(AFP, Paris, 18th) Ukraine relies on the large-scale use of drones to compensate for the lack of artillery shells and weaken Russia’s military capabilities, but experts warn that these drones cannot influence the war situation.
Drones and commercial drones used for strikes hundreds of kilometers away are starting to dominate the battlefield, especially so-called first-person view (FPV) drones that allow pilots to see real-time images of the ground as if they were in the plane As above, it is also possible to locate enemy soldiers and, if they have explosives, attack them from several kilometers away.
Ulrike Franke, senior policy researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told AFP: “Right now in Ukraine we are seeing the use of drones on an unimaginable scale, and what we are talking about in fact there are tens of thousands of them. on the battlefield, plans, hundreds of thousands of drones.”
Kyiv has allocated a drone budget of 1.15 billion euros ($1.25 billion) in 2024, and after President Zelenskiy established a dedicated drone department in February, he announced that the country would produce “1 million drones” this year.
Ukrainian officials estimate that 100,000 to 120,000 drones are needed each month.
According to an assessment by the British think tank “International Institute for Strategic Studies” (IISS), Ukraine needs between 200,000 and 250,000 artillery shells per month to conduct a large-scale attack, and 75,000 to 90,000 artillery shells to maintain defense.
The report also said that Western backers rely heavily on the United States to maintain defenses, but Kyiv does not have enough ammunition to launch a large-scale attack next year.
Thus, “Ukraine has reduced its demand for artillery ammunition by significantly increasing the production of attack drones.”
A source in the French military pointed out that 65% to 85% of the current damage to Russian positions was caused by Ukrainian first-person attack drones.
But Frank warned: “They use drones because they can produce them or buy them, but drones are not ideal.”
The explosive payload capacity of first-person attack drones is small, only a few hundred grams, and the largest commercial drones only have a few kilograms.
Stacie Pettyjohn, director of defense programs at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think tank, agreed: “Even a large number of small drones cannot match the firepower of artillery.”
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