Ukrainian firefighters battle blaze caused by Russian drones in Sumy (Image: STATE EMERGENSY SERVICE OF UKRAINE/AFP via Getty Images).
A British special forces operator has inspired one of Ukraine’s most sophisticated unmanned reconnaissance flying machines, as the frontline turns to deadly drone warfare. Ukraine is about to unleash the almost-silent SHADOX drone, a little over a pound in weight, to be used by frontline covert reconnaissance troops against Russia.
Codenamed “Price,” the UK-born commando in Kyiv’s special forces helped Ukrainian-Estonian defence startup develop the SHADOX for the battlefield. It costs just a few hundred pounds, travels ten yards per second and performs short-range spying deployments or kamikaze attacks aimed at killing Russian invasion troops.
Oleksandr Davydenko, CEO of Ukrainian-Estonian defence startup Black Forest Systems in Kyiv, told the Mirror: “Unfortunately we were forced to build this technology. This is the nuclear weapon of the present day - it kills bad people, destroys buildings but it does not pollute anything. Absolutely it could win the war for us and we have to do this - we are doing this to protect our very existence.”
He added: “It was actually helped by a British guy who has become a friend of ours. He’s been fighting in Ukraine already for four years. I cannot tell you his name but his call-sign is ‘Price’ and the idea came from him and then we developed it with our own special forces.” The drone requires just half an hour of training to operate via smartphone technology, is totally secure, and can hover silently in the air if an attack takes place.
In the past year, 80% of Russian casualties have been caused by Ukrainian drones, a massive increase from just five per cent in the opening year of the full-scale invasion. Sources told the Mirror a staggering 35,000 Russian troops have been killed by Ukrainian drones, with every attack recorded on film and treated as data for future AI weapons generation.
