🚀One of Ukraine's best-known antitank missile operators is spending all her free time learning to fly FPV drones
🇺🇦Tetyana Chornovol helped destroy a huge enemy column outside Kyiv in March 2022 with Stuhna antitank missiles
💥She got her first batch of @wilendhornets FPV drones last weekend 🙏 to your donations
🔥Lt Chornovol - the commander of an antitank unit in Ukraine's elite 1st Special Purpose Brigade and previously a parliamentarian, Euromaidan protest leader and journalist - says FPV drones are the future: "There's no other way. And there's great joy from how it's turning out"

➡She explains why in a Facebook post:

🚀Why FPVs? Because I can buy them myself, my friends can buy them for me... In almost two years of war, nothing has changed with the supply of Stuhna antitank missiles. There were few then, and there are few now

🚀In the summer, we had such a story. Eight units of enemy armour arrived at our position (IFVs, armoured personnel carriers, tanks), and we had three Stuhna missiles. We fired two and kept one in reserve. We didn't end up needing it. The muscovites didn't know there were no more rockets. They turned around and ran away

🚀Why such trouble with rockets? Because only one is produced per month for each launcher. I have two launchers. That's two missiles per month. If I get a third one, it means I'm taking it from one of my colleagues...

🚀We need them at the front, but unfortunately, I can't buy missiles. Unlike FPVs...

🚀And the weapons don't evolve. Anti-tank units need a longer range... We need high-explosive warheads...

🚀The price of a rocket, for us, is like the price of life. One time the enemy covered us with a barrage. Shrapnel cut off the head of a high-explosive missile while it was in a Stuhna. The last missile. We then dragged this 30-kg damaged rocket under fire to rescue it. We slept with it in an embrace in the trench, as if it was a wounded precious little thing - and then sent it out for repair... That's how we feel about rockets

🚀I know if I lose my Stuhna, there will be no new one. You have no idea how we risk our lives for the life of the launcher. And we are also stupidly lucky. It survived being hit within a three-metre radius by a mortar, tank and self-propelled gun...

🚀I can't do this anymore. I understand luck won't last forever... It is good that FPV technology allows me to provide for myself autonomously. Even my monthly pay is enough for me to buy four drones. This is four times more than the one Stuhna missile that the government gives me for one launcher. That's why it gives me hope…

🚀So no matter how hard it is for us "teapots," who have never flown anything, to start from scratch, we have to break this rock... There's no other way

🔥And there's great joy from how it's turning out. At first, I wanted to give up... Now I just need to tighten up the equipment a little, and off for a combat sortie

Le fait que les drones (ici FPV, mais les quadcopter de reconnaissance pareil) soient largement financés par des volontaires des deux côtés de la guerre, alors qu'ils sont des pièces essentielles au conflit est absolument sidérant pour moi.

Elle parle de s'acheter 4 FPV par mois, mais les Européens et les Américains devraient financer la production de millions de FPV en Ukraine, et le prix serait toujours dérisoire à l'échel de tout ce qu'ils financent. (Et ça permettrait au passage d'avoir du logiciel offrant une résistance au brouillage et avec suivi automatique de cible)