Videos of drones dogfighting were rare to see even a few months ago — but now they're posted regularly, signaling a new front in the drone wars in the skies over Ukraine.
Explosive FPV drones are downing expensive fixed-wing Russian surveillance drones, depriving Russia of essential battlefield-monitoring and strike-targeting capability.
In a new video, the civilian drone organization Wild Hornets shows off what it says are some of the more than 100 Russian unmanned aerial vehicles that its newly modified drones have taken down.
Scripps News' Jason Bellini asked "Ajax," the deputy commander of the Achilles drone company of Ukraine's 92nd assault Brigade, whether such UAV missions are now as common as the videos suggest.
"Yes, it's true," Ajax said. "Right now, we are started to hitting the enemy's UAVs such as [the models] Orlan, Zala, Supercam."
But Ajax said he couldn't share more details about how exactly Ukraine's military targets Russian drones.
"Right now it's a period when we do not want to give this knowledge to the enemy that he could use the same tactics."
Russian military bloggers are posting videos purporting to show their side's drone pilots attacking Ukrainian UAVs, such as the night vision equipped quad copters used to drop bombs on enemy positions in the dead of night.
The techniques of drone dogfighting appear to be varied and evolving. In one video, a drone uses a stick in an attempt to foul a fixed wing UAV's propellers.
The commonly used exploding FPV drones, whose pilots wear video goggles as they chase moving objects, are also pursuing Russian helicopters with some apparent success.
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It's frequently said in Ukraine that this is a war of engineers. Over recent months, Scripps News has reported extensively on how using small drones engineered to kill has been brought to scale at breakneck pace. With drones now engaging in aerial combat, the war is moving further and faster into the future.
