The leader of Ukraine's special drone branch said his operators are striking advancing Russian infantry at extreme close range, providing rare insight into how some of the country's best pilots are fighting. Maj. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, the commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, wrote in a statement on Sunday that his pilots have, over the last month, been engaging enemy troops at an average strike depth of 1.44 km, or 0.89 miles, from the line of contact.
Facing an existential crisis, the Ukrainians had to develop a way to counter hostile forces cheaply yet with mass. That meant figuring out how to turn inexpensive drones into weaponry, a step that quickly and fundamentally changed how the war was being fought. Now, drones carry out 80% of all battlefield hits and are responsible for most combat casualties.
Hydrogen-powered unmanned aerial vehicles are not a new concept. Drones running on hydrogen fuel have been in experimental forms for over a decade, but this is for the first time, a drone has been fully designed and deployed on full-scale combat duty in an active war zone. The drone is a hybrid version of the Raybird USA developed by Skyeton and is deployed with the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
On Thursday, Ukraine's energy minister, Denys Shmyal, warned Ukrainians to prepare for more power blackouts in the coming days as Russian air attacks continued. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia had struck energy infrastructure 217 times this year. Shmyal said 200 emergency crews were working to restore power to 1,100 buildings in Kyiv alone. Russia has been targeting Ukrainian power stations, gas pipelines and power cables since mid-January, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heat or electricity at various points.
