How homemade drones are tilting the war in Ukraine's favour

Within three minutes, Oleksii has taken the drone out of his bag, put it together and primed the warhead. As he pulls a virtual reality headset down over his eyes, the propellers start to whirr and whistle. Focused on his target, he holds the machine aloft above his shoulder in preparation for launch.

In his hand is a Khrush, a first-person-view suicide drone, designed and manufactured entirely in Ukraine.

“We have the orders to destroy and execute those who came to our land to occupy and destroy us,” Oleksii, the commander of an Azov battalion artillery unit, said.

Previously, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like these were used mainly as reconnaissance scouts to help him to locate Russian targets.

But now, as Ukraine prepares to launch an offensive, they are increasingly being used to destroy enemy targets deep behind the heavily fortified front lines.

The war in Ukraine has been shaped by both Kyiv’s and Moscow’s use of drones, in what has become the first modern drone-versus-drone conflict. A recent assessment by the Royal United Services Institute think-tank estimated that Ukraine is losing some 10,000 drones every month, including surveillance UAVs and single-use, “kamikaze” ones.

The majority of the losses have been relatively cheap, small commercial drones, such the Mavic quad-copters made by the Chinese company DJI, that are used for reconnaissance.

The Khrush, however, is one of dozens of combat drones that have been developed domestically in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion some 15 months ago.

Oleksii, who goes by the callsign “Dancer”, and his team have developed the drone from scratch to tackle a shortage in high-precision weapons.

Long-range strikes, hitting Russian logistics, heavy armour and bases, deep behind enemy lines are going to be pivotal if Kyiv’s counter-offensive is to be a success. Oleksii, an artillery officer since the 2014 Donbas war, knows the struggles faced from shell hunger and barrel wear when the fighting intensifies.

“Our aim was to create a drone that can be built from scratch in Ukraine to use it on tactical operations at a range of 10 to 20 kilometres,” he said.

His team have so far built 50 prototypes, at a cost of €2,000 (£1,700) each, that will be sent to the front lines for live-fire testing against Russian targets in the coming weeks.

The drone is designed to be cheaper and more accurate than the more conventional long-range weapons currently available. Its operators can either opt for thermobaric warheads, to destroy enemy bases, or anti-tank rounds.

The Khrush can be fitted with a warhead weighing up to 3kg, meaning its payload is five times that of the Switchblade 300 suicide drones donated by the US.

Once launched, the pilot uses his goggles and the cameras on the drone to guide the warhead into the target. The contraption might look crude, but Oleksii insists that testing has shown it is capable of destroying almost any vehicle fielded by the Russians.

He insisted the DIY appearance of the drones being used by both Ukraine and Russia doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

When Moscow last month was mocked for flying wooden drones above the battlefield, Oleksii knew his enemy’s improvisation had exposed a weakness in Kyiv’s defences.

“It doesn’t matter what it’s made of,” he said. “The main point is the drone made of wood reached its target.

“I won’t be mocking this or take this as a joke because this wooden drone had its own advantages. It was less visible to radars and is cheaper to produce. We should say they were smart enough to take this approach.”

Before the war, Ukraine didn’t have a domestic drone programme, relying largely on the Turkish Bayraktar system and commercially-available unmanned vehicles.

However, last summer officials in Kyiv, launched the “army of drones” initiative to encourage developers to produce designs for potential combat UAVs.

The scheme has spawned drones such as the UJ-22, made by Ukrjet, which has a reported range of 500 miles, and was the UAV Russia claimed had been shot down over a Moscow suburb last week.

For Oleksii, the independence of domestic production holds another very important role.

“Even if our Western partners and partners around the world at some point turn their backs on Ukraine, we can produce weapons here with materials that can be easily found or produced in Ukraine,” he said.

In preparation for the long-awaited counter-offensive, more than 10,000 drone pilots have been trained, with more being instructed.

Operators are taught to think like fighter pilots. Before each flight, they are encouraged to make detailed flight plans and use the landscape and weather to conceal the drone from air defences.

Alongside the coaching, a secret army of IT experts are hacking DJI drones to remove any commercial software that could be accessed by Russia or China to capture information from each flight.

Surveillance drones fly 24 hours a day over the battlefield and Ukraine’s armed forces won’t attempt a single advance without the knowledge from their eyes in the sky.

At a secret training base on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Dmyto Zhmakin, a senior aerial reconnaissance instructor at Victory Drones, is putting a new drone to the test. From the sky, he can easily spot a group of Ukrainian troops preparing for the offensive from almost three miles away.

“During the counter offensive, drones will be in front of our assault columns to spot danger,” Mr Zhmakin said.

“Our men have got used to drone usage now; it’s not possible to imagine a unit without air intelligence,” he added.

“The second usage is for correcting fire, and is much more effective than any previous methods we’ve had before.”

There is no shortage of willing drone pilots given the technology’s importance in the war and the simplicity of commercial drones means anyone can fly them, but only a properly trained pilot can do it safely.

Andrii, a border guard attending the course as part of the Trident Defence Initiative’s training camp, said a wrong move with a drone can put hundreds of men on the ground in danger.

“You can drive to a position, fly your drone, but there are also positions of soldiers below and they could be hit by continuous fire,” he said.

Confident that Ukraine’s drone programmes have been ramped up ahead of the counter-offensive, Andrii concluded: “We are ready to f--- them.”