Kyiv, Ukraine – Andrey Pronin doesn’t know how many drones he crashed.

“I lost count after 100,” the 44-year-old instructor, in camouflage gear, told Al Jazeera as he observed three cadets from his drone piloting school fly their buzzing plane over a withered meadow just outside Kyiv.

Sitting at a plastic table littered with tools and batteries, the cadets, with their joysticks and goggled cameras, looked geeky and harmless.

During their Saturday morning exercise, each of them took turns piloting a drone whose camera allows a first-person view of the flight.

Time and again, cadets learned to maneuver their drones by flying them through two loops embedded in the wet ground.

Drones often crashed after hitting a loop or bush, losing a red plastic propeller or a leg that had to be found in the wet grass and reattached.

But hundreds of hours of such training slowly transform a drone into an extension of its pilot’s body – and serve him on the front lines.

“We want to live in such a way that our children are not afraid”

Some cadets are too young to be enlisted.

“I still have 10 years left,” Kemal, a 15-year-old of mixed Ukrainian and Turkish origin, told Al Jazeera, referring to the conscription age of 25.

Its immediate goal is to “get ready for the races” among the cadets of similar drone piloting schools in kyiv. Other cadets who are not eligible for the draft want to pass on everything they have learned.

“We want to live in such a way that our children are not afraid, not hiding in bomb shelters, because where have I been teaching all the time? In the bomb shelters,” Viktoria, a teacher who will teach drone piloting to her high school students as part of a new mandatory course, told Al Jazeera.

Ukrainian women are not subject to conscription, but many choose to serve in the army or in volunteer units.

Survival!’

Viktoria sat next to six men in a dark classroom on the top floor of a drab office building in southeast kyiv, listening to theoretical parts of the course. Pronin projected slides on the wall to explain things like the frequencies used to fly the drone and get video feedback.

Four of these men were active military personnel sent by their military units to master a new skill. Taciturn and concentrated, they refuse to be interviewed or photographed – and only one of them blurts “survival!” » when asked about his motivation.

That’s the key word for any aspiring drone pilot or engineer, especially during Ukraine’s conscription crisis, when thousands of combat-age men are forcibly rounded up and sent to training camps – ​​or bribed to get by.

“Let’s be realistic. If you are taken away by conscription officers, you pay 8,000 hryvnias (a little less than $200) and they release you,” Pronin said. “This is the price of our training.”

Additionally, the 16-day Defense Ministry-certified training offered by Pronin and his partner Roman, who withheld his last name for security reasons, is a pathway to joining what in many ways is the newest military elite.

For Ukraine’s money

Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh region have shown the importance of heavy drones such as the Predator and Bayraktar on the battlefield. But the war between Russia and Ukraine has become the world’s first military conflict dominated by lightweight first-person view (FPV) drones.

Pronin’s cadets bring plastic water bottles purchased and weighed from supermarkets to their drills, so they can practice flying with the extra weight. These plastic bottles can be replaced by an explosive thrown into a Russian trench or by a tank with an open hatch with a shocking quality/price ratio.

FPV drones that cost less than $1,000 have destroyed two thirds of Russian tanks it cost millions, a NATO official said in April.

Most FPV drones are driven by propellers and resemble helicopters and can carry anything from heat detectors and night vision cameras to food, water and medical supplies.

Larger, more advanced drones can perform tasks comparable to Predator or Bayraktar drones.

One of them is Vampire, a Ukrainian-made heavy drone equipped with a machine gun that tracks Russian military personnel at night. The Russians call her “Baba Yaga”, in homage to a child-eating witch from Slavic folklore.

More expensive fixed-wing FPV drones are more energy efficient than quadcopters and can fly further. The largest strike Russian command centers, fuel depots, airfields and military factories.

Modern drones are fully capable of replacing snipers whose range of a few kilometers pales in comparison to what an experienced shooter with a drone can do.

“Snipers will kill with drones,” Roman said.

The downside is that even if drone pilots hide in a well-camouflaged trench, cellar, or bunker, they remain sought after by enemy drones who look for signs of their presence, such as protruding antennas.

“It’s dangerous. That’s goal number one,” Pronin said.

Meanwhile, the Russian side is surprisingly quick to imitate any tactical or technological tricks invented by Ukrainian drone developers.

“We are a step forward. They took a leap forward,” Pronin said. “And then they start to expand everything because there, everything is at the government level. They have unreal budgets.

Ukraine’s state-owned arms manufacturers often lag behind – and that’s when volunteers step in.

“Orchestra” of drone manufacturers

They produce hundreds of thousands of drones a month – in apartment buildings, basements, old warehouses and factories – and raise money online or through word of mouth.

They use Chinese and Taiwanese chips and spare parts and offer inexpensive features, like wings made from 3D printed plastic or even cardboard.

They increasingly rely on electronics made in Ukraine and can produce drones without a single part made in China, although Pronin said: “If China was closed to us, it would be painful. »

They have little government support and tell donors that the best financial contribution is not how many drones they buy but how many cadets they pay to train.

Drone developers are in constant contact with the front line and modify new models on the fly using new firmware, larger antennas or switching to radio frequencies that the Russians cannot yet jam.

The ever-changing nature of drone warfare is reflected in the course taught at the school, which “was absolutely different a year ago,” Roman said.

The school has trained hundreds of men and women to fly and assemble drones, and their priority is teaching them to work as a team “like in an orchestra,” Pronin said.

Dozens of similar schools operate throughout Ukraine, training thousands of people.

After meeting with Western military instructors and training foreign cadets, Pronin and Roman realized that Ukraine’s experience in drone warfare is the most advanced in the world – and that their school can offer something that others cannot not offer.

Both are former teachers from the eastern Donbass region. They also worked in a bank before becoming drone pilots after the region’s Russian-backed separatists revolted against kyiv in 2014.

Both said they are constantly learning by flying and, yes, crashing new drones, monitoring posts, watching videos, participating in forums and even sneaking into closed Telegram groups for the Russian military .

They already offer courses in English – and plan to allow an exclusive experience for a foreigner sitting in the comfort of their home while piloting a combat drone.

They are also convinced that once the war is over, their school will not cease to exist.

“We are not aiming for war. We aim for peace,” Pronin said. “Drones are now part of everyday life, just like cell phones. »