Yes, he writes that after he left the battlefield they became more common.

There was a video of a soldier wading through massive amounts of fiber near the front line. Just imagine that for each drone attack there will be 10-50km of fiber dropped on the landscape. It will not rot and stay there until someone cleans it up.

I've always wondered if the burning batteries and electronics in the drones have any significant environmental impact when compared to conventional weapons.

I'd rather have old fibre cables and lithium batteries than old unexploded ordinance

(If wishes were horses I'd rather Russia hadn't invaded a sovereign country in the first place, but we are where we are)

According to the article, you will get BOTH of those, no? Some of the bombs on the drones don't explode.

If it has value as a recyclable, it will be cleaned up. Does it ?

There's a really good interview with a Russian drone manufacturer where he talks about how you need to use both.

The fiber-optic drones have small warheads/payloads. They are used to hunt the enemy's EW transmitters. Once the jammers have been suppressed, then the radio-controlled drones with bigger payloads go to work and do the bulk of the damage.

From what I understand Ukraine is not using many fiber drones because there are other disadvantages. They can have them, but they mostly choose to use radio anyway. Russia is using a lot of fiber drones.

There are... I think they aren't unproblematic - the fibre can get caught on things etc. Also I read of instances where the opposition can follow the fibre back to find the drone operators.

Tracing the fiber back is possible only in extremely favorable conditions. The light must hit the cable just right and there cannot be too many cables from previous runs on the battlefield.

It's not too bad when they see the drone passing by. I have no idea how often this can happen without being seen though.

Those cables are 10km long. You can trade a couple hundred meters when the drone is flying by, but there are several KM that you cannot even see at the same time as you can see the drone.

Sounds like for fiber optic strikes you gotta do a "shoot and scoot".

The operators usually use a cordless drill to wind back as much cable as they can after the drone is used.

This is why it's so fascinating to read about this conflict. The back and forth innovations (some obvious, some rudimentary, some very much not) is just incredible to follow.

Early on: Drones in war!

Then: Ahh EW makes them useless!

Then: Fiber optics defeat EW!

Then: But you can follow the cable!

Then: But you can try to respool the cable with a power drill!

Every week it seems is a new move.

Next up: Autonomous targeting.

Next Next up: Decoys.

> Today, some Ukrainian and Russian units are also using drones controlled by fiber-optic cable, rather than radio, though I had no personal experience with this type of drone in my unit

Because it is mostly the Russians that are using those, the Ukrainians have also started using them but in less fewer numbers.

As TFA says, Ukraine has a much smaller capacity of producing the required optical fiber, which is the main reason why they are using fewer such drones.

> the required optical fiber

So then why isn't the West providing them with optical fiber?

He talks about that in the article