Олексій Дзюба War 20 February 2025, 09:00

"We expect an increase in the destruction of enemy equipment and personnel by at least three times." How the "Drone Line", initiated by Zelensky and including top Ukrainian UAV units, will work

In early February, it became known about the launch of the super project - "Drone Lines". At the first stage, it included five regiments and brigades that have proven their effectiveness on the battlefield. These are the 20th separate regiment "K-2", the 429th regiment "Achilles", the 427th regiment "RAROG", the 414th brigade "Birds of the Magyar" and the "Phoenix" regiment (the "Revenge" brigade). The initiator of the project itself was President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ministry of Defense calls such collaboration "a new standard of war, where UAVs become a key element of combat operations". We talked with the participants of the association and tell how they intend to strengthen the combat capability of the Ukrainian army in it.

Presidential initiative

"The Drone Line can really unite the best. It's very quick to act when we can be ahead of the enemy. And we will be, I'm sure of it," Volodymyr Zelenskyy says in a video announcing the Drone Line project, the initiator of the creation of which he is.

However, a week before the president, five members of the "Drone Line" had already announced their formation and opened a recruitment drive (OS).

"An unprecedented recruitment of the OS from among civilians, military personnel on transfer, military personnel in the SZCh. Trust the commanders who created their teams from scratch. These teams, as a rule, have grown from the composition of one crew to separate military units. They know their business, care about the safety of personnel and its provision," the description under the video says.

You can fill out the application form at this link . There are a lot of applications today, so sometimes you will have to wait for an answer. “You can expect to be in the Achilles regiment for up to 14 days from the moment you submit your application. Don’t be upset if you are not recruited right away,” says Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of the 429th separate Achilles unmanned systems regiment.

The new project is coordinated by the Land Forces Command, the State Border Guard Service, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation. “It will be hot,” said the head of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, who also supported the “Drone Line” in the media.

Main tasks

"We are focusing on the best UAV units. The Drone Line will scale the most effective unmanned systems in the Ground Forces and the State Border Guard Service," Defense Minister Rustem Umerov wrote on the day the project was announced by the president.

According to the minister, "infantry and UAVs will be combined into a single strike system, which in turn will allow":

— Form a killzone 10-15 km deep, where the enemy will not be able to move without losses;

— Provide constant air support and cover to the infantry;

— Detect and destroy targets before they approach our positions.

He added that "this will radically change the tactics of battle, giving Ukrainian soldiers a decisive advantage."

Regarding the affected area, in a comment to dev.ua, the K2 unit explained that this had been the case before, but not always and not everywhere there were enough resources to fully cover the strip with drones.

"The senior leadership identified those units that did this most effectively and allowed them to professionally and with powerful support cover the infantrymen in a larger area of responsibility — centrally and systematically," the regiment says.

This project is extremely important for ensuring superiority on the battlefield and preserving the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, the Ground Forces note , describing the leaders of the "Drone Line" units as follows:

The commanders of these units — the systemic commander and example for fellow Magyar (the “Birds of Magyar” brigade), the fearless tactician and master of lightning strikes Achilles (the “Achilles” regiment), the charismatic and indomitable strategist Veres (the “K-2” regiment), the aggressive and unpredictable leader Hassan (the “RAROG” regiment) — know their business, care about the safety of the fighters, massively destroy the occupiers, and master new technologies and tactics.

What will change?

We reached out to all participants in the “Drone Line.” “Birds of the Magyar” and the “Phoenix” Regiment responded that they do not provide comments to the media or provide them only after comments from senior management.

We did not receive a response from Achilles at the time of publication of this material. But in one of the last interviews, its commander Yuriy Fedorenko explained that depending on the sector of the front, UAV units work differently. "It is very important not to get stuck in a certain sector, but to understand what others are doing. Because the enemy's technological countermeasures can come to our sector," the military says.

At a certain point, he continues, when the units decided to scale up, they decided to publicly summarize a similar story. “There was a closed part where we talked about the tactics of using UAVs, and there is a public part where we reminded ourselves of ourselves and our scaling up,” Fedorenko said. He says that there is no competition between the units regarding the recruitment of personnel and there will be no competition.

"We believe that the "Drone Line" will help to more effectively control a wide area of the front, reduce the number of fire contacts between our infantry and the enemy, ensure remote and round-the-clock destruction of targets and monitoring of enemy movements, as well as speed up the response to sudden attacks and assaults," the "RAROG" regiment told dev.ua.

In connection with the launch of the project, the unit expects a significant complication of the enemy's advance and an increase in the destruction of its equipment and personnel by at least three times.

And they add that the submission of applications from recruits "has significantly increased" after the launch of the project. "They write to us on all social networks in private messages and on the recruiters' numbers. Also, people are actively filling out applications for admission to the 5 units of the "Land Forces Drone Line" and on the LobbyX platform," the "RAROG" regiment explained.

"We are united by the idea of scaling up specialized units. We will improve horizontal connections, exchange of experience, which actually existed before, but now it will have a much greater impact on what is happening at the front," dev.ua was told by K2.

Regarding expectations from the "Drone Line", the regiment says that it is to form combat-ready, maximally effective units with competent, experienced commanders and support, which, combined with trained personnel, changes the course of events .

Further development

The K2 regiment says that since they are not the founders of the initiative, they cannot talk about further expansion either, because they simply do not have such information. "At the moment, there are five units that are actively recruiting and scaling their experience with the support of the leadership."

The commander of the combined BPS unit of the 419th and 155th brigades, Andriy Onistrat, told dev.ua in a comment that he was concerned with the "Drone Line" and said that the expansion of the initiative is possible, and he laconically defines its main task as "to divide Russia." In his opinion, such a project was founded, in particular, to expand recruiting and so that it could cover most of the front.

A few weeks before the creation of the Drone Line, when the K2 Battalion became a regiment, the unit received almost 7,000 applications from those wishing to serve in it.

K2 told dev.ua that the most popular specialties in their regiment today are UAV operators, drivers, UAV masters, and sappers. “At the moment, we would like to strengthen the direction of electronic warfare operators, which can actually be those who simply know how to work with a PC at an intermediate level. We teach everything,” the unit noted.

"A drone for every makitra of the yablik. Short-term goal: to equalize the balance of "a worm arrived in the SVO/a worm left the SVO". The "Drone Line" project is starting in Ukraine. What is it and why is it here? Magyar Veres and Khasan