Don's Weekly, 6 January 2025: Part 4 (Equipment)
by Donald Hill
(…continued from Part 3…)
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Equipment
Few weeks ago, a big shipment of locally made mortar bombs was recalled by the ZSU. After being informed about several of these prematurely detonating, even we were involved in warning units about this danger. Between the brigades that felt the impact and had to ship faulty mortar bombs back to the manufacturer was ‘our’ 151st Mechanised. The Ukrainian investigative platform Censor.net reported yesterday about a related meeting of a working group of the Ministry of Defence. Turned out, one of Strategyprom’s companies manufactured 60,000 faulty mortar bombs calibre 82mm, but nearly all have been spent in combat because there was an ‘unofficial agreement to ban reporting about problems with them’… There was a number of inadverent blasts, all causing by faulty explosive fillings: apparently, major incidents were avoided because troops desperate for ammunition were modifying these on their own.
BTW, the mortar bombs in question were also observed to be far less accurate than those manufactured by other sources.
Of course, nobody from the Ukrainian MOD or the manufacturer has ever attempted to visit the frontlines and chat with troops. And so, because of that ‘unofficial agreement’ between the MOD and the Strategyprom, the problem is meanwhile increasing, and nothing is undertaken against that…
A FAB-500 bomb is assembled with a UMPK kit - and now comes another irony of this war: research by the Ukrainian investigative platform Inform Napalm has revealed that all servo motors for the Russian UMPK glide bomb kits are made in Taiwan. To make things ‘better’, the motors in question have been upgraded - on Russian demands - at least five times by now.
Obviously, it’s really so: whenever there’s a profit to make, people do not care how…
BTW, while the most common flight profile for the release of guided bombs by Ukrainian fighters is to approach the launch point at low altitude before streaking up to altitude, release the bombs and then flip over to descend to low altitude again while launching flares, the Russians tended to release their UMPKs from high altitudes and high speeds. Meanwhile, they’ve switched over to approaching at low altitudes and then jinking upwards to release, too.
Magyar’s copy of the PTM-3 mine was effective, but the fuse was just placed at one end. This meant it was unlikely it would form a shaped charge explosion like the original PTM-3. A new fuse runs the length of the mine, like the PTM-3. This, and the shape of the casing, makes it more likely that a shaped charge explosion will occur, making them even more effective.
The Wild Hornets built hundreds of drones per month at the beginning of 2024. Their team grew to 100 people and they now produce thousands of drones per month. They developed a drone that intercepted and destroyed 300 Russian reconnaissance drones to date. They developed the large Queen Hornet drone as well as their own unit that hunts Shaheds alongside the military with drones of their own design. They promised new designs in 2025.
The RMG is a Russian tandem-warhead designed to penetrate 50 cm of a brick wall or 30 cm of concrete, and then detonate a thermobaric charge, which is also effective against troops in the open or inside buildings. Ukrainian soldiers remove the rocket from a captured RMG launcher in the first step to convert the contents into a drone munition.
Russia is developing a remote automatic shotgun to shoot down FPVs.
Finland has 246 ships in their coastal fleet. They can operate in shallow waters and some have stealth features. Missile boats, mine layers and sweepers, anti-sub ships and transports and future capabilities are discussed in this thread. Finnish ground assets also support naval operations.
An F-16 in the air.
Oryx’s list of Russian equipment lost since 2022. There are 11,395 visually confirmed armored losses and 3,774 trucks and other logistical vehicles lost.
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Details about Drone Warfare
Yurii Fedorenko was in the National Guard as a special forces combat instructor in 2009. In 2015 he was discharged after a head wound and listed as partially fit for combat. He started a car business and entered politics as an advisor on defense matters and later as a member of the Kharkiv city council.
Reactivated after the open invasion, he was leading a Territorial Defense company. He would carry out the orders given to him, but the leaders would also micromanage and tell him how to conduct the operation and he ignored them and acted in the way he thought was best. His rebelliousness, determination and skill at fighting reminded a former movie distributor in his unit of the character “Achilles” in the movie Troy, and that is how he came by that call sign. It eventually became the name of his unit and he eventually dropped the call sign in favor of the unit.
In April 2022 a scout in the film industry joined the company and brought his personal drone with him. He used it to hover over Russian units and provide information on the battlefield situation. (He was later killed at Bakhmut). Fedorenko used that information to call for artillery fire that destroyed a Russian refueling point. He was a believer and decided to teach his gunners how to use drones as fast as possible.
In May, their unit moved from Kyiv to Kharkiv. Of the approximately hundred people in his unit, 60% of them could fly drones. They only had three drones and used them to cover 30 kilometers of the front, detecting Russian units and spotting for artillery. One of the units they supported was the 92nd Brigade, and after the Kharkiv offensive the respected commander of the brigade asked Fedorenko if he would like to transfer from the Territorial Defense unit to his brigade. 47 of his 91 men agreed to do so. The others were older and in poor health and decided to remain in the Territorial Defense unit.
At that time the entire unit was given six drones a month. By late 2024, just one drone team will be flying 40 FPV drones a day, using six different types of ammo.
His unit expanded from a company to a battalion ten months ago. There are plans to expand it to a regiment, but, as of October, the unit only had about 75% of its positions filled after becoming a battalion. Since July, 90 percent of his battalion have been conscripted soldiers without previous combat experience and he was intent on training them with discipline, meticulous work, constant self-improvement, and back to constant training.
He emphasizes a standard action that’s part of every operation: “There is a concept such as "post-mission activity": where we do something good, we analyze why and do it again. Where we did something wrong, we analyze why, repair the bottlenecks and do it properly. We carried out the post-mission analysis of the operations done by the Achilles, removed all the shortcomings, and so the Achilles unit is currently free of any weaknesses. Some aspects still need to be improved, such as warfighting capability, but everything is in working order.”
Part of the discipline is the recognition that the drone teams are a high priority target. To mitigate some of that threat, they dig three times as many fighting positions than they did when they were a rifle unit. Each position is dug and systematically outfitted, then three or four back up positions are prepared and units are redeployed if they think they are compromised. At each position they are also prepared to fight as infantry.
He also recognized that in order to be a successful unit you had to adapt to the battlefield, and that the battlefield includes securing the resources needed to fight, such as electronic warfare equipment, radios, radar, drones and so much more. Half of his drones are provided by the government, but with more drones they can be more effective, so he increased the public profile of his unit and they currently raise $4 million per month. Using his network formed as a politician, he reminds businessmen that if the Russians win, they will lose everything. He spends most of his own salary on equipment.
Like other successful units with a public revenue stream, they have their own workshops. One shop assembles FPV drones, another assemble drones for surveillance or bombing, another focuses on research and development and yet another creates munitions from old stored ammo. About 2.5 million tons of ammo had originally been stored in Warsaw Pact countries and were removed and stored in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union. Some of the ammo was in poor condition, and other depots were sabotaged, but the rest were repurposed as drone ammo. At one workstation a lathe is used to remove the outer casings of RPG warheads to reduce weight, which would increase the range of the drone carrying it. Individual bomblets are also removed from cluster munitions and duct taped to hand grenades that are dropped.
A year ago on the front lines, Ukraine would lose all of their fixed wing reconnaissance drones within a week due to Russian air defenses while Russia might lose 40% of their fixed wing drones within a week. Now, with the Ukrainian interception drones, he estimates that Russian reconnaissance drones are destroyed within a week of use. In terms of quantity, he believes that Ukraine will reach parity in the middle of 2025 at the earliest.
One pilot joined in 2024. During the six weeks of basic training, he was told that he had to kill at least one Russian before he died, hopefully more, otherwise the death would be a waste. When he arrived at the Achilles Battalion in the Donbass, he was assigned as an apprentice to a more experienced team. The bones of six dead Russians were scattered around the village. Two KAB bombs landed close to his mentor’s shelter and created a crater the size of a small swimming pool.
His first mission as a pilot was supposed to be to deliver a high explosive charge to a bunker but an observer drone saw two Russians walking along a road so he was diverted. It didn’t have the shrapnel that would be deadly to troops but the pilot hit the ground in between them in the hopes of wounding them seriously enough that another drone with a shrapnel warhead could reach them. The observer drone saw that one Russian was lightly injured and he was dragging his seriously injured partner to the trees. When the second drone arrived, the Russians were already in the woods, so the drone entered and looked for them. Finally, he saw them, and the lightly injured Russian abandoned his partner and ran. The drone chased him for 20 meters, overshot the soldier, and then turned and hit the ground two meters away. The observer couldn’t see the result but the pilot was confident that at that range it was a guaranteed kill. By the time he was a pilot for 90 days he estimated he had killed at least 50 Russian soldiers.
After fighting in Bakhmut and the Donbass, the 92nd was transferred to stop the Russian attack in Kharkiv. Of the battalion, one company was used to support Hlyboke, one company was used to support Vovchansk, and when the 92nd was transferred to stop the Russians near Kupiansk, one company went to support operations there. Since that is the most challenging sector, the commander is located in that sector. The stories of drone combat that follows take place in and around Hlyboke during one day.
The drone team works in pairs. The leader flies a small observer drone with a long battery life and uses it to detect targets and direct FPV drones that arrive to destroy them. A howitzer in Russia was just hit by one of their drones a few minutes earlier and a new drone is on its way to assess the damage and hunt for the crew that would be nearby. The drone flew under the canopy of the woods and saw the smoking howitzer but no sign of the crew. It did discover new vehicular tracks in a field and followed them to the edge of the woods and saw a T-80 tank. This is fortunate because the drone didn’t have enough power to fly back and its warhead would detonate upon any contact. The leader gave the order to take it out. The FPV drone observed the tank, backed into the woods to protect its exhaust grate, outfitted with a both a cope cage to block a drone and reactive armor to defeat an RPG warhead designed to burn through the metal, and all its hatches were closed. After a few moments, the pilot decided to attack at the base of the turret where the armor was thinner. His screen went blank as the drone impacted but the leader with the observer drone saw the explosion.
The observation drone saw a Russian moving on a motorcycle across open ground. By the time the FPV drone arrived, the Russian had a 15-minute head start. The drone started to close on the target but as the drone decreased altitude the terrain in between the drone and the pilot blocked the radio signal. Rather than lose the drone, the pilot abandoned the chase. But now the drone needs to be used, so the observer pilot directs the FPV to a patch of trees that was surrounded by foot trails. They weren’t there before, so this suggests Russians might have arrived during the night. Looking from the edge of the woods, the FPV pilot sees nothing. The power is running low, so the drone is flown to another patch of woods that has bunkers. Still, no Russians were found. Out of power, the drone is flown into a bunker. Even if there were Russians there, the entrance probably had a right turn and the living quarters probably was some distance away from the entrance. It’s unlikely the drone hurt or killed any Russians.
The team was ready to launch another drone when their leader radioed that radar detected a high-altitude fixed wing Supercam reconnaissance drone. If the drone team went outside and were detected, KAB bombs would hit their positions by nightfall. In WW2, German artillery dared not fire if a US observation plane was flying for fear the plane would see them firing and call in counter battery fire. In the same way, the Russian reconnaissance drone suppressed Ukrainian attacks. The drone team had to sit until the Russian drone flew away or was shot down. The team never went out at night unless they had a mission because it was easier to detect their heat signature with infrared cameras.
The Supercam flew away and a Ural truck was spotted with five Russians holding a meeting beside it. The drone sped to the scene to catch them. As it neared, there was a glitch, either from a breakdown or jamming, and the pilot lost control of the drone. The camera still worked and it showed a spinning brown and blue as the drone tumbled from the sky and exploded on the ground. The explosion would warn the Russians they were under attack, so another drone was rushed to the site. By the time it reached the scene, artillery had been used. The truck was on fire and bomblets from DPICM were hitting the ground. Between the smoke and dust, it was difficult to see anything. The drone hung in the air for a while but no movement was seen. Low on power, the pilot flew the drone into the already blazing truck.
The team took a break, ate some sandwiches and checked their phones. Then their leader called and said they’d send drones to the ruined village of Hlyboke to look for rat holes, any kind of openings that would let Russian troops enter the basements. Their leader pointed out the holes and the team flew drone after drone with thermobaric charges into the holes. Then their leader spotted two Russians that left the cover of the nearby trees and moved into the rubble. The pilot of the FPV drone flew lower than the observer drone but could not see them, so the leader guided the FPV pilot closer to the targets. Suddenly, the pilot saw them and charged forward. The two Russians ran in different directions. The FPV chased the one carrying two bags, hitting him just as he reached a wall. The leader confirmed he was dead. Another drone with a fragmentation charge was sent but the second Russian was never found.
It was just another day in the war….
Lord, why can't the UA High Command look at units like this one and ask "Hm, what are they doing that makes them so effective and how can WE do that?" You and Tom are not sounding like a broken record, you are sounding like a couple of guys who are seeing a major issue that is being ignored and talking it up. Keep talking.
Thanks for that description of Yurii Fedorenko and the Achilles Battalion. Amazing story. Felt like a no BS description of the realities of FPV warfare.