Ukrainian Soldiers’ Best Chance Russia’s Fiber-Optic Drones: Shotguns

The best chance front-line Ukrainian soldiers have against Russia’s unjammable drones is less than ideal. Short on options for fighting these drones, soldiers rely on low-tech shotguns to survive.

Fiber-optic drones that can’t be stopped or thrown off course by jamming and other forms of electronic warfare are becoming increasingly prolific in this war, and bringing one down requires physically shooting it down.

Vitalii Pervak, the CEO of Karlsson, Karas & Associates, a drone training school in Ukraine, told BI that “the best way to counter drones is to have a kinetic impact on them.”

He said that given how fast the front lines change, Russia’s electronic warfare efforts, and Ukraine’s regular shortages, “a shotgun is the best option.”

Dimko Zhluktenko, a drone operator with Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said his unit always has a 12-gauge shotgun with them as standard protocol on every mission for this reason.

When it comes to fiber-optic drones, he has been trained and told by other soldiers that a shotgun is “the most reliable way to shoot down a drone if it’s using the fiber optic” cables.

Even with regular drones that can be stopped with electronic warfare, success isn’t always guaranteed. If electronic warfare doesn’t work, “then the last resort that you have is the shotgun.”

There is a “drone with explosives flying into you, and you can’t jam it,” Zhluktenko said. “So, you shoot it down.”

Fiber-optic drones

Fiber-optic drones have a long, thin cable attached to them that allows them to maintain their connection, relying on that instead of a radio frequency that is vulnerable to interference.

With the rise of drone warfare in Ukraine came a rush to develop countermeasures. Electronic warfare has been effective at stopping more conventional drones, but now fiber-optic drones and AI-enabled drones are becoming more prevalent.

Ukraine is working on other means to stop these terrifying new drones, such as pistols that fire nets to trap drones, but those capabilities are nowhere close to being common among Ukraine’s units.

Dmytro Slediuk, the head of the education department at Dronarium, a drone training school in Western Ukraine that has trained more than 15,000 operators, shared with BI that “regretfully, there are no specific means against fiber optic based drones,” which is to say there aren’t sophisticated means to stop them.

Instead, soldiers “may counteract them using quite cheap and simple means.”

A US veteran who fought in Ukraine outlined the problem last month, explaining that “the FPVs, especially the fiber FPVs, they’re unjammable, damn near undetectable, they come in hot at over a hundred miles an hour.”

“Unless you got a shotgun really, really, handy or one of the new net guns, which are very exciting, it’s horrible,” he said at a conference about drone warfare in NATO member Latvia.

Trained to shoot

Using shotguns to engage drones is something Ukrainian soldiers are being taught to do.

Viktor Taran, the CEO of the KRUK drone training school in Kyiv that has trained over 8,000 people, told BI that when it comes to fiber-optic drones, “the only way to take those drones down is mechanical,” like with shotguns.

Pervak said shotguns can be very “effective against any kind of drone. It doesn’t matter what size the drone is, what frequencies it has, or whether it is a fiber-optic drone.”

“The effectiveness of the shotgun depends on the operator’s training,” he said. A shotgun is a long-barreled weapon that can fire a damaging spray of projectiles. The 12-gauge is a common type.

He said his drone school, working with Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces 413th Battalion “Raid,” has trained 250 soldiers and 30 instructors from different units.

Igor Belov, the founder of PSS by Logics7, a Ukrainian company that makes weapon training simulators, told BI that it is working on a simulator to train soldiers on using shotguns to shoot down regular first-person view drones and fiber-optic drones.

The company is already training soldiers with its simulators to face drone threats like drone swarms and low-flying drones.

“We are developing products that our army truly needs,” he explained, adding that “our first priority is to ensure they function effectively under real battlefield conditions.”

“All of our solutions are designed based on direct feedback from military personnel, with one clear goal — to have a real impact on the battlefield and to help save lives,” Belov said.

More than 60,000 soldiers have been trained on Logic7’s systems.

Dmytro Martsilenko, the press officer for Ukraine’s 33rd Assault Regiment, was much less certain on the value of guns against drones. “There is not enough data to assess the effectiveness of using a shotgun against drones. Because there is not enough experience,” he said.

“Nevertheless, they are already practicing using shotguns against drones at training grounds,” he added. “And EVERY unit is equipped with a shotgun.”

Another Ukrainian drone operator, who spoke to BI on the condition of anonymity, said his unit has a 12-gauge shotgun for shooting down drones if needed.

The drone fight

Drones are being used more in Russia’s war against Ukraine than in any other conflict in history, and they are used to gather intelligence, explode on target, launch grenades, and direct fire for other weaponry crews.

The extensive use of drone technology has created a challenging battlespace, with so many in the air that soldiers can’t always tell which side they belong to.

There are conventional quadcopters and octocopters, fiber-optic drones, AI-enabled drones, loitering munitions, and more being deployed in this fight.

For some, the answer is as simple as a shotgun. For others, it’s electronic warfare. In some cases, a heavy machine gun can bring one down. And then, there are drones that require interceptors, which can be costly.

For instance, Ukraine operates a limited supply of high-end air defense systems, but employing a multi-million-dollar interceptor at a drone that costs only tens of thousands of dollars isn’t sustainable. The Ukrainians have been increasingly using drones as cheaper intercept alternatives.

But for the front-line, tactical drone fights, Ukrainian soldiers are keeping their low-tech shotguns close at hand.