In Ukraine, fishing nets have a second function: capturing war drones sent by the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin.
According to information from the New York Timesthe networks are extended at critical points in the eastern front of Ukraine, under military control posts and artillery positions. The networks are sewn in cities far from the Batalha front or sent through Nordic ports, “donated” by fishermen that no longer need.
The use of the object is clear: intercepting drones that invade the skies of the country and attack anything that moves, and may be a moving shielded vehicle or hidden soldiers.
Its dense mesh makes the nets curl into drones propellers making flying objects immobilized. It is a simple weapon of defense that has some effectiveness. Other state -of -the -art weapons sometimes cannot shoot down drones due to their high speed, and fly behind the front line in order to fly on out -of -reach routes.
While Ukraine has been implementing the simple measure, Russia has increasingly used drones connected by fiber optic cables, replacing those depending on electronic signals. Cables make the drone immune to interference – one of the defense methods used on the battlefield against flying weapons.
Without the possibility of interference, fishing nets have become one of the remaining few ways to capture drones from the Russian enemy.
“Military engineers have noticed that even a common fishing network could stop or damage an enemy drone,” Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Kravchuk, head of communications from the Ukrainian Army Engineering forces, recently recently recently. He added that the networks were being installed “throughout the front line from east to south.”
SIMPLE DEFENSE INSTRUMENTS AGAINST THE LAST GENERATION
For Federico Borsari, a technology war expert at the European Policy Analysis Center, the first to use networks in this way was Russia, on a more limited scale, in 2023. At the time in question, the measure was adopted by Moscow to combat small attacking quads.
Last year, Russian state news agency Tass reported that the Russian army began installing fishing nets on Ukraine’s busy Northeast. THE New York Times It also verified the presence of these networks in the city of Bakhmut, a city captured by the Russians 2023.
Now, Ukrainians plan to cover important roads throughout the front line with nets, creating what soldiers call the “network corridors” that offer vehicles a safer passage.
The project is gradually transforming the front line landscape in Ukraine. Roads that were previously flanked by trenches and barbed wire are now also covered by screens extended between cables attached to posts. Passing through them gives the feeling of crossing a semi-transparent tunnel.
In addition, military vehicles are being equipped with the nets, literally creating a “layer of protection,” as if inside a cage. The protection causes the drone to explode a few meters from the vehicle, minimizing damage.
The measures highlight a feature of this war that has lasted more than three years: simple means of defense are opposing the state -of -the -art weapons of war.
Other examples that go beyond the fishing net are machine guns of World War II also used to slaughter enemy and scissors, used to cut fiber optic cables that could be connected to drones. The latter was requested by a Kerson City Hall employee, which asked the city’s residents to do so.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine, from the military point of view, is a clear example of a mixture of the old and the new,” Borsari said in an interview with NOW.
Fishing net corridors have already begun to be implemented by the Ukrainian forces in Sumy, a region in the Northeast partially invaded by the Russian forces, and in the Donetsk region in the east.
As the Russians advance with the drones, they shot the main access road that leads to the city of Kostiantynivka in East, which is surrounded.
To protect it, the military dug holes along the road to install poles, unfolded large rolls of thin net, and then lifted on these poles, with the aim of forming a long protection corridor on the strategic pathway.
Kiev now uses charity to ensure more networks, as there are still hundreds of kilometers of road to cover.
Ludvig Ramestam, founder of the non -profit organization Sueca Operationchange, said that NOW that the NGO has already provided 250 metric tons of networks this year alone.
He says he buys networks of neighboring Nordic countries with large fishing industries, such as Denmark.
“We give these nets a second life,” Ramestam said, jokingly that his organization would “empty the ports.”
