How Ukraine volunteers down Russia drones with pick-up trucks and WWII guns

SUMY OBLAST, Ukraine — Thousands of Ukrainian civilian volunteers recently ventured into Ukraine’s countryside in the dead of night loaded with World War II-era guns and pick-up trucks to go hunting — for Russian drones. 

While the set-up seemed rudimentary — circa-1939 Browning anti-tank guns strapped to hand-me-down trucks — the Ukrainian Territory Defense volunteers were helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces achieve their more than 93% success rate downing drones.

The combination of old and new is a common theme seen throughout the more than three-year-long war between Ukraine and its invading neighbor — and military experts say the situation exemplifies what we can expect in a new age of modern warfare.

The drones can come from miles away, sometimes taking hours to reach even the northernmost parts of Ukraine. Sitting in a bunker and waiting for a potentially devastating drone to head your way is an eerie feeling — second only to doing the same thing outside the concrete bunker in the open countryside.

Suddenly, the commander of the unit got a call: Russia launched its first round of drones that night, and they would be flying across the Ukrainian border to our region in 45 minutes. The defenders grabbed their gear and wound through the spider web of trench lines, headed for an M2 Browning anti-tank rifle mounted in the bed of a pickup.

Introduced in 1939 and employed against Nazi tanks in World War II, the M2 is now used by the Ukrainians to take out drones at night thanks to its firing range. While a standard military rifle can reach distances of 325 to 660 yards, the M2 can hit targets as far as 2,200 yards.

“It was developed as a trench machine gun, it was not supposed to take on air targets,” the unit’s commander said.

But the Ukrainian units do what they can with what they have.

The Browning’s bullets are not cheap. So to save money, a Ukrainian engineer and professor has developed a training platform to teach troops how to shoot down drones using virtual-reality headsets.

The drones themselves are relatively flimsy and small, so in close-quarter situations, troops reach for shotguns instead because the pellets’ spray pattern helps ensure the target is hit. But for these volunteers, the further away they can down a drone and leave less to chance, the better.

A drone that costs around $1,000 can produce $500,000 in damage.

Ukraine will soon rely on much more advanced warfare to down drones, with Kyiv announcing last week that it had introduced one of the world’s first laser anti-aircraft weapons designed to eliminate low-altitude targets such as drones.

As the Ukrainian unit waited for the unmistakable sound of a buzzing drone, flashes from Russia glide bombs lit up the night sky before their impact’s roaring boom could be heard. As one does with thunder, the defenders counted the seconds between the flash and boom to calculate about how far away the munition fell.

But the volunteers don’t even flinch when such powerful strikes hit, partially because many Ukrainians have become numb to the sound of explosions after three years of war. More importantly, they cannot let themselves be distracted from the difficult mission at hand.

Acute attention to the environment is essential to downing incoming drones. Some drones can be flown so low that they cannot be picked up on radar, so the Ukrainians must rely on their ears and night-vision cameras to thwart them.

“Low-altitude drone threats become increasingly prevalent in modern warfare,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a recent assessment of the Ukraine war.

Ukrainians have shot down more than 30,000 Russia-launched, Iranian-made drones since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion began Feb. 24, 2022. Ukrainian air forces have multiple methods of air-defense aside from the volunteer units, and electronic warfare technology such as jamming systems have saved countless lives.

In many places in Ukraine — especially Sumy — it is impossible to use GPS to go anywhere because of the jamming technology. Switching to a paper map is one way to avoid annihilation.

Often, Ukrainians will jam the GPS systems to make it appear as if the viewer has suddenly been transported to Moscow. While on the battlefield, a Post reporter’s cell phone falsely indicated she was in Kursk, Russia.

As glide bombs continued to fall in the horizon, a humming sound — like that of a distant lawnmower — cut through. A drone was on its way to Sumy, flying at roughly 110 mph.

A Ukrainian volunteer sniper manned the M2, pointing it toward the growing sound. A screen about the size of an iPad mounted to the gun offered a blurry, night-vision view of the sky.

Luckily, a nearby unit spotted the drone, and the red dots of flying M2 bullets from another position’s gun stopped the buzzing sounds. The defenders then headed back to their trench to wait for the next volley of drones, a back-and-forth routine they continue for roughly nine hours each night.

In the morning, they get as much sleep as they can before heading out to their day jobs as lawyers, office workers and retailers, then return to the countryside trenches at dusk for more air defense.

“This is my home,” said a volunteer with whom The Post embedded. “Who wouldn’t defend their homeland?”