{"id":16266,"date":"2024-03-01T12:47:26","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T12:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/01\/russian-quad-bike-raids-3d-printed-drones-and-a-lack-of-ammo-life-on-the-front-line-in-ukraines-robotyne\/"},"modified":"2024-03-01T12:47:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T12:47:26","slug":"russian-quad-bike-raids-3d-printed-drones-and-a-lack-of-ammo-life-on-the-front-line-in-ukraines-robotyne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/01\/russian-quad-bike-raids-3d-printed-drones-and-a-lack-of-ammo-life-on-the-front-line-in-ukraines-robotyne\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian quad bike raids, 3D printed drones and a lack of ammo: Life on the front line in Ukraine\u2019s Robotyne"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Pixelated\u00a0in the thermal drone imagery, the quad bike races down a dirt track, its destination unclear. It swerves\u00a0and is\u00a0hit by a grenade, dropped from a Ukrainian drone. Russian soldiers appear to stagger\u00a0away\u00a0from it, one rolling. <\/p>\n

The use of drones by both Ukrainian and Russian forces has become so widespread\u00a0across the\u00a0front line\u00a0now,\u00a0the\u00a0soldiers said,\u00a0that\u00a0most\u00a0maneuvers\u00a0\u2013 from troop rotations to assaults \u2013 occur in darkness when the cheap, single-use\u00a0weapons, which fly explosives\u00a0into their targets, are less effective. <\/p>\n

Kokos, a former children\u2019s entertainer turned drone pilot in the 15th National Guard unit, said\u00a0quad bikes were\u00a0\u201cmore\u00a0maneuverable\u00a0than tracked vehicles. It\u2019s hard for artillery to hit them, so we have to use drones.\u201d <\/p>\n

He said some of the captured Russians had seemed intoxicated. \u201cWe heard from prisoners of war how they are given pills before assaults. After capture, they won\u2019t eat or sleep for a day.\u201d He added of the assaults at night:\u00a0\u201cThey just keep coming.\u201d <\/p>\n

Bohdan,\u00a0the\u00a0driver of a Belgian-donated\u00a0armored\u00a0vehicle, said\u00a0Russian\u00a0drones had limited the use of his protected \u201cbox\u201d to evacuate casualties from the\u00a0front line. \u201cOur job got harder because of numerous drones flying around. The guys have to carry the injured to the extraction point between 2 and 8 kilometers\u00a0(1.2 and 5 miles) away. It depends on the shelling.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ukrainian forces along the Robotyne\u00a0front line\u00a0are facing a painful Russian resurgence aimed at taking the tiny village that became one of the main gains on the southwestern front of the summer counteroffensive. <\/p>\n

Weeks of intense fighting preceded the Ukrainian flag being hoisted inside the village, and periodic battles continued around its rubble over the winter. <\/p>\n

Like many Ukrainian soldiers along the Robotyne\u00a0front line, he said the lack of ammunition caused by a delay in US financial and military aid\u00a0was \u201cforcing them to underperform.\u201d He said\u00a0there is\u00a0a \u201cdramatic lack of ammo. It affects how many rounds we can spend on a target.\u201d <\/p>\n

His commander, Anton, said the unit used to fire 80 rounds a day, during the NATO-financed and aided counteroffensive,\u00a0but now fired about 10. <\/p>\n

He has spent more time thinking about Republican procedural dysfunctionality than you might expect for a man cheating death by shellfire in an underground bunker. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hardly understand the\u00a0Republican policy on aiding Ukraine,\u201d\u00a0he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest problem is lack of ammo. We are waiting, we wait for it very much. We urgently need it. More ammunition equals saving more lives of our soldiers and civilians.\u201d <\/p>\n

On the drone monitors flickering near him, another grenade drops into a trench. Two Russian soldiers\u00a0can be seen\u00a0clambering inside the ruins of a dugout, one manhandling a shovel. <\/p>\n

Ukrainian drone pilots now face\u00a0Russian counterparts who have\u00a0replaced\u00a0their\u00a0units but at a much larger scale, they said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have their numbers, they mass produce everything. The quality is lower but they have lots of them. They send one, it gets suppressed by our jammers, and they instantly send another one.\u201d <\/p>\n

He said a new threat was so-called FPV\u00a0(first-person view)\u00a0attack drones, controlled from a gaming headset\u00a0and\u00a0equipped with night vision. In the background of the small farming cottage in which the unit was based whirred a 3D printer, churning out components for drones. Kokos estimated they could \u201cprint\u201d parts for about\u00a010\u00a0drones a day, but were crowdfunding as supplies were limited. <\/p>\n

Saint, another drone pilot, 22,\u00a0from Lviv, held up a captured Russian\u00a0FPV drone, which he said was \u201cmanufactured much better than ours. Ours are made from carbon. Theirs\u00a0are\u00a0aluminium. That means extra shrapnel and a bigger payload.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pixelated\u00a0in the thermal drone imagery, the quad bike races down a dirt track, its destination unclear. It swerves\u00a0and is\u00a0hit by a grenade, dropped from a Ukrainian drone. Russian soldiers appear to stagger\u00a0away\u00a0from it, one rolling. The use of drones by both Ukrainian and Russian forces has become so widespread\u00a0across the\u00a0front line\u00a0now,\u00a0the\u00a0soldiers said,\u00a0that\u00a0most\u00a0maneuvers\u00a0\u2013 from troop rotations <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}