Just how effective are FPV kamikaze drones, specifically as tank killers? The narrative of the $400 home-made weapon defeating the multi-million dollar armored monster is appealing, and videos of FPVs turning Russian tanks into fireballs look spectacular, are these really representative of how well they actually work? The argument rages between those saying FPVs make tanks obsolete and others who think FPVs are TikTok warriors which look good on social media but have little real significance.
Distorting The Picture
“Availability bias” is a well-known effect in psychology. Simply put, we overestimate the significance of what we can readily see. FPV strikes are always captured on video, and not just the first-person-view from the drone itself.
FPVs operators invariably work in a team with a spotter drone to finds targets and record the success of each strike. Because the FPV video cuts out just before the drone hits, the operator cannot tell whether they destroyed the target, damaged it, or whether their drone was a dud. So every strike is recorded by the spotter drone to the team so know whether followup attacks are needed.
Sudoplatov, a Russian volunteer group, supplies FPV drones to soldiers on the condition that they send video of the FPVs performance. Sudoplatov can learn about any problems are encountered and what tactics work; it also ensures a steady stream of kill videos for their Telegram feed.
The seeming success of FPVs reminds some military analysts of the first large-scale use of portable guided anti-tank weapons, when Egypt deployed AT-3 Saggers against Israeli armor in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. At the time, some commentators jumped to the conclusion that the tank was finished. But new tactics – smokescreens, maneuvering, suppressive fire — reduced the missile threat to a significant but manageable problem. The Sagger was not a major factor in the end, being responsible for less than 25% of tank kills .
Critics like Jack Watling of the thinktank RUSI note that FPVs may not be able to fly in bad weather, are vulnerable to jamming, and cannot be flown in the dark when much fighting takes place – though this may change as new FPVs with thermal imaging are fielded.
While we see lots of FPV hits online, but we do not see all the misses or the cases where they were jammed, crashed or failed. Different sources give different accounts of the hit and kill rates for FPVs, ranging for 50% or more for elite units to a low of 10% for ordinary operators. This makes the FPV is less of a superweapon.
Other anti-tank weapons are less likely to have their success recorded, because they do not always have a friendly drone watching their work. And there are a lot of them.
Ukraine’s Anti-Armor Arsenal
Ukraine has a lot of anti-tank weapons.
The U.S. along has supplied Ukraine with more than 7,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles; makers Lockheed Martin
LMT
Allies have also supplied thousands of smaller shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, including AT-4s from Sweden and NLAWs from the UK, plus thousands of Russian-made RPGs. The U.S. also dipped into its stockpiles of older weapons to give Ukraine older TOW missiles.
The Pentagon states that Ukraine received “nearly 250,000 anti-tank munitions” to the end of November 2023.
Ukraine has its own anti-tank weapons. The locally-made Stugna-P guided missile has been notably effective, but again this perception may be because videos of so many engagements are shown online because they are easy to record.
There are also weapons whose effects we never see. The U.S. had sent over 1,100 Phoenix Ghost and anti-armor loitering munitions, plus an unknown number of SwitchBlade 600s. Operational security means no videos have ever been released of these weapons in action.
Guided weapons may not even be the biggest tank killers. In the early stages of the Russian invasion, Russian armored attacks were broken up by Ukrainian heavy artillery – made more lethal by drone spotters able to direct shells on to targets – and this was more significant than guided missiles, according to UK thinktank RUSI.
There are also the tanks. By July last year, Ukraine was estimated to have some 1,500 tanks in service. The heavy armor and big gun of a main battle tank are designed specifically to overmatching enemy tanks in direct combat. Not only Ukraine’s original armored force, but now imported German Leopards, UK Challengers and American M1 Abrams tanks are dueling against their Russian counterparts. And they are using new tactics, like drone-guided indirect fire, to take out the opposition from long range.
Lighter armored vehicles like Ukraine’s Bradleys have also famously proved capable of taking on Russian tanks, even when they only have a 25mm cannon.
Unconventional Means Of Destruction
We should also remember that FPVs are not the only drones. Even small Mavic-type quadcopters can stalk and destroy tanks with sufficient persistence. But Ukraine’s Army of Drones includes several heavier types capable of destroying tanks, in particular the night-flying R-18 ‘Baba Yaga’ and a bewildering variety of heavy multicopter bombers – some of which are big enough to drop anti-tank mines on tanks.
While some of these drone bombing attacks are shared on social media, the target cannot easily be identified, and unless the result is a catastrophic explosion it is hard to determine if it has been destroyed. So although these bombers are being deployed in much larger numbers than previously, it is hard to gauge their effectiveness.
Finally, there is the old-fashioned anti-tank mine. Deployed in vast numbers by both sides, , and have caused heavy casualties during attacks. In addition to the big TM-62, Ukraine also has smaller mines, some of which can be laid by drones to fill in gaps previously made through minefields. While anti-tank mines are more likely to blow off a wheel or track than to destroy a tank, the larger TM-62 can penetrate the hull and kill the crew.
Given this varied array of anti-tank weapons – guided missiles, unguided anti-tank rockets, artillery, tanks, drones and mines as well as FPVs – it seems unlikely that the FPVs will have a significant impact. Like the AT3 Saggers in 1973 their effectiveness may be more perceived than real.
However, unlike in 1973, in this conflict we have a small army of OSINT analysts searching out, picking over, and filing images of every destroyed vehicle. Some analysts like Andrew Perpetua also note the cause of destruction including FPV kills. By assembling data from several sources we can get some idea of how much damage FPVs are actually doing to Russian tanks.
And the results, discussed in Part 2 tomorrow, hold some surprises.
