KHARKIV, 10 GEN – Entering what appears to be an empty, unfinished house, you descend into the basement, eventually reaching a small cellar. The constant hum of a 3D printer fills the space. In this cramped room,reminiscent of a hacker’s den,a crucial battle of the new Ukrainian war is being fought,using technology costing just a few hundred dollars.
Video Inside the Secret Kharkiv Cell Printing Drone Components in 3D
A team of six soldiers, not in uniform, tests motors, measures battery weight balance, installs mini cameras, adn designs and adapts new parts. These parts will be used to attach weapons and anything else the mechanical birds can carry or drop.
“There are about a hundred drone verification units across the country, employing around a thousand soldiers, mostly engineers. But we’re always looking for people. More than conventional skills,” Alex, a 37-year-old intelligence officer from the ‘Taifun’ unit, emphasizes, “we want young people with curiosity. We can handle the rest – we can prepare them in less than sixty days.” But everything changes quickly, so we constantly need to update our technology to counter the systems the enemy develops.
This new, deadly weapon, capable of destroying million-dollar military assets, is fiber optic drones costing between $300 and $1,000. “They aren’t intercepted by radio, so it’s impossible to interfere with their signal with jamming.The pilot controls them directly,” Alex explains. That’s why, near positions in trenches and throughout Ukrainian military zones, a dense web of thin, almost invisible cables can be found among the grass and tree trunks. It’s fiber optics that connect visors, screens, controllers, and joysticks to the quadcopters – a direct channel the enemy can’t interfere with unless they destroy those invisible lines, which allow for a range of up to sixty kilometers.
This technology is rapidly gaining traction and is now used on both sides of the conflict.“The setups are different, but we and Moscow use the same Chinese components.” Even in this conflict, which began four years ago with World War II-era weapons, the race is now about constant growth and procurement.
“Based on requests from soldiers, we receive a kind of shopping list, then we place orders. But Beijing can’t send directly to us and ships to Europe,where we then pick up the parts.Russia does the same with other countries, always buying from China. All of this is important for defending against artillery and advances without losing soldiers,” concludes Alex as the background noise in the cellar fades and the 3D printer finishes its latest plastic creation: another propeller for a grenade, ready to fall from the sky onto enemy lines in the donestk region.
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