In what may be a first in the deployment of First Person View drones, the Russians have established an FPV drone enclosure around the village of Kurakhove. Kurakhove, which is one of the villages in the Avdiivka direction, is located southeast of Selydove in an area of heavily contested fighting within kilometers from Pokrovsk.

In regards to the village of Kurakhove, the Russians have attained three strategic objectives for the establishment of its FPV drone enclosure. In contrast with localized air superiority or a localized no-fly zone, an FPV drone enclosure targets enemy targets on the ground but in a certain order, starting first with logistics before attacking communications. With both logistics as well as communications disabled, the FPV drone enclosure seeks to neutralize rockets, artillery or mortars.

The Russians have tracked, intercepted, disrupted, or stopped logistics on the ground lines of communication surrounding or passing in and out of the village. Along the roads to the south of Kurakhove, the Russians have consistently targeted Ukrainian supply convoys, transports, or vehicles with troops, weapons, or supplies. In the north, the Russians have done the same, disabling logistics. This enforced presence from both north and the south of the village has led to the establishment of an enforced line of contact, along which Ukrainians can only expect to become the target of an FPV drone attack. It has led to either a degradation of or completely disrupted its supply capabilities for the village.

Within the village of Kurakhove, the Russians have begun to create a GPS-denied environment through the systematic identification, targeting or destruction of Ukraine’s vital, limited, irreplaceable communication towers, relays, repeaters, transmitters, uplink towers, or wireless communication equipment attached to the ground, roofs, or high structures. Recent footage, for instance, depicts how Russians have targeted multiple communication towers with FPV drones. The effect, if incomplete, has likely caused blackouts in some or all of its areas of responsibility. It has likely caused Ukraine’s communications to become decentralized.

Last but not least, the Russians have systematically sought to uncover, identify, target, or destroy any or all artillery, mortar or multiple launch rocket systems, all of which are partially, if not wholly, reliant upon Ukraine’s communications. These attacks limit available short or medium range means for Ukrainians to counter Russian incursions into the village, offer fire support for armor such as Leopards or Abrams tanks, or provide cover for a withdrawal.

The FPV drone enclosure appears to be enforced through the deployment of multiple Russian drone teams from Army Group South coordinating efforts to prepare the way for the city to be encircled by Russian ground forces and for these troops to prepare an additional layer of encirclement with the establishment of artillery fire control around the village against the backdrop of FAB glide bombs directly into “enemy centers of resistance.”

It is said that both Ukraine and Russia “have created formidable defensive zones with mines, trenches, strong points, and anti-tank obstacles,” as such “no man’s lands.” Ukrainian and Russian commanders do “face the problem of World War I on the Western front.” To achieve victory, however, Russians have simply figured out a way to get around or ring around Ukrainians rather than “to break through” their defensive zones.[1]

While Russia has restored maneuver to the battlefields in eastern Donetsk, the introduction of an FPV drone enclosure to prepare for Russian ground forces to encircle a village like Kurakhove appears to be a new tactic for this maneuver.

The subject of encirclements with drones is a scientific topic within the study of unmanned aerial vehicles but for the tactic to be deployed in this sequentially layered fashion before the introduction of Russian grounds forces for the encirclement of villages like Kurakhove the Russians, there appears to be no solid precedent from the preceding series of encirclements. In contrast with Syledove, the Russians do not appear to have established an FPV drone enclosure. If it is the case that this is a new tactic, Russia’s deployment of FPV drones to create an enclosure is a new development in the integration of combined arms warfare.

The deployment of a sequentially layered fashion of encirclement with FPV drones discounts theories of attritional warfare that tend to place an oversized, unscalable, or perpetually definite weight towards a single arm in combined arms warfare. Many OSINT bloggers, for instance, have sought to argue on the basis of extremely far-reaching conclusions about Russia’s stockpile of Soviet-era arsenals of artillery, mortars or multiple rocket launch systems that Russia could only be expected to come belly up, should Ukraine continue to destroy these arsenals. Russia’s shift towards encirclements after the restoration of maneuver before the creation of a layered fashion of encirclement with FPV drone enclosures shifts the scales in these theories towards sizable, scalable or perpetually indefinite weights in combined arms warfare.

Russia’s deployment of a sequentially layered encirclement with the creation of an FPV-drone enclosure as a first layer comes at time when the Kyiv Independent seeks to advance the claim that Russia’s drone warfare has “grounded in harsh realities.” During the course of Russia’s encirclement of Kurakhove, however, the Russians did not appear “to show the cracks in Russia’s war machine.” In at least one video published by Military Summary on October 7th, the footage from from 10:43 to 14:51 indicates that Russia is able to field one FPV drone after another in an endless chain. Given the fact that more than two weeks have passed since October 7th, Russia’s creation of an FPV drone enclosure around Kurakhove undermines the Kyiv Independent‘s claims.

The U.S.-led NATO coalition is desperately seeking to prop up Zelensky’s failed regime, its disastrously unsuccessful promotion of Syrsky to the rank of general after the failed Kursk operation, or Ukraine’s decimated economy with more and more sums of money. Only recently the United States, whose foreign policy aim is not for a Ukrainian victory but the degradation of Russia’s military might, advanced a new aid package worth $400 million dollars with absolutely no strings attached to results. In entirely muted reviews of Ukrainian aid packages, neither the Council on Foreign Relations[2] nor the Center for Strategic and International Studies[3] have said a word about Ukraine’s lack of success on the battlefield, choosing to remain silent rather than dare to question America’s wasteful expenditure of more than $175 billion on a forlorn war.

References

[1] – [“Three Futures for Ukraine: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 2nd, 2024]

[2] – [“How Much U.S. Aid Going to Ukraine,” Council on Foreign Relations, September 27th, 2024]

[3] – [“The Past, Present, and Future of U.S. Assistance to Ukraine: A Deep Dive into the Data,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 26th, 2024]