Russian troops have set up a 2km (1.24 mile) mesh netting “tunnel” on a road linking Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The mesh netting is designed to protect Russian logistics against first-person view (FPV) drones that have become a ubiquitous attack weapon for both sides. The move comes as Russian forces are launching another major push against the town of Chasiv Yar.
“To cover the supply routes of the Russian Armed Forces from FPV drones, military engineers are installing protective nets,” a Russian soldier said on a video showing the construction of the mesh net tunnel. “Our group maintains more than two kilometers of anti-drone nets. The nets are placed on the most exposed sections of the roads to ensure the safe movement of our equipment. We strive to continuously expand the coverage area, enhancing the installation technology of the nets to set them up more quickly.”
The video shows Russian troops unrolling a spool of mesh netting, which they then attached to 15- to 20-foot poles spaced evenly along both sides of the road. The theory is that the netting will provide a buffer to keep Ukrainian FPV drones from directly striking vehicles.
“The expectation is that the FPV drone, on the final trajectory of its attack, will simply get entangled with its propellers in the taut net or go off course, even if it manages to break it,”
the Russian Military Informant Telegram channel wrote.
Yuri Podolyaka, an influential Russian milblogger, suggested that the anti-FPV drone netting is a creation by troops in the field on an ad hoc basis because the Russian Defense Ministry is providing insufficient EW equipment.
“This is the ingenuity of the fighters against the bureaucrats of the General Staff who are still unable to understand that today electronic warfare is more important than tanks,” Podolyaka wrote on Telegram. “And even more so than a bunch of different expensive junk that was created for war and which is absolutely useless now. But which is still being mass-produced by our factories (and often ahead of schedule).”
Still, creating a netted ‘tunnel’ of sorts will also confine Russian forces to a very narrow and well-defined corridor that can be bombarded by artillery and other means of attack. This could prove to be a far more ‘fatal funnel’ than what an open road plagued by FPV attacks would be.
Source: The War Zone