American In Ukraine Experiments With Kamikaze Drone

An American volunteer with Ukrainian forces has shared videos of his unit’s first kamikaze attack drone. It’s a project powered by determination, improvisation and a lot of duct tape. And it shows how the do-it-yourself approach to drone warfare has spread.

James Vasquez is a U.S. Army veteran who has been fighting in Ukraine for more than a year, and posts videos of his war experiences on his Twitter account which has attracted more than 400,00 followers.

Vasquez’s videos usually show typical experiences of front-line combat. Yesterday he put up a sequence of videos showing the first flight of an experimental kamikaze senrt against Russian positions.

The Ukrainians have been using consumer quadcopters to drop grenades since the start of the conflict, and operators are now skilled enough to drop bombs into trenches and foxholes and through open tank hatches. In July, they advanced to a new level with racing drones turned into loitering munitions, able to carry a bigger warhead and dive through doorways and into trenches. These quadcopters are effective but have very limited range and can only hit targets a mile or two away. The next step is fixed-wing drones which can fly for further. Effectively its the capability of a Switchblade loitering munition but for just a few hundred dollars rather than tens of thousands.

Some Ukrainian unit are already building their own improvised attack drones from hobby parts, while others are adapting the cardboard-winged drones supplied to Ukraine by Australian company SYPAQ. Vasquez’ team thought they would join in with a home-made creation.

In the first video, Vasquez stands beside the drone, while holding the payload: an RPG warhead weighing a couple of kilos. This is an anti-tank warhead, with enough explosive to be effective against personnel in defensive positions. Vasquez is two kilometers from Russian lines, and a crackle of gunfire can be heard in the background.

“We thought if we’re going to test it, we might as well test it on a couple of Russians,“ says Vasquez.

The second video shows the warhead being attached to the drone with what Vasquez calls “duct tape, the tool of champions,” and the warhead is armed and ready to go. This improvised approach makes such drones far more risky than the manufactured version with built-in safety .

The third video shows the danger: a soldier gets ready to hand-launch the drone, now nose-heavy with the warhead attached. If it dives to the ground, he is likely to be in the explosion zone. The twin electric propellers fire up, and he launches it into the air with a two-handed throw.

The fourth video shows the drone airborne to the sound of cheering from the ground crew. The two engineers who made the drone – from Chernobyl, according to Vasquez – had weighted it correctly.

“I thought it would be nose heavy and dive but as engineers they took that into consideration and applied tire balancing counterweights in the back,” notes Vasquez.

The fifth video shows the last 39 seconds of the attack run from the drone’s nose cameras as it closes in on Russian positions – and crashes into a row of trees by a Russian trench.

According to the drone telemetry, it had traveled more than 4 kilometers from launch, and the battery indicator is still showing more than half full, indicating that it is capable of hitting targets well behind the front lines.

“From a concept flight perspective it was a total success. We know it works,” Vasquez tweeted.

Followers have replied to the videos with a slew of suggestions to improve the drone, many of them focused on safety: such as warning the soldier launching it to watch out he does not get hit by the tailplane and maybe think about a catapult launcher instead.

Ukrainian forces are now acquiring converted racing drones in large numbers for short-range attacks. A wealth of videos show how effective these are against ussian trenches, personal carriers and even tanks. Cheap fixed-wing kamikazes will extend their reach and hit Russian forces further back. And all with no risk to Ukrainian troops.

The Russians have also produced some small artisanal loitering munitions, but accounts on Telegram social media suggest they have a much harder time due to bureaucracy and the lack of official support.

After the start of the earlier phase of this war in 2014, a host of new Ukrainian startups made up for the state industry’s inability to supply small drones. They have these have produced some highly successful models, with the latest being the RAM II. This is a loitering munition with a flight time of over 50 minutes, carrying a three-kilo warhead to a range of thirty kilometers. Factory-made drones like RAM II may appear in large enough numbers to dominate the battlefield. Or they may be outnumbered by thousands home-made drones like the Vasquez kamikaze. produced by soldiers literally taking things into their own hands. The prospects are looking good for sales of duct tape.

(Vasquez has teamed with former U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Ripley Rawlings to provide non-lethal aid for Ukraine through a foundation called Ripley’s Heroes, read about it here).