. They have unrealistic budgets.”

Ukrainian state-owned arms producers often lag behind – and that’s where volunteers step in.

“Orchestra” of drone creators

They produce hundreds of thousands of drones a month – in apartment buildings, basements, former warehouses and factories – and raise money online or by word of mouth.

They use Chinese and Taiwanese chips and spare parts and offer inexpensive features such as wings made of 3D printed plastic or even cardboard.

They increasingly rely on Ukrainian-made electronics and can produce drones without a single part made in China, although Pronin said: “If China is closed to us, it would be painful.”

They enjoy little government support and tell donors that their best financial contribution is not the number of drones they buy, but the number of cadets they pay to train.

Drone creators are in constant contact with the front line – and are constantly modifying new models, using new software, larger antennas or switching to radio frequencies that the Russians cannot yet jam.

The ever-changing nature of counter-drone warfare is reflected in the school’s course, which “was completely different a year ago,” Roman said.

The school has trained hundreds of men and women to fly and assemble drones, and their priority is to teach them to work as a team “like an orchestra,” Pronin said.

There are dozens of similar schools throughout Ukraine, educating thousands.

After meeting with Western military instructors and training foreign cadets, Pronin and Roman realized that Ukraine’s drone warfare experience was the most advanced in the world and that their school could offer something others could not.

Both are former teachers from the eastern Donbas region. They also worked in a bank before becoming drone pilots after the region’s Russian-backed separatists rebelled against Kiev in 2014.

The two said they were constantly learning by flying and crashing new drones, monitoring publications, watching videos, participating in forums and even sneaking into closed Telegram groups for Russian soldiers.

They already offer English language courses – and are thinking of providing an exclusive experience to a foreigner who sits comfortably in his home, flying a combat drone.

They are also sure that after the end of the war, their school will not cease to exist.

“We are not seeking war. Our goal is peace,” Pronin said. “Drones have become a part of everyday life, just like cell phones.”