«They know what’s coming next.» A visit with the soldiers who bring death from above
Unmanned aerial vehicles have fundamentally changed warfare in Ukraine. A visit to a battalion shows their strengths and weaknesses.
From: NZZ by Jonas Roth (text), Dominic Nahr (photos and video), Kramatorsk
It’s only a few minutes to the target. A barren, crater-strewn landscape unspools beneath the drone, somewhere on the Ukrainian eastern front. The drone pilot Dom and his commander Sitch stare intently at the video image while Dom gently operates the remote control levers. The thermal imaging camera makes everything appear in shades of gray – dark gray is cold, light gray is warm.
It’s 9 p.m. on a starry evening in March. Shortly beforehand, a Ukrainian surveillance drone discovered two Russian soldiers hiding in a knee-deep hole in the ground. Now Dom’s drone is on its way to kill them. It carries two grenades, each capable of releasing 2,400 pieces of shrapnel – with potentially fatal consequences for every living creature within a radius of 25 meters.
It is controlled from a bunker dug into the ground, the position of which must remain secret. The small, stuffy room smells musty and old ammunition boxes serve as seats. Today it’s even more crowded in here than usual, because journalists from Switzerland and their Ukrainian translator are squeezed in alongside the soldiers.
Then two bright dots appear on the commander’s screen, 40 meters below the drone. The Russian soldiers stand out clearly from the ground due to their body heat. «They can hear the drone,» says Dom. «They know what comes next.»
Voice of Ukraine 