January 28, 2025: Ukraine has been fighting the Russian invaders for three years now. The expensive Russian failure to conquer Ukraine is largely due to Ukrainian ingenuity and innovations. Russia responds but rarely gets ahead. One area where Russia fell behind was drones. Ukraine revolutionized warfare with its many drone-based innovations. Russia tries to keep up but economic sanctions and continuous new drone developments from Ukraine get in the way.

By late 2024 Ukraine had come up with another gaggle of drone ideas. The most visually obvious one is the remotely controlled drone swarm. The usual Russian defense is jamming the control signals. The Ukrainian swarm has drones capable of operating independently when jammed and continuing the attack with less accuracy but, because it is a swarm with dozens of drones, some are still going to hit the target. The swarm concept has been tested successfully and the next step is using it against the Russians.

Ukrainians are able to modify their tactics and technology quickly, often in hours if all that is involved is a software modification. One new concept that has already been used is First Person View/FPV drones to plant magnetic mines on the edge of a road or trail Russian armored vehicles are headed for. When the armored vehicles show up, all that moving metal activates the magnetic mines, blowing the tracks or wheels off the armored vehicles. Thus immobilized the crews usually bail out and run before another FPV drone with more explosives arrives to finish off the motionless vehicles.

Ukraine has developed the Flamingo VB140 anti-drone interceptor, a meter-long, fixed-wing, propeller-driven aircraft that can operate at altitudes up to 4,500 meters and fifty kilometers from its launch site. Flamingo VB140 will intercept, by crashing into them, any airborne drone in its target list which it encounters. If no targets are found Flamingo VB140 will just fall to the ground when its battery is out of power.

Flamingo VB140 is meant to destroy Russian reconnaissance and surveillance drones, especially the Orlan-10, which is the most common Russian recon drone. Introduced in 2011, Orlan-10 is one of few UAVs that Russia developed locally. Orlan-10 is propeller-driven, weighs about 15 kilograms and can carry a payload of up to 6 kilograms of various kinds of recon equipment, including infrared cameras, or an array of multiple cameras used for creating 3-dimensional maps. Its 95-octane gasoline-powered engine provides a cruise speed of 90 to 150 kilometers an hour, a service ceiling of about 5,000 meters, and a flight endurance of 18 hours. Together with control and launch equipment, the Orlan-10 costs about half a million dollars. The aircraft is launched by a portable folding catapult and lands by shutting down the engine and deploying a parachute. Russia has produced over two thousand Orlans so far and they continue to be produced despite the difficulty in obtaining some electronic components.

Oran-10s required several Western electronic boards and chips. These components could not be manufactured in Russia and had to be imported. By 2017 it was clear that Russia was not simply using existing stockpiles of now banned components to build new Oran-10s. This was a major problem because Orlan-10 was a key observation asset as it could spot targets for Russian artillery or rocket fire. Oran-10 can operate high enough to be safe from rifle or machine-gun fire and it is difficult for a lightweight anti-aircraft missile like Stinger to hit. At night it is even less vulnerable to ground fire.

In Ukraine some Orlan-10s continued to be shot down or crash because of equipment failure. Their wreckage was examined for the presence of banned components and these items were still there. The banned items were common, not custom-manufactured for Orlan-10s. There were dozens of distributors you could order from. Government efforts to sort out which distributors were selling the Oran parts to a firm with a link to Russia have come up empty. Russian forces have lost over a hundred Orlans in Ukraine so far and have replaced these losses because Orlan-10 is their principal means of spotting targets for Russian artillery. Orlan-10s entered were used in Ukraine and Syria before 2022.

Russia has recently faced another Ukrainian anti-drone system that involves deploying a net to foul a Russian drone’s propellers and cause it to crash. As long as the drone delivering the net is cheaper than the Russian drones it takes down, it is a worthwhile system. Ukraine is relying more on drones to intercept relatively slow moving Russian cruise missiles. Most of these cost over $50,000. Bringing them down with drones that cost less than a thousand dollars is how you win wars. Ukraine still receives aid from NATO nations, while the Russian economy is a mess because of three years of sanctions. Russia has used up most of its national cash reserve and building more drones is not at the top of their to-do list, not when the Ukrainian drone destruction efforts have been so successful. Orlan drones are a necessity because reconnaissance and surveillance are essential. Orlans get built first and other types of drones are obtained with whatever cash is left.