Can speed beat drones on the battlefield?

 

The Telegraph calls these tactics "suicidal", but they appear to be working to at least some extent.

Since they were trialled over a year ago, most [Russian] motorbike attacks have ended in failure, with the majority of riders killed before they can reach their target.

Yet, those that are successful solve a key tactical challenge in Ukraine: how to cross an open battlefield under constant surveillance from above – and fast.

Russia’s military is said to be planning to systematically integrate motorbikes across the front ahead of new offensives.

. . .

Since autumn last year, there has been a considerable increase in bike-led attacks in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region and Donetsk to the east, where Russia largely abandoned armoured vehicle usage after suffering unsustainable losses in the winter of 2023 to 2024.

The attacks are fast-paced, but deeply flawed. For months on end, drone footage has shown the remnants of such failures, which have turned the edges of fields and Ukrainian trench lines into a junk yard of twisted metal and burnt tyres.

It is not just bikes, but all kinds of unconventional unarmoured vehicles turning up at the front, including quad bikes, civilian cars, Chinese-made buggies and electric scooters.

. . .

Motorbikes can travel roughly 45mph across harsh terrain, while small first-person-view drones move at more than double that speed. But the drones have to get from their base to the battlefield, by which time the riders have enough time to reach the trenches.

Pavlo Narozhnyi, a Ukrainian military expert, said: “The riders could have five to 10 minutes to storm Ukrainian trenches and attack, often outnumbering those inside.”

By moving fast and spreading out, bikes and buggies are starting to prove “very effective” against Ukrainian artillery and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), he added.

“They now make up 20 to 25 per cent of Russian assaults. It is hard for Ukraine to sustain such relentless attacks,” added Mr Narozhnyi, who is also founder of Reactive Post, a non-profit that supports Ukraine’s artillery brigades.

. . .

The riders’ task is not to attack infantry, he explained, but get further enough behind Ukrainian lines to attack mortar crews and drone units – more specialised soldiers that are harder to replace, he explained.

Ukrainian soldiers are starting to call this the “run, stab and escape” tactic.

There's more at the link, including some video footage of drone-versus-bike engagements.

It's a logical development, provided that the offensive forces are willing to take heavy casualties among their high-speed troops.  What happens when they run out of such troops?  I don't know, but I imagine it'll be hard to find volunteers to replace those that are blown up on television every day.  Soldiers have a well-developed sense of self-preservation when it comes to suicidal operations.  BTDTGTTSTPI.

That might also explain, of course, why Russia has apparently not taken much territory in recent weeks, despite Ukrainian complaints that such high-speed tactics have made defense difficult.  Russia's largely eliminated the Ukrainian bridgehead in the Kursk area, but that's about as far as it's gone.  Could it be that these tactics are costing them so many casualties as to make a larger-scale assault difficult to achieve?  Possibly... but we can't rely on official reports to make that assessment.  Propaganda rules the airwaves in that part of the world.

Peter