Ukrainian soldiers are out cutting and snapping any fiber-optic drone cables they come across, regardless of which side they belong to. They use scissors, knives, even their bare hands.
Troops say it doesn’t matter if a drone is Ukrainian or Russian. If they’re not sure, they just assume it’s hostile.
These unjammable drones controlled by long, thin cables have flooded the battlefield as a countermeasure to the electronic warfare that often renders radio-frequency drones inoperable.
As these drones have become increasingly prolific, the result has been forests and trenches snarled with discarded and active cables.
Francisco Richart/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Dimko Zhluktenko, an analyst with Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said that he always carries scissors so that he can “cut each and every optic fiber that we see.”
He said that his unit “actually stopped considering them friendly or foe. We think that all of them are kind of the enemy drones.”
In a YouTube video about the gear he carries, Zhluktenko said scissors became so essential that when his unit started operating in areas littered with fiber-optic cables, every team member was required to carry a pair. He said that he bought retractors for his team so no one would lose them.
Dimko Zhluktenko
A Ukrainian soldier who spoke with Business Insider on the condition of anonymity said troops can often break the thin strands with their hands; that isn’t often necessary, though. Soldiers in his unit already carry scissors for medical purposes. Many also have knives.
He said that there can be so many cables about on the battlefield that “you don’t know if it’s a new thread or if it’s an old one that’s been lying around for a long time.” So his unit severs any they find as often as possible.
Not just fiber-optic cables
Other similar behaviors have been observed on the battlefield.
There are sometimes so many drones in the sky that soldiers looking up from the ground can’t even begin to tell which is friendly and which is hostile. In such cases, soldiers can be ordered to shoot down any drone they see.
Soldiers in charge of electronic warfare systems sometimes panic and jam everything in the air when they can’t tell drones apart, Zhluktenko previously told Business Insider.
Viktor Fridshon/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Zhluktenko told Business Insider that cutting the fiber-optic cables is not something that he had to do often, as his unit was typically working in areas further from the front-line fighting that had fewer of the fiber-optic drones. He described it as something that they “sometimes” encountered.
Soldiers in Ukraine’s 15th Mobile Border Detachment “Steel Border” previously said in a video for Ukraine’s state border service that using scissors is a reliable way to disable the Russian drones. Russian soldiers have reportedly done the same.
If the cable is intact on an active and operational drone, the only other way to stop it is to physically shoot it (troops say a shotgun works best); that requires a mix of skill and luck, though.
Fiber-optic drones are a relatively new feature in this war that have not previously been fielded at this scale. That these drones can be disabled with simple tools — scissors, knives, bare hands — underscores a broader pattern in Ukraine: sophisticated systems are often countered with low-tech fixes.
In many cases, some of the most effective counters to advanced technology have been older or improvised combat tools — from shotguns used against small drones to nets draped over vehicles and positions to blunt aerial attacks. Even the drones themselves are cheap innovations designed to overcome more expensive equipment and wartime demands.
