The drone missions usually start in the dead of night, around 2 a.m.
By 4 a.m. it’s already too late to get moving.
Bogdan, who asked us to withhold his surname for safety reasons, is a Ukrainian drone pilot who has repeatedly deployed to combat in multiple locations along the frontlines.
“You need to wake up very early,” he said. “You have to be at your [piloting location] during a period of darkness, because it is a question of safety.”
Drone operators have become the modern military’s snipers: operating in darkness, hiding in plain sight — and absolutely critical for military forces, both as a force multiplier for his own side, and a devastating blow to morale for his opponents.
Bogdan prefers underground locations like cellars or basements, especially those with more than one point of exit. They’re more easily defended, and can be used for a quick evacuation if he suspects his location has been compromised by Russians on the lookout for drone pilots.
“You feel like a rat,” Bogdan said, because you’re always being hunted. “Everybody is looking for you. They know it is extremely important to find and destroy guys who give [Ukrainian forces] a view from the sky… they’ve got very serious units that do this job.”
The situation is one of absolute anxiety and fear, he said, “but you need to control yourself.” He tries to focus on breathing, on his past experiences and training.
The job is inherently dangerous: To fly drones, you need to be right near the frontlines, and if your position is found by enemy forces artillery can very seriously injure or kill you. Russian troops can track pilots down through electronic warfare, or if a pilot gets too complacent in choosing or arriving at their position.
Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance, as the American military saying goes. Long before he wakes up in the middle of the night, Bogdan reviews his tasks for the day ahead.
He chooses his equipment depending on whether his mission is an intelligence-gathering or strike mission. He charges his batteries, he checks his controllers, he prepares screens and he makes sure his car is fueled up.
Ukrainian drone pilots usually operate in a small team of around three people: one is a pilot, the second an assistant, and a third serves as a driver who provides security once they arrive at the hide site.
Innovation in Bogdan’s field is happening at a breakneck pace — new tactics and methods are developing in real time, oftentimes at the cost of Ukrainian blood. And the Ukrainians are adapting to a new reality that drone warfare is becoming a central part of combat. Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the Ukrainian military to establish a new branch specifically dedicated to drones.
Small commercial drones, once seen as toys for children or tools for online influencers, are easily adaptable to become weapons of death. Bogdan thinks that the revolutionary nature of the technology is akin to the development and deployment of machine guns during World War I.
When the war started, pilots like him were just using Chinese-made drones out of the box, largely for reconnaissance. In the time since, they’ve been turned into explosive weapons, which can be driven in an FPV — or first-person view — using virtual reality goggles.
“We can take grenades, or the explosives from an RPG, reconstruct it and connect it to the drone, making a kamikaze drone,” he explained. Before the full-scale invasion, no one thought of using drones this way.
The frontlines are far from major cities nowadays, since Ukrainian troops have pushed Russian forces away from large population centers like Kyiv and Kharkiv over the past two years. It leads to a surreal and dizzying change of scenery for drones pilots once their missions are complete.
“The war is very localized,” he explained. “So you can be in the field, and half an hour later you can drink coffee in a cafe.”
But drinking coffee in a cafe can be a seriously guilty pleasure. Many troops feel, paradoxically enough, shame for being away from the frontlines while their colleagues are in danger.
And a common reaction to soldiers returning to urban centers — and seeing civilians living life with a sense of normality — is a feeling of disgust. They simply can’t adjust and pretend that life will proceed as normal. It’s Bogdan’s recurring concern when he speaks to his civilian friends.
“The war is still here. Please don’t forget about this,” he said.
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