A Ukrainian soldier with the call sign Price smiles when he is asked if he has any combat experience of drones.
“Only running away from them,” he says.
It was a Russian mortar, not a drone, that took off part of one of Price’s legs, and although it ended his career as an infantry squad commander it did not blunt his desire to defend Ukraine.
Now Price (31) is learning how to build and fly drones at the Killhouse academy, a training centre run by Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps at a former industrial site in Kyiv.
RM Block
Hundreds of soldiers and civilians take courses every month, and it is open to men and women of all ages, Ukrainians and foreigners. Members of the 3rd Army Corps train for free, soldiers from other units get a discount, and civilians pay; the basic drone course, lasting at least six days, costs 8,000 hryvnia (€165).
For that money, they learn the fundamentals of flying a first-person view drone (FPV), which the pilot operates using a remote controller and goggles that deliver a live video feed from the camera on the drone.
Rigged with explosives and now capable of flying for up to 20km or so, FPVs have become ubiquitous on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, where analysts say they now account for about three-quarters of all casualties.
Simple FPVs cost only a few hundred euro, but can cripple tanks, missile launchers and other systems that are worth millions.
Ukraine and Russia now make millions of drones every year, and need more people to build and fly them. Kyiv created a new branch of its military for drone warfare last year – the Unmanned Systems Forces – which is now looking to recruit 15,000 new members, including pilots, electronics specialists, programmers and project managers.
“Many civilians come here because they are curious about getting into the army and are considering joining the fight. About 20 per cent of civilian students join the military after the course. On the basic course it’s mostly civilians – about 60 per cent,” says a spokesman for the 3rd Army Corps who uses the call sign Radio.
He is standing in a massive industrial warehouse that has been turned into an obstacle course for drones. Beginners must fly through frames and hoops, gaps in the concrete pillars and tyres dangling from the roof. A life-size model of a tank, an old van, a mock-up of a frontline trench and a mannequin are there to be targeted or dodged.
“The FPV pro course is more about flying with military payloads, facing electronic jamming, flying outside, working with ground stations and in crews,” says Radio, who was a media executive before he joined the army.
“You might not be ready to go into battle the day after finishing the pro course, but you will be ready to be part of a unit where you will get more training, and it will definitely be easier for you to adapt to life as a military drone pilot.”
An instructor with the call sign Michael says the pro course “aims to simulate combat situations ... The students have to find hidden targets, to fly with a very bad radio signal and a bad image on the screen, to hit moving targets and hit other drones.
“The main skill we teach on this course is micro-controlling. The students have to fly very slowly and in a very controlled way inside a building, going in through small holes, moving in a very small area, learning to kill enemies who are hiding in very difficult positions. The enemy also wants to live and is trying to save his life, hiding in places where a pilot without very good skills could not get him,” he adds.
“It’s better to make mistakes here on a course than on a combat mission. The price of a mistake here is just a damaged or destroyed drone. In war the price of a mistake can be someone’s life.”
The academy also runs courses on fixed-wing drones, which resemble miniature unmanned aeroplanes and can fly for hundreds of kilometres, and on the ground drones that are increasingly used at the front for delivering supplies and evacuating casualties. All the courses take between six and 10 days.
On the engineering course, students learn how to build a drone, prepare it for a mission and counter the jamming that has driven the rapid development of FPVs on kilometres-long fibre optic threads that are immune to electronic interference.
“The technology is changing very quickly, especially with FPVs, so we have to stay relevant. Everything is based on what is happening at the front and we update the course all the time,” says the head of the course, who has the call sign Shark.
“From the technical aspect it’s hard to counteract jamming and the Russian military is highly developed in this field. They have a lot of jamming equipment and it is strong,” he adds.
“We are figuring out a kind of machine-learning system so the drone can find the target and strike even under electronic interference. And we are developing our fibre-optic drones ... and finding frequencies that the Russians are not jamming.”
Shark demonstrates a hand-held detector called an OKO-3, which can intercept and display video feeds beamed back from Russian drones to their pilots – making Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield aware of aerial threats lurking nearby.
“It’s particularly useful for soldiers going into or out of forward positions, because drones are flying everywhere all the time at the front line,” he says.
There were women students in the classes visited by The Irish Times, and Radio says women make up between 5 and 10 per cent of all attendees: “Last week we had two women who were over 60, who had decided that they want to build drones and help the country this way.”
There are also foreigners on nearly every course, including volunteers fighting for Ukraine and civilians who want to learn more about weapons that now loom large in western defence concerns, following a Russian drone incursion into Poland in September and disruptive drone flights around several major European airports and other sensitive facilities in recent months.
Matthias, a German-Ukrainian management consultant based in Vienna, passed the basic FPV course in Kyiv in August.
He thought having more in-depth and hands-on understanding of drones would help him in his work with Ukrainian defence firms for Ernst and Young, and as a volunteer delivering supplies to areas near the front line in Ukraine.
“It’s also a rapidly evolving technology and, who knows, if war comes to Europe in the future – though I hope not – then at least I will be ready for the newest technology and won’t have to start from scratch like a lot of Europeans would have to,” Matthias (32) says.
For Price – who was a merchant sailor before the war – the battle continues at home, and his wounded leg is no impediment to drone work. He has completed the basic and pro FPV courses and the engineering course, and is now learning about fixed-wing drones.
“I want to complete the ground drone course too, so I have as much knowledge as possible,” says Price. “It doesn’t matter to me which type of drone I will operate – I will serve wherever I am needed most.”
