It looks like Ukraine’s Armed Forces found a new source of explosives. The Ukrainians are literally mining Russian minefields, repurposing recovered TM-62 anti-tank mines, and giving them back to their former owners by dropping them from drones.
This war is full of great examples of battlefield engineering, but this new strategy certainly tips the scales in terms of ironic ingenuity.
Russian defensive doctrine calls for minefields with a depth of 120 meters. In Ukraine, the Russians adjusted their doctrine and quadrupled minefield depths up to 500 meters.
In August, Oleksiy Danilov, the former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told reporters at CNN the density of Russia’s minefields was “insane.”
“On average, there are 3-4-5 mines per square meter,” Danilov said. “Imagine how difficult the work is to remove them to allow our military to move afterwards. And if earlier there were hopes that this could be done with the help of equipment provided by our partners, today our units are doing a very difficult job on foot in many parts of the frontline at night.”
Russian artillery and defensive trenches are certainly formidable, but the complexity of Russia’s minefields was far and away the biggest challenge to Ukraine’s three-month-old counteroffensive. Now, they might be a primary source of new munitions for Ukraine.
A video circulating on social media shows how the Ukrainians modified commercial drones to carry their new payload. The explosive is equipped with a grenade fuse and then put on a platform on the drone’s underside. When the drone is over its target, the pilot releases the platform and drops the mine. Designed to stop tanks, the air-dropped mines make quick work of softer targets.
Ukraine’s ability to use commercial drones on the battlefield is a large part of why it’s still in the fight. Ukraine’s drone pilots are getting so good, one almost took down a Russian Ka-52 attack helicopter with an FPV racing drone carrying an artillery shell. Video of the incident is also making the rounds on both Ukrainian and Russian social media channels.
Larger unmanned aerial systems are also flying more now. In just the last week or so, Ukrainian skies saw the return of Turkish made Bayraktar TB-2 drones. Bayraktars achieved cult-status in Ukraine during the early months of the war, but seemed to disappear once Russia’s air defense systems were established.
In August, Ukraine crippled those air defense systems with attacks on Russian sites in Crimea, so now Bayraktars are back in action. Russia will likely be facing many more of the drones in the future since Ukraine and Turkey inked a deal to build Bayraktars in Ukraine.
The Western think-tank The Institute for the Study of War said Ukraine made strategically significant gains to start September, passing Russia’s first defensive line, liberating Robotyne, and entering the trenches of Russia’s second defensive line near Verbove.
Most Western intelligence outlets agree Russia spent most of its time fortifying the first defensive line. So, there is hope Ukraine’s counteroffensive can now pick up the pace and push south to the Azov Sea before winter sets in and stalls the fighting once again.
