Ukrainian soldiers sometimes wind up taking out their own side’s drones on the war’s chaotic battlefields, where it isn’t always clear if the weapons buzzing above them are friend or foe.
Soldiers say that in moments of uncertainty, they may have no choice but to open fire on any drone they see, disable all radio-frequency drones with electronic warfare, or sever the control cables for unjammable fiber-optic drones without knowing the source.
“Friendly fire and friendly electronic warfare influence are one of the biggest causes of loss of equipment on the front line. It’s true,” Mykyta Rozhkov, the chief business development officer of Frontline Robotics, a Ukrainian drone and weapons maker, told Business Insider.
The losses are understandable, though, he said. “In the end, if something looks like a drone and is coming your way and it’s less than 100 meters from you, maybe it’s better to shoot it.”
Like other losses, it’s just a part of how this intense and drone-heavy war is playing out, companies said.
Stanislav Hryshyn, the cofounder of Ukrainian drone maker General Cherry, told Business Insider people “need to understand that the battleground is total hell, the toughest place in the world, the scariest one.”
It’s unclear how many Ukrainian drones are lost to friendly fire; however, soldiers have said that there are often so many drones in the sky that it causes panic and confusion.
Sometimes taking down a friendly drone is an accident, especially considering the intensity of the electronic warfare fight; other times, it’s intentional. In the heat of battle, soldiers may panic jam everything.
Ukrainian soldiers told BI previously that troops will also cut the cables on fiber-optic drones built to survive electronic warfare with a better-safe-than-sorry attitude.
They use scissors, knives, or their bare hands, with one soldier saying that every member of his unit carries scissors for this purpose and that he bought them all retractors so no one would lose them.
Facing these challenges, drone operators will sometimes message nearby units to negotiate times and directions for safe passage to stop their drones from being downed by friendly defenses.
The problem is less apparent with Ukraine’s ground drones, also known as ground robots or unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), which are a small but rapidly growing part of Ukraine’s arsenal. DevDroid, one maker, told BI that while it doesn’t believe that Ukrainian soldiers are deliberately targeting its drones out of confusion, there were still some friendly fire mistakes. Oleg Fedoryshyn, the company’s director of R&D, called them “small friendly accidents.”
Ukraine has been working to improve battlefield coordination through its Delta system, an online battlefield management system which provides an overall picture of the fight, including where Russian targets are and how to coordinate Ukraine’s forces. It includes a layer dedicated to the awareness and management of Ukraine’s drones that could reduce friendly fire.
Drones are also built to be expendable, though, and losses are expected. Drones are far cheaper than the high-end gear that Western militaries have traditionally relied on, and that’s a deliberate feature of how they are built and how they are used.
Rozhkov said powerful missiles still have a place on the battlefield, but Ukraine’s experience, as well as the Iran war, shows that countries also need weapons that can be produced quickly and used at scale, like drones.
But that kind of mass can be hard to manage and control.
Friendly-fire losses can create more demand for drone makers because destroyed drones have to be replaced. The companies Business Insider spoke to said that the upside is limited. Ukraine’s defense budget is stretched, Russian jamming and interception already consume huge numbers of drones, and some companies said they provide drones to units for free. But losing those systems to friendly fire or some other impact on the mission is just the cost of the drone war.
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