Throughout this year, Ukraine has successfully launched several small counterattacks that retook small amounts of Ukrainian territory from the Russian invaders, usually on the order of thirty or forty kilometers. Their latest counterattack, Operation Vivaldi, seems a bigger affair, liberating more land and featuring some interesting tactical and technological wrinkles.
For twenty months, Russia’s 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies ground toward Lyman, a small city in eastern Ukraine that sits on a critical road and railway juncture. By seizing it, Russia would gain a crucial logistics hub to sustain its campaign to encircle the Fortress Belt, the cities anchoring Ukraine’s defense in Donetsk. But in May, Ukraine’s 3rd Corps launched Operation Vivaldi. In just a few weeks, Ukraine collapsed the Russian salient, encircled elements of the 2nd and 14th Motorized Rifle Divisions, and liberated up to 250 square kilometers of land.
The Ukrainian corps performed this masterpiece by achieving drone dominance over Russian forces. Provided with two brigades from Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, 3rd Corps saturated Russian rear areas with drones. One Russian military blogger reported how a considerable number of Ukrainian Hornet drones, which operate more than 150 kilometers behind Russian lines, attacked river crossings, disrupted logistics, and prevented reinforcements. These strikes isolated the Russian forces and, as their logistics system collapsed, prevented them from receiving the personnel, parts, and energy needed to effectively operate their own drones.
Remarkably, 3rd Corps reported that its forces neutralized Rubicon, Russia’s elite drone unit, “destroying its logistics, ammunition depots, drone launch sites and newly formed units and killing their experienced drone operators.” To prevent its complete loss, Russia withdrew Rubicon from the Lyman axis. Blinded, Russia was vulnerable to the Ukrainian counterattack.
More on drones dropping drones:
Ukraine’s Third Army Corps carried out what it described as the first-ever attack involving unmanned ground vehicles deployed by heavy bomber drones during Operation Vivaldi, the corps reported on September 24.
According to the corps, heavy bomber drones operated by the Third Assault Brigade deployed NC13 strike unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), known as “Gryphons,” more than 10 kilometers behind Russian lines.
The Third Army Corps said cameras mounted on the ground robots recorded the operation, which resulted in Russian soldiers being killed and wounded in an area where they had not expected such an attack.
The tactic was developed from scratch by soldiers of the NC13 strike UGV unit and implemented with support from the brigade’s unmanned aerial systems.
Here’s Preston Stewart on how details of the operation unfolded:
Paratroop operations have traditionally been high risk, high reward plays. In World War II, Operation Varsity was a success, but Market Garden wasn’t. Adding heliborne units ups both both risk and reward, and U.S. forces in Desert Storm successfully set up advanced refueling stations behind enemy lines to maintain the high tempo attack. The big risk has always been troops being killed or captured behind enemy lines, but drones dropping UGVs eliminates that risk. There’s still the possibility of losing the bomber drone to jamming, but that’s always a concern employing them in any capacity.
We’ve already seen Ukraine deploy machine gun equipped UGVs in defensive positions. I wonder what havoc might be wrought by dropping a few of these on logistics crossroads deep behind Russian lines…