Today’s picture is a far cry from the hype surrounding Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones in the early months of the war.
The aircraft made headlines and were praised in song for their role in smashing Moscow’s armoured columns and the Black Sea fleet flagship, the Moskva.
But such models – known as MALE, for Medium Altitude, Long Endurance – have lost relevance as the conflict has dragged on.
“The front has stabilised and become impenetrable, as the Russians have deployed systems” to defend against attack from the air, an anonymous European defence industry source said.
Now the drone war has become a numbers game.
Most suicide drones are downed by air defences, “used to force the defenders to fire their missiles and run down reserves”, a senior French military source said.
“You also create terror and uncertainty at all times. Over the long term, that has value,” the source added.
03:09
Ukraine denies Russia’s claim it tried to assassinate Vladimir Putin with drone attack on Kremlin
Ukraine denies Russia’s claim it tried to assassinate Vladimir Putin with drone attack on Kremlin
Eroding enemy air defence cheaply is especially vital for Russia, whose production of long-range missiles is limited to around 40 per month, analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds of British defence think-tank RUSI wrote in a recent report.
Moscow’s air force “launches large numbers of aircraft to increase the number of potential axes of threat … [and] to identify gaps in Ukrainian air defence” where traditional missiles could get through, they said.
Kyiv also uses “commercially available Chinese propeller-powered drones or old Soviet jet-powered reconnaissance drones” that can attack “well inside Russian territory”, the European industrial source said.
The vast majority of drones are smaller models used on the front lines for both reconnaissance and attack.
Ukrainian troops have published many videos on social media showing modified commercially available drones dropping bombs onto Russian soldiers’ positions.
On any given 10-kilometre (6-mile) stretch of front line, “it is typical for there to be between 25 and 50 UAVs (unstaffed aerial vehicles) from both sides”, RUSI’s Watling and Reynolds wrote.
Purpose-built Ukrainian Furia and Russian Eleron-3 drones range up to 50 kilometres (31 miles), while modified commercial quadcopters – many bought through crowdfunding – can venture fewer than 10.
The swarms have pushed both sides into deploying electronic defences, lowering the cost of countering devices that are too cheap to be worth shooting down with pricey missiles.
The Russians have stepped up their electronic warfare game. It’s a huge change
“The Russians have stepped up their electronic warfare game. It’s a huge change,” the senior French officer said.
Even individual Russian platoons are now equipped with anti-drone weapons, RUSI said, including “directional jammers and arrays for hijacking UAVs”.
Anti-drone “rifles” that emit jamming signals are “the absolute basics of defence, what really works are non-portable jammers deployed close to the front line”, the European industry source said.
But such “big spheres on tripods with generators” are “easily spotted and have a limited life expectancy”, they added.
Drone and anti-drone warfare were “a new form of combined arms combat”, the French officer said.
“Just as we have infantry, cavalry and artillery, so we have drones, electronic warfare and connectivity.”
With so much energy going into their destruction, most small drones “won’t fly more than four or six times before being shot down”, the officer added.
Ukraine has said they are losing around 10,000 drones per month across the large range of devices they use – a figure impossible to verify that could be aimed at securing more Western aid.
If breakthroughs and counteroffensives see a return to rapidly shifting front lines, drones will remain relevant.
Where highly mobile advancing troops get cut off, “drones could offer a method to resupply these units with the ammunition and other supplies necessary for them to continue their operations”, he added.
