Russia has ramped up the use of plywood drones and is now using “cheap and economical DIY” unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide reconnaissance on the battlefield.
That is according to a Ukrainian spy official who said Putin’s forces have resorted to plywood and foam-based plastic vehicles kitted with Ukrainian SIM cards to identify air defences, film damage, and act as decoys—kamikaze missions that identify Ukrainian positions.
“They identify where our mobile groups are positioned (using 4G and 5G) and where our machine guns are so they can destroy them,” according to Anthony Cherniak, a military spy agency spokesperson who spoke to Reuters last week: “They’re trying to picture where our defences are.”
Mr Cherniak said the drones, which closely resemble Iranian-designed Shahed drones – which detonate on impact – are cheap to produce (about US $10,000 per drone) and, despite not carrying explosives, are “virtually indistinguishable” from more expensive attack drones. “This is creating headaches for commanders in the battlefield, with the attacks revealing Ukraine’s air defence systems,” a spy official told Reuters.
“The drones can fly at an altitude of 1,000 metres (or 3,000 feet), putting them out of range of machine guns and rifles,” Mr Cherniak said.
Russia has been trialling Chinese plywood in drones for over a year.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has served as a testing ground for new and emerging drone warfare technology, with Wood Central revealing in October that volunteers using Chinese plywood to assemble drones and transport them to Russian soldiers to attack cities.
At the time, Wood Central exclusively revealed that plywood-framed drones could reduce the cost of drone manufacturing by 10-15% and have the potential to scale up production to meet repaid deployment if approved by the Russian government.
The advantage of the design is “its ease in making different size frames for different applications,” according to a Russian source. “For example, 5-inch frames are suitable for training, 6-inch for reconnaissance, 7-inch for kamikaze and 9-inch for bomber.”
A computer-controlled router is used to cut the drone frames out of 9mm thick plywood, with a laser cutter cutting parts out of thinner plywood. The frame is assembled with drone fitments: four motors and propellers, an ELRS receiver, a flight controller stack, a camera and video transmitter, an antenna, and a battery.
“Keep in mind that turning 500 frames into drones would require about US $200,000 worth of components,” the source said. “In a poor and corrupt country like Russia, it’s unclear how this would work out.”
- To learn more about how China is helping Russia produce plywood drones for the Ukraine war, click on Wood Central’s special feature.
