Ukraine is rebuilding thousands of “dead” drones after electronic warfare made freshly delivered UAVs suddenly useless | Tech Radar

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'The second life of drones': Why thousands of UAVs in Ukraine have stopped working, how a team of 'craftsmen' is fixing 24,000 obsolete drones every year, and what it means for the future of the drone industry

Electronic warfare now kills drone effectiveness within months

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Thousands of perfectly functional drones became useless after frequencies were heavily jammed

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Thousands of drones sitting in Ukrainian warehouses are not broken, but they cannot fly in the current combat conditions because their components are already obsolete.

The problem stems from the time lag between large government contracts and the rapidly changing electronic warfare environment on the front lines.

When the enemy figures out a drone's operating frequency and starts jamming it, the pilot loses video signal, and the aircraft becomes effectively blind.

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Re Drone, a workshop created by the Sternenko Community Foundation, now refurbishes up to 2,000 drones per month (24,000 annually), giving obsolete equipment a second life in active combat.

The state purchases drones in massive batches of 10,000 to 20,000 units, but production and delivery take so long that battlefield conditions change completely before the equipment arrives.

A frequency that remained usable for six months in 2023 now stays relevant for only three months or even less in some areas.

Re Drone's craftsmen solve this by replacing outdated video transmitters with newer components that operate on different, less suppressed frequencies.

Combat crews initially organized informal exchanges through military chat rooms, transferring drones with compromised frequencies to units where those bands still worked.

Over time, some units accumulated hundreds of drones in their warehouses, ready to give them away in exchange for scarce components like up-to-date video transmitters.

This barter system gradually evolved into the Re Drone workshop, which now processes over a thousand drones every month from its dedicated facility.

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The workshop strips drones with poor-quality airframes or defective fiber optic coils for their valuable internal components, using motors, controllers, and other surviving parts as donors to repair other equipment.

The breakdown in communication starts when manufacturers sign large contracts and then never hear from the troops using their equipment.

Decentralized procurement helps, but purchasers without combat experience often choose the cheapest bid rather than the most battle-worthy design.

Manufacturers must stay in constant contact with military units because conditions change faster than a single feedback loop can track.

Logistics planning must account for real-world delays, and quality control cannot stop at the factory door.

The Sternenko Foundation requires manufacturers to replace defective drones at no cost, and the state should enforce the same standard across all contracts.

Manufacturers must also build ecosystems, not just individual drone which can be quickly isolated, as a drone needs compatible ground stations, updated software, and ongoing support to remain useful as electronic warfare tactics evolve.

Companies that sell sealed black boxes will watch their products become obsolete in months.

The state should create spaces where manufacturers can develop shared standards for connector types and frequency bands, which would allow a pilot to swap a transmitter from one drone to another without a full workshop teardown.

Re Drone's work highlights a fundamental flaw: manufacturers build proprietary systems with no standardization across brands.

This is the opposite of the modularity that has been championed for consumer electronics for years.

Though open standards may introduce security challenges, they are often seen as a necessary risk to maintain technological superiority.

It will allow field repairs, reduce waste, and end the cycle of disposable drones that workshops like Re Drone are forced to endlessly refurbish.

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Efosa has been writing about technology for over 7 years, initially driven by curiosity but now fueled by a strong passion for the field. He holds both a Master's and a Ph D in sciences, which provided him with a solid foundation in analytical thinking.

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