Trudy Rubin
In a warren of rooms filled with computers, 3D printers, colorful wires, and drone frames, the atmosphere was casual, but the intentions were deadly.
The young men in their 20s and 30s, dressed in cargo pants and T-shirts, wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Silicon Valley start-up. Except they were fighting for their lives — and their country’s survival.
In the basement command center, three of the soldier-techies stared at multiple screens with dozens of views delivered by Ukrainian-made surveillance drones. They were looking for Russian targets in a war that had lasted for three and a half years.
As I peered over their shoulders during a June visit to the rear of the front lines, a moving car was spotted.
Orders were quickly passed to a frontline drone navigator and pilot in a trench or basement who would make the final call as to whether the target was clearly visible and worth destroying — at which point the pilot’s goggles would let him watch the little exploding drone descend until a flash signaled another kill.
It was a slow day, and everyone’s attention had turned to other screens before I could learn the fate of the car. But there were always more targets to find.
By my side, the 31-year-old commander of an elite drone battalion of the 59th Assault Brigade, call sign Condor, told me there are up to 300 targets a day, which can range from a single fighter in the grass to a moving motorcycle to a small Russian dugout covered with branches or nets.
“The orcs outnumber us, and they don’t care about loss of lives,” Condor said, using the name of the grotesque enemy warriors in the Lord of the Rings series to refer to the Russians. “In this new way of war, infantry and artillery and mortars still matter, but everything is controlled by air. Now, a military is just a way of supporting drones.”
No comments:
Post a Comment