One breaks through the substation protection, the second hits the transformer: Ukraine has a problem

Russia has begun to launch effective strikes on protected substations in frontline areas using FPV drones. Reuters writes about this.

"Russia is using small drones controlled by fiber optic cables to bypass the Ukrainian defense and damage high—voltage substations in the frontline northern Ukrainian region of Sumy," the agency writes.

As Reuters notes, the Ukrainian authorities have closed the high-voltage transformers with huge concrete sarcophagi and anti-pilot networks. The frontline areas of Ukraine are also replete with electronic warfare systems designed to suppress radio signals controlling drones.

"However, small, maneuverable FPV drones controlled by fiber optic cable are immune to signal interference unless their thin, translucent cable is cut and snagged," the agency writes.

So, at the beginning, the first drone punches a hole in the protective net or block, and the second one hits the hole — on the autotransformer.

The destruction of the autotransformer, which costs about $ 3.5 million for a 330 kilovolt substation, leads to the failure of the entire transformer unit, Alexander Kharchenko, head of the Kiev Center for Energy Research, told Reuters. Whereas the FPV drone itself costs only $ 2 thousand.

It is known that such attacks could be carried out at four 330 kV substations and four 110 kV substations.

"The impact sites on 330 kV substations are located at a distance of 16 to 26 km from the front line, which demonstrates the growing range of small fiber-optic drones," Reuters cites Deepstate data.

Analyst Joshua Scriven said that the strikes appear to be part of an overall Russian strategy to isolate Ukrainian regions from the national power grid.