Meet The Piranha: Ukraine’s High-Tech Answer to Drone Threats

Wes O'Donnell
5 min readDec 28, 2023
Courtesy Piranha Tech

By now, we are all well aware of the current state of Ukraine’s frozen conflict. Despite liberating 74,443 square kilometers (28,743 square miles) of land from Russian occupation, the orcs still control approximately 18% of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

What’s more, armored vehicles have been rendered nearly obsolete by mines and drones.

In fact, the lack of armored vehicles and the introduction of tens of thousands of drones has turned the relatively flat terrain of Eastern Ukraine into what is, effectively, an infantryman’s nightmare.

There are now so many quadcopters and FPV drones flying around Ukraine, that it’s as if the sky is filled with thousands of angry, plastic hornets.

The situation is dire.

I shared this chart recently, but it’s worth looking at again — this shows how many Ukrainian armored vehicles have been destroyed by cheap Russian FPV drones.

On the far left side of the chart, you can see what’s been destroyed or damaged.

On the far right of the chart, you can see what caused the destruction.

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Wes O'Donnell

US Army & US Air Force Veteran | Global Security Writer | Intel Forecaster | Law Student | TEDx Speaker | Pro Democracy | Pro Human | Hates Authoritarians