[Jimbuna]

Stark warning to Ukraine’s drone army as Putin plans summer advance

Soviet Su-34 bombers, tanks and even oil refineries deep inside Russia – all is fair game for Ukraine’s army of drones. Outgunned from the start of the invasion – and with artillery rounds held up in the US Congress - Ukraine is having to rely on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Used to track enemy soldiers, guide artillery and even strike targets, now almost every fighting brigade has an assault drone company, while most units own small reconnaissance drones.

So much so that in early February, president Volodymyr Zelensky announced the creation of a separate branch of the Ukrainian Armed Forces devoted to drones. As the momentum on the battlefield is shifting in Russia’s favour, there are fears that Ukraine would not be able to hold up a ground offensive in the northeast this summer.

Dr Jack Watling told Metro.co.uk that Ukraine could not use their UAVs to make up for the shortage in ammunition. ‘Ukraine is actually in a reasonably good place when it comes to its UAV industry domestically and those that are being supplied,’ RUSI’s senior research fellow for land warfare said. ‘There is a mature workstream. We know what UAVs are required – ISR UAVs able to penetrate into operational depth; but not the Ukraine-manufactured Leleka'

‘That class of UAV, and then obviously Ukraine has an ongoing requirement for FPVs, which is exaggerated because of the shortage of artillery.’ He added: ‘The real challenge should be growing the military. It is not a shortage of UAVs, but a shortage of ammunitions. That has to be the priority'

About 18 miles from the border, Kharkiv – the second largest city in Ukraine – has become a primary target for the Kremlin. Zelensky said that this week almost a quarter of it had been destroyed in Russian strikes. He accused the enemy of seeking to reduce Kharkiv – which was home to more than 2 million people before the war – to rubble, clearing the way for its troops to advance. Dr Watling said there are two trajectories of where the war is going, depending on military aid from the US

Addressing where he sees the conflict going in the coming weeks and months, he said: ‘There are two future trajectories of the conflict. One of them is that the Russian offensive is blunted because Ukraine’s army is able to deploy its defences properly and has been supplied with enough ammunition. This would allow them to stop Russians from making significant gains. Ukraine uses the time this buys them to sort out the mobilisation law that was just passed'

‘We help them develop training pipelines, so that they can start generating new units of action.’ Dr Watling said this was the ‘optimistic trajectory’, but a more bleak scenario is on the cards unless the US Congress lifts the embargo on military aid. He warned Ukraine is ‘perilously close’ to running out of ammunition, adding: ‘The pessimistic trajectory is that Russians make significant gains with their offensive'

‘Meanwhile, Ukraine’s allies in Nato start to feel like they can change the timeline, but not the trajectory of the conflict and therefore begin to prioritise rearming themselves. Then there is a significant reduction in international aid, and there is more and more pressure on Ukraine’s armed forces. Russians are able to start working on their own objectives, which is to force capitulation in 2025. So, we have a huge amount of agency in determining which way the war goes. We are running perilously close to putting Ukrainians in a position where they run out of ammunition'
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