AP (“Ukrainian midrange drones reshape the battlefield by targeting Russian supply lines“):
Through the grainy gray-and-white haze of thermal images streamed from a drone, Ukrainian pilots watch the roads that keep Russian forces supplied, hunting for targets with a fleet of midrange drones that is reshaping the battlefield.
In a basement command post in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, hundreds of kilometers from the drone over Russian-held territory, pilots wait for movement. When a vehicle appears, they will nudge the controller, sending the aircraft diving toward its target to disrupt Russian supplies deep behind the front.
“Our mission is to cut logistics,” said Kat, commander of Ukraine’s K-2 brigade, which fires midrange drones. “Cut off their supply lines, and the infantry on the front line have no food, no ammunition, no night vision, no batteries. Nothing. That’s how we’re wearing them down in every sense.”
Obviously, this is a huge shift, albeit one that’s been building gradually. As valuable as hitting enemy maneuver forces is, taking out their ability to provide logistical support can actually turn the tide of the war. It not only makes it harder for the Russians to fight, it will eventually break the will of their soldiers. Even Russians aren’t going to fight indefinitely low on food and ammo.
Soldiers spoke to The Associated Press on condition their call signs and not real names be used, in line with military regulations.
By repeatedly striking the highways that carry fuel, ammunition and reinforcements, Ukrainian commanders say they have made logistics slower, costlier and far less predictable, helping stall Russian advances and enabling Ukrainian counterattacks and strikes into illegally annexed Crimea to isolate the peninsula from the mainland.
Until recently, much of that territory lay beyond Ukraine’s reach. Front-line drones lacked the range, while long-range drones were reserved for strategic targets hundreds of kilometers away. Between them stretched a 25- to 200-kilometer (15- to 125-mile) corridor where Russian troops and supplies moved with relative freedom.
Fixed-wing midrange drones equipped with Starlink satellite communications have begun closing that gap, turning Russia’s logistical rear into an active battlefield.
“They’re ensuring that the Russians are constantly pressured along their supply logistics lines and that they are unable to supply certain parts of the front so that the situation may be more controllable,” said Samuel Bendett, a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses.
So far, so good.
Here’s where it gets dicey:
The machinery of the midrange campaign hides in plain sight. An ordinary office is a command post. A carpenter’s workshop is a drone assembly point. A quaint village house, a launch site.
The nerve center of K-2, one of Ukraine’s most elite drone units, sits in a drab workspace. The workstations are cluttered with coffee mugs, energy drink cans and e-cigarettes.
In May, the unit launched 800 midrange drones, 650 of which struck intended targets — all from this room.
Dressed in civilian clothes, the pilots sit beneath harsh fluorescent lights, eyes fixed on computer screens, as if working late over spreadsheets.
Using civilian facilities to launch military strikes is a war crime under Article 28 and Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This is, of course, rather mitigated by the fact that the Russian military has been routinely targeting civilian population centers, for little to no military advantage, since the outset of the conflict.
