Kyiv, Ukraine – Andrey Pronin doesn’t know how many drones he shot down.

“I lost count after 100,” the 44-year-old camouflaged instructor told Al Jazeera during three observations. students of drone flight school They steer their buzzing plane over a parched meadow just outside Kiev.

Sitting at a plastic table piled high with gadgets and batteries, the students looked nerdy and harmless with their joysticks and goggle cameras.

During Saturday morning drills, they each took turns flying a drone whose camera allowed for a first-person perspective of the flight.

Over and over, students learned how to maneuver their drones by sending them through two loops stuck in wet ground.

Drones often whizzed down after touching down on a loop or bush, losing a red plastic propeller or a leg that was found in wet grass and had to be reattached.

But hundreds of hours of such exercises gradually turn the drone into an extension of the pilot’s body, serving him on the front lines.

‘We want to live so that our children are not afraid’

Some students are too young to be drafted.

15-year-old Kemal, who has mixed Ukrainian-Turkish origins, told Al Jazeera that the draft age is 25 and said, “I still have 10 years.”

His immediate goal is to “prepare for races” among students of similar drone flight schools in Kiev. Other students who are not eligible for compulsory military service want to pass on everything they have learned.

“We want to live so that our children are not afraid and do not hide in bomb shelters, because where have I been teaching all this time? In bomb shelters,” Viktoria, a teacher who will teach high school students to fly drones as part of a new compulsory course, told Al Jazeera.

Ukrainian women are exempt from compulsory military service, but many choose to serve in the army or volunteer units.

Survival!’

In a darkened classroom on the top floor of a dreary office building in southeast Kiev, Viktoria sat next to six men, listening to the theoretical parts of the lecture. Pronin projected slides on the wall to explain things like the frequencies used to fly drones and get video feedback.

Four of the men were active soldiers sent by their military unit to master a new skill. Speechless and focused, they refused to be interviewed or photographed, with only one shouting “survival!” he blurted out. when asked about his motivation.

This is the keyword for every aspiring drone pilot or engineer, especially during Ukraine’s conscription crisis; Thousands of men of war age are forcibly rounded up and sent to training camps or released with bribes.

“Let’s be realistic. If you are taken away by conscription officers, you pay 8,000 hryvnia (a little less than $200) and they let you go,” Pronin said. “That’s the price of our training course.”

Moreover, the 16-day Department of Defense-approved training course offered by Pronin and his partner Roman, who withheld his last name for security reasons, is in many ways a way to join the newest military elite.

Pay Ukraine’s money

Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region have shown how important heavy unmanned aerial vehicles such as Predators and Bayraktars have become on the battlefield. But the Russia-Ukraine war has become the world’s first military conflict dominated by lightweight first-person view (FPV) drones.

When Pronin students go to their exercises, they bring plastic water bottles that they buy from supermarkets and weigh, so they can practice flying with the extra weight. These plastic bottles could be replaced by an explosive thrown into a Russian trench or an uncapped tank with a shocking price-quality ratio.

FPV drones that cost less than $1,000 Destroyed two-thirds of Russian tanks A NATO official said in April it cost millions.

Most FPV drones are propeller-driven and helicopter-like and can carry everything from heat detectors to night vision cameras to food, water and medical supplies.

Larger, more advanced ones can perform tasks similar to Predator or Bayraktar drones.

One of them is Vampire, a Ukrainian-made heavy drone armed with a machine gun that hunts Russian soldiers at night. Russians call it “Baba Yaga”, inspired by a witch who eats children in Slavic folklore.

More expensive fixed-wing FPV drones are more energy efficient than quadrocopters and can fly farther. Larger ones hit Russian command centers, fuel depots, airfields and military facilities.

Modern drones are fully capable of replacing snipers, whose range of several kilometers pales in comparison to what an experienced shooter using a drone can do.

“Snipers will kill with drones,” Roman said.

The downside is that even if drone pilots hide in a trench, a basement, or a well-camouflaged shelter, they are still sought after by enemy drones that look for signs of their presence, such as protruding antennas.

“This is dangerous. That is the number one goal,” Pronin said.

The Russian side, meanwhile, is surprisingly quick to imitate any tactical or technological trick invented by Ukrainian drone developers.

“We’ve got a bounce. They’ve got a bounce,” Pronin said. “Then they start making a big deal about everything because everything is at the government level there. “They have unrealistic budgets.”

Ukrainian state-run arms manufacturers often fall behind, and that’s where volunteers come into play.

‘Orchestra’ of drone makers

They produce hundreds of thousands of drones a month in apartments, basements, old warehouses and factories, and raise money online or through word of mouth.

They are using Chinese and Taiwanese chips and spare parts and developing inexpensive features such as wings made of 3D-printed plastic or even cardboard.

They are increasingly relying on Ukrainian-made electronics and can produce drones without a single Chinese-made part, but Pronin said: “It would be painful if China is closed to us.”

They benefit from little government support, telling donors that their best financial contribution is not the number of drones they buy but the number of students they pay to train.

Drone developers are in constant contact with the front lines, tweaking new models on the fly by using new firmware, larger antennas, or switching to radio frequencies that the Russians cannot yet intercept.

The ever-changing nature of UAV warfare is reflected in the school’s course, which “was definitely different a year ago,” Roman said.

The school has trained hundreds of men and women to fly and assemble drones, and their priority is to teach them to work in a team “like in an orchestra,” Pronin said.

Dozens of similar schools operate throughout Ukraine, providing education to thousands of people.

After meeting Western military instructors and training foreign students, Pronin and Roman realized that Ukraine’s drone warfare experience was the most advanced in the world and that their school could offer something others could not.

Both are former teachers from the eastern region of Donbas. They also worked at a bank before becoming drone pilots after Russia-backed separatists in the region rebelled against Kiev in 2014.

Both said they were constantly learning by flying and, yes, shooting down new drones, watching broadcasts, watching videos, joining forums and even sneaking into closed Telegram groups for Russian soldiers.

They already offer English courses and are considering giving a special experience to a foreigner who can sit comfortably at home and fly a combat drone.

They are also confident that their schools will not cease to exist when the war ends.

“We are not aiming for war. We aim for peace,” Pronin said. “Drones have become a part of daily life, just like mobile phones.”