December 2024 Vector Report 1
DEC-JAN 2024/5
HIGHLIGHTS
- Israel continues to lead globally in this field, combining advanced technology with unique
operational experience. - New AI technology may allow Ukrainian forces to more effectively operate unmanned
systems during periods of inclement weather, potentially upsetting the battlefield rhythm that has prevailed since the full-scale war began. - Ukrainians have adapted their tactics to deal with the novel threat of Russia’s “tethered”
FPV drones. - New battlefield technologies have created tactical dilemmas for Ukrainian troops.
- Both Ukrainians and Russians are experimenting with new kinetic options, including shotguns, to shoot down enemy FPV strike drones.
- Inspired by the war in Ukraine, China has surged the incorporation of drone technology
into its combat planning. - A Taiwanese manufacturer unveiled a new FPV strike drone, which is 100% domestically
manufactured.
EDITOR'S NOTE
One of the most shocking videos to come from the war in Ukraine made its rounds on social media
this past week. The GoPro footage is from a Ukrainian soldier who moves alone through a
bombed-out village. At first, he coordinates an FPV drone strike against a building where a Russian soldier is suspected to be hiding. After the strike, the Ukrainian enters the compound, presumably to conduct a battle damage assessment. He takes small arms fire and is hit by at least one bullet but manages to toss a grenade into the building where the shooter has hidden.
The grenade explodes. When the soldier peers around the building’s corner toward the doorway, he comes face to face with a Russian soldier. Hand-to-hand, single combat begins. The soldiers wrestle for control of a knife, grabbing the blade when they must. Blood flows. The Russian soldier repeatedly bites the Ukrainian soldier’s hand, tearing off chunks of flesh. The Ukrainian soldier reportedly calls out for a comrade who never arrives. The two men exert themselves to absolute exhaustion. Perhaps the Ukrainian’s gunshot wound has depleted his strength. Perhaps the Russian is simply stronger. In any case, the Russian soldier gains the advantage and takes control of the knife. The Ukrainian grunts and gurgles when the blade goes in. The pace of action relents. The Russian sits back on his haunches with a million-mile look on his bloody face.
“That's it, Mom, goodbye,” the Ukrainian concedes. “Let me die in peace,” he says to his enemy,
continuing: “You opened me up. Let me breathe a little; it hurts a lot. Let me go quietly, don't
touch me.” The Russian stands and replies, “You fought great.” “Thank you,” says the Ukrainian. “You were the best fighter in the world. Better than me.”
The Russian exits the frame. A moment later, the Ukrainian says, “It’s not necessary,” just before a
blast jolts the GoPro footage to ground level. Blood drips in front of the lens until the footage
expires. This video lays bare the brutal truth about war. A timeless truth that transcends technology. All combat, even in its most modern variants, comes down to killing the enemy. Yes, the Ukrainian soldier was operating in tandem with FPV drones. But his survival ultimately hinged on a knife fight.
A screenshot from the knife fight video, posted to social media channels. Drone warfare is not a replacement for anything. Rather, it complements all other modes of warfare. And when technologies fail — or cancel each other out — victory may depend on a soldier’s ability to fight in the most primitive ways imaginable. The knife-fight footage is particularly shocking because it offers such a stark contrast against the emotional divorce of FPV snuff videos in which soldiers are run down and eliminated by machines controlled by unseen operators ensconced miles away.
In this edition of the Vector Report, our team member in Ukraine covers how drone warfare has
changed some of the most elemental aspects of ground combat. This includes the many trade-offs that troops on the modern battlefield must face when weighing the contradictory tactics needed to deal with disparate threats, ranging from FPV drones to artillery. As our team member in Ukraine writes, “[S]oldiers face a choice — separate and make themselves vulnerable to FPVs as single targets, or coalesce and create a huge signature and a juicy target for indirect fire.”
Even before the 2022 full-scale invasion, Ukrainians were adapting to these peculiarities of modern warfare — sometimes turning to simple technologies and tactics as a hedge against Russia’s most advanced weapons.
One example of this was the use of Cold War-era landline battlefield telephones to communicate between trenches. In many places on the eastern, entrenched front lines, even before 2022, Russian EW systems could detect and pinpoint radio communications, even if they were encrypted. The best way around this was to reduce one’s electromagnetic emission to as near zero as possible. Old landline telephones offered a way to do so. That same principle is in action with another of the war in Ukraine’s latest trends — the use of fiber-optic, tethered FPV drones.
Although these drones fly slower and are less maneuverable than their free-flying counterparts, they’re immune to EW defenses. In recent months, Russia has rapidly scaled up its use of tethered drones, creating an acute imbalance in the tit-for-tat arms race between offensive and defensive and drone warfare technologies — the duel between “sword and shield,” as many Ukrainians call it. Tethered drones began last year as a bespoke solution employed by a limited number of Russian units in the Kursk salient. They’ve now evolved into a sweeping, technological evolution that has affected Ukrainian tactics at all levels, as our Ukrainian team member reports in this edition.
Looking back on 2024, it’s clear that drones have risen in importance for both sides of the Russo-
Ukrainian war. The numbers alone speak volumes: Ukraine delivered at least 1.3 million drones to its forces last year, while the Russians delivered about 1.4 million. The spectrum of drone combat employment has also expanded. Notably, the Ukrainians have pioneered the use of FPV strike drones as air-to-air interceptors. And the year closed out with another historic first. According to Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukrainian 'Magura V5 naval drones, armed with surface-to-air missiles, downed two Russian Mi-8 helicopters near “The issue of using anti-aircraft missile launchers (on USVs) was only a matter of time,” a Russian mil-blogger wrote on a Telegram thread about the Ukrainian strikes.
In a separate Telegram post, another Russian blogger wrote: “At the moment, [Russian] surface
fleet is not able to protect itself from USVs on the open sea. With varying success, it can protect
itself in bays and at bases. So once we lose the helicopter advantage, we (and essentially no one)
cannot ensure the safety of civilian shipping at sea.” The Vector Report has covered this point before, but it merits repeating. Drones are no longer a stop-gap measure meant to account for deficiencies in manpower or ammunition or naval ships.
Drones are now invaluable in their own right, and dominance in the so-called air littoral is a
priority for modern combat. At sea, Ukraine’s maritime drones have all but neutralized Russia’s
superior naval presence in the Black Sea. The war in Ukraine is not a perfect laboratory for America’s adoption of small UAVs and USVs into its combat operations. The open steppe of eastern Ukraine is a far cry from the maritime domain within which a battle for Taiwan would be fought. The U.S. military also has levers to pull that Ukraine lacks — air power and naval power, most notably.
Yet, all our vaunted technology may not be as lethal as we assume. Just look at the powerlessness of Ukraine’s high-tech EW systems against Russia’s fiber-optic, tethered drones. One relatively low-tech solution defeated the fruits of years of research and development and reset the race between sword and shield. Such technological resets are regular occurrences in Ukraine. And when they happen, both sides scramble to field “good enough” rebuttals. They don’t waste years in development or convoluted procurement practices. They field whatever they can as fast as possible, and battlefield natural selection is their barometer for success.
Thus, when it comes to a war with China, we must have flexible production lines and development
systems in place ahead of time to ensure that we can engineer and field solutions at the proverbial
speed of war. We must also have fluid mindsets capable of adjusting our doctrines according to
battlefield realities, even amid all-out combat.
There is no final lesson to be learned from the war in Ukraine. There are only trend lines to study
for the sake of anticipating where modern warfare technology and tactics will be when we fight our next war. We must be ready to adapt, and we must be psychologically hardened to the possibility of a war in which our technological advantages do not spare our troops from the kind of brutal, all-out combat we’ve seen in Ukraine. Yes, it’s important to know how to fly an FPV. But it’s still important to know how to fight with a knife.
