ILSAN, South Korea — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, pushing relentlessly for a macho, muscular military, might be nonplussed to hear that some of Ukraine’s deadliest warriors don’t sport the Spartan physiques of elite commandos.
“The best drone pilots are young guys — or young women — who are former gamers,” said Yuriy Kyrylych, an academic and representative of Ukraine’s drone industry. “They don’t look like special forces … they are new-era soldiers.”
Mr. Kyrylych was speaking at a “Lessons from the Ukraine War” seminar at the Seoul Aerospace and Defence Expo, or ADEX, running this week in the huge KINTEX Convention Center in Ilsan, northeast of Seoul.
ADEX officials say it is the third biggest such show in the world, after Farnborough, England, and Paris. Halls bristled with everything from armored fighting vehicles and mock-ups of missiles of all classes, through binoculars and thermal image sights, to specialized small-arms munitions and protective gear.
Many booths, operated by both Korean and global defense contractors, devoted space either to drones, and/or defenses against.
Uncrewed arms have become the most iconic weapon class to emerge in the full-scale, high-tech war raging between Ukraine and Russia. Given the proven risk they pose to multiple traditional combat assets — from infantry soldiers and entrenched positions, to armored fighting vehicles and surface warships — the global fascination is understandable.
Prior to the outbreak of full-scale war in 2022, Ukraine was a key European outsourcing center for software and home to a community of top-level online gamers.
As tank columns surged across their frontiers, Ukraine’s nerd community leveraged their skillsets to take on Russia’s massive, technologically superior military.
“Russia was more technically advanced,” said Mr. Kyrylych. “So, we looked at the asymmetric approach.”
While naval and ground drones have been used, uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, come in the widest variety of shapes and sizes, from jet- and rotary-propelled small aircraft, to hand-held quadcopters.
Key Ukrainian innovations were birthed at the smaller end of the scale 2014 — and not by the miltech sector, but in the commercial sector.
“Like drones for wedding-party photography,” said another Ukrainian participant, Evgeni Utkin, a chip entrepreneur who fought in the 2022 defense of Kyiv. “They’ve been very effective, and very low cost.”
Photo- and video-capturing drones are used for aerial reconnaissance and artillery spotting and fire adjustment.
They are also armed with explosive warheads and flown into enemy armored vehicles, field fortification openings, or even individual soldiers as “kamizake” UAVs.
Yet others are fitted with rifle grenades or mortar bombs, operating as direct-drop drones — capable of dropping explosive loads from a hover just meters above the target, through gaps as small as tank commander hatches.
Direct-drop UAVs also supply friendly troops in exposed positions that are dangerous to reach by road with munitions, rations and first-aid kits.
Pilots behind the zero line view operations on LED screens — hence the term “FPV (first-person view) drone” — controlling their UAVs with gaming-style console joysticks.
Based far behind the front, “Our young guys, who have spent a lot of time gaming, destroy tanks,” said Mr. Utkin.
UAVs are not just making the battle space deadlier; they are extending it.
“There was a 5-kilometer kill zone when we started,” said Mr. Utkin. “Now, it is 30 kms, soon it will be 50 kms, then it will be 100 kms.”
While many Western companies with backgrounds in pricey fixed-wing or rotary aircraft work on highly advanced drones, UAVs’ expendability means focus should be on capabilities, not specs, Mr. Kyrylych advised.
“The most useless thing in a drone is the platform itself,” he said. “Its payload, and its data transmission, is much more important.”
According to Mr. Kyrylych, battle drones have gone through five levels of development.
The first phase was pilot-controlled UAVs for reconnaissance and artillery fire control, followed by the advent of the FPV kamikaze drone. Control was by radio signal.
The second generation was pilot-controlled, but operated with more advanced communications, such as Starlink datalinks and fiber-optic cable trails. At this stage, drone-vs-drone combat began.
The third generation were UAVs controlled by pilots operating them from as far as hundreds of miles from the zero line. These operate over mixed communications channels, with inbuilt redundancies, to pre-empt electronic jamming or spoofing.
The fourth generation are small drones controlled by “mother” drones that can operate far and high — the first step in autonomous UAV action.
The fifth generation, under development, will be fully autonomous, with AI “brains,” that don’t need pilots, meaning signal jamming is obviated. Swarms can be unleashed from anywhere on Earth.
“Swarm outperforms any system,” Mr. Kyrylych predicted. “That is the future.”
He advised militaries to stand up independent, cross-service drone commands that can drive innovation with immediate effect. “Drones are not battle-tested, they are battle-innovated,” he said.
“Every two weeks, something changes in the front line, and every two months, we see some new product,” Mr. Utkin added. “‘Time-to-market’ is zero.”
Due to the prodigious burn-through rate of combat drones, a production race is underway between Moscow and Kyiv. Mr. Kyrylych explained the differences.
Russia’s military industrial complex produces fewer drone models, enabling higher production volumes, he said. Ukraine’s drone sector, conversely, has 500 separate firms manufacturing “a zoo of drones.”
That forced the adoption of open-source platforms. As a result, any firm can make incremental tweaks in response to the evolving battlefield: open platforms “can be changed every week,” he said.
“This is not a war between nations,” said Mr. Utkin. “It is a war between the past and the future.”
South Koreans who face an expanding UAV threat from North Koreans who have fought alongside the Russian Army preach the same lessons.
“What I found was different to what I imagined,” said Yu Yong-weon, a lawmaker who has visited Ukraine. “There is an urgency to share these lessons.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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