Factory to front lines: A Western spy drone’s journey to war in Ukraine

SOUTHEASTERN UKRAINE — Two soldiers emerged from the tree line carrying the drone, trying to avoid scraping its wings against the branches.

They placed it on the launch rail, angled toward the open sky above a field of budding sunflowers.

The drone sprang to life, its small, rear-facing propeller roaring like a lawnmower.

Sporadic raindrops pitter-pattered on the aircraft as the Ukrainian operators waited for their launch window.

Then, at the press of a button, the drone shot into the gray sky for its final test flight before deployment to the front lines — where it would be sent to hunt.

Drones have radically transformed the war in Ukraine.

To capture how uncrewed aircraft are reshaping combat and how lessons from the fight are changing the way companies build these weapons, Business Insider followed a Western-made AR3 surveillance drone from its factory in Wales to the battlefield in southeastern Ukraine, where soldiers from the 15th Artillery Reconnaissance “Black Forest” Brigade readied it for front-line operations.

Its journey from production to the front underscores one of the central dynamics defining both the conflict and Western military and industrial planning.

Ukraine still needs foreign aircraft to sustain its fight, while Western manufacturers need Ukrainian combat experience to keep those aircraft relevant against evolving Russian defenses.

There’s a deeper lesson in the manufacturing-and-feedback loop as NATO braces for its own potential fight.

Sarmat, a platoon commander in the Black Forest Brigade who requested to be identified only by his call sign for security reasons, said that although Ukraine can produce millions of drones each year, its forces still need more aircraft and combat capability than the country can supply on its own.

With Western-supplied drones, he said, “we have the opportunity to fly more, to detect more, and to be much more successful.” At a private airfield on the Welsh coast, factory workers assemble AR3 drones inside one of several manufacturing sites in Britain that are operated by the Portuguese defense company Tekever.

The long World War II-era runway and private airspace around the quaint town of Cardigan make it an ideal location for flight testing.

Many of the drones produced here will soon embark on a nearly 2,000-mile journey east to Ukraine.

Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Tekever made reconnaissance drones for governments and commercial clients to monitor illegal fishing and migration at sea.

Now, the company is increasingly producing uncrewed aircraft for Ukraine.

At the start of the war, Ukraine relied heavily on Western military assistance to fend off Russia’s invasion forces.

Kyiv also invested heavily in its own drone industry to gain a technological advantage over a much larger military.

Hundreds of Ukrainian companies now produce millions of aircraft annually, including strike and reconnaissance drones.

That growth has reduced Ukraine’s dependence on foreign suppliers for some types of drones, but it has not eliminated it.

Longer-range reconnaissance aircraft such as the AR3 can fly deeper and stay aloft longer than many of the smaller, cheaper drones that Ukraine produces in vast numbers.

These tools give commanders a key way to locate valuable Russian targets beyond the immediate front.

Ukrainian drone production and battlefield tactics are also shaping Western military planning and training.

Top NATO officials have said they are absorbing many lessons from the conflict, including how quickly drone designs and countermeasures become obsolete.

Western support is “extremely important to Ukraine,” said Scott McClelland, the deputy director of Tekever’s defense unit. “This ultimately comes down to wider European security.” The UK is one of the largest suppliers of military aid and security assistance to Ukraine.

It has committed more than $21 billion in military support since 2022, including 150,000 strike, reconnaissance, and logistics drones this year.

Tekever’s AR3, the specific cost of which the company declined to provide, is among the systems supplied through that support, along with drones from British drone makers Windracers and Malloy Aeronautics.

Sarmat’s unit received its first AR3 in early 2024 and learned to operate the aircraft from Tekever.

But the conversation doesn’t end there.

Tekever maintains a secure hotline around the clock to answer questions from Ukrainian operators.

The soldiers, in turn, test new technology in combat and tell the company what needs to change to make the drone more effective.

Exchanges like these between troops and industry have given rise to an accelerated development cycle driven by the brutal demands of modern warfare.

A drone that works against Russian defenses today may struggle once Russia changes its jamming, detection, or interception tactics.

Manufacturers must then modify the aircraft before the advantage disappears.

McClelland said that the feedback from Ukraine allows Tekever to continually upgrade the drone.

For instance, after the Black Forest Brigade requested a change to the AR3’s climb rate, the company modified the engine. “The operating environment in Ukraine has really required us to respond at a speed that is almost alien to traditional Western procurement,” McClelland said.

Western militaries might spend years bringing a new product to life and putting it into service with the armed forces.

For Ukraine, that would be “far, far too late,” he said.

Technology developed on that timeline could be “completely redundant” by the time it reached the battlefield because Russian forces and the conditions of the war would have already changed, creating new requirements.

The pressure to move at speed and remain on the cutting edge extends beyond a single drone or type of drone.

Western governments are studying how to shorten weapons development and procurement cycles for future conflicts in which equipment may need to be updated within months or weeks, rather than years.

Ukraine is providing a real-time test of whether defense companies and procurement systems can keep pace.

Business Insider reporters traveled across Ukraine to document how new technologies, tactics, and industries are radically changing warfare.

Read more dispatches from Ukraine here: From Wales, the drones are boxed and sent to Portugal; then begins the long overland journey across Europe to Poland, where they cross into Ukraine.

Tekever did not disclose specific shipping details for security reasons.

After a drive from the factory in Wales to London, a flight to Warsaw, two trains to Kyiv, and a final drive to a remote forest at the end of a dirt road near Dnipro — more than 24 hours of movement east — Business Insider caught up with one of Tekever’s drones.

The Black Forest Brigade uses the forest as cover when setting up AR3 drones for operations.

The soldiers had also strung up camouflage netting to conceal their position from Russian drones that could be nearby.

They carried assault rifles and electronic-warfare equipment as a last line of defense.

The soldiers pulled a box from a windowless van that had been driven from Portugal with their drone.

The vehicle also served as the aircraft’s ground-control station.

Slightly beyond the tree line, the Ukrainians assembled a catapult launch rail and communications antennae, then put together the AR3 like a Lego set, piece by piece, and ran a number of pre-flight checks under the cover of their camouflage netting.

After securing the aircraft on the rail and waiting for a light rain shower to pass, the operators received clearance to launch.

The drone, powered by its gas engine, took off into the sky.

A few minutes later, it deployed a parachute and floated down onto the field before landing on an airbag.

Two soldiers scrambled across to retrieve it.

This was only a test flight — a final check before a real mission against Russian forces.

On an operational flight, the AR3 can remain airborne for hours.

It typically operates dozens of miles behind the front lines, searching for high-value targets such as air defense systems, radars, and artillery, Sarmat said.

Operators pass the coordinates they collect to artillery crews, who can then decide whether to engage.

The drone can return later to conduct a battle damage assessment should offensive units opt to open fire.

That work fills a critical gap between the smaller drones watching the immediate front and other surveillance systems looking much farther into Russian-held territory.

The team works nonstop, sometimes more than seven days without a rest.

Summer is ideal for reconnaissance; cameras are less effective in the winter, and the unit doesn’t fly in bad weather. “Every week, we have a lot of targets,” Sarmat said.

The battlefield has changed dramatically since the war began in 2022.

It is now saturated with electronic warfare, which can disrupt flight operations for drones like the AR3 that rely on radio-frequency connections vulnerable to signal jamming.

A drone does not need to be shot down to be rendered ineffective.

If Russian forces sever its communications, interfere with its navigation, or expose the operator’s position, the mission may fail and leave the crew at risk.

Tekever declined to say how many of its AR3s have been lost in Ukraine.

In August, Russian state media reported that Russian forces had downed an AR3 and transferred it to a research institute for study.

Ukraine has been forced to explore innovative solutions to keep its drones in the sky. “It’s war,” Sarmat said. “Somebody has a shield — we create a sword.

Then we create an automatic weapon.

It’s the same situation with electronic warfare.” The work has become more dangerous for the Ukrainian operators.

Every day, the drone-infested “kill zone” on the battlefield is expanding, putting even launch positions farther from the front within Russia’s reach.

That challenge can make concealment and mobility as important as the drones themselves at times.

A sophisticated reconnaissance drone offers little advantage if Russian forces can find and attack the team launching it.

Working from the forest is critical to the Black Forest Brigade’s survival.

Once, they lived in the trees for a month.

Mid-range reconnaissance drones like the AR3 help Ukraine find Russian forces and equipment behind the front lines.

But as Ukraine leverages these Western-made weapons in the war, there’s a deeper lesson in the cooperation for NATO.

For alliance countries preparing for a possible large-scale confrontation with Russia, the lesson isn’t simply that their militaries need drones.

They may also need factories, purchasing systems, and military institutions that can effectively act on front-line feedback, staying ahead of an adversary’s swift adaptations. “Our main task is to win the war,” Sarmat said. “But also, we have a task to give our partners all our experience and our advice on how to be successful on the front lines.”

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