Small Drones, Big Impact: Ukraine's FPVs Shatter Russia's Armored Might
Destroying thousands of armored vehicles, Ukrainian drones, mines and artillery are steadily depriving Russia of the mobility its forces need for major advances
World War I, the political crisis of 1917 and the ensuing five-year civil war embarrassed and bloodied the Russian army. With hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead and decades of doctrine totally discredited, the colonels and generals in the reconstituted Soviet army faced a daunting task in the mid-1920s: to conceive of a new way of war for a new era.
A century later, Ukrainian doctrine and technology—urgently crafted as a Russian force bore down on Kyiv—are dismantling the ideas and equipment that emerged from that defining period in Russian military development.
The Ukrainians are swiftly de-mechanizing what was the world’s leading mechanized army. If they can finish what they’ve started, they could render the Russian army immobile … and incapable of major offensive action.
To be fair, immobilizing the Russian army isn’t exactly the same thing as defeating the Russian army. But it may be the last step before that final defeat. This is the first feature in a series explaining what Russia’s defeat, and Ukraine’s victory, could plausibly look like.