Outnumbered and outgunned, Ukraine turns to drone warfare to gain advantage

The soldiers drove up to an abandoned holiday home, somewhere along the Oskil River in northeast Ukraine in late February. The night was clear and still — a sharp contrast to the daylight hours filled with the near-constant boom of artillery fire. 

The only interruption to the darkness was the flash of a Russian airstrike somewhere in the near distance, painting the horizon with a flood of orange light for a brief second.

The slow whir of a descending drone overhead broke the silence. "Is that one of ours?" one of the soldiers asked another. The reply: "I sure hope so." 

As Ukraine sits outgunned and outnumbered, these men — part of an elite drone unit searching for Russian troops in the dead of night — are playing an ever greater role in its defence.

Ukraine is now using an enormous amount of drones — by some counts, it is acquiring as many as 50,000 first-person view (FPV) drones per month.

The country's minister of digital transformation stated recently that Ukraine aims to build one million drones this year, in addition to those it buys from abroad. 

Last month, Canada's defence minister, Bill Blair, announced that the federal government would be donating 800 drones to Ukraine. 

But Russia has ramped up its drone production even further: the highest estimates placing its monthly acquisitions at 300,000.

It's no secret that the past few months have been difficult ones for Ukraine. As Western aid has lagged, with a U.S. military package held up in Congress for months, Russian forces have pressed the advantage. 

They recently conquered the fortress town of Avdiivka, in Ukraine's southeast, forcing the beleaguered defenders to withdraw in the face of overwhelming firepower and handing Moscow its most significant battlefield victory since the capture of Bakhmut last May. 

All eyes are now on what will be the next Russian target. 

One likely candidate is Kupiansk, a previously occupied town in Kharkiv province, where the Russians have allegedly amassed over 40,000 troops and 500 tanks for an assault. The intensity of Russian attacks in the area has steadily ramped up in recent weeks, portending a larger battle to come.

It's against this background that Ukraine's drone operators, like the unit along the Oskil River, have grown in importance.

As the half-dozen men under his command began their silent preparation for the night's first mission, Roman, the unit's commander, pointed across the river.