Is the FPV Suicide Drone as Effective as Its Reputation?

I have no doubt small aerial drones--including FPV suicide drones--are a valuable new weapon. But is it the Silver FPV Bullet it is often made out to be?

I've expressed my doubts about the dominance of First-Person Viewer (FPV) drones based on a moment in time during the Winter War of 2022 that doesn't allow for the development of counter-measures.

But before we focus to the drone versus countermeasures race debate, just how effective are these drones?

This really needs better data to decide. I honestly don't want to take the time to do more than a cursory search. But I follow the war closely and haven't noticed much data behind the claims of revolutionary status. Those FPV drone video feeds are compelling. But we only see the apparently successful strikes. Our military surely has better data on success rates and how armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) are destroyed in combat.

Early in the war, various infantry anti-tank missiles got the glory. And we saw images of Ukrainian 100mm anti-tank guns pressed into service. The drones weren't the wonder weapon yet.

So let's just go with what I found for more recent times.

This reports on Russian armored vehicle losses:

Separate reports published by Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) on Feb. 13 suggest Russia has lost over 8,000 armored fighting vehicles, such as tanks and armored personnel carriers, in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. ...

The IISS said the figure has reached 8,800 since February 2022, with Russia losing more than 3,000 armored fighting vehicles in Ukraine in the past year alone.

So basically, Russia has lost far more in the first rather disastrous year for Russia's mechanized units. 

So let's call it 3,000 tanks and other armored vehicles lost in the last year.

I don't know how those vehicles were lost. Drones, anti-tank missiles, direct-fire guns, mines, tube and rocket artillery, hand-held anti-tank rockets, and other causes could kill them. 

Before publishing I see this: "Despite the extensive use of drones, missiles and tanks in the conflict, artillery fire has been responsible for 70% of all losses on both sides[.]" But "losses" is not defined. Does that mean AFVs, all equipment, or lives?

But for the purpose of illustration let's assume for the best-case scenario that every last one of those 3,000 were taken out by drones.

In this June 2023 post I quoted a story saying Ukraine was losing 10,000 drones per month. That's 120,000 extrapolated out to a full year. So if every Russian armored vehicle was destroyed by drones, it took 40 drones to achieve one kill.

What is the kill rate for all the other means of killing AFVs? Lots of precision weapons have 90+% kill probabilities. But that is lower if you include attempts and not just actual shots taken. And attempts could include sending out infantry with Javelins who are blown up in an air strike before they get a chance to shoot. Does it take 40 Javelins put into Ukrainian infantry hands to kill one AFV? What about HIMARS rockets? Precision shells or cluster munitions? Direct fire rounds? With modern sights our tanks have a very good first-shot hit probability. Although precise numbers escape me on that as I write this.

And of course, looking at those other rates accepts that drones aren't making all the kills as my best-case assumption as a starting point made. And as that 70% figure suggests.

If drones killed half of those 3,000 AFVs--which I consider a very good record, if that assumption is used--they required 80 drones for each kill.

And as drones have gotten more popular since June 2023, are more lost now? Which ups the drones per AFV killed ratio even more.

Further, define a kill. If a drone disables a tank that is later taken out by dumb artillery shells walked into it by observers correcting the shot, what weapon do we credit with killing it before the Russians could recover it and repair it. Or what if a drone kills a AFV first disabled by other weapons? Double-tapping a disabled vehicle is a factor in tank losses.

Finally, the drone loss would not be only suicide drones, I assume. How many are pure recon now or armed non-suicide drones?

Anyway, I have more questions than I have answers for resolving my skepticism. But setting my questions into a post will no doubt help me notice stories--as I did pre-publication for the 70% figure--that answer my questions that in the past I possibly filtered out of my krill flow of news as irrelevant at that moment.

NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.

NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.