Ukrainian Hams vs Goliath
Radio amateurs in Ukraine
may be silent and out-gunned,
but this is not stopping them
from helping outwit
intruders during an
emergency.
Russia had amassed
a 40-mile mechanized
column to mount an
overwhelming attack
on Kyiv from the north.
But the convoy of
armored vehicles and
supply trucks ground to a halt
within days, and the offensive
failed, in significant part
because of a series of night
ambushes carried out by a
small team of Ukrainian special
forces and drone operators on
quad bikes, according to a
Ukrainian commander.
The drone operators were
drawn from an air
reconnaissance unit,
Aerorozvidka, which began
eight years ago as a group of
volunteer radio
hobbyists designing
their own machines
and has evolved into
an essential element in
Ukraine’s successful
David-and-Goliath
resistance.
While Ukraine’s
western backers have
supplied thousands of anti-tank
and anti-aircraft missiles and
other military equipment,
Aerorozvidka uses
crowdfunding and a network of
personal contacts to keep
going, by getting hold of
components such as modems
and thermal imaging cameras.
The unit’s commander gave
an account of the ambush near
the town of Ivankiv that helped
stop the vast, lumbering
Russian offensive in its tracks.
He said the Ukrainian fighters
on quad bikes were able to
approach the advancing
Russian column at night by
riding through the forest on
either side of the road leading
south towards Kyiv from the
direction of Chernobyl.
The hams had night vision
goggles, sniper rifles, remotely
detonated mines, drones
equipped with thermal imaging
cameras and others capable of
dropping small 1.5kg bombs.
“This one little unit in the
night destroyed two or three
vehicles at the head of this
convoy, and after that it was
stuck. They stayed there two
more nights, and [destroyed]
many vehicles,” cont page 4
cont - Ukrainian Hams vs Goliath
The Russians broke the
column into smaller units to try
to make headway towards the
Ukrainian capital, but the same
assault team was able to mount
an attack on its supply depot,
crippling the Russians’
capacity to advance.
“The first echelon of the
Russian force was stuck
without heat, without oil,
without bombs and without
gas. And it all happened
because of the work of a few
dozen radio hobbyists.
The Aerorozvidka unit also
claims to have helped defeat a
Russian airborne attack on
Hostomel airport, just north-
west of Kyiv, in the first day of
the war, using drones to locate,
target and shell about 200
Russian paratroopers
concealed at one end of the
airfield.
US defense officials said
that Ukrainian attacks
contributed to the halting of
the armored column around
Ivankiv. The huge amount of
aerial combat footage
published underlines the
importance of drones to their
resistance.
The unit was started by
young college educated
Ukrainian hobbyists who had
been part of the 2014 Maidan
uprising and volunteered to use
their technical skills in the
resistance against the first
Russian invasion in Crimea and
the Donbas region. Its founder,
Volodymyr Kochetkov-Sukach,
was an investment banker who
was killed in action in 2015 in
Donbas – a reminder of the
high risks involved. The
Russians can latch on to the
drone’s electronic signature
and quickly strike with
mortars, so the Aerorozvidka
teams have to launch and run.
In its early days, the unit used
commercial surveillance
drones, but its team of RF
engineers, SW programmers
and drone enthusiasts later
developed their own designs.
They built a range of
surveillance drones, as well as
large 1.5-meter eight-rotor
machines capable of dropping
bombs and rocket-propelled
anti-tank grenades, and
created a system called Delta,
a network of sensors along the
front lines that fed into a
digital map so commanders
could see enemy movements as
they happened.
These technological battles,
and Aerorozvidka’s way of
fighting, appear to be the
future of warfare, in which
swarms of small teams
networked together by mutual
trust and advanced
communications can
overwhelm a bigger and more
heavily armed adversary.
