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RAmzan is walking around his garage workshop with glee, showing off a small blue mortar bomb from “Holland or Poland”, a huge thin-tailed, bulbous head from the US, a Ukrainian specially designed high-explosive packed grenade and even an anti-tank mine – for everything fall on Head of the Russians.
He is a former infantry soldier three years of war And says he misses the thrill of fighting at close range, but, as armor for four Freelancer A team flying an unmanned bomber in a National Guard Typhoon Freelancer Unit: “This is the best way to kill the Russians.”
in constant war front line improvementWorkshops like Ramadan’s garage – where he makes his own detonators and designs new types of incendiary bombs – have taken over industrial-military research centers worth billions of pounds in NATO countries.
The drone war began with self-financed Ukrainian soldiers adapting civilian toys to lethal effect. Kiev now has the capacity to produce millions of drones, but this model remains a promising startup.
Ramadan’s squad, Team Grey, is led by an older former infantry officer, who we’re not naming, who has been in the war for 10 years and his family lives in the Russian-occupied Donbass. He is waiting in a bunker within enemy lines in Kamyanske, not far to the south. Zaporizhzhya,
from russia The army has tried to attack the Ukrainian border here in the last three weeks. It has used armored attacks, but has been pinned down by Ukrainian drones and infantry – and it is losing ground at staggering and bloody cost.
Ramzan’s pickup is loaded with briefcase-sized drone batteries and boxes of bombs as he sets out to join his crew. The last few miles are driven at blinding speeds on potholed roads and dirt trails in the dark illuminated only by sidelights. Ramzan would rather die in a road accident than a Russian drone attack and is a hunting ground for first-person view (FPV) Kremlin drone pilots.
Working by red torchlight, the team unloaded the car, which was hidden under camouflage netting, and drove into a strip of woodland. Ukrainian artillery fires sporadic shells into the south – they ignore the outgoing explosions, and grumble in irritation. Artillery attracts Russian drones.
“Noisy neighbors,” someone says in the pause that follows.
Almost in silence, a tarpaulin is torn from the storm and it is examined for night operations. They have five missions whose goals are set ukraineIntelligence system of. They also have to respond to live reports of Russian military activities.
Ramadan has hidden some bombs under a bush, ready to arm the quadcopter, a six-foot square box of carbon fiber lined with Meccano Ariel’s wig.
It is flown remotely from an eight-foot square bunker dug into the ground by hand, with a roof made of mud and tree trunks. Half the space is taken up by a computer showing a live feed from the Typhoon that the pilot will use to fly the AV.
Another computer shows a multiscreen feed of drones flying over the battlefield. Surprisingly, some of these Russian hunter-killers are FPVs that seek out targets – such as the Gray Crew’s bunker.
Ramadan and his assistant take Typhoon to a field, quickly attach two bombs to clips under his belly and arm the devices in the red glow of their head torches. As they return to the bunker, Avi takes off.
After a few minutes, the Typhoon’s navigation goes haywire and the compass packs up. it’s jammed ukrainehas his own device and it keeps wandering around as Evie struggles to control it with invisible changes in the controls he presses between thumb and forefinger.
“I have to get it back to us,” he muttered.
The sound of the Typhoon soon begins to be heard over the bunker. It contains a penetrating bomb and 4 kilograms of high explosive designed to hit the Russians in a similar hole.
There is silence when the AV makes it back to the field – the blades of grass fluttering in the monochrome video feed of its down-draft – the bombs are not safe until Ramzan gets out to open their detonators and reattach their safety pins.
There is a sigh in the bunker and it goes unmarked when, after a few minutes, the unmistakable biscuit sound of an incoming artillery shell exploding nearby comes.
Soon the craft were airborne again, now armed with three bombs and ordered to attack another suspected Russian bunker at Kamyanske.
Avi takes the drone over the village. The black and white video feed below intensifies the scary sight. Like almost all of the 1,300 km border line in Ukraine, the war is being fought in the rubble. Small groups of infantry try to hide in the blasted mess of masonry and splintered wood below.
A black hole is the target. Previous reconnaissance reveals that two men are hiding in a bunker under the roof trap here. Avi dropped three bombs. The screen lights up as each explosion occurs.
Ramzan is happy, he says – his detonator worked. Avi, an engineer by profession, is not bothered by the thought that he may have killed some humans.
“They have come here to kill and take our land. I will kill as many people as I can,” he says, exclaiming rapidly between flights that then last an hour or more.
Russia has interceptor drones in the area and has also launched a series of air strikes in the vicinity. We can see them on a ground-level monitor out in the trees, a few miles away. We can feel the thuds of the explosions through the Earth.
“According to military doctrine we should have one soldier every ten meters of the front line but we can’t do that, so we have drones,” says the leader of Team Grey. RussiaUkraine’s rapid adoption of unmanned aircraft in this war has prevented and prevented large-scale attacks, overturning decades of military thinking to Kiev’s benefit.
The Soviet-era notion that Russia could send more men to fight and die than the other side and achieve victory through numbers alone has been destroyed with the Kremlin’s armored columns.
Now no soldier on either side wants to go to war in an armored personnel carrier. Enemy drones turn them into blazing ovens for a few hundred dollars per hit.
Gray Team is ordered to react to Russian infantry recently sighted in the village. Two men are seen walking on the ground. In the past, skilled intruders have used thermal blankets and stealth to sneak up on Ukrainian drone crews and kill them at night.
The storm is soon roaring at speeds of around 60 km per hour. All eyes in the bunker are on the video feed. Black vegetation is visible amidst the debris of the city.
“Storm, wait!” The Ukrainian controller calls over the messaging system. He can see Evie’s feed and knows better where the men are hiding.
They may be Special Forces Reconnaissance – Russian Spetsnaz elite soldiers. They could be stormtroopers gathering for an attack. They may be soldiers who have lost their courage and want to escape from the holes where they have been forced to live.
No matter. Evie drops one, then two bombs, which flash black and white for a short period of time. The controller adjusts his aim and two more bombs are dropped. It is impossible to see what, if anything, has been hit.
Avi is disappointed. He rewinds the recording of the hits in slow motion for about an hour and, frame by frame, finds evidence that he has taken some people’s lives. He is soft-spoken, tired. He doesn’t keep count, although his predecessor in the bunker had scratched his human score card on the silver insulation paper on the walls.
He doesn’t need to worry. Avi killed. Later Ukrainian reconnaissance footage, in color video, shows three torn and mutilated bodies lying in the shade of trees in the village.
As morning approaches, the night’s work is over and Ramzan goes back to his workshop to charge the batteries and make more bombs.
The radio plays sads as he drives at breakneck speed down an empty road smooth operator.
He smiles.