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Ukraine’s drone wizardry has drawn the attention of militaries around the world.
In addition to an ever-growing drone industry, the rise of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has necessitated new education. Since 2022, a crop of drone schools has popped up around Ukraine to train drone pilots to fight back against Russia’s invasion.
One of the latest graduates is Vladyslav, a fresh recruit in Ukraine’s military who asked not to be identified by last name due to security concerns. Out in the fields of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the western edge of the Donbas, Vladyslav is taking his final exam after a four-week course at one such school, this one specializing in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR drones.
Landing the fixed-wing drone is the hardest part. Unlike quadrocopters or other vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft models, Vladyslav has to bring in a Leleka 100 — “leleka” meaning “stork” in English — drone at speed, which endangers the camera, the most expensive part of any reconnaissance drone. The Leleka’s camera is in its nose, meaning pilots have to angle up right before the drone touches down.
It’s a lesson Vladyslav has had four weeks to absorb.
“The wind took it away a little bit — there’s more wind when you’re higher up,” says Vladyslav, hoisting the drone over his shoulder after landing. “I messed up a bit, but it turned out fine. The camera’s intact, everything’s ok.”
In addition to various route mapping and GPS-jammed navigation, the final exam is especially heavy on take-off and landing. For take-off, one member of a team loads the Leleka 100 into what they call a catapult but what more closely resembles a slingshot, then walks it back before releasing it from over their shoulder.
The version that Nazar Zholinsky, another new pilot, is flying is a “dummy,” with a plastic case where the camera would normally be in the Leleka 100’s nose.
Zholinsky’s been in service for coming up on two years. Pre-war, he worked as a barber but started flying DJI Mavics — a line of Chinese consumer drones that became the first to see widespread use in the war — as a hobbyist five years ago, when he was 17.
“I went in as a volunteer and said right away that I want to fly drones, that it’s something I know how to do,” Zholinsky told the Kyiv Independent. “They agreed, but then things turned out a little differently. And then here this opportunity came up and I was like ‘Hey guys, I’m going with you, we’re going to fly, we’re going to strike.’”
For his landing, Zholinsky manages to bring the dummy drone back down with a gentle thump on the two stout ventral fins on its underside.
A continuous stream of pilots in training passes through the field carrying and launching their UAVs. Others further into their exams show off an emergency landing with a parachute.
The main goal of ISR drones like the Leleka is to direct artillery strikes. The simulator program requires the pilots in training to find and strike Russian armored equipment and blindages.
For their exams on the training field, or "polihon" as its known in Ukrainian, the pilots run multi-hour missions from a camouflaged tent decked out with old carpets and two little wood stoves. Their instructors assign them buildings and vehicles in the area to locate and report coordinates on — but without actually calling in the artillery. The exams end up resembling a high-flying scavenger hunt.
The clubhouse atmosphere belies the fact that such training grounds often fall victim to Russian attacks, including one in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast at the start of March.
Most of the 42 students in ongoing classes are soldiers retraining from other duties. In total, Oleksiy says that the drone school has put out something like 3,000 pilots since launching, including 1,100 graduates in 2024.
The growth in graduates is a function of the increasing professionalization of Ukraine’s drone army, itself a product of both Ukraine and Russia thoroughly integrating drones into their militaries since the start of the full-scale invasion.
“If you don’t adapt, you won’t survive,” said Oleksiy of his own transition to the drone business after working for a retail electronics chain called Citrus pre-war.
A new weapons curriculum
Drone training programs have picked up steam since 2022. This one is run by Dnipro-based drone maker Deviro, which started up in 2014, beginning with the Leleka, and more recently adding a strike drone called the Bulava — the Scepter.
The school ultimately received their accreditation from the Office of State Aviation within the Defense Ministry in May 2023, said Filip Holovko, the director of the school. It was at the time the eighth in Ukraine, he said. The field today has around 60 schools.
“The better we train people, the better they’ll use our drones,” Holovko told the Kyiv Independent. An artillery spotter for the Ukrainian military from before the full-scale invasion, he joined DeViro in 2021.
He recently returned from a trip to Donbas to try out the Bulava, which has yet to start mass production. He says the unit he was with managed to destroy a Russian Buk air defense missile with the new strike drone.
“Military training centers have a problem in their training. The instructors are unmotivated, there’s limited foundational technical knowledge, and there are very few of these drone complexes,” Holovko continued.
Deviro offers their training for free to drone buyers — almost all from the Ukrainian military. They take a loss on the school, but consider it a part of the complete kits they sell, which include a ground station and two or sometimes three UAVs that go for around Hr 10 million, or roughly $240,000. They’ve sold a total of 500 stations, Holovko says, with many more drones built to replace those that had been shot down.
Back at the school, another 40 students are taking a quiz with questions on the Ukrainian air codex and aviation regulations, as well as the classification of flights by altitude.
They spend weeks on simulators that replicate the standard set-up of an ISR system — two computers, one controlling the camera and one showing a map, featuring a navigator.
At a third computer sits an instructor, often Oleksiy, who sets up Russian equipment to locate and target, while also throwing chaotic weather patterns into the mix to test the pilots.
The simulator is proprietary software that replicates the experience of soaring through the cities of Melitopol, Kupiansk, and Bakhmut.
“If you’re in Melitopol, I mean, you have trees and houses and so forth. But if you’re in Bakhmut, the whole map is torn apart,” Oleksiy said, flying through the 3D rendered rubble of the city in Donetsk Oblast, destroyed during a nine-month Russian siege.
A Krasukha, a Russian EW station, appears in-frame. The pilot inputs the coordinates, initially failing to take wind speed and direction into account. The first strike misses to the southeast. With the second, the Krasukha erupts into digital flames.
Like in real usage, control of the Lelekas at take-off and landing runs through a separate system. Those simulators run at a separate bank of computers outfitted with controllers that look like blockier versions of those you’d find with a gaming console.
Post-war prospectives
The future of the drone business in Ukraine, which has boomed with wartime spending, is an open question in the event of ongoing ceasefire negotiations.
As has become a common refrain in Ukraine, Holovko is confident that “a full, all-encompassing peace between us and Russia will never happen.”
“As a father to my children, I would like to see all of this over today,” says Holovko. “But I don’t want to have given up seven years of my life with a weapon in my hand for (unfavorable ceasefire) conditions — I don’t want to do that.”
Holovko fears that Europe’s drone purchasing in any pending rearmament will privilege more expensive and less effective ISRs like the German Quantum Systems’ Vector or Poland’s FlyTronics’ FlyEyes, as opposed to Ukrainian makers.
“We have our own production in Ukraine that’s second to none of them, that’s actually proved itself much more,” Holovko continued.
Note from the author:
Hi, this is Kollen, the author of this article. Thanks for reading. Ukrainians’ responses to Russia’s invasion showcase a society that is deeply resilient and inventive, despite pullbacks in aid. If you like reading stories highlighting those features from on the ground, please consider becoming a member of the Kyiv Independent.
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