Don's Weekly, 29 December 2025: Part 5 (Equipment)

by Donald Hill

Equipment

Ukraine produces 50% of the weapons it uses on the front line and almost all of the long-range weapons it releases into Russia. Two factories belonging to Fire Point have been hit by Russia. Fire Point produces the Flamingo missiles and 60% of the drones (reportedly 200 a day) used in attacks on Russia. They do not use parts from China and the US to avoid the risk of being denied these parts. Syrsky says long-range strikes cost Russia $21.5 billion this year.

Russia used two ground drones to dump rocks into a small stream and create a bridge by pushing them into place.

Japan installed a laser defense system on a 6,200 ton ship that is a test platform. It uses ten 10 kW lasers that are combined into a single 100 kW beam with enough power to burn through metal surfaces. The light travels through a solid-state optical fiber treated with rare earth elements that amplify and focus the beam. It is designed to shoot down drones, mortar rounds and lightweight airborne threats. With sufficient power, the system has an ‘unlimited magazine’ that can fire indefinitely. Some of the challenges the system will face include atmosphere and moisture, which can diffuse the beam, and maintaining aim while on a pitching deck at sea. Energy weapons often need time to recharge between shots and require substantial cooling and electrical power. Lasers usually only convert 25-35% of their energy into destructive power. Sea trials will begin in March 2026, and operational deployment is years away.

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Project Eagle

Project Eagle (originally White Stork) was an effort founded by the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt soon after the 2022 invasion to aid Ukraine. He also established the D3 (Dare to Defend Democracy) Foundation in 2023 to accelerate the defence start up companies in Ukraine and allied countries. It has invested in 16 companies, mostly Ukrainian, and works with drones, AI, EW and cybersecurity. The fund received $5 million from Denmark.

Schmidt advised the Pentagon to “get rid of tanks and buy drones instead”. Project Eagle is producing drones with AI and has made several trips to meet and observe front line drone operations. His company, Swift Beat, is working with Aurelian Industries (which develops AI for 911 emergency centers) and Estonia’s Volya Robotics. They are developing an interceptor, a medium-range strike drone, and a kamikaze drone.

Project Eagle uses Ukrainian companies to build hulls and Schmidt said he doesn’t make a profit in Ukraine, but not everyone in Ukraine’s drone industry trusts him. Some think he wants to acquire their technology and resell it at a higher price.

The Merops interceptor drone system has a command station, launch platforms and multiple Surveyor drones. It takes two weeks to train a commander, a pilot and two technicians.

Military personnel from Poland, the US, and Romania are training in Poland to use the Merops system. Video here.

The Surveyor drone can operate autonomously or be remotely piloted. It has a speed of 280 kph which makes it fast enough to intercept the 300 kph jet-powered Geran-3. It costs $15,000, which is 10-40% of the cost of the various Russian drones. Project Eagle is working on a jet-powered drone.

The US head of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense command said it was lethal and cost effective. A US senior NCO said, “It’s a simple system to understand. If you’re good with an Xbox controller, you’re good.” Poland’s deputy chief of the general staff said it was a “gap filler.”

A July report said Project Eagle’s Merops interceptor drone was responsible for 90% of the Shahed drones that were destroyed. November and December reports say it is responsible for 40% of the intercepted drones, which totaled 1,900 drones. Zelensky says the interception rates vary by drone at 60-90%.

Ukraine produces the General Chereshnya AIR interceptor drone, which killed 548 Russian drones in October. It has a range of 22 km, a ceiling of 5,000 meters, a flight time of 35 minutes and a speed of 200 kph. The developer placed another drone into serial production that has a speed of 309 kph.

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Lasar’s Group

You may not have heard of this group, and that was by design. It has formally existed since September 2022 and is one of the most effective drone units in the Ukrainian army. But the environment has changed, publicity is needed, and the group is adapting to the environment to remain effective.

Born in Moldova, Pavlo Yelizarov, aka Lasar, served in the Soviet army and then moved to Ukraine, building and selling an agricultural business. He was deputy minister of transport from 2007-8. He became a co-investor of a TV studio and produced a talk show. His studio had issues with President Poroshenko and Zelensky’s political party called for a boycott of his studio.

All that was (mostly) set aside when the Russians invaded openly. A former Transport Minister and an MP said the local recruitment center had a line a kilometer long, but no weapons. Yelizarov called the Defense Minister who sent them to another recruitment center that provided them with weapons. Yelizarova joined the 126th Territorial Defense Battalion and he started organizing checkpoints and finding equipment and building materials, spending $400,000 of his own money in the first month.

After the Russians withdrew from their attack on Kyiv, he moved to an SOF unit in Zaporizhzhia and saw a drone unit in action for the first time. Yelizarov spent $10,000 on a drone smugglers used to bring cigarettes across the border and his team figured out how to drop a mine from it. He then spent $680,000 on spare parts from China and the team started assembling drones in a garage. Someone suggested attaching a Starlink terminal to the drone and controlling through the internet. They also added 18 batteries to the drone instead of just two for longer flight times which raised the cost of the drone to $20,000 but allowed the drone to attack a lot more targets.

By the summer of 2022, his group only had five pilots, but without orders, they weren’t allowed to move to the front lines to fly them. So they had HUR or SBU soldiers bring the drones close to the front line and the pilots then flew them remotely. That led to the realization that pilot performance actually increased without the dangers and distractions of front line locations. It also saved lives, as Lasar’s Group only lost 16 soldiers in three and a half years of combat.

He met the commander of Azov that summer, and Biletsky was impressed with the new drone but told them that a tool without tactics is nothing and gave them some tactical suggestions, which quickly paid off with successes.

Wanting to scale up his operation, he met with different military commanders who were uninterested based on his lack of military experience. The Deputy Interior Minister suggested he form his own National Guard unit, and the commander of the National Guard accepted him and approved his organizational plan for 300 people, 98% of whom were civilians just a few months earlier. His chief of staff was a woman that headed an administrative service before the war. His intelligence team were mostly financial analysts. And as soon as they filled out their teams with 30 pilots, Yelizarov told them to expand the roster to 90 pilots. They currently have about 1,300 people (pilots, staff, ground crews, etc.) and have a 13-person team for every 10 km of front.

Ylizarov prefers working with civilians because he thinks they are focused on results while professional military personnel are focused on process. He provides the objective and lets his subordinates use their creativity to achieve that objective. He finds that military personnel need constant direction and micromanagement.

[The successful infantry brigades are also focused on results and will review and change their processes to achieve the desired results. Like all successful units, they encourage initiative in subordinates, and they are constantly evaluating operations to try and improve their capabilities.]

The pilots learn the basic functions of their job fairly soon, but even the most experienced pilots undergo training to learn something that someone else has discovered and to constantly refine their skills. Before conducting operations, reconnaissance teams undergo two months training, FPV pilots undergo one month training, bomber pilots undergo three months training, and field crews that deploy the drones to be remotely piloted, are trained for two weeks.

Early in the war they didn’t have any funding, so they solicited the $20,000 for each drone from donors. He met with CODE 9.2’s commander who was having difficulties trying to take a village. They planned the assault together and eight Russians were killed in a single strike. CODE 9.2 took the village with just one person being wounded. And then the Russians counterattacked with 14 IFVs, a tank and 100 infantry, but three drones stopped the assault with losses to both vehicles and infantry. CODE 9.2 later converted and became a very effective drone unit.

In the fall of 2022, Russian tanks were a major threat to Ukraine so Yelizarov set a goal of destroying a certain amount of vehicles per month. If they could achieve and maintain that goal then in two years there would be none left. Russia lost over 11,000 tanks and Lasar’s Group is responsible for almost 20% of them.

The escalating successes gave them credibility and access to state money needed to grow the operation at scale. He used his own company to pay companies to produce drones and he received $95 million in 2023, $140 million in 2024, but that was reduced to less than $95 million in 2025. With his company receiving money from the state and providing drones to himself in the military, he received several visits from law enforcement officers. Through strict accounting, he has avoided corruption charges but the accusations are still made.

Production was matched to the size of the drone teams but it’s now only funded for 30% of capacity. With full funding they could conduct three times as many attacks. US financing paid for 2,000 drones in October, which helped.

With the destruction of so much of Russia’s armor, and with Russia’s conservation of its remaining armor, they switched their primary target to artillery. In June, they destroyed more artillery than the next four units combined. They’re also developing a new relationship with special operations units but cannot provide details.

Yelizarov attended the University of Defense, which usually leads to a strategic leadership position. His goals for the army is to remove excess people at the senior level, optimize structure and shorten decision and implementation times. But he was in political opposition to Zelensky before the war, so there is very little chance he would be assigned a position with any power.

Because of these issues, he has reluctantly decided to become more public. He doesn’t want to provide information to the enemy, but he needs funding and recruits. They didn’t even want to publish the videos of their missions, (which are all kept on file), but without a media presence, they cannot compete for recruits.

In the Forbes interview last October, they spoke of a drone pilot that went by “Fish”, that come to them with a dream of killing a Russian tank but was unable to do so with his personal Kazhan (Bat) drone he kept in the trunk of his Nissan Navara. He is well known among pilots for having destroyed over 500 pieces of equipment*. They said they didn’t want to reveal his name, but soon after the video discussion reveals him to be Roman “Fish”, a company commander of drones, 34 years old and married without children but with two dogs.

*(106 tanks, 200 IFVs, 111 APCs, 50 SPGs, 2 MLRS, 5 AA guns, 9 pieces of engineering equipment, and other targets).

While Starlink is their main communications system, 30% of their crews use LTE or PFC communications to reduce the risk of dependency on Starlink and the whims of its owner, plus the periodic outages that occur. While Lasar’s Group created the first heavy bomber drone and worked exclusively with heavy bombers and reconnaissance drones over the last three years, they recently stood up two FPV companies, as well.

Roman “Fish” said there are enough drone manufacturers now, and the ones that exist need to continue to improve and perfect their products. There have been times when drones were removed from the box and were unable to function.

In order to attract recruits, they are now showing past operations, meeting recruits just after they’ve been picked up off the streets and providing them with answers and facts to help calm their fears. People that actually conduct operations talk with them to tell them what it would be like to join their unit. Many are afraid of being sent untrained to an incompetent unit, and Lasar’s Group explains to them the training they could receive and that only 1% of their soldiers have been killed throughout the war.

One operation that was shown was in the defense of Avdiivka. The 110th Brigade was defending the city but they were short of artillery shells. The Russians knew this, so they sent an armored column of 32 vehicles at night. Lasar’s Group was called in to help and they used five drones to destroy 27 of the vehicles and only lost one of those drones in the operation. Fish was responsible for 15 of them himself.

After that disaster, the Russians switched to daytime attacks so they could see where they were going and speed to the Ukrainian lines. Lasar’s Group switched their crews to a daytime schedule and prepared their drones to launch within 2-5 minutes’ notice. Over time, the Russian attacks became primarily conducted by cart, ATV, motorcycle, donkeys and foot, and, again, Larsar’s Group was responsible for 20% of the AFV kills.

With the change of Russian tactics, it appears that Larsar’s Group once again returned primarily to night operations to hunt infantry and artillery.

The last operation they showed was a joint mission with the 73rd Marines, where their aerial drones were transported on the Marine’s naval drones to hit multiple Nebo radars and air defense systems, plus other targets on the extreme western tip of Crimea by the village of Mayak.

Then they showed a video that many have seen already. A drone was returning from a mission without ammo and saw a Buk anti-aircraft system, so it landed on the vehicle in between missiles and rode with it for 15 km. The vehicles stopped and it was noticed. Many Russians gathered and one hit it with a stick. They ran as the self-destruct mechanism was activated.

The 37 minute video is available here.