Ukraine Drone Cables: City Under Surveillance | NRK Urix

The threads glisten in the light. They stretch criss-cross between rooftops and lampposts. Over fields and roads.

From a distance, it almost looks as if the city in eastern Ukraine is covered in cobwebs.

But there is no giant spider that has been on the move in Lyman, just a few short kilometers from the front.

What you see are the remnants of the bitter drone war between Russia and Ukraine.

The video has been shared by Ukraine’s 63rd Mechanized Brigade. Reuters has verified that it shows Lyman, although the news agency cannot confirm the exact date.

Immune moth jamming

In the last year, so-called fiber optic drones have become more and more popular.

Instead of being controlled with a radio signal, the drones are equipped with a thin cable that leads back to the drone operator.

– You can almost imagine that the fishing reel has been set on the trap, Lars Peder Haga, associate professor at the Luftkrigskolen, has previously told NRK.

Every day, hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian drones fly over Lyman, according to Ukraine’s military.

The fiber optic drones have several advantages. Most importantly: They cannot be jammed by electronic warfare. The signal is also not affected by the terrain and buildings.

But they can also easily get stuck on things, and the length of the cable limits how far they can fly. Nevertheless, fiber optic drones with a range of 40 kilometers have been reported.

The cables left behind also present new challenges.

Netting and barbed wire

The “net” that the drones leave behind, as in Lyman, makes maneuvering difficult for the soldiers on the battlefield.

– You never know if they are from a fiber optic drone, or a mine trap, said the Ukrainian soldier Khyzhak to the news website Business Insider.

He said that the soldiers have to move more slowly to avoid all the cables that stretch around the terrain.

It is also common to see drones that have become stuck, for example in trees.

When the drones are immune to jamming, the soldiers must also adopt new methods to defend against them. Nets have been put up in several places to protect roads and infrastructure.

Rotating barbed wire strung between two points has also become more popular, the Estonian defense magazine The Baltic Sentinel reported this autumn.

The barbed wire gets stuck in the drone’s fiber optic cable, which is dragged over the ground.

The magazine calls it a low-tech solution that puts the high-tech drones out of action.

– Any mission can end with a torn cable and the loss of expensive equipment and explosive charges.

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