“21:00 would be better,” Miro texted me back. “More likely that we’ll come back from the mission” and he adds a right bracket that is used in Ukraine as a smile emoticon.
Here we were, discussing via texts on Instagram a podcast on war drones with a military who is currently on the frontline.
Talking about technology.
Before learning drones, Miro had served 4 years in the US army, and 8 month out of those 4 years he spent in Afghanistan. Now he is an intelligence and combat drone operator at the frontline defending Ukraine.
But it wasn’t the plan.
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Plan was to join the The New York Film Academy to study acting.
“Then the COVID started, everything was closed down, so I came back to Ukraine, - Miro shares on my podcast Ukraine’s News with Margo in Twitter Spaces. “I was like, okay, I'm just gonna wait the COVID out in Ukraine. The COVID thing ended. But then the possibility of a big war at the end of 2021 started. There were big rumors that the big war is gonna start in 2022. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna wait till the end of the winter. And if nothing starts, then I'm just gonna go back to LA and go back to my film school.”
And then February 24, 2022 came.
“And here I am, a year and a half later, doing something that I never thought that I would actually be doing: being a combat and intelligent drone operator” - Miro says and adds:
“It's something that I had to learn from the ground up.”
“Drones it's not a future, it's already present of warfare” Miro said during our talk and russia could share some stories about it : this year drones attacked russia and occupied Crimea more than 190 times, according to BBC Verify date as of September 1.
The night drone attacks on August 30th in the nights which is considered the most massive attack on russia in 2023 so far that hit occupied Crimea and 5 regions of russia – ryasan, oryol, bryansk, kaluga, moscow.
Pskov got it the worst.
So, eyes are on drones, for Ukraine - both in raising funds and in focusing to produce it domestically and scale up, since it proved to be inexpensive, deadly and - as Miro shared during our talk - quite scary war tool.
And now Miro was operating one.
M.G.: How it is to fly drones and learn to operate one?
M.P.: In the first 4 months of the war me and my teammates, we joined the police force. When there's a war in your country, police is not necessarily the one that gives you tickets and puts you in jail. No, we didn't do that. We were on the combat side of it. We were doing evacuations. We had to evacuate civilians or if there's a rocket attack, we had to help with injured people and stuff like that. It's really exhausting. Doing the evacuations under artillery fire, people who don't want to leave, they say: “Just go away, we're gonna stay here”. And we decided: okay, we have to start actually participating in combat.
So what we're gonna do? Regular army doesn't take us because I am disabled veteran. Any veteran that's being in combat is a disabled one way or another. I have all my 4 limbs. But my back, my shoulders, my hearing, it's a little bit shaky. So if I try to join a regular army - no. Almost all of my teammates are like that. So we were like, okay, we want to participate. We wanted to be active. So what do we do?
So our commander, Leonid, he got this idea that we can raise funds and purchase a combat drone called “The Punisher”. We raised funds and purchased that drone. It was our first drone. And with that drone we had 64 combat missions. Out of them, 46 targets destroyed. I was the one who would do the full report on all the targets for our chain of command, so I know that 18 were unsuccessful 46 successful, which is pretty good for a team that just learned a new device so quickly. We had 1 month's training with drone that is capable of carrying 2.5 kilos - 5 pounds - of explosives. You have a target, the drone flies 40 km one way, so we were able to fly deep in the enemy's territory, drop the bomb - successfully or unsuccessfully - and then come back, and it's pretty good because 40 km is far - like 24 miles. You are able to stay on the verge - sometimes - the distance of artillery and tank fire. So you can be in pretty safe environment. There are some artillery like MLRS that shoots rockets, it can reach you. But usually they won't spend the rockets on some drone team.
Although they do sometimes, so you have to be careful.
M.G.: And how much such a drone costs?
M.P.: Usually combat military drones, they're extremely expensive. They go like from couple hundred thousand dollars to couple million dollars. This drone is not a military drone. It's pretty much a toy. It costs $70,000. You get operating station, ground operating station and 2 drones with it. One drone and a second one if the first one breaks.
Why do I say it's it's a toy?
Because it's basically like a small airplane that you sometimes see videos of people flying around.
But the people who invented it they added the drop system, that you attach a bomb to. At some point when you have to drop the bomb it disengages, the bomb drops and you fly back. So it's basically a toy, it's not a military drone.
Although now a year later I think it's on the verge of becoming a military drone because the company who created it they saw big success with these drones. So now they got licenses to put the military equipment on it. As soon as you put military grade equipment on it, it becomes a military drone. It's sort of a bureaucracy.
M.G.: When a toy drone really becomes a military drone?
M.P.: You have to put military grade equipment there. This drone operates with GPS systems, right? There are civilian GPS systems and there are military-grade. Military-grade GPS systems are capable to withstand the pressure of electronic warfare. The one that blocks the GPS signal. So military-grade systems are capable to withstand that. Our systems, we're not capable to withstand it. For example, if you fly somewhere on a straight line, and you see that there you have electronic blockage of your GPS in some area, you just fly around. And basically, that's it. You have to manoeuvre through some areas.
But I mean, 46 times out of 64 we delivered the package. Yeah, it wasn't easy, it's not like you go from point A to point B, you have to withstand some pressure. And of course they try to counter attack your drones, sometimes even with rockets, they shoot rockets at your drones. For a drone to fly from point A to point B, for example, 40 kilometers - or 24 miles - into the enemy territory, you have to know its location. To know its location, you have a GPS system just like you have on your iPhone. When you open Google Maps, you have to know your position, that's GPS. So when the drone flies, what they try to do, and we do the same to their drones, they try to block the GPS signal.
M.G.: So your drone doesn't know where it's going?
M.P.: Yes. Sometimes it was really a pain in the ass to deal with. Sometimes you have to just turn around and cancel the mission. Sometimes, with the blockage of GPS, they send information to your drone. It's called spoofing. If we fly at 400 meters altitude, they can send information to your drone that, hey, you fly at 1000 meters altitude. The drone thinks that he's at a 1000 meters, but he's actually at 400. So he starts to descend and he descends into the ground. That's what happened to one of our drones. And one drone costs 20 something 5 thousand dollars. So I just watched on my screen how $25,000 drone just crashed into the ground with the bomb in it and I was very nervous because thing thing happened on our territory. So I see that drone is actually crashing and it’s crashing with a bomb in it . And as operator, I can still maneuver, I can still send some commands for it to land somewhere. So we were fortunate enough for it to land in the field, so it doesn't land on somebody's house. Because when the drone is not under control, and it has explosive on it, that's really scary for you as an operator. You don't want it to drop it on somebody's head.
“So I just watched on my screen how $25,000 drone just crashed into the ground with the bomb in it”
But I was able to maneuver it into the field and of course the drone drop exploded, but nobody was injured.
It was actually a success.
M.G.: Sounds like it and congrats on that! So basically even after russians confuse the drone and “overtake” it, you still can manoeuvre it?
M.P.: Yes, because when they send their signal to the drone, there're windows where you can find the connection with the drone and send a command. As an operator you already know that the drone is gone. You can't do anything. But at least you can maneuver to a safe area. Here, we are in the south of Ukraine, in the Kherson area. That was actually when Kherson was not liberated yet, so we were participating in the combat operations liberating Kherson. In Kherson, it's easier because there are big fields here. Giant farms with giant fields. So it was easier for me to navigate it into some cornfield so nobody gets injured. You get those little windows of opportunity to manoeuvre, to send your signal.
But the military grade drones, they're able to withstand that pressure, those enemy signals to your drone.
M.G.: So when your drone will get this militarygrade GPS system, russians will be able to take it down only with a weapon like missile or something and won’t be able to use electronic warfare against it?
M.P.: Any electronic device can be brought down by anti drone systems, it’s just military grade is able to withstand a big part of it. But anything that flies can be brought down. Even a $4 million drone. There are cases that it was just hacked and brought down. It's just what it is. It's a constant race. Some drone technology that's good now, in 6 months is garbage.
M.G.: That's a short time!
M.P.: Yes, it is. A year ago, we started this drone thing last summer, in 6 months our Punisher was not capable of operating at all. It took 2-3 months for the company that created Punisher to build a new system that's capable to withstand the pressure. It's a constant race, constant sprint.
M.G.: So you need to update it every half a year and you can’t use it while updating?
M.P.: Yeah, that’s why in 1 year we added more drones to our arsenal, for different types of missions. Now we have the Punisher, of course, 2 types of intelligent drones, the one that flies at higher altitude and you're able to see and track the target. We have FPV [First Person View - ed.] drones. That's our main tool right now. It's a first person view drones. Basically a suicide drone.
“In 6 months our Punisher was not capable of operating at all. It took 2-3 months for the company that created Punisher to build a new system that's capable to withstand the pressure. It's a constant race, constant sprint.”
The furthest we ever flew was 15 or 16 kilometers, which is pretty far. It's not as far as Punisher, but it's a different type of tool. It's very good for destroying tanks, army vehicles, antennas or surveillance cameras. For instance, for the past 2 months, we destroyed, I think, 12 or 13 surveillance cameras. And those cameras cost from somewhere from $300,000 to $1.5 million. The camera has optical and thermal vision and is capable to see for 10 kilometers and identify anything within 10 kilometer range.
M.G. So you blind the systems.
M.P.: Yes. So that's why FPV is very good for those kind of missions. But why we decided not to use FPV - for example, you fly somewhere on the FPV drone, you drop a bomb and then you come back. If I said that Punisher is a toy, FPV drone is a legit toy. Anyone can buy an FPV drone on Amazon right now. That's where we were actually buying them from at some point.
M.G.: How much is an FPV drone?
M.P.: FPV drone is $500-$600 - average price for a good FPV drone that's capable of flying like 15 kilometers far.
M.G.: I heard there are units using FPV not as kamikaze but for returning missions?
M.P.: Yeah we thought of it for maybe 5 minutes and decided not to do it. Why we decided not to use FPV drone for returning missions ? First of all, it's cheap. I mean, $500 is for military purposes. If you destroy a tank, for instance, and you spend 2 drones on it, you spend $1,000 for one tank.
Come on, that's cheap.
I mean, the tank costs a couple million dollars, and then you are able to at least damage those couple million dollars with your drone. Usually it takes 2-3 drones per 1 target to destroy it.
“If you destroy a tank, for instance, and you spend 2 drones on it, you spend $1,000 for one tank.
Come on, that's cheap.”
And second of all, when you fly FPV, you're streaming videos and that's how you're able to navigate through the video channel. It’s very easy to connect to your video channel. Even we sometimes accidentally connect to FPV videos from other teams. I'm able to see what they see through their drone. So if it's so easy to connect to the video streaming of your drone, you drop something and then you come back straight to you, right? Then the enemy knows where you're flying from.
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M.G.: So what makes drone expensive is security so others cannot hack its streaming?
M.P.: Yes. What's inside of the drone makes it expensive. For instance, the GPS module that's able to withstand russian anti-drone pressure now, the only GPS module that's probably like 2 cm wide, 2 cm thick. It costs $18,000. Just one little thing. And if you want to secure your video channel, it's going to be another X amount of money. So it's easier for FPV drones to use the regular drone with regular video signal and to send it one way.
“What's inside of the drone makes it expensive. For instance, GPS module able to withstand russian anti-drone pressure, that's probably like 2 cm wide, 2 cm thick, costs $18,000. Just one little thing. And if you want to secure your video channel, it's going to be another X amount of money”.
The government doesn't sponsor us. Everything we have is either our friends, us, or some organisations that do the drones, that help us, because they see the results. And when they see the result, they're like: “okay, we're going to give you 20 more FPV drones. Let's see what you do with this”. And they are private organization, they give us 20 drones. For example, out of 20 drones we have 7 destroyed targets, which is good, let's say it's 3 drones per target. And they see that and go: “okay, it's good, we're gonna give you 20 more”.
So every time you have to prove yourself to get more. And it's okay, of course, because it’s somebody's money. Usually it's Ukrainian people, Ukrainian businessmen who like to participate one way or another. So they go: “okay, I'm gonna give you for example 50 drones” - one time it happened. And they gave us 50 drones and we could destroy, like, 15-20 targets. And they're like : “okay, that's actually pretty good”.
“With 20 drones we have destroyed 7 targets. Which is good. Let's say it's 3 drones per target. And they see that and go: “Okay, we're gonna give you 20 more”.
With FPV drones what's fascinating is that a $500 drone can destroy a million-dollar camera, like this, easy. It’s in 7 or 8 minutes it takes to fly to that camera. Or the cell towers they use for communication. you just fly to it and you destroy this tower.
And our group forces, our military has more advantage in that area because russians cannot communicate with each other or at least temporarily for that day until they fix it their communication is broken. So in the big picture, it brings the result.
Or if we destroy this super camera that is capable to see that far and identify targets that far, if in that area if we destroy it, then our ground forces, our army and our armored vehicles and tanks, they can manoeuvre and the enemy won't know it. That's why we do it.
M.G.: How good russia is with drones and in defending from them? Do you feel that Ukraine has a leverage now?
M.P.: Somewhere from February to May this year, russia was very good in defending from the drones. Very good. We couldn't do anything, especially my team. And I spoke to other drone teams, they had a hard time.
But then, this summer, something changed.
And I think what changed is now we caught up in technology and our technology is able to withstand more. So now we have this window, it's still going, this window of opportunity to put more pressure with our drones because russia is not as capable as it was to block our drones.
And I think it will be a circle of life. It will go back to the time that russia is able to withstand again, and then we're gonna catch up again.
Are we better in drone warfare than russia? I think we're a little bit better. We bring more results in drones than they do. But with that being said, they are very good. They have very good drones. They have very good suicide drones. Their intelligence drones are very, very good. Zala and Orlan. They’re able to catch your Starling signal, they’re able to use a thermal vision. And if you're in a forest, they'll be able to see your terminal signature through the through the leaves and stuff like that. So you have to be careful.
My team got under an FPV drone attack. Somebody from the russian side, same team as us, tried to wipe us out. I wasn't in the vehicle. I was in Kyiv, had some rest. So other other part of the team was doing missions here. And they were driving somewhere near Kherson. And I don't know why, but our driver decided to pull under the tree, the car that we were in, it's not armored vehicle it's just a regular fucking car the everyone will be probably dead, because it's a big explosion. If you throw one grenade, it's deadly. One FPV carries the force of 10 hand grenades. So if that amount of force hits your car, your vehicle, the explosion kill everyone instantly in the vehicle.
So yeah, we got lucky. They have FPV drones, they have suicide drones, they have intelligent drones. They are very good. Probably even technologically their drones are a little bit more capable. But the amount of drone’s the amount of teams they have is is less than we do. And luckily, yet they don't have that many great FPV operating teams. I was thinking the other day, imagining, if I was on the russian side right now, I wouldn't drive on any road that's 10 kilometers close to the front line. Because it's deadly. There's many FPV teams and. Everyday you have tens of successful missions that kill russian soldiers and I was like “thank god i’m not on russians side”.
“Thank god i’m not on russians’ side”
M.G. Do you feel that in the future this FPV drones could be updated so they could fly further, longer?
M.P.: I'm just an operator, I'm not a technician. We have technicians and they tell me what to do and I do it. I never did drones before the war. But right now what I see and I hope that they will at least here in Ukraine develop FPV drones furthermore because it's very, very efficient and low-cost thing. Even if FPV costs $3,000, it would still be cheap, because regular suicide drone price like for instance Warmate is what, 20-25 thousand dollars for one drone? And with FPV you are able to achieve slightly less results when you speak of power of explosion, but it's still able to do a lot of damage and we have to develop somehow FPV drones to make them fly further, carry more and withstand of course. Because sometimes they try to block your signal or your video signal.
“Drones are not a future. It's already present of warfare.”
Sometimes it works. Most of the time it doesn't. But still, you know, if I could, if I was in charge, I would do anything possible to develop the FPV drone.
Because drones, it's not a future, it's already present, of warfare.
I'd rather have a million drones than a hundred tanks.
M.G.: There are a lot of talks about drones with AI being the future of warfare. Is it still from futuristic movies or are drones with the AI are being used in Ukraine?
M.P. No. We have a drone that is capable to fly like a thousand meters. I am capable of selecting the target. For example, a moving truck. I'm capable to select that moving truck and lock my camera on it and the drone will follow this truck without me doing almost anything. If it goes under the bridge, then I have to lock again on the truck. If it goes out of the view for a few seconds. But I'm capable of locking the truck in my camera and follow it. I mean, I'm only making sure that the camera is still locked on the truck, but the drone does everything for me. So I think this is an AI. Our intelligent drones cost $70,000. So if a $70,000 thing can do this, then I think a $2 million intelligent drone can do some outstanding stuff. I never experienced that high level of drones. But if my drone is able to follow the target by itself, then I think $2 million drone can even identify what kind of truck is it, if it's a tank or if it's an armored vehicle, if it's an artillery gun, stuff like that.
“I'd rather have a million drones than a hundred tanks.”
There will be evolution of drones big time. I am actually scared to think what the drones will bring to warfare in 20-30 years… War is scary, very scary, and the drones, it's the scariest thing of it. Because it's a little thing that flies in the air you're not able to see and it can kill you at any time.
And right now [russian war in - ed.] Ukraine is the beginning of actual drone warfare in the history.
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