🧵1/ Ukraine’s Drone Wall is Ready for Russia’s Spring Offensive As...
David Kirichenko@DVKirichenko
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Apr 25, 2025
~3 min read
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🧵1/ Ukraine’s Drone Wall is Ready for Russia’s Spring Offensive
As Russia launches its spring offensive, Ukrainian soldiers are confident their drones will give the invaders hell (including the soldiers on crutches). A new kind of warfare - low-cost, high-impact, a drone wall.
As Russia launches its spring offensive, Ukrainian soldiers are confident their drones will give the invaders hell (including the soldiers on crutches). A new kind of warfare - low-cost, high-impact, a drone wall.
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2/ Russia’s spring offensive has already begun, says Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. Under pressure to show gains, the Kremlin is turning again to meatgrinder tactics - sacrificing troops for inches.
But this time, they’re running into a wall of drones.
But this time, they’re running into a wall of drones.
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3/ Russia is hurling waves of troops forward. This includes Russian soldiers on crutches and on wheelchairs. CNN reported: "Russia is ‘recycling’ wounded troops, sending some to the frontline on crutches"
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4/ Ukraine is laying down a 15km “kill zone” of autonomous drones, aiming to extend it to 40km. The goal: deny Russian forces the ability to move undetected across the front.
Machines are doing what men once had to.
Machines are doing what men once had to.
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5/ Ukrainian drones now dominate the skies and trenches. Some frontline zones are held almost entirely by drone units.
As one soldier told me: “We’re holding the line with drones. There’s barely anyone in the trenches.”
As one soldier told me: “We’re holding the line with drones. There’s barely anyone in the trenches.”
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6/ Ukraine is producing 200,000 drones a month - up from 20,000 just a year ago. Most are built using commercial components, open-source software, and raw battlefield urgency.
This isn’t defense industry as usual. It’s wartime innovation at Silicon Valley speed.
This isn’t defense industry as usual. It’s wartime innovation at Silicon Valley speed.
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7/ US Rep. Pat Harrigan warned:
“Low-cost FPV drones cause 80% of Russian casualties. If America doesn’t scale this tech fast, we’ll lose the next war before it starts.”
Ukraine's innovative startup culture is transforming the twenty-first century battlefield.
“Low-cost FPV drones cause 80% of Russian casualties. If America doesn’t scale this tech fast, we’ll lose the next war before it starts.”
Ukraine's innovative startup culture is transforming the twenty-first century battlefield.
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8/ Ukraine’s drone production is scaling quickly. Deputy Defense Minister Ivan Havryliuk announced that domestic output is expected to reach 200,000 drones per month by 2025, up from just 20,000 at the start of 2024.
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9/ Ukraine’s once-neglected defense industry has surged from $1 billion in output in 2022 to an expected $15 billion this year.
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10/ “We have our own Silicon Valley. In garages across the country, we have ingenious researchers and engineers building things no one has ever made,” said Ukraine’s former Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov.
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11/ Even Russian drone developers have admitted they’re stuck in constant iteration, struggling to keep up as Ukrainian forces stay one step ahead.
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12/ American drone manufacturers have often struggled to meet the demands of the modern battlefield. Their drones are expensive, slow to produce, & susceptible to electronic interference. Ukrainian firms offer inexpensive, combat-tested alternatives refined under fire.
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13/ While Western procurement cycles typically stretch over years, Ukraine can turn ideas into field-ready weapons in months. Wartime necessity has turned Ukraine into perhaps the world’s most agile military innovation ecosystem.
Much of this progress is volunteer-driven.
Much of this progress is volunteer-driven.
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14/ Volunteer groups such as @VictoryDrones are also working to integrate AI into drone platforms, aiming to reduce the cost of last-mile targeting.
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@VictoryDrones 15/ The result is a new kind of no man’s land is forming, battlefields that will be increasingly saturated with semi-autonomous drones that seek and destroy anything that moves. Ukraine has no choice but to fight this war, but it offers a glimpse into the future of warfare.
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@VictoryDrones 16/ As Ukraine refines its use of autonomous systems, Russia should prepare to suffer even greater losses. Mass assaults, once effective in places like Bakhmut, are now being met by waves of Ukrainian drones. Ukraine’s drone wall is rapidly defining this phase of the war.
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@VictoryDrones 17/ Volodymyr Zelensky stated, “Russia must come to terms with the idea of the inevitability of Ukraine’s power.”
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Bonus: censor.net/en/videonews/3…
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Roy🇨🇦@GrandpaRoy2
Ukrainian drone leader “Madyar” forcefully explains how Russia must be stopped by expending drones and not soldiers.
“Below is my option for stopping the enemy's advance and preserving the infantry.
Rhetorical ‘what to do?’
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“Below is my option for stopping the enemy's advance and preserving the infantry.
Rhetorical ‘what to do?’
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"Russia has been innovating to work out how to degrade Ukraine’s layered drone defences" rusi.org/explore-our-re…