Small unjammable drones controlled by fiber-optic cables have become so integral to Russian and Ukrainian combat operations that they are leaving trails of cabling everywhere, turning areas of the battlefield into a tangled web.
As a counter to extensive electronic warfare, fiber-optic drones are becoming increasingly prevalent on both sides. And with sprawling cables stretched across the battlefield, soldiers are moving with greater caution.
“You see the little webs, and you never know — is it from the fiber-optic drone? Or it’s a part of a booby trap,” Khyzhak, a Ukrainian special operator who for security reasons could only be identified by his call sign (“Predator” in Ukrainian), told Business Insider. Mines and traps have also been prominent threats in this war.
Earlier in the war, first-person-view (FPV) drones — small quadcopter-style drones fielded by both Russia and Ukraine that often carry explosive warheads — relied on radio-frequency connections. However, both sides quickly figured out how to use signal jamming to stop them.
In response, Russia and Ukraine began developing fiber-optic FPV drones that connected to their pilots using spools of long, thin cables. The cables preserved a steady link and made the quadcopters resistant to traditional electronic warfare tactics.
The best chance that soldiers have to stop the fiber-optic drones is by shooting them out of the sky, but that requires precision, quick reaction times, and a lot of luck.
The fiber-optic cables that provide these drones with their greatest advantage are also their greatest vulnerability, as they can get tangled in the environment and bring the flight to an abrupt stop. And even if they don’t get tangled, the cabling is still left draped across the battlefield after use.
Khyzhak, a soldier in the 4th Ranger Regiment, a Ukrainian special operations unit modeled after its US Army counterparts, said it is very common to see fiber-optic cables everywhere because there are more and more of these drones in use, and the cables frequently get stuck in trees and fields.
The 4th Ranger Regiment shared combat footage earlier this month showing Khyzhak, along with two other operators and their driver, narrowly avoiding a Russian fiber-optic drone strike while speeding back to base after a front-line mission.
The footage shows fiber-optic cables strewn in the field next to the road and even on Khyzhak’s gun.
“It was everywhere,” he recalled, speaking about the September incident, where the driver skillfully maneuvered out of the path of the Russian drone, which detonated on the side of the road.
Other video footage taken from the battlefield shows how fiber-optic cables crisscross like spider webs, sometimes only visible in direct sunlight or when viewed from a certain angle.
Khyzhak said the cables are particularly annoying during nighttime missions, when special operators can’t use a lot of light. He described them as a “tactical issue.”
Soldiers can’t always tell right away if it’s a harmless fiber-optic cable or something far more dangerous, like a booby trap. This forces them to think carefully about whether they should call an engineer, destroy the web with explosives, halt, or proceed forward.
It can definitely slow down the mission, Khyzhak said, and becomes a bigger concern the closer special operators get to the front lines, or if they’re working covertly in Russian-held territory.
Ukraine and Russia have expanded production of fiber-optic drones over the past year, and both sides are racing to develop variants that can fly farther across the front lines.
Russia, for instance, has begun to employ fiber-optic drones with a 50-kilometer (31-mile) range, which exceeds the distance that most known variants can travel. Cable length typically limits their range to between 10 and 25 kilometers (roughly 6 and 15 miles).
In Ukraine, fiber-optic drones have become such a threat to critical supply routes that soldiers have covered the roads with netting to protect vehicles from attacks, although it doesn’t always guarantee their safety.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s defense industry is developing new countermeasures to defend against these drones. The innovations have also caught the attention of NATO leadership, which has been using lessons from the war to inform its own military planning.
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