The little Ukrainian kamikaze drone ended its service life pretty much as its creators had hoped and planned it would – in a suicide attack against the thin rear armor of a Russian T-72 tank operating in the eastern Kharkiv sector in late November.
A Defense Ministry spokesman said on Dec. 16 that drone production is one of Ukraine’s great military success stories, with the count of UAVs manufactured by state-run, commercial and grass-roots manufacturers on track to top the 1.3 million mark by year’s end.
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Kyiv Post traced the life cycle of one particular drone from its conception, financing, construction, testing, deployment and its final use in combat.
It was a generic quadcopter with a 25-centimeter (10-inch) frame designed to carry the warhead from an RPG round or a similarly sized explosive charge.
Every day during the ongoing war in Ukraine hundreds of almost identical first person view (FPV) drones are expended in strike missions against Russian troops and their combat equipment across the more than 1,000 kilometer (625 mile) front line. Most field operators say only one in three or four successfully hit the target.
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Almost without exception soldiers on both sides, rate a drone carrying an explosive and piloted by a skilled operator looking for a kill as the most feared weapon on Ukraine’s battlefields.
The Ukrainian army is the first military in history to organize drone users into a specific professional branch of its forces alongside the infantry, artillery or armored units. When a large Russian army attack begins and the Ukrainians are ready for it (which is not always true), its drones circle the area of engagement like hawks ready to take a turn at swooping onto a target.
In order to feed the inexhaustible demand for drones, Ukraine churns out hundreds of them every day in shops, garages, mini-factories and even individual apartments across the country. There is no central planning. Some combat units manufacture their own drones. Sometimes drone operators raise funds through appeals to the general public on social media. Civic action groups gather money and hand it over to other civic action groups that build drones. Every once in a while, people decide the best way they can contribute to the war effort is to build some drones themselves.
“Our” kamikaze drone that hit the Russian tank in Kharkiv region came into being thanks to its own unique mix of volunteers and financing, just like every other Ukrainian drone. One human that Kyiv Post verified as being directly involved in bringing it into existence was “Sean” – a pseudonym – a London-based IT professional.
Sean said he was politically active and opposed to what he considered the British government’s lukewarm support to the Ukrainian defense effort against Russia. An active social media user, he works as a volunteer gathering donations and materials for delivery to Ukraine. By 2024 he – along with most Ukrainian frontline soldiers – decided battles in this war are mostly won or lost by the number of FPV drones in Ukrainian army hands. In his spare time he runs a large online chat group called UADroneGroup which discusses how they can get the maximum numbers to where it is needed.
“You really can’t say how many people are involved in all this,” he said. “Because for everyone you see posting or asking a question or getting a donation or whatever, there are many more that are helping.”
This summer, Kyiv businessman Andrey Timofeiuk surfaced on the chat group Sean and several others were running. An energetic man with an excellent sales pitch, Timofeiuk had been doing volunteer work since the start of the war. He and some buddies decided to try and manufacture some FPV drones, partly because they knew that is what soldiers at the front needed the most, but also just to see if they could do it.
A member of Timofeiuk’s team Vladislav Shevchenko was even by the standards of Ukrainian wartime patriotism under no real moral obligation to bother with volunteer work. He had already lost part of his right leg in combat fighting as an infantryman. The invalided serviceman was employed at a state defense manufacturing firm to support a wife and four children but decided to make better use of his spare time.
Shevchenko told us that, working with another skilled assembler, the two-man team can put together a single FPV in about six hours.
Timofeiuk said that volunteers have created drone assembly instruction videos that, if followed diligently, can turn even the least technically-inclined individual like himself into a tolerably reliable drone assembler.
Drones are tested by the receiving combat unit and if they fail the flight test, they’re thrown out. All aircraft produced by Timofeiuk’s operation - they call themselves Roof Drones - pass those tests, he said.
Another team member Vadim Ivanov, a ceramic tile importer by day, said that volunteers have set up dedicated web pages with links to manufacturers of the nine main parts that make up a standard Ukrainian FPV drone including the engine, rotor, antennae and electronics. Many components (but not all) are sourced from and ordered via “AliBaba.” The parts are normally received in Ukraine within about two weeks having normally been routed through the Baltic region by air, he said.
The initial problem for the Ivanov and Roof Drones logistics was to figure out who to give the drones to and how to do it. That involved intensive messaging exchanges and networking as previously unknown drone manufacturers have to prove themselves to the end user.
One drone from the first batch - serial number D05 - went to a Polish volunteer flying drones with Ukrainian front line units. As part of their initial logistic test, UADroneGroup found the funds needed to pay for that single quadcopter – around $350.
That volunteer, call sign “Gypsy,” confirmed that drone D05 met the necessary standard and flew it on a successful combat mission during the Summer. A foreign volunteer to the Ukrainian military at the start of the war, by mid-2024 she had flown strike operations on practically every sector of the front, and had developed extensive networks with volunteer groups building and pushing FPV drones to frontline operators.
On the strength of her confirmation, Sean’s UADroneGroup sought out funding for Timofeiuk’s Roof Drone team to build another ten drones (D011-D020), and as guided by Gypsy sent them to the 13th National Guard Brigade Khartiya, a Kharkiv-raised formation with an excellent fighting reputation.
In due course two members of one of Khartiya’s reconnaissance platoons published a public appeal that said: “Please donate money so Roof Drone can build us more drones to crash into the Russians.”
That production run was completed in October and the ten drones were delivered to Khartiya’s recon men by Ukraine’s Nova Poshta delivery service, a DHL-like courier company renowned in Ukraine for efficiency and low cost. The aircraft left the manufacturers and reached the combat unit overnight, Ivanov said.
On Nov. 29 Timofeiuk was at an evening gathering of mostly young Kyivites relaxing at the end of the working week. Music was loud and the war featured little in discussions among the crowd. Partway through the evening a power outage shut off the lights and killed the music.
Timofeiuk’s phone chimed - a text message, sent by Khartiya. He read it, whooped, read it again, and then showed the video to everyone he could. People cheered. A grainy black-and-white video, which Kyiv Post has seen, showed an FPV drone dropping to low altitude, taking aim and then flying into the rear end of a T-72 tank. Afterwards Gypsy confirmed the video was authentic and took place in the north-eastern Kharkiv sector. Whether or not the T-72 was totally taken out wasn’t clear, but it looked like a good engine compartment hit.
Gypsy said she was now involved in fixed-wing drone operations which, she predicted will be the next big technology jump in drone warfare in Ukraine.
Sean told us his next goal is to get 3D printers that will allow more drone parts to be machined in Ukraine. Despite the success of the drones he and his group have helped provide, he said he still has “imposter syndrome.”
“That drone cost about $330 to make, and it took out a tank that cost, what, $1.5 million dollars?” Timofeiuk said. “You should show that video to Trump and the Americans. They can cut us off from their weapons if they want. We can build drones without anyone’s help.”
Roof Drone’s batch D021-D030 was sent to Khartiya earlier this month with the next batch in production for delivery in January, Timofeiuk said.
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