Shoddy Russian workmanship is letting Ukraine win the drone war

On paper, Russia and Ukraine both produce more than 100,000 of the most important first-person-view drones every month. These tiny, inexpensive drones – each weighing just a few pounds and costing around $500 – can haul nearly their own weight in explosives out to a distance of several miles, all while under the control of operators wearing virtual-reality headsets, seeing what the drones see with their forward-looking cameras. 

An FPV strike can maim or kill an exposed infantryman or damage – even destroy – an armoured vehicle. When Ukrainian brigades were starving for artillery ammunition this spring, the direct result of pro-Russia Republican lawmakers in the US Congress blocking further aid to Ukraine between October and April – made-in-Ukraine FPV drones helped to fill the firepower gap and forestall major Russian gains.

According to analysts who tally battlefield losses in Ukraine, Ukrainian FPV strikes outnumber verified Russian strikes at least three to one, if not six to one – even though Ukrainian workshops and Russian factories produce roughly equal numbers of drones.

The build quality is the likeliest reason. In Ukraine, FPV drones come from two major sources: centralized domestic or foreign production paid for with government funds as well as the collective effort of many small Ukrainian workshops that often get their funding from private and non-profit donors. Ukrainian UAV development and production is diverse, disaggregated and responsive to demand signals.

In Russia, by contrast, the government has monopolised FPV drone production at just a few big state enterprises that are rife with cronyism. That both invites corruption and fraud and slows innovation. 

The consequences, for Russian drone operators on the front line, include what Samuel Bendett – a drone expert with the Virginia-based think tank CNA – describes as “poor quality overall” and “significant technical issues, like FPVs not able to take to the air when out of the box on the frontlines.” Sure, the Russians might build as many drones as the Ukrainians do, but how many Russian UAVs actually work?

The quality disparity might be even greater when it comes to anti-drone defences – in particular, radio jammers that are designed to block the signals between drones and their operators. As the wider war in Ukraine ground toward its third year and Ukrainian FPV production ramped up, Russian regiments responded by equipping vehicles and infantry with jammers, lots of them.

But many of the Russian jammers simply don’t work – and for the same reasons Russian drones often don’t work. “Absolutely poor build quality,” one Russian observer admitted. 

In early April, a Ukrainian brigade staged a daring three-night raid to steal an immobilized Russian tank sporting what appeared to be a new multi-frequency jamming installation – only to discover the jammer was ineffective. “It was makeshift,” reported one of the Ukrainian soldiers who fetched the Russian tank. 

The individual jammers and their antennas might have been factory-standard, but the overall assembly – multiple radio emitters roped together atop a wooden shipping pallet – was “homemade,” and probably not very effective. 

It wasn’t an isolated problem for the Russians. A multi-frequency jammer peddled by at least one popular Russian social media channel is worse than useless, according to a recent report from one Russian blogger. The blogger identified a “huge list of technical errors” and also criticized the jammer’s “weight and size [and] the carrying handle that breaks.”

Among those technical errors are mismatched and improperly aligned antennae and a cooling fan that’s installed wrong – and totally inadequate to deal with the massive amounts of heat a jammer produces. Not only does the $2,400 jammer not function as advertised, it might inspire false confidence among front-line troops. “It is even scary to imagine how many people died, falsely hoping” as they assaulted through swarms of Ukrainian drones, the blogger wrote.

In the Ukraine drone race, the Ukrainians are clearly winning. Not because they make more drones and jammers – but because the Russians’ drones and jammers are badly made.