Rare access inside a Ukrainian flying school training hundreds of kamikaze drone pilots
Ukrainian officials have given Forces News rare access inside a centre that is training hundreds of people to fly the cheap kamikaze drones that have been used to great effect against their Russian opponents.
Drones have become a vital weapon of the war, supplementing regular artillery, and volunteers have set up drone schools across the country to teach soldiers and civilians how to fly them.
Hundreds of men and women are being taught how to use small, cheap uncrewed aerial vehicles to seek and destroy Russian targets, wearing a headset that lets them see what the drone is seeing.
An instructor known only as "Ihor" explained: "At first, the Russians didn’t know what they were, and we were able to attack targets close to the front line.
"Now, they’ve moved everything back about six to eight kilometres. In Bakhmut, for instance, we used FPV (first person view) drones to hit individual Wagner soldiers in their trenches.
"They're often more effective than artillery, particularly at getting into small areas and we’re starting to use them over longer distances."
The students use simulators to practise flying, manoeuvring their drones through different landscapes.
From Bakhmut to the Black Sea, drones have been a force multiplier, allowing Kyiv to hit Russian targets at reach with little danger to its troops.
The Ukrainian government says it is training 10,000 FPV drone pilots a year.
The drones, however, are difficult to fly and their battlefield success ratio is low, which is why Ukraine says it needs thousands more.
However, some units have managed to achieve a much greater success rate, sometimes up to 80 per cent.
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