Ukrainian-made kamikaze FPV drones are being sent to the front. European drone design has … [+]
Yesterday on the 9thth In January, the UK government announced that 30,000 ‘state-of-the-art, first-person-view drones’ were being deployed to help fight Russian aggression and ‘target enemy positions and armored vehicles’.
The announcement is part of the Drone Capability Coalition’s effort to support Ukraine with surveillance and attack drones. Funding for the 30,000 drones comes from the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, Latvia and Sweden under a £45m ($55m) contract.
This is an important change. In addition to traditional, big-ticket weapons systems that Ukraine cannot produce—F-16s, Challenger and Abrams tanks, HiMARS missile launchers—allies are now offering the kind of high-tech, low-cost systems that Ukraine he created himself. and using so successfully. The coalition could make a big difference, not just for Ukraine, but for the UK and others to build their own modern drone industries.
The rise of FPV
The first first-person drone (FPV) has become the primary weapon of this conflict, putting long-range precision fire into the hands of foot soldiers on a massive scale for the first time. Adapted from racing quadcopters, FPV armed with a warhead weighing four pounds or more tanks, armored vehicles and artillery at ranges up to 12 miles. Fast and agile, they can chase trucks or speeding motorbikes, or dive into foxholes and trenches.
This is made possible by Ukraine’s advanced situational awareness software, which combines data from satellites, sensors, drones and other sources and provides a view of the battlefield down to the lowest levels.
Ukraine built more than a million FPVs last year, and according to the official quoted by the Wall Street Journal this week, they are responsible for most of the front-line attacks. But there’s always a demand for more, and the new Coalition Drone capability offering will help. No details on the drone’s specifications have been released.
Critics argue that Ukraine has been forced to rely heavily on FPV due to the lack of traditional weapons systems such as artillery and guided missiles, and that they would be better off strengthening their conventional forces. However, the Russians – who have large amounts of artillery and guided missiles, as well as tanks and aircraft – have also been trying to build FPV as quickly as possible. Putin recently claimed that production had increased tenfold in 2024 to 1.4 million, although there are doubts about the quality and effectiveness of Russian drones.
A drone operator of the 15th Brigade (Kara-Dag) of the National Guard of Ukraine is seen with an FPV … [+]
FPVs are also a major component of Russian firepower. It is notable that Russian FPVs and not missiles or tanks are credited with downing the Ukrainian-supplied Abrams and Challenger tanks.
Construction at cost
Perhaps the most significant difference between FPVs and other military equipment is cost. A US-made Javelin missile, the pinnacle of anti-tank missile excellence, costs $202,000, so it can only be supplied in limited numbers. FPVs costing $500 each may be less effective (although the actual effectiveness of the Javelin is rarely discussed), but can easily be purchased in large numbers and used against individual enemy soldiers.
Even if the money were available for more Javelins, America does not have the capacity to produce them in volume; it took a major effort to increase production to 4,000 per year.
The effectiveness of small attack drones has not been lost on US analysts, and there have been several attempts to build comparable systems for US forces. However, the Pentagon’s procurement system has a long tradition of building the highest possible quality without compromise, rather than affordable, ‘good enough’ systems.
Bolt-M is a sophisticated US FPV with advanced AI
This procurement process has resulted in products like Anduril’s Bolt-M, a highly sophisticated FPV quadcopter with automated guidance that requires no operator skills but is priced “in the low tens of thousands of dollars.”
And Teledyne FLIR’s Rogue-1 attack quadcopter, which costs over $90,000 a shot.
And the US Army’s Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO), a portable anti-tank attack drone. According to Army budget documents, the LASSO costs $200,747 per drone… as much as a Javelin.
The Drone Capabilities Coalition appears to have largely avoided these issues. The $55 million cost of 30,000 drones translates to a unit cost of $1,800 per drone. This is high by Ukrainian standards, but extremely low for Western suppliers.
Price vs. sovereign capability
As Dr Jack Watling of the UK defense thinktank RUSI points out on X/Twitter, some of the differences compared to the Ukrainian drones are because they are largely assembled from components from the world’s lowest cost provider – China .
“If you want to reduce the number of Chinese components, you increase the price,” says Watling. “But if you pay that price, then you invest in more capacity to produce the sub-components.
This parallels the experience in Ukraine, where drone manufacturers have tried to establish domestic production, increasingly producing batteries and other components themselves. They have found that Chinese suppliers can be erratic, suddenly raising prices or, worse, selling all their stock to Russia.
The contract should increase Europe’s ability to supply key elements of drones. This will help build a sovereign capability as well as an industrial base for future production.
Additionally, Coalition drones are described as ‘state of the art’ suggesting advanced capabilities. In Ukraine we’ve seen FPV with jam-proof fiber optic links, AI targeting and thermal imaging, all of which come at a price tag of hundreds of dollars above base cost). It will be interesting to see what innovations are incorporated into the Coalition’s drones. Secure communications are likely to be a high priority, and they may feature Ukraine’s most advanced warheads and FPVs, which often rely on repurposed RPG rounds and other improvised solutions.
Not everyone is happy with the announcement.
“The UK will transfer 30,000 FPV drones worth $55 million to Ukraine as part of the drone coalition. And if we were to buy it, we would have 150k FPV for the same money.” commented Ukrainian collector Serhii Sternenko on Twitter/X.
Sternenko knows what he’s talking about, having supplied more than 100,000 FPVs himself, recently quoting prices of $350-$460 for basic FPVs and $700-$800 for night versions with thermal imaging.
On the other hand, the new group of FPVs still represents favorable. Ukraine gets a free army of (apparently) high-end attack drones, and Coalition members gain useful experience and build their capacity to make more and better drones in the future. And this will increase their ability to provide more cost-effective support; 30,000 drones would likely be more useful than half an F-16 for the same amount of money. The coalition has pledged to supply Ukraine with one million drones, so there should be many more to come.
The Pentagon’s Replicator program, launched in August 2023, also aims to produce large numbers of low-cost, high-speed drones. However, the results of this effort are still awaited.
