Eyewitness to war: Ukraine’s DIY drones defy Russian jamming
In Ukraine’s drone workshops, even the fiber-optic spool’s hollow core becomes vital, highlighting a strategic split: precision versus volume in jammed skies.
In a nutshell
- Ukraine’s home-grown defense
technologies are accelerating - Kyiv’s scalpel strategy uses tech know-how for smarter drones
- Russia’s sledgehammer strategy uses captured tech to scale proven concepts
- For comprehensive insights, tune into our AI-powered podcast here
This is another installment of the series “Eyewitness to war” by Dr. Paul Schwennesen, who writes firsthand observations from the Ukrainian front lines.
This is part one of a GIS series on drones. Part two is available here.
In a cluttered workshop in central Ukraine, I was handed what looked like a standard fiber-optic spool for a tethered first-person-view (FPV) drone. The fiber was wound tightly around the spool, like a fishing reel. But the technician pointed to the hollow plastic core at the center. “That,” he said, tapping the cavity, “is now useful space.”
Fiber-optic tethered spool drones are no longer niche – they are becoming a substantial and growing subset of munitions-delivery platforms, especially in electronic warfare-jammed or GPS-denied airspace. Strikingly, as these platforms evolve, the spool itself has transformed from a passive “attachment” into viable design real estate.
Both sides now exploit the hollow core. Russians reportedly use it as a chamber for explosive payloads, while Ukrainians are experimenting with turning it into an avionics and telemetry compartment. The Ukrainian engineers explained the trade-off with a kind of clinical detachment that illuminates an underlying difference in approach: When you pack explosives inside the spool core, they said, the surrounding fiber windings act as a damper, reducing fragmentation effectiveness. The Russians, they said with a shrug, do not especially care. “They will just send 10 more drones to finish the job. We have to be more calculating.”
That exchange frames much of what I have seen over the past year. The Ukrainian approach optimizes for fine-tuned efficiencies, while the Russian approach saturates contested space with mass. One side sharpens scalpels, while the other wields sledgehammers.
The workshop
In January 2026, our team visited a drone assembly workshop operated by an unmanned aircraft system strike unit under an elite Ukrainian military directorate. What we observed confirmed a noteworthy trend: Ukraine’s strategic trajectory toward reliance on homegrown defense technology is accelerating markedly.
Resource scarcity, funding constraints and industrial limits force careful allocation and relentless creative iteration. Embedded engineers collaborate directly with private-sector developers, and they constantly refine low-cost fiber-optic and radio frequency (RF) command-and-control solutions for kinetic drone missions, with particular emphasis on deep strikes and frontline operations.
Russia, by contrast, fields heavier or more numerous platforms at scales beyond Ukraine’s ability to match. Captured hardware and intercepted communications suggest a slower innovation cycle – but once concepts are validated, they are deployed in volume. The result is not a simple quality-versus-quantity dichotomy but is instead a structural, even a cultural, divergence in approach that imprints itself on every element of warfighting strategy.
The workshop we visited sits near the end of a diffuse production chain. Unit-level engineers and “fighting technicians,” fully integrated into combat units, assemble and test drone platforms before the final addition of explosive ordnance. Here, various subsystems – transmission modules, flight controllers, navigation sensors and fiber spools – come together to form lethal weapons.
The technicians are clearly masters of their trade. They know the subtleties of this rapidly evolving design space inside and out. While fiber-controlled drones draw the most attention, the unit is broadly capable across every domain: relay networking, RF adaptations, LTE (cellular network) exploitation and custom firmware development.
The unit regularly integrates solutions from private-sector vendors and engineerers, reflecting the broad and diverse ecosystem of organic defense tech production capacity. What struck me most was not any single piece of hardware, but the engineers’ mediating role in translating operational needs into meaningful battlefield design tweaks. All this is a far cry from centralized defense contracting; rather, it is distributed co-development under fire.
Technical experts on our team noted the following elements.
Control links: Quiet resilience
Ukrainian-developed radio control systems (most notably MILELRS paired with MILBETA firmware) have proven remarkably resistant to Russian jamming. These indigenous adaptations of civilian ELRS and Betaflight provide real-time jamming diagnostics, manual and dynamic frequency reconfiguration, redundant RF chains, automatic channel switching and multi-receiver integration. These are low-cost, accessible solutions built on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) foundations. While the frequency-hopping architecture is designed to be predictable and can theoretically be spoofed (or deceived), Russian electronic warfare appears far more effective at broadband “noise” jamming than in systematic spoofing.
Control link interference, in other words, has not broken Ukraine’s small-drone ecosystem. Ukraine’s countermeasures and counter-developments have adapted their small, inexpensive drone fleet to exploit gaps in the Russian jamming environment.
Read more from military affairs expert Dr. Paul Schwennesen
- Ukraine’s tech hubs and digital Darwinism
- Ukrainian ingenuity and a new kind of war
- Drones and implications for America
Video: A persistent bottleneck
Video transmission remains an acute vulnerability for both sides: Since nearly all FPV drones rely on video feeds for pilot inputs, intercepting or degrading video transmission frequencies has become a prime focus for both Russian and Ukrainian technicians – a battle fought within specific frequency bands.
Russian Shtora-type jammers such as Silok, Zerkaltse and Cheburashka scan broad frequency ranges from elevated positions well behind the front. Analog video, with its wide bandwidth and relatively high transmission power, is easy to detect and overpower. As one engineer explained to us: Russia is not trying to seize control of the drone; instead, it is trying to blind the pilot – filling their video feed with the dreaded “snow” (static blackout) that degrades an attack.
Ukraine counters jamming not through brute force but through clever spectral maneuvers. This includes using non-ISM bands, which are typical commercial frequencies above 7 gigahertz, and employing Ku-band microwave transverters to obscure transmission signals into the clutter of satellite traffic. They also utilize analog repeaters that, despite some degradation tradeoffs, extend the range of transmissions. Meanwhile, a gradual shift toward digital solutions is underway for deep-strike missions.
Digital video is something of a “hot” new domain – it offers resilience and operator visual clarity but comes at both a financial cost and latency penalties. For frontline FPVs, where 20 milliseconds versus 100 milliseconds can determine success or failure, analog remains largely dominant. The Ukrainians are not blind to the vulnerabilities of analog transmission; they simply calculate that trade-offs must align with the mission profile and budget realities. Economics still occupies the commanding heights of strategic decision-making.
Navigation under denial
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) denial is a baseline assumption in battlefield areas of operation. Consequently, short-range FPVs often omit GNSS entirely, relying on operator familiarity with local landscapes for navigation.
Larger platforms integrate one or more of the following workarounds to navigate effectively:
- Real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS modules, which allow correction data from base stations to achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy.
- Wide-area RTK networking, which links many reference stations together to collectively generate location-specific navigational correction data.
- Controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs) for filtering jamming/spoofing signals and maintaining a lock on proper (though weak) satellite transmissions. CRPAs are expensive and processor-intensive.
- Beacon-based terrestrial positioning, which uses triangulation data from fixed transmitters to accurately fix the platform’s location. Networks typically degrade to tens-of-meters accuracy beyond 10 kilometers.
Each solution carries cost, performance or operational security limitations. Yet what we observed repeatedly is a savvy “layering” protocol: Stacking imperfect systems together yields functional resilience. It is inelegant, but it works.
LTE, IP and relay architectures
One of the most strategically important developments has been the advancement of LTE and internet protocol (IP) relay networks, which play a crucial role in long-range command-and-control systems. Custom firmware forks now let flight controllers interface directly with LTE modems. This pushes control and telemetry over broadband links that ride commercial cellular networks. Video can travel via LTE or IP camera architectures. Relay nodes – such as FlybyIP WAN systems – tie together disparate methods like LTE, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and fiber, into flexible control chains. The result gives Ukrainian pilots a wide range of bandwidth options.
These capabilities are particularly valuable for enhancing operational reach, as exemplified by the 4,000-kilometer deep strike conducted during Operation Spider’s Web. This covert drone attack by Ukraine’s security service took place deep inside Russia on June 1, 2025. These systems greatly reduce the likelihood of interception by making it more challenging for adversaries to conduct electronic warfare operations.
The cost of exploiting existing commercial technologies in a relay architecture is extraordinarily modest relative to the operational payoff. Ukraine is building a distributed nervous system – less visible than mass production lines, but arguably more transformative. It appears to have the edge in this scalpel-like approach – Russians (who, to be fair, innovate as well) tend, as a rule, to favor mass over fine-edged innovation because they can afford to.
The pattern emerging
The spool vignette captures the broader pattern: Russia optimizes for volume and brute electromagnetic dominance. If per-unit lethality is less effective, they simply send 10 more units to make up the shortfall. If Ukraine exploits frequency bands to guide munitions, Russia saturates the signal space with high-power jammers across broad swaths of the frontline, at enormous logistical expense.
Ukraine, meanwhile, optimizes for precision and adaptation, relying on a broad and diffuse network of informal and generally decentralized innovators across all echelons of society. Russia capitalizes on its scale, whereas Ukraine harnesses innovation through continuous improvement. This goes beyond a mere technological divergence; it highlights the deeply rooted differences in strategic cultures as demonstrated through the hardware used.
The moral component
As a modern, West-leaning society, Ukraine naturally embraces a strategy that prizes technical acumen and individual initiative. It often feels as if every Ukrainian under 30 is a technical wizard, equally fluent in cutting-edge global solutions and highly advanced, bespoke native architectures.
Ukraine’s “Delta” battlefield software platform is an excellent case study. It fuses data from drones, satellites, sensors and human intelligence into a comprehensive “God’s-eye view” of the dynamic frontline, giving commanders and field-level operators a constantly updated sight picture of the status quo. This platform is an open-architecture-based system built by Ukrainian engineers and kept up-to-date by Ukrainians themselves.
Russia has nothing apparently comparable and relies on a hierarchical planning structure that typically sacrifices unit-level information in favor of centralized (and often inaccurate) battlefield modeling.
The day-to-day lived experience of Ukrainians after their fourth winter of war reveals much about the moral dimension of the conflict. While Russians seem to have embraced a collective fatalism fueled by fear, Ukrainians have adopted a novel form of social solidarity fueled by humor. In Russia, an overwhelming sense of fear keeps citizens in the dark about the significant loss of life – over a million casualties – suffered for negligible territorial gains. A friend with relatives in Russia said that the New Year’s celebrations in Yekaterinburg, one of the country’s largest cities, were unusually subdued this year. Instead of the typical lively festivities, entire apartment blocks spent the night in silence.
The Ukrainians’ basic, spontaneous resilience, compared with the dogged, directorial norms of their Russian aggressors, translates into a military and civilian strategy that shows every indication of exhausting their invader’s massive, top-heavy model.
Scenarios
Likely: A persistent technical arms race with no decisive edge
In the near to medium term, analog FPV drones will continue to dominate frontline operations thanks to their low latency and low cost. Meanwhile, digital and IP video, as well as LTE-based command-and-control links, will expand significantly in deep-strike roles. Relay networking will proliferate across both sides, enabling greater standoff distances and improving overall drone survivability.
The electronic warfare contest will intensify further, with Russia improving its ability to discriminate, while Ukraine pushes deeper into unconventional frequency bands and stronger encryption methods. Fiber-optic drones will increasingly play a vital role in areas where radio frequency communication is severely disrupted.
The conflict is likely to exhibit a pattern of back-and-forth dynamics – resembling a technical arms race – rather than leading to decisive breakthroughs. The side that shortens its innovation loop gains a temporary advantage. Ukraine currently demonstrates remarkable cycle speed due to its integration of civilian engineers, private-sector suppliers and frontline units. Whether that tempo can be sustained under prolonged attrition remains an open question.
Also likely: Ukraine’s battlefield model sets a new template
Several implications are already apparent for other nations and the future of warfare. Ukraine has shown that commercial technical ecosystems are viable strategic assets – open firmware, COTS electronics and civilian telecom infrastructure can be readily repurposed for important military functions.
It has also revealed the electromagnetic spectrum as a major new landscape of operations – strategic high ground that is not necessarily guaranteed to the side with bigger budgets or more industrial capacity. Ukraine has also demonstrated that rapid innovation can carry the day. Such innovation relies on an open society and low thresholds for military integration – the actor that can mobilize its human capital in a broad, decentralized manner can gain enormous, unanticipated benefits from its latent ingenuity.
The recent example at the NATO exercise Hedgehog 2025 is a case in point: A small unit of Ukrainian drone operators, tasked with simulating Opposing Force operatives, countered a British brigade and an Estonian division, wreaking havoc on NATO armored units. They used their organically developed Delta software, applying hard-won battlefield acumen in a real-world scenario that left NATO commanders stunned.
Smaller states are almost certain to view this pathway as a viable geostrategic counter to their adversaries’ military-industrial might. Speed, flexibility and distributed ingenuity are hallmarks of a new military ethos – one pioneered and perfected by Ukrainians.
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