Ukraine Military History Institute
In 2024 the problem was Russian eyes over Ukrainian lines
Rob Lee starts with what worried him most two years ago. In 2024 it was the Orlan, the Supercam and the ZALA, Russian reconnaissance drones spotting for Lancet, for Iskander and for glide bombs.
He was in Ukraine in June 2024, and his takeaway then was that manpower and a number of other things were problems, but this was the big one. If Ukraine could not fix it, he thought, it would be a really big challenge.
In Lee's view the biggest technological development of 2024 may have been the scaling of interceptors to protect the area behind Ukrainian lines.
Interceptors made expensive reconnaissance a losing trade
Today both sides have interceptor teams. Lee rates Ukraine's as more sophisticated than Russia's, but the principle now applies in both directions: send expensive reconnaissance past the front line and it will likely be taken down at some point.
The consequence is a movement toward cheaper reconnaissance and cheaper strike drones. The RAM 2X and the Bulova are still in use, Lee notes, but it is good to have a cheaper option. Dmytro Putiata agrees without qualification.
This is the logic of the whole chapter. Once anything that flies past the line has a meaningful chance of dying, the drone worth having is the one you can afford to lose in quantity.
Match the drone to the target, and trucks need the cheapest one
Lee is precise about which drone does which job, and the distinction is what makes cheap mass useful rather than merely numerous.
The FP-2 can put holes in a bridge. Enough of them can destroy a building. A Hornet cannot do either. But the FP-2 is a poor option for trucks: it is too expensive, and hunting vehicles takes far greater quantities.
That is where the Hornet and the Dart come in. They are cheap enough to send in significant numbers, so they can be flown along roads looking for Kamaz trucks and fuel trucks, and keep hitting them. Lee's word for it is simply affordable.
Interdiction is a volume problem, and a weapon too expensive to send in volume cannot solve it however capable it is.
Russia had that cheap option in January, and Starlink was half of it
Russia was doing exactly the same thing, Lee says, until it was not.
In January Russia was flying the Molniya with Starlink, a combination Lee puts at about 2,500 all together, which he calls cheap. It was used against the road between Pavlohrad and Petropavlivka, which he describes as the main logistics artery for Ukrainian units. Lee had been there the week before, and Russian crews were knocking out fuel trucks.
Then Russia lost access to Starlink.
Without Starlink, nothing else in the Russian inventory filled the gap
The Geran was still available. But the version with a video camera, the one that can do dynamic targeting, was not in large numbers at the time. Russia tested some in 2025, Lee says, but had not scaled them. A regular Geran is basically good for stationary targets, which a moving truck is not.
The BM-35 and BM-70 became way less effective without Starlink, and were being used against air defence systems and other targets instead.
The Lancet could do the job, but it is expensive, and Russia did not have enough of them. The quantities were not there to interdict basic trucks.
So the loss of one commercial service removed Russia's cheap way of hunting vehicles, and nothing in its inventory was both cheap enough and numerous enough to replace it. Lee's summary is that without Starlink, it was painful for a while.
Meanwhile the trade reversed. This spring, Lee says, it is Ukraine conducting interdiction on the main highways to Mariupol and elsewhere, going after fuel trucks and other vehicles, the same targets Russia was hitting in January.
Rassvet and the jammers are Russia trying to get it back
Lee is clear that this is not a permanent state. Russia is developing countermeasures to Ukraine's use of Starlink, and building its own equivalent.
That equivalent is Rassvet, Russia's own satellite system. Lee says it has had two launches, and thinks it might provide about an hour of use per day, while being open that he is not sure how extensive it is yet. The direction is not in doubt: Russia intends to use it the way Starlink is used, for remote operation of drones. It is also working on a mesh repeater system.
Lee's broader judgement explains why Russia is bothering. If anything in this war is a game changer, he says, it is Starlink, because it has changed how the war is fought and enabled Ukraine to fight more efficiently than a bigger country. He presents that explicitly as his view.
On jammers, he names the Peresvet-M among several types. Putiata's advice is not to try to remember them all, because there are approximately ten.
A jammer near the front is a target
Samuel Cook raises reports from some unmanned ground vehicle units that they were seeing jamming. Putiata disagrees. The radius is up to 2,500 metres, depending on the version, and the emission is large, so a jammer placed close enough to affect UGVs would be found and destroyed. Nobody, he says, is doing that right now.
Lee adds one word: yet. Two weeks before recording, during an assault involving Azov, Russia tried it, the first time he knows of a jammer used that close. They were hit. He recalls one near Vovchansk in 2024 as well, and the method then was simple: find the centre of the interference and hit it with a precision munition.
What Russia wants instead, Lee says, is mobile combined electronic warfare teams: one system jamming Starlink, another interfering with reconnaissance, others on further frequencies. The aim is to jam GPS so the Excalibur does not work, jam the video telemetry of drones, and jam Starlink together, so that every route to the jamming asset is degraded at once.
What to watch
- Camera-equipped Geran in quantity. Lee's account says their absence is part of why Russia lost its truck-hunting capability. Scaled numbers would restore a dynamic-targeting option without Starlink.
- Rassvet coverage beyond an hour a day. Lee's estimate is uncertain by his own account. A sustained increase is the clearest sign Russia can rebuild the Molniya model on its own satellites.
- Jammers sited near the front line. Putiata says nobody is doing it now and Lee says yet. Repeated attempts like the Azov one would show Russia accepting the losses to shield its electronic warfare.