KYIV, Ukraine — The front line in the Russia-Ukraine war stretches the entire length of this country, from north to south. It has barely budged in four years and is sometimes compared to the static, deadlocked, trench warfare of World War I.
Yet straddling this front line is the kill zone, dominated by constantly evolving drone technology that's defining this conflict — and the future of warfare.
"This kill zone is a belt of territory which is full of Russian drones, Russian mines and also artillery. It's nonstop reconnaissance and surveillance," said Ukraine's Sr. Lt. Taras Myshak, the spokesman for Ukraine's 59th Separate Assault Brigade. He spoke with NPR on Zoom, just a few miles from the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has a similar arsenal threatening the Russian forces that are dug in on the other side of the line.
The most important thing to know about the kill zone is that any sign of movement — just sticking your head out of a foxhole for fresh air — can get you noticed, and attacked, by the drones constantly buzzing overhead.
Myshak says even routine movements, like rotating troops in and out of this zone, is a nightmare.
"Not far from where we are talking today, we have a group that moved through the kill zone, and they will walk four hours just to go 1 kilometer," he said. "Because all the time they hear the drone, and they have to hide and wait. Then the drone passes, and they can move."
Nightfall doesn't make it any safer to move because the drones have thermal cameras that detect body heat and make it even harder to hide.
"In the night, it's even more dangerous," he said.
A front line that barely budges
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, it advanced rapidly in conventional fashion with large columns of troops in armored vehicles. Later that fall, Ukraine's counteroffensive drove the Russians back in some places.
Since then, the two armies have settled in, and the front line has moved only incrementally, mostly with limited gains by Russia. This line now stretches more than 700 miles. On either side of the line, the kill zone is a band roughly 10 to 20 miles wide and dominated by drones.
"The kill zone is basically a product of drone warfare," said Rob Lee, a U.S. Marine veteran who now lives in Ukraine and monitors the war for the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia.
Because Ukraine has far fewer troops and relies heavily on drones, it has a remarkably small presence on the front line.
Lee said that in many places, Ukraine has fewer than 10 soldiers per mile, in small groups, spaced out hundreds of yards apart.
"Those infantrymen are maybe two positions where it's two to four people," said Lee. "They're underground for the most part. They're trying to remain hidden."
These troops are not really trying to hold back advancing Russian soldiers, he added. They act more as spotters, relaying Russian movements to Ukrainian drone operators behind the front lines, who then track down the Russian intruders from the air.
Lee says the front line is so saturated with drones that it's virtually impossible for either side to pull together a large ground force without being detected and drawing fire.
Military vehicles like tanks and armored personnel carriers are even easier to spot and attack.
"Because of such a high density of drones, it became very difficult to bring vehicles near the front line at all," he said.
Neither army planned to fight this way.
Ukraine had no real drone industry at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the country will make 10 million this year.
Russia has ramped up its own drone production. It's expected to make more than 7 million this year, including jet-powered aircraft that are often evading Ukraine's defenses.
Starting from scratch
When Dima Putiata joined Ukraine's military four years ago, he knew nothing about drones and didn't think this was a manly way to wage war.
"When I saw that we have drones, I was not smart enough. I said, 'No, we don't need to have it. Let's fight like men.' I was a little bit maybe romantic in this way," said Putiata.
In addition to skeptics like Putiata, few Ukrainian troops were trained to use these new weapons.
"No one had drone operators," he recalled. "It's just, 'Oh, you're a driver? You can use it.' Or, 'Oh, can I use a drone? You can try.'"
By the time he left the military in May, Putiata, a sergeant, was commanding 26 drone crews in and around the kill zone in northeastern Ukraine.
Both sides have rapidly embraced the technology even if they don't know where it's headed next, he said.
"They understand how to use it here and right now, maybe not really understanding how to use it in the future," he noted. "My point is, you just need to keep going and adapting."
Recognizing the role of drones
Two years ago, Ukraine became the first country to establish drones as an independent branch of its military.
This innovation now includes the widespread use of ground drones, which look like trollies and perform a wide range of tasks that have become too dangerous for troops.
The robots deliver food, medicine and ammunition to the front line. The robots can be loaded with machine guns that now carry out regular attacks.
The ground robots are also being used to evacuate wounded soldiers from the kill zone. But drone operators and combat medics have separate skills, and it turns out you need both.
"The drone operator doesn't know how to properly evacuate a wounded soldier, and the medic doesn't know how to operate a ground robot," said Lyuba Shipovich, a Ukrainian American who heads a private group, Dignitas, that trains troops on drones.
"So now we're trying to create combined program that will train both the medic and the robot operator," she said.
Media coverage tends to focus on long-range airstrikes that Russia and Ukraine are inflicting deep inside each other's territory.
But the vast majority of the fighting is in the kill zone, with drones now responsible for 80% of all casualties, according to Rob Lee and other military analysts.
Dima Putiata, the former Ukrainian soldier, says what started in this war has already spread to other conflicts.
"With drones, this is the cheapest flying munition that can be massively produced. You can destroy a lot of stuff," he said. "It's much cheaper than it used to be to have a war, unfortunately."
A kind of war, he predicts, that the world will see more often.
NPR's Hanna Palamarenko contributed to this story.
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