Blinding the Russians' eyes in the skies: how the Ukrainian army mastered the art of downing Russian spy drones

On the evening of 28 August 2024, a Russian Zala reconnaissance drone flew into the area of Ukrainian positions near Bakhmut. Someone had stuck tape on its left wing to spell out "Zayebal" (Russian for "f**ked off").

The Russian drone operators were expressing either their admiration or their surprise at the work of Ukraine’s Signum UAV unit, then part of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Brigade. The day before, Signum's drone pilots had downed eight Russian reconnaissance UAVs one after the other without a break.

The drone marked "Zayebal" was the only reconnaissance drone the Russians launched in that area on 28 August, and once detected, it was successfully downed.

"We were very amused by this writing on the wing," recalls Tourist, a Signum drone operator whom Ukrainska Pravda met in Kramatorsk.

Tourist, who is 28, was a civilian before Russia’s full-scale invasion and had been living in Estonia for several years. On 23 February 2022, he registered his delivery company there. Two days later, on the 25th, he returned to Ukraine and joined up.

The Russians' strong reaction to eight of their drones being downed in a single day is, on the whole, understandable.

After all, just a few months earlier, between April and July 2024, Russian reconnaissance UAVs had had no problem flying along the entire front line, in the relative rear (over Dnipro and Sumy), and even in the absolute rear (over Myrhorod in Poltava Oblast, 150 km from the border). In July 2024, a Russian Orlan reconnaissance drone spied on a military airfield in Myrhorod and then adjusted a missile attack.

Ukraine’s defence forces did not know how to take Russian reconnaissance drones down. At one point the line of contact was swarming with them and they were approaching cities in the rear.

Using air defence missiles to shoot at drones or scrambling fighter jets is expensive, and using anti-aircraft guns, as Ukrainska Pravda saw on its last mission, is ineffective. Electronic warfare (EW) often didn’t work on reconnaissance UAVs.

The problem was gradually solved by using popular, low-cost FPV (first-person view) drones, and in the summer of 2024, Ukrainian operators began using them to hit aerial as well as ground targets. They began to be known as "anti-aircraft FPVs", while the drone operators were dubbed "air defence units".

In order to detect the target – i.e. Russian reconnaissance UAVs – they are usually assisted by electronic intelligence (ELINT) equipment, the name of which is kept secret for security reasons.

The Signum unit was a pioneer in terms of downing Russian reconnaissance UAVs, destroying 65 of them in its first six weeks of operation near Bakhmut.

"We’ve completely closed off our front to Russian reconnaissance drones: they [the Russians – ed.] have stopped launching guided aerial bombs, they’ve stopped firing artillery, and they use fewer FPVs. That’s because all the ‘illumination’ of our positions comes from reconnaissance drones. It got to the point where they didn't come near us for two weeks," Tourist explains.

Ukrainska Pravda asked Signum about the secret of their success, to what extent the downing of Russian reconnaissance drones is changing the rules of the game in this war, and what is holding Ukraine back from making better and more frequent use of drones in combat.

***

The Signum UAV unit was founded by volunteers in February 2022. The guys had initially fought in the infantry before switching to working with drones. They joined the 93rd Brigade as volunteers in April 2022, and that autumn they were mobilised into it.

"At first we all thought it would be over soon," Tourist recalls. "No one wanted to serve, to force themselves into the army framework. But then on our first day in Soledar [Donetsk Oblast – ed.], on a spoil heap, two of us were wounded, and a week later one of our comrades lost his leg. That's why we decided to join the brigade [to have social security benefits – UP]."

Signum soldiers were among the first troops in the Russo-Ukrainian war to use FPV drones against ground targets – and later among the first to use them against aerial targets too. 

Today, Signum is part of the 53rd Separate Mechanised Brigade named after Volodymyr Monomakh and operates in the vicinity of Serebrianka Forest. The unit transferred to the 53rd Brigade to serve under the command of their newly appointed brigadier, Oleksandr Sak. Sak had supported the establishment of Signum as a unit within the 93rd Brigade when he was a battalion commander there.

All of Signum's drones are provided by volunteers.

This is Tourist’s story in his own words.

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Hear it, see it, feel it

The first time we downed a Russian drone with an FPV drone was around June 2024. It was solely down to being able to "hear it, see it, feel it" without any auxiliary means. That is, we just heard it, found it visually, and flew our drone at it. It was near Bakhmut.

I was the navigator that day, guiding the pilot by landmarks, and my friend Serhii was the pilot. First we saw a Zala [a reconnaissance drone – UP]. It has a wingspan of three metres, so it’s difficult to detect, but possible. And then during the flight, I heard a Lancet [an attack drone – UP] and some attempts to down it. The Lancet was probably hunting for some of our vital equipment, so we decided to hit it. Besides, at the time we didn't even know if we could catch up with the Zala...

So Serhii gained altitude and speed and just rammed into the Lancet! That's how we destroyed our first Lancet. It was the first recorded downing of a Lancet by an FPV drone in history.

We hit our first Zala that summer, just a little later. The principle was the same: hear it, see it, fly. Its altitude was about 1,200 m – that’s no problem for an FPV, our record altitude was 5,600 m. But because the air is so thin at that altitude, you need to give the drone more gas, and that means more battery consumption and less time in the air.

To start with we used FPVs even without explosives, just ramming into the Russian UAVs. As it was rammed into, the drone would deploy its parachute and fall. So it remained intact, and we could pick it up.

However, we only managed to take away maybe three drones in total – all the others were picked up by people who happened to be closer and passed off as their trophies. There’s a black market for resale [soldiers always want to have their trophies – UP].

Then the Russians installed a safety device that prevented the parachute from opening as it fell. So we started attaching plastic explosives to the FPVs – just 50-80 grams are enough to down a reconnaissance UAV.

We’d actually been trying to hit a Russian reconnaissance UAV for a very long time.

Each of our crews working on ground targets had separate goggles and one or two equipped drones in case a reconnaissance UAV flew overhead. They were all ready to go in the yard somewhere, and you’d run out and put them on, switch them on, and fly off.

We tried this 15-20 times, but it never worked. Either we didn't have time to react, or the navigator guiding the pilot couldn't explain where the target was, which is very important.

We were constantly devising schemes to detect these drones better and guide the pilot. We even used the Mil Dot formula! But it wasn’t good enough. We needed something else to achieve the result we wanted.

The switch to ELINT

Eventually, Serhii Sternenko told me there was a very cool way to detect air targets [electronic intelligence equipment – UP]. I knew that it existed, but it was top secret. At the time, it was like science fiction. No one knew where to look for it. 

We started engaging our team [to look for it], and you'll be surprised to learn that a very short time later, two weeks later, we got these electronic intelligence systems. Their task is to detect an enemy UAV and show the approximate direction it’s moving in. After that, our FPV operator flies to that area and looks for the reconnaissance UAV. After all, ELINT systems provide very approximate floating data.

Another problem is that firstly, the FPV drone has a very poor camera [the DJI Mavic, for example, has a better one – UP], and secondly, there’s the difference in altitude. You can be under a Zala drone, for example, and not know about it.

So an FPV pilot has to learn to see a flying target against the backdrop of everything on the ground. That is, you have to learn to see a white speck against the background of a forest, with all its different colours, from a high altitude. We always fly much higher than the target because we don't know exactly how high up it is.

Our record for detecting and destroying a target is about five minutes. The longest we flew was about 40 minutes – that’s two 20-minute flights. 

Sometimes we’re told "There’s shelling in Zone N." We fly over there and look for where their artillery is because they’ll always strike with adjustments, together with a reconnaissance UAV. And very often, that’s where we find our target. As soon as we down that UAV, the attack stops in almost 100% of cases, you know?

I was so happy when the ELINT equipment arrived that we destroyed four targets at once on the first properly organised day we worked with it – that was in August 2024. From then on we hit an average of four targets a day. Once we destroyed eight, and after that the Russians wrote "Zayebal" on one of their Zala drones with tape.

The Russians have a lot of reconnaissance UAVs. They produce about 30-40 drones a month at the Zala factory alone. Until we started destroying them, they also had lots of them in warehouses. But since the autumn of 2024, the Russians have started launching them about 90% less often because of our work and the work being done by other units.

The sky used to be swarming with them! The roads to Chasiv Yar, Toretsk – everything was under their control 24/7. So we had plenty of work to do. It got to the point that after a Zala was shot down, we’d get an interception and the commander of the Russian UAV unit would be threatening to send his subordinates to the infantry for flying badly. He’d be using a lot of foul language too.

Now the Russians can no longer afford to fly to, say, Konstiantynivka and adjust their strikes.

The result

Once we started downing Russian reconnaissance UAVs, we stopped being afraid of driving to our positions during the day. We stopped being afraid of disclosing our position. We can now safely camouflage ourselves and do our work, go about our business, at positions 3, 5, 15, 20 km away from the line of contact. 

The risk of being detected is now significantly lower.

Our work has forced Russian reconnaissance UAVs to fly at an altitude above 3,000 m, which makes it very difficult to see what is happening on the ground. Their cameras aren’t that good. When they fly at 1,500 m, they can see everything easily: cars, people walking down the street.

Why didn't we start doing this earlier? I guess because the senior leadership thought drones weren’t important. We often have to prove that this system works. We’re always hearing: Come on, guys, how can this FPV [reach a Russian reconnaissance UAV – UP]? It's a thousand metres up, can it really go that high? 

But as it turns out, it can, and very easily too. It’s so easy that hundreds of Russian UAVs have already been destroyed all along the front line.

What prevents Ukraine from fighting better with drones?

For us to destroy Russian reconnaissance UAVs with our FPVs, the units around us have to turn off their electronic warfare systems. But this is a very complex and sensitive issue. 

After all, there are many units working simultaneously on one front, each with its electronic warfare system, and each one has a "cool guy" who sees a Russian UAV on his radar and wants to destroy it. But it's usually such a clumsy attempt…

Russian reconnaissance UAVs are equipped with the Сomet GPS communication system, which protects them from being jammed by us. It’s four or eight antennae that "look" exclusively up and receive a satellite signal. Electronic warfare that influences them from below [from the ground – UP] can't affect them in any way. 

So the electronic warfare of our "neighbours" affects us more. I've had at least four situations where I was flying low behind a Lancet, chasing it, and then when I was literally 50 metres away from it, I completely lost the video.

This is the problem of interaction between units. 

With the advent of FPV, every platoon, every company, every battalion commander wants to boast that they have cool FPV operators, "monsters" that will destroy Russian infantry. But unfortunately, they lack a significant amount of technological knowledge and an understanding of the full picture of the work. 

We have analogue video with 72 channels in total. You can't use every one of those 72 channels, because they're too close to each other. They jam each other. 

We tried to deal with this by creating groups to which we added pilots so there was a flight queue. But there were so many units that you could be waiting 40-60 minutes in this queue… 

For every 10 km of the front, approximately ten day FPV crews and ten night crews are enough to work on ground targets – but right now there are 20-30. For a radius of 15 km, three day crews and three night crews working on aerial targets – i.e. as air defence – are enough. Now, there are many times more. There are far fewer frequencies than there are people wanting to work. 

Our government has chosen to go down the route of mass production [for drones – UP] rather than quality. We have forgotten that we need to create something new, to master new frequencies, and not just buy thousands of off-the-shelf components in China. If we created Ukrainian video transmitters and video receivers on new frequencies that the enemy doesn’t have, our drones would be much more effective. 

We have large enterprises engaged in radio electronics. We talked to the management of one of them and suggested that they create video transmitters and video receivers on new frequencies and update them over time. They replied: "We can't do that because we’ve received an order from the state for the assembly of drones."

So at a time when dozens of very cool civilian businesses are now creating drones and sending them to their units, the state is choosing mass production over development for its enterprises. It shouldn't be like this. 

Also, I think the state should sign flexible contracts with drone manufacturers obliging them to change their frequencies every two months. Nowadays, almost all ground defence is designed for FPVs. This is how we fought for Andriivka [a village near Bakhmut – UP].

Engineers in all UAV units face a challenging task – to be constantly improving something. We are very grateful to the volunteers for the drones, but after we receive them, we have to sit down and think about what to do to make them work.

Nothing changes in our country, whereas the enemy is constantly adapting.

If we mastered new frequencies, we’d have, say, a month before they found an electronic warfare system for them. And we could get a lot done in that month.

Olha Kyrylenko, Ukrainska Pravda

Translation: Yelyzaveta Khodatska, Yuliia Kravchenko

Editing: Teresa Pearce