Russian troops used an “advanced” FPV drone
7 March, 2024 Russian FPV drone equipped with advanced communication system, March 2024. Photo credits: Serhii Flesh. The Russians are experimenting with FPV drones equipped with advanced communications.
Serhii Flesh, military expert in the field of radio technologies, reported on this. The Ukrainian military discovered a surviving Russian FPV drone of an unusual design on the battlefield. In addition to the warhead, it carried a wire coil of unknown purpose.
The drone was handed over to the"Birds of Magyar" unit's specialists for further study. "We saw something we had never seen before. A Russian FPV drone was flying toward a target with a 10-kilometer-long coil of thin fiber optic cable.
The cable was unwound in the air. We see a new technology for controlling FPV drones," Serhii Flesh shared. 
The use of wired communication in drone control offers an important advantage, as such a drone becomes invulnerable to its own and enemy electronic warfare. Due to the wire, the drone operator will have a constant, uninterrupted video signal in high quality, which will significantly increase the strike's accuracy and effectiveness. In addition, the operator's "radio horizon" phenomenon disappears, due to which the connection is lost during diving in the last meters of the flight.
It is not yet clear at what stage Russia's development of drones of this type is, but the fact remains that their first prototypes have been introduced on the front lines. Serhii Flesh noted that such a solution was also proposed as part of the January hackathon of the Ministry of Defense, which presented promising developments in the field of unmanned systems. However, this idea was not supported at the time due to the high risk of fragile fiber optics breaking during the flight.
Wired control
In the field of unmanned aerial systems, wire control may seem like something exotic.
Still, it has long been used in a similar way to control missiles of anti-tank systems, both of old Soviet and modern fourth-generation models.
Fiber optic wire of the Israeli Spike ER2 missile.
In particular, the Israeli Spike-ER anti-tank missile system, which is widespread in the world, is capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 10 kilometers using fiber optic wire for communication.