"Fuck! Fuck! Shit! He took out my second drone!"
In the trenches of a reserve position, inside an emplacement concealed beneath camouflage netting, an English-speaking soldier leaped to his feet. He snatched off his FPV goggles, holding the controller in one hand and the goggles in the other, shouting, cursing, and hopping around in agitation.
Drone operators could be attached down to the company or platoon level to support frontline infantry operations, but the majority of drones were still operated in concentrated groups.
In the past, there had been dedicated radar vehicles or control trucks belonging to specialized drone warfare units. Now, however, with the rapid miniaturization and widespread commercial availability of civilian drones, the vast majority of drones on the battlefield were actually modified commercial models.
Here at this position, all the drones were conversions of civilian gear, and grouping skilled drone operators together made command and control far easier.
There were at least ten operators stationed here, covering an enormous sector and controlling no fewer than thirty drones.
Not every drone had video recording capabilities, but this time, the soldier holding the controller had recorded the drone's final feed.
A suicide drone's feed inevitably went black upon impact, but whether a drone was shot down mid-flight or hit its target was an unmistakable difference.
The footage was crystal clear: the screen had gone black while the drone was still at least ten meters away from its target.
FPV drones, however, typically used FPV goggles—a head-mounted display—meaning only the pilot himself could see the feed; onlookers could not.
"Hahaha—"
"You're one unlucky bastard."
Laughter rippled across the position, though without any real malice.
It could hardly be called a mistake on his part; you could only say the chosen target had been exceedingly lucky. After all, shooting down a drone with small arms was something witnessed from time to time, not an unheard-of anomaly.
Still, for a single pilot to lose two drones in a row was undeniably embarrassing.
It was terrible luck—or rather, the prey under attack was extraordinarily fortunate.
Drone operators typically saw themselves as hunters, selecting their quarry on the battlefield.
For an unlucky pilot to have a drone shot down by his target was no big deal, but losing two in succession was downright humiliating.
The pilot looked utterly incredulous. Clutching his controller, he fumed with deep grievance, "Two in a row! This guy is something else! He shot down my first drone, so I dropped altitude, flew nap-of-the-earth at over eighty kilometers an hour, and he still shot it down—"
The operators at this position included both Ukrainians and foreigners, but what they all shared was their youth.
When a new toy came along, the young usually mastered it best.
Most drone operators were young men, and young men rarely minced their words.
"You crashed it yourself, didn't you? Someone shooting down two drones in a row? Are you crazy or am I?"
An arrogant-sounding American spoke up. He was an FPV pilot as well, and easily the most skilled of the only four FPV operators present.
He had kept his FPV goggles on because he was still flying his own drone.
"What's the bearing? I'll go take him out."
Without an instant's hesitation, the flustered pilot blurted out, "Sector A4. I marked it on the digital map. Four guys."
Each operator was assigned a specific sector to control, but when coordination was required—for instance, if heavy armor appeared on the ground—they would send multiple drones in together to attack.
With two drones patrolling this designated sector lost, now was the time to coordinate.
Powering up, an FPV drone resting on the ground shot skyward, streaking across the position at high speed.
Looking down from the drone's aerial perspective, the terrain below was laid bare.
Ignoring the grunts in the trenches, it flew straight toward the target area.
"There are four of them. Two are carrying a stretcher with a wounded guy on it, and the guy following behind shot down a drone flying flat and low. No, wait, he took out my first drone, and immediately after that he took out the second. I didn't crash!"
"Yeah, yeah, I hear you. You didn't crash; you got shot down. Buddy, you might as well just say you had a flyaway."
He clearly didn't believe a word of it, though he shouldn't have been so blatant about saying it.
Target acquired. Less than two minutes into flight, traversing roughly three kilometers of the defensive sector, the four figures moving briskly through the trench quickly came into view.
"Trying to evacuate a buddy? Beautiful friendship. Heh."
With a cold sneer, the pilot nosed the drone into a steep dive.
"Yahoo—fuck!"
The pilot sitting in his chair jerked violently to his feet. He hadn't taken off his goggles, but his hands instinctively wrenched the controller.
"Fuck! Fuck!"
Normally, a round of chuckles would have ended it. Crashing was hardly a rare occurrence, and getting shot down happened every once in a while. One pilot failing and another taking over was entirely routine.
A drone blew up, and that was that; what was there to make a fuss about?
"My drone got shot down!"
The pilot whipped his head around in panic before realizing he still had his FPV goggles on. He ripped them off, his face plastered with bewilderment. "An infantryman... he just suddenly snapped around toward me, raised his gun, and my screen went black! How is that even possible?"
"I told you! I told you!"
The pilot who had lost both of his drones perked up immediately, shouting, "I told you it was shot down!"
"Bullshit! That's impossible!"
Many operators refused to believe in flukes, and even more were brimming with confidence.
Crashing three FPV drones in a row from sloppy handling was normal, but three consecutive shoot-downs by ground fire?
Out of the question.
A third pilot initiated his drone, and the craft blasted into the air.
"Sector A4, right? Four guys? Watch this."
FPV drones were relatively scarce, while standard quadcopters were far more plentiful. But since three FPV drones had already gone down, the fourth certainly couldn't be an ordinary bomber drone dropping hand grenades.
This time, the wait was slightly longer. Three minutes later, the pilot spotted the four men on the ground once more.
"Put the feed on the main monitor! Record the screen!"
Someone finally couldn't resist. Whether crashes or shoot-downs, wasting three drones in a row was something they all needed to witness together.
The drone's video feed was routed to a computer monitor, allowing everyone to see.
Four men on the ground: two carrying one, and the last bringing up the rear.
The trailing soldier cradled a gun, his head tilted constantly toward the sky. Now came the time to enjoy a game of cat and mouse.
"They stopped."
"They spotted the drone."
"They aren't even running."
"Probably scared shitless."
The operators were chatting casually, but the two who had lost their drones watched the screen with eager anticipation.
Generally speaking, infantry who realized a drone was hunting them would flee immediately, scattering in all directions. Today, however, whether these four were scared dumb, frozen in panic, or truly paralyzed with terror, no one could say.
They had actually stopped. They didn't run, nor did they hit the dirt. The two carrying the stretcher simply dropped into a crouch, and all three looked up at the sky together.
The man in the rear even raised his weapon toward the sky.
Had they really stumbled across a pack of idiots?
"Ready? Here it comes."
No need to be polite; blow them to bits and call it a day.
From an altitude of fifty meters, the drone plunged into a rapid dive, its speed topping one hundred kilometers per hour. Straight and true, with no fancy tricks, hurtling directly toward the ground to detonate.
No finesse required—just letting the ground pounders savor utter despair in their final seconds.
And then, the screen went black.
While still thirty meters out, the video transmitted back from the drone cut out completely.
"What the f—"
"Ah! It was shot down!"
"Again!"
Now there were three stunned pilots. But after cursing in shock, the third pilot snapped without hesitation, "I still have one drone left! Wait for me! Keep the feed up! No straight dives this time—I'll use evasive maneuvers!"
He was still confident, because infantry were supposed to be entirely defenseless against drones.
So it had to be a fluke. All of it had to be a fluke.
Finally, the commander spoke up.
"Hold on. We've already lost four FPV drones. We can't keep throwing away valuable assets like this. Send in the bombers."
"Sir, let me blow them up! Please, sir, I swear I'll get them this time!"
The commander hesitated, then said quietly, "Yesterday, over at a nearby position, three drones were shot down as well."
A sudden hush fell across the trench.
The commander continued, "Word came from the Strelet Battalion's operators, and everyone laughed at them. Nobody believed three drones were shot down; they all said they'd crashed them. But now... could it be—"
"Could they really have been shot down?"
"Isn't it obvious enough by now?"
"Use the bombers to finish them off. Put up multiple birds and drop together."
The bomber drone operator couldn't resist a trace of mockery, which only fueled the FPV pilot's desperation to prove himself.
"No! Wait for me, Sir! Just watch!"
"Hmm. All right. Put the feed on the monitor."
Generally, an operator controlled two drones, and this one still had one left.
They would see.
Another FPV drone launched. This one was a size larger, built to take out vehicles. Using it against infantry was somewhat wasteful, but having reached this point, waste no longer mattered.
The drone began circling, flying erratic zigzags above the four stationary figures, darting across and back three times.
Its nose could pivot at any instant. Flying straight at an enemy made it easy to hit, so he intended to exploit the FPV drone's greatest strength: sudden pivots, abrupt diving strikes.
And then, the exact moment the drone snapped into an abrupt turn, the feed went pitch-black.
This time, no one shouted.
The entire drone control post fell dead silent.
"Is that guy even human?"
Someone finally broke the silence, but nobody answered.
There was no answering. Nobody knew what to say.
All they knew was that another stunned, terrified, heartbroken, and demoralized drone operator had just joined their ranks.
Chapter 66