New Delhi: The Ukrainian drone skimmed low over the treeline near Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine, moving purposefully towards Russian positions, dragging a thin fibre-optic cable across no man’s land.
Since Russian jamming systems had made large parts of the sector hazardous for conventional radio-controlled drones, Ukrainian operators had changed tactics. The drone was now controlled via a fibre-optic cable, making it harder to disrupt electronically, though it was still vulnerable to terrain hazards, battlefield debris and Russian gunfire.
The scene is emblematic of a broader trend developing across the Ukrainian battlefield, where successive cycles of battlefield innovation are quickly being followed by new electronic warfare systems and tactical countermeasures.
Western analysts say that the proliferation of drones and counter-drone systems in Ukraine has steadily transformed the battlefield into an increasingly ‘transparent’ battle-space.
India’s Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (CISC), Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, had recently stated that Russia-Ukraine war is not simply a war between two nations but “a living laboratory of hybrid asymmetric warfare, which is the most rapid technological innovation seen since the Second World War”.
Troop movements, logistics routes, and even rear positions remain under near-constant aerial surveillance.
According to Reuters, drone-related casualties in the conflict have risen from less than 10 percent in 2022 to as much as 80 percent in 2025, highlighting the ways in which unmanned systems are changing frontline combat and demanding continual tactical adaptation.
In another report, the Hudson Institute has estimated that drones were responsible for up to 75 per cent of combat losses on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides, highlighting the growing role of unmanned systems in battlefield attrition.
Several defence analysts have described the conflict as the world’s first large-scale ‘drone-centric war’.
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How the drone war evolved
Russia entered the conflict with a more mature military drone ecosystem, centred on systems such as the Orlan-10, Forpost-R and Eleron-3SV, which had already been combat-tested in Syria in 2015 and in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
Russia possessed around 3,000 Orlan-10s before it entered the war. These systems allowed Russian forces to detect targets, adjust artillery fire, and maintain battlefield surveillance well beyond the immediate frontline, giving Moscow an early ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) advantage in the war.
According to Reuters, Ukraine first used the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 in eastern Ukraine in 2021 against Russian-backed separatist positions.
In the opening phase of the war, Ukraine used these extensively to strike Russian armoured columns and logistics convoys advancing towards Kyiv. It also employed various drones, such as Furia, Leleka-100 and modified civilian drones, such as DJI Mavic and Matrice, marking the beginning of mass small-drone warfare.
In the second phase of the war, Russia rapidly expanded industrial-scale drone production around Lancet loitering munitions, and Iranian-designed Shahed-136 (Geran-2) and Shahed-131 (Geran-1) drones that it used for long-range strikes.
Ukraine introduced US-supplied Switchblade 300 loitering munitions for anti-personnel strikes and Switchblade 600 systems for tanks and hardened targets. However, analysts at CSIS say the systems had relatively limited battlefield impact due to limited quantities.
The FPV drone revolution
By 2023-24, with the expansion of Russian air defences and jamming systems, Ukraine shifted away from larger Bayraktar TB2 drones towards domestically assembled low-cost First Person View (FPV) attack drones, Reuters reported.
These drones were cheap, easy to modify, and easy to replace in large numbers.
In a relatively short period, Ukraine developed a rapidly expanding domestic drone industry that adapted to battlefield requirements and produced a wide range of specialised drones, Reuters reported.
‘Baba Yaga’, a Russian nickname for several Ukrainian heavy multi-rotor bombing drones, including the Vampire, R18, Kazhan, and Nemesis, were developed for night-bombing and resupply missions.
The UJ-26 Beaver emerged as one of Ukraine’s increasingly used indigenous long-range ‘one-way attack drones’, with a reported range of 600–1,000 km, and was reportedly used in strikes against Russian oil and fuel facilities.
Ukraine also introduced naval drones such as the Sea Baby and Magura V5 unmanned surface vessels (USVs). Magura V5 drones were used in attacks against several Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels, including the landing ship Caesar Kunikov and the patrol ship Sergey Kotov, operating near Crimea.
The next phase of the drone war saw the development of Liutyi, a long-range attack drone that carried out numerous strikes on Russian oil refineries in Saratov, Ryazan, Syzran, Tuapse, Perm, and Novokuibyshevsk, temporarily disrupting refining operations.
Liutyi was also credited with long-range attacks reaching more than 1,000 km inside Russia, including strikes on the VNIIR-Progress plant in Cheboksary which manufactures electronic and guidance systems for Russian military equipment.
According to Western analysts, AI-assisted naval drones, including Marichka, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), and the Toloka (TLK) family of underwater drones, are currently under development in Ukraine.
Ukraine has also successfully developed and deployed an interceptor drone, Sting, that has reportedly achieved interception rates of around 95 percent.
In April 2026, The Jerusalem Post reported that the Ukrainian defence ministry had claimed that Ukrainian interceptor drones had neutralised 33,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of various types in March alone.
Ukraine has rapidly expanded domestic drone production, with Reuters reporting that Kyiv planned to procure about 4.5 million domestically produced FPV drones in 2025.
Ukraine’s wartime drone industry has drawn growing international interest. “Nearly 20 countries are currently involved at various stages,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X.
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The electronic warfare battle
As drones became central to combat operations, electronic warfare increasingly emerged as a critical component of battlefield survival.
A Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) analysis noted that Russian and Ukrainian forces began to expand GPS-jamming systems, radio-frequency suppression networks, and signal-spoofing technologies on a significant scale in late 2022.
Russian systems included Pantsir-S1 and Tor-M2DT air-defence systems, alongside Krasukha, R-330 ZH Zhitel and Pole-21 electronic warfare (EW) complexes, designed to jam drone navigation, suppress radio links and disrupt GPS-guided systems.
The Washington Post reported in March 2024 that the Russian EW systems had become sophisticated enough to increasingly interfere with the effectiveness of several Western precision-guided systems supplied to Ukraine, including GPS-guided artillery rounds and HIMARS rockets.
Ukrainian forces responded by rapidly expanding their EW coverage, employing Bukovel-AD counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) and mobile air defence systems such as Gepard, NASAMS and IRIS-T.
By 2024–25, large sections of the front had become saturated with electronic interference, with both sides increasingly using GPS spoofing, radio-frequency jamming and anti-jamming navigation systems to disrupt or sustain drone operations in contested airspace.
Drone operators increasingly reported that drones lost navigation, froze mid-flight, or veered off course after entering heavily jammed sectors, Business Insider reported. The heavy jamming triggered another adaptation cycle and contributed to the rise of fibre-optic FPV drones.
FPV drones and the next adaptation cycle
The current phase of drone evolution has seen the emergence of fibre-optic FPV drones, which are controlled through fibre-optic cables rather than radio signals, making them more resistant to electronic jamming.
By 2025–26, fibre-optic drones had emerged as a growing feature of frontline operations, with both sides increasingly using them to attack logistics routes, destroy armoured vehicles, hit trench positions and penetrate areas saturated with EW systems, Reuters reported.
While these systems proved harder to jam, they also introduced operational constraints, including a shorter range, slower manoeuvrability, and cable fragility.
Prince Vandal of Novgorod (KVN) is among the Russian fibre-optic FPV systems widely used in Kursk and eastern Ukraine. Russia also modified some Molniya fixed-wing strike drones to use fibre-optic guidance and has been using them for reconnaissance and strike missions in the vicinity of the Donetsk front, Forbes reported.
Additionally, Russia has also been deploying a large number of improvised fibre-optic quadcopters, which have been used in the Pokrovsk, Chasiv Yar, and Kursk sectors.
Khyzhak REBOFF is one of the first officially codified Ukrainian families of fibre-optic drones being employed in heavily jammed sectors. Some Ukrainian heavy multi-rotor bombers are also reportedly being adapted for fibre-optic control in high-EW environments, though details remain limited.
The future of warfare
The Russia-Ukraine conflict continues to drive rapid changes in drone warfare, EW and battlefield tactics, with both armies adapting technologies and operational methods in response to evolving threats.
The pace of adaptation on both sides has compressed innovation cycles from years to months, and in some sectors, even weeks.
Military analysts increasingly view this war as a major testing ground for the future of warfare, where drones, EW systems and rapid battlefield innovations will decide the outcome.
This conflict has shown how low-cost technologies can have a profound effect on land, air and maritime operations, prompting armies across the globe to revisit force structures, air defence systems and battlefield survivability.
Hemant Kochar is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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