SEPTEMBER 2024

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HIGHLIGHTS

• Israel launched “Operation Northern Arrows” after increased Hezbollah rocket attacks on
  northern Israeli cities.
• Israeli strikes killed several key Hezbollah figures during the past week.
• The role of drones is expanding in the conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and
  Israel and Hezbollah along the Lebanese border.
• Long-range drone strikes against Russian targets have given Ukraine’s forces a boost, but
  challenges continue to mount along the eastern front.
• Similar to the Ukrainians’ Baba-Yaga heavy-lift drone, the Russians are also employing
  several larger drones as bombers.
• The Russians are increasingly employing in combat a fixed-wing drone called the Eleron.
  

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EDITOR'S NOTE

During the eight-year period prior to Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, the war in Ukraine was a
laboratory for the advancement of drone warfare tactics and technology. During that time, a cadre
of Ukrainian innovators, drawn from all walks of life, spearheaded a grassroots effort to develop
their country’s drone warfare technology and doctrine.

That effort, largely driven by volunteers and disruptive visionaries, afforded Ukrainian troops a
qualitative edge on day one of Moscow’s full-scale invasion, allowing them to overperform against their Russian enemies. Among the founding members of Ukraine’s drone warfare revolution was a native of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region named Serhii Udovkin.

Despite the Kremlin’s lies about a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Serhii saw firsthand that it was a Russian invasion that took over his hometown. Rather than sit on the sidelines or simply flee, he decided to join a pro-Ukrainian volunteer battalion — one of the many irregular militias that had formed when Ukraine’s regular army was on its heels a decade ago. Serhii, like many of his fellow volunteer soldiers at the time, had no prior military experience. He learned how to be a soldier while in combat — a baptism by fire some Ukrainians referred to as “natural selection” boot camp. At one point, Serhii and some fellow soldiers had planned to scout an unfamiliar section of the front lines. Just prior to the mission, a soldier arrived at his unit with a small drone — a commercial type, that you could buy at an electronics store, or online. Using the drone, this soldier surveyed the route that Serhii’s squad had planned to take, discovering an enemy ambush site smack on their path. Had Serhii and his comrades gone on that mission, they would have almost certainly been killed, wounded, or captured. “That drone saved my life,” Serhii later said, explaining how the close call had illuminated for him
the possibilities of using small drones in combat. “Back in 2014 and 2015, it was unbelievable to use drones,” he told this writer. “But after that mission, I changed my mind and understood the value of drones.”

After he returned to civilian life in 2015, Serhii became a drone expert and created a volunteer drone-training program for Ukraine’s military. As a civilian volunteer, he helped to generate many of the novel ideas that allowed Ukraine to use drones to such devastating effect in the full-scale war’s early days. “We have experience against the Russians since 2014, and we’ve had to teach ourselves,” he said. “It was a bloody experience, but we improved our tactics and our units on our own.”

After the February 2022 full-scale invasion, Serhii sent his wife and infant child to live abroad. Then, like many combat veterans of his generation, he volunteered to resume active -duty military service. Serhii became the commander of a special operations drone company and went straight to work developing many of the TTPs that Ukrainians now use on the front lines.

Right away, Serhii proved how drones could be a force multiplier for Ukraine’s dwindling supplies of artillery shells. He described one instance in which a nearby Ukrainian mortar team fired 46 120 mm rounds at a Russian air defense site and only scored one hit.

One out of 46.

Serhii’s SOF drone team then flew one large drone on four sorties, each time carrying a 120mm bomb. Those four flights scored four direct hits and destroyed the target. Serhii’s unit focused on targeting Russians’ lines of supply, as well as their EW systems and air defense systems. His unit also provided long-range ISR for HIMARS strikes. Before every mission, Serhii changed his tactics and techniques and physically modified his hardware to match the Russian threats specific to each section of the front lines. In training, his unit simulated the unique Russian electronic warfare threats they would face at the location to which they are about to deploy. “My team should be ready for different scenarios,” he said. “We train to simulate Russian electronic warfare threats and how to conceal ourselves from their drones.” In combat, his unit used a variety of drones, for both ISR and strike missions, broken down
according to their ranges — up to a distance of about 150 kilometers. Each new pilot entered his unit as a specialist in one type of drone. Over time, they learned to be proficient with all drone types in use by the unit, so that they are interchangeable in case of casualties.

Despite their successes, Serhii’s unit faced many obstacles. He said that 75% of their drone
losses were from friendly-fire shoot downs — underscoring the need for better communication and information sharing within the battlespace. He also said that Russia had prioritized Ukrainian drone operators as targets. “The Russians do not spare artillery against Ukrainian drone operators,” Serhii said.

By the summer of 2023, Serhii’s main goal was to create a dedicated, fully independent drone battalion for Ukrainian SOF. Yet, the endless months at war were taking a personal toll. He hadn’t seen his family for more than a year by then, and he missed them. When asked what inspired him to keep facing the enemy, Serhii said he was fighting today so that his infant child would not have to fight Russia tomorrow. “The Russians came to our country and killed our people,” he said. “It’s our country, our land, our families. For us, it’s very clear. We kill them, or they kill us.”
Serhii died during a combat mission in September 2023. Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are suffering a terrible toll, but they know they’re fighting for their nation’s survival. The war’s existential stakes have spurred an all-hands-on-deck effort to defend the homeland. This nationwide resistance movement includes the talented entrepreneurs and innovators, such as Serhii, who developed the technology and tactics that allowed Ukraine to defy Russia and inspire the world.

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