Ukraine is deploying new drones to target Russian armor beyond radio horizon
"We can already reliably hit targets at a range of 30 kilometers,” said one long-time drone pilot in Kharkiv Oblast. “Now there’s a new wave of development, so in a year they’ll have completely different capabilities."
A robot dog walks through tests of drones using fiber optics to fly at an undisclosed location in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, on Jan. 29, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Tetiana Dzhafarova / AFP via Getty Images)
Defense Industry
Ukraine’s drone manufacturers are scrambling to reach the Russian equipment that lurks beyond the radio horizon — the distance where the earth’s curvature blocks the video signal that Ukraine’s cheap strike drones depend on.
Over the past year and a half, short-range drones, like first-person-view (FPV) drones, have cleared a no-man’s land of roughly 20 kilometers on either side of the front line, where neither Ukraine nor Russia dares to put high-value weapons.
The area just beyond that current FPV drone range has become a major logistical nexus for Russia's war — and the latest goal for Ukraine's strike drone makers and pilots alike. They are designing, testing and just starting to mass produce new configurations of drone signaling that maintain connection into prime targets at 50 kilometers and, ideally, further.
The Ukrainian military has grown acutely aware of high-value targets like Russian tanks, anti-air batteries and rail junctures sitting just outside of the range of their current drone arsenal. They are looking to a combination of signal repeaters, “mothership” drones, auto-piloting, and extravagantly long spools of optical fiber to push into this “near deep” target range.
"Right now, we have nothing reliable to strike with beyond the range of artillery or FPV drones," Oleksiy, a director of development at drone company WarBirds of Ukraine, told the Kyiv Independent. Out of concern for his safety, he asked not to publish his last name.
"You can get about 20 kilometers on an optical fiber line. You can fly on radio guidance to about 30 kilometers."
But the latest models are workable enough, says Serhiy, a drone pilot based outside of Kharkiv, who says new drones are reaching further into Russian territory.
"We can already reliably hit targets at a range of 30 kilometers," Serhiy told the Kyiv Independent. "Now there’s a new wave of development, so in a year they’ll have completely different capabilities."
Signal repeaters, either airborne or otherwise, can extend the range of connection. Mothership drones do something similar, while also dropping off a number of FPV drones — themselves limited by short battery life as well as signal range — nearer to identified Russian targets.
WarBirds, for example, converted its cheap and light-weight reconnaissance drones into a bomber drone, Puhach. They have been outfitting the Puhach with a variety of fixings to make it function as a "mothership" drone that drops quadrocopters as far as 37 kilometers away and then functions as a signal repeater to communicate with them.
Vyriy, one of the largest FPV makers in Ukraine, recently announced its largest quadrocopter yet, the MAX 15, designed to carry more battery and explosive charge and "capable of overcoming a distance of up to 50 km depending on the weight of the warhead, the battery, and the presence of a signal repeater."
Brave1, a government-funded initiative that directs Ukraine’s military tech start-ups, is likewise working on a solution. In fields outside of Kyiv, they are testing new means of reaching high-value Russian firepower in the near-deep.
Among those are EW-resistant fiber-optic controlled drones. Ukrainian firms are winding spools of up to 40 kilometers onto thick-framed FPVs that trundle off into the distance.
Development is, says Oleksiy, about the "golden medium" of balance between the trifecta of range, payload, and accuracy. Cost is also a major consideration.
Ukraine has poured money into deep-strike drones that hit Russian targets like weapons-producing plants and stationary military positions thousands of kilometers away from the border. But those deep-strike drones are too expensive, and Ukraine doesn’t produce enough of them to keep up with the part of the line just beyond the radio horizon.
Another cause for alarm is that Russian electronic warfare seems to have rendered U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets — which have a range of 80 kilometers depending on the ammunition supplied — ineffective, notes James Lythgoe, who heads the Ukraine office for U.S. drone company Shield AI.
Far more expensive than drones, HIMARS have gone from 90% accuracy to about 20% against Russia today, Lythgoe told the Kyiv Independent.
Shield AI’s V-BATs are long-range reconnaissance drones that can log 13 hours in the air during a single flight. They consequently specialize in the zone beyond where today's FPV drones reach, thanks to expensive connectivity equipment and staying at high altitudes.
Lythgoe tallies that the firm's V-BATs have found 140 high-value Russian targets, including artillery and air defense for the Ukrainian military. But in over a hundred of those instances, they could not find a Ukrainian strike drone that could reach those targets in time. He recalls a recent instance of a V-BAT following an SA-22 Pantsir, a surface-to-air missile system.
"We were watching it for over an hour and 40 minutes, and we could not find a strike platform. And that's a mission-critical capability; an SA-22 is a $15-million plus asset. And that was at 110 kilometers (beyond the line),” said Lythgoe, who said he's seeing a "scramble" to fill in the near-deep strike gap.
Another constraint is that many Ukrainian drones can already fly to these depths past the Russian line but can’t be trusted to identify their own targets once they get there, absent the control of a pilot.
As with many elements of drone warfare, many are waiting on better targeting, particularly enhanced by AI.
Oleksiy said WarBirds had managed to use new auto-targeting modules to set up strikes "from three kilometers away from the target, at an altitude of 800 meters, where you’d get the radio horizon, which is the most important thing. And then after that, we don’t have to do anything with it."
Author's note:
Hi, this is Kollen, the author of this article. Thanks for reading. Ukraine is holding up in the face of a tense summer and persistent Russian assaults, including on the capital. Along with a resilient population, Ukraine's defense tech wizardry has been a core pillar of the country's resistance. If you want more stories like this, consider joining our community today to help support our work.
