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A Ukrainian brigade said it used an FPV drone to deliver an escape bike to a trapped soldier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Its chief of staff said it took three tries with a Heavy Shot drone to make a successful drop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
It’s one of the first recorded instances of an FPV drone being used for such logistics in a warzone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A Ukrainian brigade said it used first-person-view drones to deliver e-bikes to a surrounded soldier, marking a rare instance where such devices were used to airlift a vehicle in battle.<\/p>\n
In a video published on Wednesday, the “Rubizh” 4th Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard<\/a> said it dropped the roughly 88-pound e-bikes so the soldier could escape mostly Russian-controlled territory.<\/p>\n While the brigade didn’t say in the video when the operation occurred, it said the soldier had been trapped at a shelter near Siversk, a town in Donetsk, where fighting is still ongoing.<\/p>\n “The enemy was in front, behind, and on both flanks. Completely surrounded,” Mykola Hrytsenko, a junior lieutenant serving as the brigade’s chief of staff, said in the video.<\/p>\n The soldier, whom the brigade identified by the call sign Tankist, was the only survivor of four Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the area, Hrytsenko said.<\/p>\n “The Siversk direction is known for incredibly difficult logistics. Almost none exists there. Guys have to walk six to seven kilometers on foot to reach a position,” he said.<\/p>\n Hrytsenko said his team crafted an evacuation plan that involved heavy cargo drones, such as the Baba Yaga<\/a> or Heavy Shot, carrying a bicycle with an electric motor to the exhausted soldier’s position.<\/p>\n Such drones are typically used in Ukraine as bombers and are designed to deliver payloads of about 40 to 50 pounds, though they can also airlift cargo.<\/p>\n Carrying a nearly 90-pound e-bike, Hrytsenko said, would push the drone to its limits and shorten its range to roughly 2 kilometers.<\/p>\n Hrytsenko said his team initially lost two drones trying to deliver e-bikes to the soldier. The first was shot down with the bike, while the second crashed because its motors burned out, he added.<\/p>\n But the “Rubizh” brigade published clips of the third drone carrying the bike via a winch system and the soldier appearing to receive the bike. Business Insider could not independently verify the authenticity of the brigade’s footage.<\/p>\n Hrytsenko said the bike’s parts were disassembled and brought to a nearby position on the frontline. Afterward, the vehicle was put together and flown to the soldier, he added.<\/p>\n “Everyone in HQ was shouting and crying like we’d just launched the first plane in the sky,” Hrytsenko said of the moment when the bike arrived.<\/p>\n The brigade also showed surveillance drone footage of a soldier riding an e-bike through the battlefield.<\/p>\n Hrytsenko said that while the soldier later struck a land mine, he was able to walk several hundred meters to a nearby friendly position, where drone pilots flew in another e-bike so he could fully exit the combat zone.<\/p>\n “The operation cost us two lost e-bikes, around 100,000, and two lost HeavyShot drones, $15,000 each,” Hrytsenko said, likely referring to 100,000 hryvnias, or about $2,340.<\/p>\n The brigade said the soldier evacuated safely and showed interview clips of a man it said was Tankist. BI could not independently verify his identity.<\/p>\n Hrytsenko added that the e-bikes were funded via donations from volunteers, a common occurrence in Ukraine, where units have to crowdfund for drones and weapons.<\/a><\/p>\n “If you see a strange fundraiser for an e-bike, or a unicycle, don’t be surprised. Maybe it will save a life,” he said.<\/p>\n First-person-view, or FPV, drones have been used for many non-combat functions during the war, such as dropping small items<\/a> on the battlefield or compelling soldiers to surrender<\/a> via loudspeaker.<\/p>\n However, this marks one of the first times such a drone has been used to deliver a large asset like a vehicle during ongoing fighting. Given that the size of the payload may make a drone easier to spot while limiting its range, it’s unclear if this tactic will become more commonplace.<\/p>\n Read the original article on Business Insider<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nIt took three attempts, brigade says<\/h2>\n