Russian Soldiers Used Scissors to Down a Ukrainian Fiber-Optic Drone
There's no way the Russians can deploy the scissor defense very widely.
On or before Saturday, Russian troops somewhere along the 700-mile (about 1,100-km) front line of Russia’s 40-month wider war on Ukraine detected incoming Ukrainian drones. Specifically: fiber-optic first-person-view drones that send and receive signals via millimeters-thick, but miles-long, spools of optical fiber.
Fiber-optic FPVs are extremely difficult to defeat. The main defense against wireless FPVs, which send and receive signals by radio, is electronic jamming that can ground the drones before they strike. But fiber-optic FPVs can’t be jammed. That’s why both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces are building more of the fiber-optic models—even though they’re several times more expensive than the $500 wireless models.
But sever a drone’s optical fiber, and it’ll fall from the air. Optical fiber is tough, but it can be broken by bending it 180 degrees. Surgical scissors can also cut right through it—as the Russians were well aware. “Got the scissors?” one hidden Russian asked after a Ukrainian FPV buzzed past, trailing its optical fiber, in a video from the Saturday incident. “Got ‘em,” another hidden Russian responded.