Photo: Alexander KOTS
21st CENTURY INTELLIGENCE
– Look what a fraer, he came directly with daddy! – men in shorts watch what is happening on the monitors, pressing the buttons on the joystick.
Spacious room, air conditioning (outside the window +35), kitchen with coffee, pastries. “Luxury-style warfare,” the boys laugh. From the outside it may look like a gambling club where friends have gathered to have a good time. But on the screens it is not a computer game, but real combat work. Our reconnaissance drone “Supercam” hangs in the sky over enemy territory. It transmits an image to tens of kilometers.
This is the border area of the Kharkiv region. A town on the Ukrainian controlled side. The civilians were driven out of it a long time ago. Pickup trucks and jeeps arrive at the biggest house. Human figures come out of them and “dive” under the visor. It seems that the big head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has gathered the commanders for a meeting.
– And so it was possible? I wonder.
I am used to the fact that at the front it is not customary to put cars at the headquarters; they will definitely cover it.
– Relax, roosters, – our operators comment. Well, we’ll fix them.
– Come on, while they are conferring, we fly to the piece of iron.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
The drone flies towards another settlement – Cossack Lopan. I see familiar shapes on the screens. Well exactly! This is the same station where Ukrainian border guards took me off the train in May 2014. Journalists from Russia were no longer allowed into the square, and we made our way under various legends. I went “for treatment in Berdyansk”, with a paid ticket and a return ticket.
– Who are you? the officer asked me.
– Sales Manager, – he lied without blinking.
– And here it says that you are a journalist from Komsomolskaya Pravda. And he is prohibited from entering Ukraine for 5 years.
And they put me on the train back to Belgorod. Who would say that I would “return” by plane.
“WE CUT THE ANSWER”
There is an old axiom: if in a positional confrontation you do not “nightmares” the enemy, then he will become impudent. Shoot neighboring territories from multiple rocket launch systems, launch DRGs (sabotage reconnaissance groups – Ed.) and organize “raids”, which, although more propaganda than military, are no easier on civilians.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
Belgorod residents often ask me why we don’t “turn on the answer.” And this answer is being applied before my eyes by the artillery at the points that the fighters of the special “flying” unit delivered. Every day they reveal the locations and the headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the border area, in which they work with howitzers.
“Supercam” returns to the headquarters, from which the meeting commanders disperse only to neighboring houses. Artillery representative in the same room – sends the coordinates to the battery. In a few hours, the Ukrainian media will announce that Russian tanks (they decided so, because our howitzers worked very accurately) fired at a peaceful village, damaging several houses. Of course, they will keep silent about the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces removed the civilian population from there a long time ago.
– Recharge board, – commands the operator.
And I, with two fighters, get on a cart that goes to the outskirts, where one wing flies to the designated point, opens a black parachute and lands on the field. Both guys are local, Belgorod. We went to the unit as volunteers. One went through the local defense, but took root with the drones.
SUPEREFFICIENT BIRDS
Serega, let’s call him that, is also from Belgorod. And he also joined the group by his own free will.
– I decided to do this business on my own ground. I came at the call of my heart, and for me, technical devices are very close: there is education. As it turned out, I also have adequate driving skills.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
Seryoga is a kamikaze attack drone operator. Recently, our troops have been actively saturated with FPV drones, which, at a relatively low cost, have abnormal efficiency. Remember the pictures from the Zaporozhye direction, where manned ammunition worth 50 thousand rubles destroy equipment worth millions of dollars. In Russia, the development of such devices began to be carried out by enthusiasts, but deliveries are already taking place in parallel both by volunteers and through the Ministry of Defense.
– This is the Ghoul FPV drone. It is provided to us by our close friends on the “Turned in War” Telegram channel, Serega says, as he unpacks a box of drones. – We have been working with him for a long time, the car is very good. Now they are equipped with charges of different properties, equipped with electronic detonators and have a long flight range, which is very important for us.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
We are in the forest near the border. We reached the halfway point by car, then on foot, to the launch point. A short, agile fighter climbs a tree and sets up a repeater antenna to increase flight range. Nearby are the allies of the army special forces with their boomerang drones. We are waiting for orders from Superkam operators.
What goals are you reaching?
– And infantry, and equipment, and shelter – whatever we can get. We have all kinds of ammunition: thermobaric, incendiary, fragmentation. We do it ourselves. As practice has shown, charges made with one’s own hands work most effectively. But we also work with personnel – cumulative “carrots” (fired from a hand-held anti-tank grenade launcher. – Auth.).
– Do you press EW?
– In this regard, our “birds” showed themselves very well – they pass the main electronic warfare systems. There are exceptional cases, but 95 percent of us reach the goal.
“HAVE A SUCCESS!”
The wait lasts several hours in the company of hordes of mosquitoes. On this very day, the enemy is working furiously with electronic suppression systems, preventing the Supercam from finding a target for us. The guys are discussing how FPV drones have changed the balance of the battlefield.
– This is something from which you cannot run away and hide, neither in a trench nor in a shelter. According to the technique, the artillery will not hit the first time, but here – a guaranteed defeat. Catching up with the car even at high speed is not a problem. The enemy also has those well-developed drones. There was a time when we were way behind them, but today we are definitely ahead. We have a large number of developments in our country, but not all of them make it to the front. It’s one thing when you show something at a training ground, and quite another when you need to work at a great distance with the active opposition of the enemy. Now we are waiting for the coordinates at a distance of five kilometers. And not all devices will pass this test.
Finally the goals arrive. The fighters put on special glasses in which the entire flight of the drone can be seen from the first person. Control is much more complicated than a conventional quadcopter – there are no stabilization systems or automation. This has to be sacrificed for efficiency.
“Ghoul” rises into the sky at the same time as “Boomerang”. Drones with a high-pitched buzz are heading towards the border. They give me spare glasses so I can see the flight. First, the drones fly over the field, then they fly over the enemy’s trench line. “Boomerang” goes to its target – the opornik. The “Ghoul” flies towards the rembaza, in the administrative building in which aerial reconnaissance officers discovered a group of soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Serega does a couple of circles on him to choose the point of impact. The head instinctively turns, goes up, goes down… Finally, he makes a turn, and dives. The last thing I see is a dark window opening.
– There’s a hit! -confirms the operator of the quadcopter sitting next to him.
Photo: Alexander KOTS
Eliminate the attack of the quadcopter hovering next to us, aiming at the target with a powerful zoom. There is no objective control, there is no counted defeat. And the pictures clearly show how the “Ghoul” explodes inside the building.
Five minutes later, the combatants send out another pair of drones.
The special forces are training a young operator right here in combat conditions.
“Why should I send him to Moscow for three months?” The group commander shrugs. -Here he will learn everything in a few outings. And we go out every day.
From the other side, the mortars begin to work. The Ukrainian Armed Forces fire randomly at neighboring forest plantations in the hope of covering the kamikaze operators.
– In our business, the most important thing is to leave on time, – Seryoga winks.
We roll up and move away from the launch point at high speed. An enemy drone has already flown to search for the special group.
Not this time…
READ ALSO
The liberation of the people in the direction of Kupyansky: Trump, which Russia kept in the Ukrainian “offensive”
Voenkor Kots spoke about the advance of Russian troops in the Kupyansk direction (details)
