“There’s been a huge surge in their drone numbers lately, and so many different ‘birds’ in the air, including a lot of fiber-optic drones that you can’t jam,” said Anatoliy, the commander of a mortar battery from Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Assault Brigade, who was transferred from Kharkiv to Kursk to help counter relentless Russian assaults.
“We’ve already lost a lot of equipment,” he said. “They’re constantly dropping KABs [guided aerial bombs] and launching a ton of first-person view (FPV) drones.”
Amid intense fighting, the battle for Russia’s Kursk Oblast has become a proving ground for new technologies and a center for drone warfare innovation. Ukraine’s General Staff has reported nearly 40,000 Russian casualties in six months, including more than 16,000 killed, along with the capture of over 900 enemy combatants.
Alongside the drones, “they’re throwing waves of meat at us,” Anatoliy said. Kursk is also where Moscow deployed troops lent by North Korea, showing how desperate Russian President Vladimir Putin is to reclaim Ukrainian-occupied territory.
Russia started using fiber-optic drones in Ukraine in the spring of 2024. At first, Kyiv did not see them as necessary for the battlefield but, as technology became increasingly effective at disrupting standard drone communications, they realized the need to adapt. Now Ukraine is aggressively developing its own to counter the enemy’s growing use of them.
Initially, drones relied on wireless signals, prompting both sides to deploy electronic warfare systems to jam them. Now, the shift to fiber-optic has become the latest front in the ongoing battle for superiority.
Unlike traditional drones, fiber-optic FPVs are linked to their operators through cables. “The main advantage is their immunity to electronic warfare and jamming, while also providing excellent video quality,” said Samuel Bendett, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
But this advantage comes with trade-offs. “Since these tactical drones must carry a fiber-optic spool, they become larger, heavier, and slower, making them vulnerable to countermeasures such as short-range firearms, kinetic attacks, and physical defenses,” he said.
Ihor, of the 23rd Mechanized Brigade, said the expensive new drones are only used for assaults. “The downside is the limited range,” he added, while Illia from the Yasni Ochi unit of Khartiia — the 13th National Guard Brigade — said the drones “perform very well, but the preparation time is a drawback.”
Beyond logistical challenges, the drones also introduce unexpected hazards. “Sometimes vehicles get stuck because cables wrap around their wheels,” Illia said.
Use of the drones surged in the fall of 2024, particularly in areas like Kursk, which Putin ordered his forces to reclaim after Ukraine’s dramatic push across the Russian border. The Kremlin began pouring in vast resources, including the troops from Pyongyang, and Kursk quickly became a focal point for the latest battlefield technologies.
“Both sides are now racing to develop fiber-optic drone tactics and countermeasures, testing new ideas and concepts daily,” Bendett said.
Novgorod Region Governor Andrey Nikitin claimed Kremlin forces had destroyed more than $300m worth of NATO-supplied equipment using fiber-optic FPV drones, Russian state media reported.
While the report gave no evidence to back up the claim, it’s clear the threat to Ukrainian self-propelled artillery has increased with the introduction of the drones. Their immunity to vehicle-mounted jammers is proving to be a significant challenge, increasing the toll on Kyiv’s forces.
As well as being unjammable, the drones are hard to detect as they emit no radio signals. The cables can also stretch up to 10km (6.2 miles), with newer models reaching even further. But this also poses a risk to the drone unit, as the cables can reveal your location. In one instance, a Ukrainian drone unit traced fiber optic cables back to a Russian drone base and successfully targeted it.
They carry similarly lethal munitions to radio-controlled drones, including warheads from RPG rockets, and are typically larger, using 10-inch rather than 7-inch propellers so they can carry heavier payloads and larger batteries.
“While fiber-optic FPVs are bigger and more expensive, they are designed to go after bigger targets, including very valuable self-propelled artillery,” said Roy Gardiner, an open source weapons researcher. “Since electronic warfare jammers cannot counter fiber-optic FPVs, artillery will likely have to move farther back to stay protected.”
As the threat grows, Ukraine is working on countermeasures.
The Magyar Birds Brigade, a Ukrainian drone unit, claims to have created a system using mobile radar to detect incoming fiber-optic drones several kilometers away. Once identified, the unit launches its own drones to intercept and destroy them before they reach their targets.
While effective, the radars have limited range and are vulnerable to detection, demonstrating an urgent need for advanced counter-drone sensors across the frontline.
While they may not revolutionize warfare on their own, the new drones represent the latest evolution in an intensifying technological arms race — one where innovation can tip the balance, even if only briefly.
David Kirichenko is a freelance journalist and an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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