On Monday, a unit of the Ukrainian military blew up two bridges inside Russia. They took pictures of the explosions, then released them as evidence of their battlefield success. However, that is not what made the news. Ukraine’s 58th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade used the drones to spot and destroy significant ammunition caches belonging to Russia’s military under the two bridges inside Russia’s Belgorod region, which shares a border with Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. This report published by CNN details how the combat operation demonstrated how first-person-view (FPV) drones are getting cheaper, easier to use, and increasingly important in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

FPV Drones Spot Ammunition on Bridges

The brigade, operating in the Kharkiv region, targeted the bridges used by Russian forces to store ammunition. Ukrainian forces later destroyed them, with one drone used to guide the operation. According to the news outlet, these “are regular drones that you can get and easily assemble. And the innovations are so that the camera transmits through fiber optics so that no one can track the signal.”

Bridges on Fire After Ukraine Strikes Weapons on Them Inside Russia

Russia has made significant military gains inside Ukraine in recent weeks. For its part, Ukraine has had limited success in inflicting notable damage on Russia. This was the case in April and May, when Moscow’s missile and drone strikes forced Kyiv to ground flights and close schools. Russian ground forces are also advancing in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv’s relative lack of success stands in contrast to earlier in the war, which saw Ukraine repeatedly strike at the Russian heartland. It included attacks on Russian bases as far away as Ryazan, a city 200 kilometers from Moscow, as well as in Crimea and parts of southern Russia.

The destruction of the Belgorod bridges is something of an outlier in this regard. Ukraine previously used HIMARS rocket systems supplied by the United States to target a bridge in Russia’s Kursk region. The rocket artillery platforms are not cheap; each launcher is worth many millions of dollars, and the rockets are tens of thousands of dollars each. By contrast, the drones Ukraine used on the Belgorod bridges cost between 25,000 and 30,000 hryvnias each, or about $600–$725. This means they are much cheaper than something like a smartphone.

Moscow says it has also destroyed Russian drones in Ukraine using sensors developed in Russia, but the particular claim by Kyiv about its FPV drones is verified and public. According to its social media accounts, Ukraine’s 58th Brigade discovered a significant cache of Russian anti-tank mines stashed under one of the bridges, as well as another supply of ammunition.

Cheap Drone Combat Spot Ammo on Bridges and Destroys Them with Rockets

“The costs were about the same as a smartphone, but the results were incomparably more significant,” the unit said. However, the same weapons Ukraine used on the bridges are also proving increasingly effective against Russian aircraft. In June, drones were used to take pictures of ammunition caches under a bridge in Russia, which were later detonated using a drone after operators became suspicious.

In June, Ukraine used small drones that had been smuggled close to Russian airfields to destroy or damage 48 aircraft. Experts estimate that even an unmodified commercial drone can be a threat to an aircraft on the ground. Bielieskov also notes that in the hands of a creative operator, even cheap drones can have an outsize impact.

“I have a feeling that with this kind of equipment, it’s not so much a question of quantity as of the quality of training, tactics, and all this together,” he told The Moscow Times. “If a simple drone can cause this amount of damage, then this is quite telling.”