KYIV — If any of them survived, they probably regret leaving the sunroof open.
The three Russian soldiers, filmed from a weaponized Ukrainian drone from above, scramble into what looked like a worn-down sedan somewhere near the city of Kharkiv. Their position had already been struck earlier by another drone and they were trying to evacuate an injured comrade. Just then, a small metal projectile about the size of a soda can descends on them. It has been outfitted with an incongruous white fin. It sails through the air, slipping right through the aperture in the car’s roof, detonating on impact. One soldier is still able-bodied enough to sprint away, although the same can’t be said for his co-passengers. As smoke billows from the top, the vehicle careers out of control, grinding to a stop.
The drone’s camera footage shows a Russian soldier through the sunroof. Another is crawling on the ground. Though the concussive force of the blast didn’t kill these men instantly, the numerous lacerations caused by the mortar’s shrapnel may yet prove deadly.
The video ends.
“We have thousands of volunteers in Ukraine hoping to say ‘hi’ to Russian occupiers in this way,” Yuri Vlasyuk said admiringly of his own team’s work. The soft-spoken 46-year-old explained to Yahoo News at a cafe in Kyiv that the white fin on the bomb, which gave it enough aerodynamic stability to perfectly meet its target, was 3D-printed by a Ukrainian civilian at home. Although it was dropped by an operator of Ukraine’s 92 Mechanized Brigade, the manufacturer received his own digital trophy.
“The volunteers that print these for the drones get a video showing them being put to good use,” Vlasyuk said with a grin. He then pulled up other videos posted to Facebook and Twitter showing grenades and mortars with 3D-printed fins hitting columns of unsuspecting Russian troops, as well as ones displaying Ukrainian hands packing their metal tubes with nails.
Vlasyuk self-effacingly described himself as a “just a guy who knows some cool people.” In reality, his cohort is an organic network of tinkerers — engineers, electricians, programmers and 3D printers — who’ve been helping their military wage a grassroots campaign against Russian invaders.
Some of the yield of their collaborative activity has wound up arming Aerorozvidka, the innovative Ukrainian drone warfare and reconnaissance unit founded in 2014 and now works cheek-by-jowl with the Ukrainian army. Its fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles, remote-operated birds of prey, silently stalks Russian tanks at night and played a major role in halting an invading convoy that snaked toward Kyiv at the start of the war.
Aerorozvidka has seen an incredible return on investment. A $10,000 drone purchasable on Amazon can drop a $10 grenade from above and destroy a modern Russian tank worth millions. When the group needed someone with a background in machine learning, they reached out to Vlasyuk, a central figure in the Ukrainian arm of the “maker movement,” an international subculture of tinkerers, artisans and hobbyists.
Started in San Francisco in 2007, the movement brings together participants with a variety of technical skills to build, modify and experiment. The events rapidly expanded across the United States and were seen as an effective way to promote the adoption of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills among young people. A “Maker Faire” was even held at the White House in 2014.
In 2015, a year after Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea, Vlasyuk, a reseller of Apple computers, hosted a series of maker events in Kyiv after seeing what others in…
Read More: Ukrainians deploy DIY weapons against Russian troops