This is what a typical day looks like for a sergeant of a drone company at the front.
I woke up. I sat down behind the streams [from the front line, which are given by the "Mavics"]. I checked whether all the [drone] crews were on duty. If any problems arose, we solve them.
My team checks how the newbies are doing, how the training is going, whether they received or not the means [with which we will work]. If our board was shot down, we submitted it for writing [it] off. We found a target, and we start combat work, then a combat mission from the brigade came.
Thatʼs how you run around among everyone. If there is a bird-walking weather, I do a new staffing schedule, because we are currently expanding the "Inquisition" battalion.
I donʼt want to be an officer.
I have imposter syndrome. Iʼm supposedly a blogger. A bunch of people constantly come to me in the comments, claiming that I write from the couch, that Iʼm not a real soldier.
And I understand that there are many people fighting nearby who donʼt have Facebook. They are unknown, and they donʼt communicate with them the way they communicate with me. And they have a [complicated] life. And I have an easier version of life, so maybe Iʼm really doing something just because Iʼm a blogger? Thanks to [media] I can get myself an officer position (and a rear one). Thatʼs wrong.
I asked the brigade commander [Colonel Oleksandr Sak] to accept me for who I am.
When we first met, I immediately said that he had a toxic subordinate [me]. I explained that when I criticize something, it’s not because I want to assert myself.
My toxicity is the flip side of my perfectionism in combat work. And if I’m forbidden to speak out, I’ll fade away in other ways too. He heard me and supported me.
Sometimes he can write to me that I’m wrong, and I agree. I respect him a lot for that.
Oleksandr Karpyuk in the Kherson direction, 2022.
The Russian “Rubicon” is an innovation center.
It is believed that “Rubicon” is a special unit with a bunch of pilots. This is not so. It is not an analogue of the UAV Forces, and it is not an analogue of any drone unit, letʼs say Nemesis.
“Rubicon” develops drones, tests the tactics of their use in practice, and what works, scales up the front. This is its strength. For example, it has developed and scaled up long-range “awaiters” on fiber optics. That is, itʼs FPVs, which fly deep into our rear and lie in wait for equipment. Or anti-aircraft crews. That is, itʼs FPV crews that find targets in the sky using tactical radar and intercept our strike or reconnaissance drones.
Thanks to this, Russia effectively strangles our logistics.
The Defense Forces also have units that work on logistics.
Units of the Central Military Operations "A" and GUR, the 412th separate Nemesis brigade as part of the UAV Forces, “Lasarʼs Group” as part of the National Guard, and others.
However, the Russian army is taking scaling up working tactics more seriously. We are lagging behind in scaling up.
Moreover, this initiative comes from the very top, the "Rubicon" is being targeted by the higher command of the Russian Armed Forces. We do not have such an innovation center. Although, theoretically, the 1st Separate UAV Center (which was scaled up and until recently was called the 14th Regiment) should become it.
There has just been a revolution at the front.
After we blocked the Russians from Starlinks, they lost coordination across the entire front. The Russians are just as lazy as we are. Having received Starlinks, they also screwed up all other means of communication and built everything on Starlinks.
Their command watches streams of the front line from the “Mavics”, through Starlinks. Tactical radars transmit data to anti-aircraft crews via Starlinks. And suddenly it all goes down at the same time.
Now they will look for other options, for example, to make the same fiber-optic lines or build Wi-Fi bridges [i.e. chains of Wi-Fi signal repeaters]. But these technologies have a lot of nuances, and it will not be possible to restore everything at the same time. Especially since they are here in an expeditionary operation.
And we have everything nearby. I went to the “Epicenter”, I bought it and I used it.
Watch the full version of the conversation on the Babel channel. Serg Marco talks about the combat path of the 59th brigade under the command of Vadym Sukharevsky: from a land motorized brigade, it became a separate assault brigade within the UAV Forces. The brigade repelled the PMC “Wagner” offensive in 2023, went through several changes of commanders, and is now holding the defense in the difficult Donetsk direction.