Spring, a drone pilot with the Ukrainian National Guard’s Typhoon unit, said some upgraded ukraine drone capabilities arrived in early 2025 with serious glitches before they were ready for combat. She tested more than 10 types of mid-range strike drones and found that the first system she flew kept malfunctioning.
Spring’s Early 2025 Tests
“In every sortie, everything that could go wrong went wrong,” Spring said of the first drone system she tested in early 2025. She said the fixed-wing drone’s camera feed would stop working or its software would stall before takeoff, and the controls sometimes became unresponsive after a few minutes while the batteries failed.
Spring said the drone had already been sent to the front for combat use. She said experienced combat pilots test systems in a trial-and-error process to weed out faulty drones before they reach crews.
Typhoon Range Flights
Spring said she has been testing these drones since early last year, splitting her time between the southern front and several days at practice ranges. She said she conducts up to 11 daily flights that last 30 to 80 minutes each, which gives her unit repeated chances to catch software, control, and battery problems before a drone is cleared.
She said after a drone passes a test range, she brings it to the front lines for further trials before it can be deemed combat-ready. Some drones need only a few flights for approval, while others require dozens.
Mid-Range Strike Drones
Mid-range strike drones are typically fixed-wing systems that can fly between 18 and 180 miles. Spring said she specializes in drones that can fly between 40 and 60 km, and she said the systems she tests cost between $1,000 and $15,000 each.
Analysts say these drones have given Ukraine a critical advantage by letting it hit logistics, command posts, and transports in rear areas that Russian commanders had treated as safe. Spring said some mid-range drones also carry AI targeting that keeps them flying and seeking their target after losing contact with the pilot’s control station.
Spring said the drones must strike targets reliably at 25 miles away and beyond, because that range has helped disrupt Russia’s way of fighting and contributed to a net loss of territory for Russian forces in the last few months. That leaves frontline testing with a hard practical standard: if a drone cannot keep its feed, controls, and batteries working under stress, it does not reach combat crews in her unit.
“If a manufacturer is not responsible, I do everything possible to prevent their system from reaching combat crews in our unit,” Spring said. The pressure now sits on the testing pipeline, not the sales pitch.
