RUNNING for my life as I scanned the windswept slate-grey skies over Ukraine’s front line, I made one desperate last dash for cover.
Panting as I plunged into the prickly hedgerow, I lay totally still and listened in dread for the fateful sound.
Moments later it came — the spine- chilling banshee whine which has heralded the doom of thousands of soldiers in these killing fields.
The kamikaze drone, screeching loudly right in front of me, was not about to claim my life in the ongoing conflict between Ukrainians and Russians orchestrated by Vladimir Putin.
Because I was the quarry in a simulated drone hunt staged for The Sun yesterday by Ukraine’s elite front-line 68 Jaeger Brigade.
And though it wasn’t for real, it was still a deeply unnerving experience.
Not long after, I discovered that I was being targeted by a drone operator who had been responsible for the deaths of many Russians in the brutal war zone just a few miles away.
The 29-year-old drone pilot, tall and nerdy-looking with a thin red beard, revealed to me that he had been given the code name The Moderator due to his previous role in the military before the war broke out.
He said: “I used to work moderating comments left by people on websites to make sure nothing offensive went online.
“Now I moderate Russians.”
The Moderator — who The Sun agreed not to identify fully — said he had lost count of the number of Putin soldiers his drones had dispatched in recent months.
This unlikely and softly spoken warrior kills by expertly working two joysticks on a gaudy, bubblegum-pink remote controller.
“I just like the colour pink,” he said in halting English, smiling.
“I don’t know how many Russians I’ve killed — it’s less than 100 but more than 50 or 60.
“I see them running or hiding through my drone’s camera but try to see them only as targets. I’m not happy but I’m not sad when I kill them — I’m just doing my job.
“They make their own problem because they would come to my home to harm me and my family.”
The Moderator said he had never flown a drone before he joined the unit — but enjoyed using a controller to play racing games on his computer at home.
He added: “It’s like a video game where we are using our joysticks to look for terrorists.
“When Russian soldiers are attacking us, we feel threatened. They are trying to kill us with their drones so it’s a real fight, it’s real life.
“On every mission I’m leaving one less foreign person who would do bad things to my family and my country.
“We work in constant danger because they have long-range weapons, artillery and tanks, and we feel it every day. They are hunting us like we hunt them.”
The Jaeger Brigade’s 100-strong drone unit’s kill rate is astonishing, given that it only went operational on the Ukraine front line in April last year, around the threatened city of Petrovske.
In just ten months the elite squad — with pilots aged up to 50 but made up mainly of nerdy young gamers — has recorded the “confirmed kills” of at least 8,000 Russian soldiers.
And it is one of around 250 similar active Ukrainian drone units attached to brigades delivering carnage along the entire 600-mile front line in the east of the country.
Increasingly sophisticated drones, particularly First Person View (FPV) quadcopters beaming live pictures to pilots, now account for more Ukraine casualties than any other weapon.
Both Ukraine and Russia are locked in a desperate race to develop ever more deadly UAVs, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
And Ukraine appears to be winning this battle of a complex hybrid war by mass-producing cheap killing machines based on hobby shop ’copters available online.
Weaponised drone toys are steered into battle remotely by pilots peering through goggles which project real-time video from a front-facing camera attached to the flying bomb.
‘Blast enough to bring down a small house’
The suicide drones can cost as little as £320 to build, but are now regularly destroying battle tanks costing millions.
Ukraine’s 70mph FPVs, with a range of around 12 to 13 miles, are being churned out cheaply by the thousand, by 3D printers in underground munition plants across the embattled nation.
Attempts to jam the radio signals which direct them have been thwarted by new models, controlled by miles of super-fine fibre-optic cable linked to the pilot’s controller.
FPVs are usually armed with 1.5kg of high explosive, which can be detonated on contact with a target or explode nearby.
The blast is enough to bring down a small house, and drones are often flown inside buildings to hunt the terrified enemy from room to room.
FPVs have also proved Ukraine’s most effective anti-tank weapon, trumping £200,000 US Javelin shoulder-launched missiles and £32,000 British NLAWs, or next-gen light anti-tank weapons.
Drone controllers have the advantage of being able to hover over tanks, looking for weak spots in their armour, or fly in through open hatches with devastating results.
Soldiers risk their lives to launch the drones as close to the front line as possible to maximise the strike range, but pilots flying them can be much farther away.
Missions are often supported by winged- surveillance UAVs which loiter for much longer over the front line to pick out targets and record video of attacks to confirm kills.
Ukraine also uses far bigger Vampire drones with larger bombs or 15kg rocket warheads that can destroy fortified bunkers.
Other large UAVs have been developed to ferry ammunition to front-line units and even bring back wounded soldiers on stretchers.
But the drone troops we spoke to yesterday stressed that although their work is now pivotal, they can only achieve battlefield success backed by infantry soldiers and conventional weapons.
And Ukrainian soldiers are currently still losing ground every day on the eastern front as Putin orders his much larger force to advance.
In 2023, Ukraine’s President Zelensky pledged to build a million FPVs within a year, and the former Joe Biden administration in the US pumped £1.2billion into Ukraine’s drone development.
An attack on a tank left its horrifically injured crew writhing in agony and on fire
Nick Parker
Huge hi-tech investment by both sides has changed the face of front- line combat in recent months.
Any soldier daring to break cover within 12 to 13 miles either side of front line trenches now risks a terrifying death by drone.
Grisly videos are regularly posted online showing drone footage of doomed soldiers cowering in panic.
And it looks likely that front lines will soon resemble science fiction-turned-fact as AI technology creates flying weapons which will patrol kill zones autonomously.
The commander of 68 Brigade’s drone unit — call sign “Lutiy” — invited us to try the drone simulator linked to his laptop inside his bunker yesterday.
It was tricky, owing to my total lack of gaming experience, but looked easy when he took control and steered the weapon straight into the image of a military truck.
Stern-faced Lutiy, a 30-year-old dad of one, then showed us graphic footage showing the last moments of dozens of enemy troops.
Harrowing images included one sequence in which an attack on a tank left its horrifically injured crew writhing in agony and on fire.
Moments later, Lutiy smiled and showed off a crayoned picture his four-year-old son had sent him.
Lutiy — whose name means “Angry” in Ukrainian — told The Sun: “We don’t want to be here, we would rather be home with our families and don’t take any pleasure from the horrible things we see on our screens. But we will fight on for as long as we have to.
“In less than one year my unit has killed 8,000 Russians and destroyed 200 of their vehicles — but we can’t win this war just with drones.
“People in Europe see these videos of Russians being blown up and don’t seem to realise we are fighting for them as well as ourselves to hold back the Russians.
“Ukraine needs more support.”
