A Russian Fiber-Optic Drone Edged Past a Tarp Covering a Garage—And Found a Ukrainian Leopard 2 Tank Inside

Vehicle crews struggle to hide from unjammable drones

It’s becoming a trend—a dangerous one for vehicle crews on both sides of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.

First-person-view attack drones, connected to their operators by miles-long, millimeters-thick optical fibers, are poking around built-up areas along the 700-mile front line in Ukraine, hunting for—and finding—armored vehicles in their concealed urban hideouts.

A video captured by a Russian drone crew and circulated online in early March depicted a fiber-optic quadcopter drone easing under a tarp and into a barn where a Ukrainian Bohdana wheeled howitzer was parked. The drone slammed into the howitzer’s cab, likely badly damaging it.

A month later on or just before Friday, a fiber-optic drone from the Ukrainian 53rd Mechanized Brigade’s Signum team—deployed west of Bilohorivka in eastern Ukraine—sneaked into a warehouse to strike a parked Russian T-80 tank.

A few days later on or around Monday, a Russian fiber-optic FPV slipped through a gap in a hanging tarp and hit a Ukrainian Leopard 2A4 tank parked in the garage of a brick structure. The drone damaged the gunner’s periscope, but “everything inside is intact,” a Ukrainian soldier said after an inspection in a video (at top) translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated.

The Leopard 2 crew was lucky. But that luck belies an ominous development for mechanized forces on both sides of Russia’s 38-month wider war on Ukraine. Tiny drones have harried armored vehicles in Ukraine since at least 2023, but the drones were almost all controlled via radio—and radio signals weaken fast among the walls and roofs of a dense urban area.

(Above video of Ukrainian fiber-optic FPV operations via Special Kherson Cat)

Cautious tanks

For a couple of years, Russian and Ukrainian vehicles were safe from enemy drones as long as they were parked inside a solid structure and concealed from view. Yes, the drones had ushered in what the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. described as a new “era of the cautious tank.”

But tanks were still useful. “Instead of spearheading assaults, tanks are increasingly used more like mobile artillery, providing fire support from safer distances,” CEPA analyst David Kirichenko noted last year.

A tank operating as a mobile howitzer, firing its main gun at a high angle to extend its range, might be able to stay a few miles from the front line and still contribute supporting firepower to an assault. If a tank stayed close to its “home”—its brick or concrete shelter—it would’ve stood a good chance of surviving. Especially if it was covered by a nearby radio-jamming unit.

Among buildings at a distance of several miles, a radio-controlled FPV would struggle to maintain a connection to its operator—even in the absence of jamming. Radio-bouncing repeater drones, in use on both sides of the wider war, can boost the control signals—but these repeater drones are less common than the simpler, cheaper attack models.

Fiber-optic drones obviate the need for repeaters and cancel out the protective qualities of radio-muddling walls and roofs and electronic warfare. Drones can maneuver an inch to the left, an inch to the right, offering their distant operators a clear through a door or past a tarp at the howitzer or tank parked inside.

Leave the door open, or leave a gap between tarp and ceiling—as the Leopard 2’s crew apparently did—and a fiber-optic drone can slip inside. Boom.

If there’s any comfort to offer vehicle crews in this dangerous new era, it’s that “many FPVs fail, either mechanically because of the construction or technically because of the warhead failing to detonate,” explained Sam Cranny-Evans, editor of Calibre Defence.

But hoping for an FPV to malfunction as it strikes your vehicle isn’t exactly a long-term strategy for defeating drones that swarm the front line by the tens of thousands every day.

Read more: