Inside the World of Drone Warfare

Drones began as a battlefield curiosity, and have become a staple of modern warfare. Here at Soldier of Fortune, we have spent years pushing past the headlines to bring readers deeper into what’s happening on the ground.

What follows is a look at some of our findings, from the history behind the platform to how predators study battlefield developments, up through the problem of how to repel a swarm.

How Drones Broke the Rules of War

Drone warfare stretches back farther than the deserts of the Middle East or the trenches of eastern Ukraine. This overview by publisher Susan Katz Keating pulls back the curtain, tracing the military’s long, uneven relationship with unmanned vehicles. It’s a context that reframes everything else in this collection. The drones swarming the skies now are not some sudden leap forward, but the latest chapter in a much older story.

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War Predators in Ukraine: They Come to Study the Killing Fields

Ukraine is more than a battlefield; it’s a proving ground. Foreign actors, deploying cut-outs and deniable assets under the cover of aid work, journalism, or contracting, are using the war to gather real-time data on how drones perform against live targets, according to intelligence sources who spoke with Soldier of Fortune publisher Susan Katz Keating. 

This article digs into who’s really watching from the shadows, and why China and other foreign powers are drawn to the wreckage of Shahed UAVs and the battlefield data pouring out of the conflict.

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Russia’s New Fibre-Optic Drones Evade Jamming in Ukraine

Electronic warfare was supposed to be the great equalizer against cheap drones. Jam the signal, and the threat drops out of the sky. Russia’s answer to that has been to trail a physical fiber-optic cable behind the drone. No signal to jam means no way to stop it with the tools that have worked until now. 

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‘You Will Wind Up Dead’: Inside a Combat Drone School in Russia

Behind every drone strike is an operator, and that operator had to learn somewhere. The author goes inside one of the training pipelines turning out Russia’s FPV pilots, where the instruction is blunt, the stakes are made explicit from day one, and washing out isn’t an option once you’re at the front. 

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Hedgehog Armor: The Spiked Shield to Stop Drones From Turning Tanks Into Fireballs

Cheap FPV drones can turn a multimillion-dollar armored vehicle into scrap metal. Crews in the field have responded with armor that looks more like something welded together in a scrapyard than a defense ministry blueprint. 

This article examines the rise of “hedgehog armor” and the broader cottage industry of field-expedient protection that has emerged in response to drones.

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Threatening Skies: Countering the Drone Swarm Apocalypse

A single drone is a manageable threat. A swarm of them, coordinated and overwhelming in number, is a different problem entirely. Soldier of Fortune looks at where the technology and doctrine stand for countering mass drone attacks, from directed-energy weapons to networked detection systems.

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Shotguns vs. Drones: A Clay Shooter’s Guide to Defeating Enemy Swarms

In the escalating drone wars, where fiber optic and First-Person View (FPV) drones threaten soldiers and civilians alike, one man is turning the art of clay shooting into a battlefield advantage. 

Lieutenant Marco Angelelli, an Italian Air Force reserve officer and Italian Clay Pigeon Shooting Federation (FITAV) athlete, talks to Soldier of Fortune about his program to teach battlefield operators how to use shotguns to fight off small, agile drones.